[Air-l] Re: first post (An Internet without Space)

[Jonna Ahti]

Greetings from Helsinki! The big piles of snow have begun to melt down and 
the city seems to be floating on water... 

I would like to add my humble opinion to the discussion of spaces and 
places on the Internet. I don't see any problem in using these terms when 
we discuss Internet. More problematic from my point of view are those 
people who only look at the Internet as a form of technical invention and 
as a technical environment. For me it is primarily a social environment 
that is regulated by technical properties. I also find it problematic in 
the academic world that there is a constant need for terms that sound fine 
but are lightyears away from the terms that "normal" people use. The users 
have created a whole bunch of terms that are good and widely spread and I 
think that "cyberspace" is one of those terms. I think it is one of peoples 
basic psychological needs to "be at home"; to be a part of something that 
one can in some way get a hold of. Chat rooms are imagined to be real rooms 
because we deal with real people there. If someone starts to cry in a chat 
room other users offer her/him a handkerchief - acts are in other words 
regarded as real acts. 
"Space" is a great term because it let's us imagine things spatially but it 
also tells us that Internet users are aware of the non-spatiality of the 
net. They know that it is not a real world in a same sense as our physical 
world but a limitless space(!).
I think my role as a researcher is to be a link between academia and 
Internet users and to try to get these two worlds closer to each other, not 
to separate them with terms that nobody understands or with theoretical 
junk that has nothing to do with reality.
I am young, naive and unexperienced and not very good in expressing myself 
in English but I wonder if I am alone with these thoughts on this list... 

Jonna Ahti     

-- 
Ms. Jonna Ahti
PhD student
NORDICA - Department for Scandinavian Languages
and Scandinavian Literature
P.O.Box 24
00014 University of Helsinki
Finland
jonna.ahti at helsinki.fi
tel. +358-40-5625497