Cyberspace

Cyberspace, a metaphoric abstraction used in philosophy and computing, is a (virtual) reality which represents the Noosphere/World 2 both "inside" computers and "on" computer networks.

Cyberspace As a Metaphor: Text-Based Internet-Surfing

The word ?cyberspace? is currently used in a primarily metaphoric sense and is mostly associated with the Internet. When we sit in front of a computer and turn it on, something like magic happens before us; if we are correctly hooked up we can bring up an environment of hypertext with a click of the mouse. It feels like that behind the screen, there is a potentially very huge reservoir of information that is always in the making. Such a reservoir is somewhere, out there. We are certainly aware that people who generate information, and places wherein information resides, are not behind the screen or in the hard drive, but we nevertheless take the computer as a gateway to another place where other people have done similar things. Conceptually, we tend to envision a nonphysical ?space? existing between here and there, and believe that we can access that ?space? by utilizing computer-based technologies. We send messages to others by e-mail, or talk to others in a chat room. We play chess on-line interactively as if the rival were right before us, though invisible. By participating in an on-line teleconference, we experience some sort of presence of other conference participants. But where are we? Where are those with whom we communicate? Since we can reach one another in a certain way, but are mutually separated after all, we tend to envisage the potential of such an electronic connection in terms of spatiality. Usually, we call it ?cyberspace? that connects and separates us at the same time when we are engaged in the networked electronic communicative activities -- the ?space? that seems to open up or shut down as the computer screen is activated or deactivated. In this sense, what we get from cyberspace is mostly text-based information with graphic visual aid.

Related Topics:
E-mail - Chat room - On-line

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But the concept of spatiality is based on the notion of ?volume duality?, as Zettl calls it. A space has positive and negative components. The positive volume has substance, while the negative volume is empty and delineated by things with substance. For example, a room has the negative volume of usable space delineated by positive volume of walls. But text-based Internet does not have such duality. When we surf the Internet for its textual contents, we know we are spatially situated in front of a computer screen, and we cannot enter the screen and explore the unknown part of the Net as an extension of the space we are in. We know that the volume duality does not extend to the textual sources, because the screen itself belongs to the positive side of the space, and the gap between the screen and us belongs to the negative side; that is, the duality is already exhausted before we consider the textual contents on the screen. As for the gap between two words in a textual page, it only functions to separate two symbols, and symbols are not considered substantive entities.

Related Topics:
Internet

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When we read the text page by page, however, we might attribute a spatial meaning to the interval between two pages if we consider the unturned pages to be somewhere ?out there.? The choice of the word ?page? may also figuratively implicates a spatial interpretation. Furthermore, words such as ?files?, ?folders?, ?windows?, and ?sites? might even suggest that there be a spatial dynamic at work behind the scenes. But the only role of these figurative metaphors is organizing the textual contents, and the contents themselves are not figurative. The word ?cyberspace? here refers, therefore, not to the content being presented to the surfer, but rather to the dynamic that enables us to surf among different units of contents. We project a figurative structure into the symbolic connections which we know clearly are not figurative or spatial.

Related Topics:
Page - Files - Folders - Windows - Sites

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Therefore, ?cyberspace? understood not as something other than ?space? but as one kind of space, is metaphorical. Some of us call it "nonphysical? space as if space allows a nonphysical version, but it remains unclear how space can be non-physical in its original sense. The metaphorical use of the term seems to be based on our understanding of the electronic connectivity, for the purpose of storing and delivering symbolic meaning, as a means of gathering and separating contents. In such a case, the word ?space? might suggest a collage of positive and negative volumes, or the interplay between presence and absence of meaning. It directs us to regard the delivered meaning-complexes as delineated by operational units that are not given as symbolically meaningful, and that correspond to our actions of clicking, scrolling, typing, etc. These actions create ?gaps? between our mental operations that articulate different units of meaning carried by symbols.

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The prefix ?cyber? is derived from our understanding of a cybernetic process as a self-reflexive dynamic system that uses a negative feedback circuit to stabilize an open-ended process. Here the notion of cyberspace applies such an understanding of the self-reflexive mechanism in cybernetics to the meaning-making process of the hypermedia. Thus cyberspace suggests a possibly infinite number of occasions of grouping and separating, surfing and routing, constructing and destroying, etc. This open-ended quality resembles the perceived infinity of the physical space that cannot be pictured as being bounded by something. It is impossible to imagine that it would reach a final closure. Similarly, the experience of always having a potential to encounter something unknown or unexpected seems to be inherent in the surfing process. This is a process of perpetual interactions.

Related Topics:
Surfing - Routing

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In the context of such a metaphor, how can we understand the notion of cyber-culture? In fact, there is a tendency in the media to equate cyberspace with cyber-culture, and forget the hard-cored phenomenological aspect of cyberspace. When some journalists attempt to play the role of cultural critics on the Internet, they frequently convey a message that cyberspace is equivalent to a digital community or a digital city. That is, a web of personal relationships, where civic democracy is based on a balance of diversity and unity, or of coherence and openness. But such an equation between cyberspace and a web of personal relationships does not help us envision the possibilities of cyberspace and cyber-culture, because it prevents us from asking the question of how cyberspace allows for the rise of cyber-culture; nor does it help us understand the fact that the metaphoric nature of text-based cyberspace has been carried over to the current understanding of the formation of the so-called ?cyber-culture?.

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One assumption behind the notion of cyber community as currently held is that a community, as a cultural entity, can be formed solely on the act of communicating a shared set of social values. But in the real world, we don?t consider such an act alone a sufficient condition for cultural identity. It seems that the physical proximity, geographically and ethnically understood, is more basic for the formation of cultural identity among those with shared values. The rhetoric of cyber community has yet to be justified by solid analysis before it can hope to become a conceptual tool that helps us understand cyberspace and cyber-culture adequately.

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