A reflection.

It has been an incredibly interesting exploration into the two concepts of “resident” and “visitor” shown by Le Cornu and White. My first impressions still remain to an extent (These being that the two concepts seem simplistic for dealing with millions of internet users displaying qualities of the “visitor” and “resident”). Whilst I understand that White stated a user could be both a “visitor” and “resident”, this didn’t help me find the use or relevance in them; I feel it further calls into question the use of the definition in any kind of categorizing or inferential way.

What hadn’t been brought to my attention before reading Calum’s blog was the use of the definitions as a tool to measure certain things, and in turn provide a guide for measuring users digital habits which has clear advantages such as being able to find solutions to problems academics that may be attempting to digitise education could face.

Furthermore, Pippa’s blog highlighted the importance of the terms behind the concepts, which I found, on a personal level, a far more useful way of conveying how people live and work on the web. The exacting definitions of a “tool” and “place” allow a far more descriptive and useful way of seeing how people use the Internet than the concepts. However, I couldn’t help feel that the descriptive points perhaps furthered my belief that the concepts as separate entities weren’t useful.

Having said this though, these were two points from different blogs. One that reinforced my own belief, and one that highlighted a large advantage to the two concepts. As a final reflection, I still maintain my view in the perspective of my discussion, though Catherine and Calum’s blogs both successfully challenged my perspective and argument and provided good reason to reconsider my view.