Conceptualizing the Semantic Web as a Text, Image, and Performance Triptych
Prof. Jonathan Roberge
(INRS Urbanisation Culture Société, Québec, Canada)
Section: Culture and Society / Session: Cultural sociology in action: methodological
reflections and empirical explorations (chair Dimitri Kurakin)
From the development of the Arpanet by the American army in the 1960s to the Web 2.0
(O’Reilly 2005), less than half a century has passed. During this period, however, what we
have witnessed is nothing short of a digital revolution, which now affects every aspect of
cultural life. Systems of values are being put to test, cultural practices have become blurred
and highly complex, digital devices have gained a certain autonomy (through the logic of
algorithm, among other things). As if this process were neither fast nor broad enough, we
are today challenged by yet another discursive machine in the making, namely the Web 3.0,
or the “Semantic Web” (Baker 2006, Wainright 2005). What could lie behind such a
conceptual evolution? Is there an actual difference justifying such a distinction? These and
other questions raise significant epistemological, as well as ontological, issues. A deeper
understanding in this realm would inform our comprehension of the present and the social
sciences in general, and cultural sociology in particular should be equipped with new tools
to make sense of such complicated passage. This paper aims at clarifying what these new
and improved tools could be, but more specifically it will try to elaborate on their intrinsic
relations. As the Web 2.0 and 3.0 are fashioned by strophe and narrative, highly visually
determined and enacted through the presentation of the self, they can be usefully
considered according to the triptych (or trialectic) formed by text, image, and performance.
Of the three notions, that of text is the most obvious. A future Semantic Web will still be
organized by bits of written materials, even though they may be smaller or more distanced
from one another. In such an analysis, cultural sociology would thus be able to claim its
filiation to post-structuralism and hermeneutics (see Alexander & Smith 1998, Ricoeur
1986, Roberge 2009, 2011). The challenge ahead will be to propose a rich and thick
description of the meanings carried through such texts, as much as—and this is new—
proposing original ways to link them to the second part of the triptych—images. The
Semantic Web might not enhance visual culture per se, but it will redefine it in yet
unimagined ways. While prior efforts to ascribe meaning to representations and icons are
to be acknowledged, e.g. the work of Roland Barthes, it will be of special importance to
overcome the aforementioned and much-discussed word/image dualism (see Bartmanski
2012). In “serious leisure” websites like those dedicated to food blogging, there is now a
clear trend toward such an overcoming, even though sociologists are not ready to give
significance to such profane subject matter. And then comes the question of performance.
Of the three segments of the triptych, this one is the most complex because the literature on
the topic is much less developed, with maybe the exception of Schechner’s or Turner’s
work. Performativity in the context of the Web, present and future, will both mean and put
into motion different and contradictory things. Codes, digital software, platforms and the
like will do more and act more—and in more efficient ways (Mackenzie 2005). Individuals,
for their part, will also create and generate more varied or different cultural content, and by
so doing reinvent their modes of interaction (see Van Dijck 2009, for instance). As such,
how can both systemic and interactionist dimensions be remediated, either though the
tools of cultural sociology or in the context of a Semantic Web? Moreover, how can they be
reunited with the questions of text and image in a rich yet subtle way? In the conclusion of
the paper, I will argue that our capacity to imagine, understand, and even explain the text,
image, and performance triptych is fundamental for renewing cultural sociology, thus
preparing it for the digital challenges that lie ahead in the near future.