context collapse : In face-to-face communication events we carefully assess the context of the interaction in order to decide how we will act, what we will say, and how we might try to construct and present ourselves. As Erving Goffman has demonstrated, we continuously and often unconsciously take note of the physical surroundings, the people present, and the overall tone and temper of the scene among many other things (1959). . . .
¶ Now look carefully at a webcam. That’s there. That’s somewhere else. That’s everybody. On the other side of that little glass lens is almost everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you have ever heard of, and even those you have never heard of. In more specific terms, it is everyone who has or will have access to the internet – billions of potential viewers, and your future self among them. . . .
¶ The problem is not lack of context. It is context collapse: an infinite number of contexts collapsing upon one another into that single moment of recording. (†1854)
