DIGITAL COTTAGE INDUSTRIES

摘要

A global renaissance in cottage industries is currently underway, fuelled by a wide spectrum of digital communications - from smart phones to the Internet and, increasingly, the technologies of virtuality (ranging from augmented reality to fully immersive virtual reality). A growing number of products - digital or otherwise - floating on the pervasive cybermarket are being developed and distributed from the home. This re-emerging para-industry, global in scale and regional in consequence, subsumes many sectors using digital avenues as sales and marketing vehicles, from mohair products in Ireland to curios upcycled from washed-up flip-flops in Kenya and the scanning of literature to generate ebooks in Japan. Up until the digital age, cottage industries were located on sites disconnected from industrial and urban centres. Today, however, following William Gibson's recent identification of the 'ageographical and largely unrecognized meta city that is the Internet', it is increasingly difficult to identify spaces that are outside of the urban process.