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 an Incomplete Replica: Video-Based Game-Playing

Video-based game playing differs from text-based communicating in regard to the meaning of spatiality, as long as the ?gap? on the screen is a representation of the negative volume of space in the setting of the game. Video images are meant to be figures that actually occupy a space and the animation is meant to reproduce the movement of those figures in motion. Images are supposed to form the positive volume that delineates the empty space. Video images have to be able to move across the screen, on which the physical space of the game-player merges with the purported space surrounding the game figures.

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A game cannot adopt itself to the cyber-culture metaphor unless it first reaches out to engage more players in the game, and then allows players to be figuratively represented on the screen. These figurative surrogates that act on behalf of the players are called ?avatars.? But since an avatar represents the player in an objectified manner, the alleged identity between the player?s actual body and the avatar is no more than a stipulation. In such a case, there is no primordial space constitution at the ontological level. The Husserlian constitutive act of consciousness does not take the space surrounding the avatar and the space surrounding the player?s body as one and the same space.

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If we now call it ?cyberspace? that allows avatars to move around as symbolic representations of the actual participant?s bodies, then the metaphoric use of the word that suggests an open-ended potential of meaning-generating and reserving would become obsolete. A notion of digital community discussed above would now demand a representation of the alleged community members by avatars. However, since the sense of participation depends strongly on the participant?s self-identity as an un-mediated subjective person from her first-person perspective, the objectified avatar necessarily creates an ontological gap that cannot be filled by stipulation, and the talk about cyber-culture remains metaphorical and flashy.

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