[Air-l] cyber-space

Fri Feb 13 00:41:31 PST 2004

The term ‘cyberspace’ was first coined by William Gibson in his 1982 short
story ‘Burning Chrome’ to refer to a computer generated virtual reality.
However, the term became popular in 1984, after its use in Gibson’s novel
‘Neuromancer’. Etymologically, cyberspace is a compound word and the origin
of the first term ‘cyber’ comes from the Greek word kybernetes (κυβερνήτης),
which means pilot, governor, and ruler. The root ‘cyber’ is also related to
‘cyborg’, a term that describes a human-machine synthesis resulted by
connecting the human body in advanced high-tech devices. According to
Gibson, cyberspace is the name of a real nonspace world, which is
characterised by the ability for virtual presence of, and interaction
between people through ‘icons, waypoints and artificial realities'. The
Gibsonian cyberspace is an urban ‘thin’ space (Kneale, 1999), dealing with
urban experiences and problems such as crime, social exclusion and poverty.
It mirrors, socio-economic conflicts and geographical divisions that occur
in enormously enlarged and highly polarised cities, in which speed and
movements over the virtual world of cyberspace are the key metaphors for new
spatial experiences. Gibson himself recognises that, by his imaginative
stories, he did not predict the widespread use of computer networks like
Internet around the globe, but he simply used actual technological
developments to make sense of his imagined and futuristic worlds described
in his novels (Gibson, 1996).

But cyberspace no longer strictly refers to the fictional ‘matrix’ in
William Gibson's novels; it is not science fiction but rather a science
fact. It has now entered into common speech on and off the Internet, as
shorthand for the conception of computer networks as a virtual space.
Instead of the human-parts metaphors (brains, memories etc.) that were
basically used to describe the first appearance of computers, the literary
term cyberspace is used as a virtual place-metaphor to describe and
understand the function of ICTs networks. “One doesn't ‘go’ somewhere when
picking up the telephone. But when the computer couples with these same
telephone lines, suddenly spatial and kinetic metaphors begin to
 proliferate” (Nunes, 1995: 1). According to Vinton Cerf, one of the
inventors of Internet, the ‘information superhighway’ metaphor has very
little ability to explain either where the Internet arose or where it could
go (Cerf, Forward, in Stefik, 1997). Stefik complements that politicians,
especially the American ones, use the highway metaphor in their rhetoric in
an attempt to persuade people that large-scale investments on the Internet
will, similarly to highway system, benefit the common good. Stefik, instead,
teases out four other metaphors from current discourse about the Internet:
First, the digital library metaphor shows up in digital libraries, databases
and other archival information services. It emphasises the publishing and
storage of collected knowledge for preservation and access by a society.
Second, the electronic mail metaphor shows up the Internet as a
communications system. Third, the electronic market metaphor is used for
thinking about issues of digital commerce, digital money, and digital
property. Finally, the digital worlds metaphor shows up in description of
geographical and social settings and navigations on the network, groupware
and multi-user virtual environments, augmented reality, telepresence, and
ubiquitous computing (Stefik, 1997: xx-xxi).

Indeed, the development of Internet/ Web technologies have formed a virtual
space that is based on the operational integration of the above spatial
metaphors and which is concerned with information, communication and various
types of interaction, as well as the diversity of personal interests and
values. It is able to embrace and integrate many forms of human activities
that are related to real places and physical proximity/ movement (i.e.
online shopping and banking). “But the price to pay for inclusion in the
system is to adapt to its logic, to its language, to its points of entry, to
its encoding” (Castells, 1996: 374). Thus, through the powerful influence of
the Internet as a new communication system mediated by social interests,
government policies, and business strategies, a new culture is emerging: the
culture of real virtuality (Castells, 1996: 461). He further explains that
“it is real virtuality, and not virtual reality, because when our symbolic
environment is, by and large, structured in this inclusive, flexible,
diversified hypertext, in which we navigate every day, the virtuality of
this text is in fact our reality, the symbols from which we live and
communicate” (Castells, 1997:10-11).

On the other hand, places/spaces are not static objects, but rather dynamic
systems of connections where the external sphere (society and space) acts
upon the internal sphere (self and mind) and vice versa. Regarding the
spatial conception of cyberspace, therefore, the significance of the bi-pole
place-metaphor/ real virtuality is interrelated to the fact that our
‘internal sphere’ is making use of the network topology of virtual places.
Cyberspace could then be notionally linked either to the Platonic definition
of space as the totality of geometric relations possible, or to the
Aristotle’s more topological definition of space as the generalized sum and
place of all (virtual, in our case) places. It might be also argued that
computer networking provides, more than even before, a selective setting for
the extension of ‘cognitive space’, thus of the space which is constructed
intellectually, and delineates our knowledge of others (Adams, 1998:102-3).

Based on the above discussion, I would argue that spatiality of cyberspace
is defined around its interrelation to real (physical) space (see Batty,
1997). The spatial embodiment of cyberspace  can be described as having at
least three layers: the technical, which is concerned with the technological
infrastructure of cyberspace; the geographical, thus the topology of ICTs
networks formed by the location of their nodes and hubs; third is the social
layer, which is concerned with the spatial organisation of people using the
ICTs networks. Cyberspace is a spatial system; its network topology is
certainly dependent upon spatial fixity; its development is critically
influenced by the geography of economic and technological development.
Having that, we should approach it not by treating it as an artefact but as
a serious ontological challenge to modern spatial studies. The maintenance
of geography and its characteristics (people, space, time) are considered
important means to draw conclusions regarding the basic features of
cyberspace’s spatial conception and embodiment in contemporary society.

vas

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Gibson, W. (1996): Civilisation and the Edge of Popular Culture, an
interview to Bob Catterall; CITY, 5-6, pp: 174-177.

Kneale, J. (1999): The Virtual Realities of Technology and Fiction: Reading
William Gibson’s Cyberspace, in Crang, M. et al (eds.): Virtual Geographies:
Bodies, Space and Relations, pp. 205-221; Routledge: London.

Nunes, M. (1995): Baudrillard in Cyberspace: Internet, Virtuality, and
Postmodernity, Style 29, pp. 314-327.

Stefik, M. (ed.), (1997): Internet Dreams: Archetypes, Myths, and Metaphors,
MIT Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, London.

Castells, M. (1996): The Rise of Network Society, Blackwells: Oxford.

Castells, M. (1997): An Introduction to the Information Age, CITY, 7, pp.
6-16: introductory speech to the Conference on ‘Information and the City’,
organised by the CITY journal and held at the School of Geography, Oxford
University, on 22nd of March 1997.

Adams, C. P. (1998): Network Topologies and Virtual Places, Annals of the
Association of American Geographers, Vol. 88, No 1, pp. 88-106.

Batty, M. (1997): Virtual Geography, Futures, Vol. 29, No 4/5, May/June
1997, pp. 337-352.

========================================
Dr Vassilys Fourkas
Spatial Development Research Unit
Department of Urban and Regional Planning and Development
School of Architecture
PO Box 491
Aristotle University of Thessalonica
54124
Thessalonica
Greece

Tel: ++30 2310 995584
Fax: ++30 2310 995592
Email: vfourkas at estia.arch.auth.gr
URL: http://estia.arch.auth.gr/cyberspace

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Eero Tarik" <et at tarik.com.au>
To: <air-l at aoir.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2004 9:28 AM
Subject: [Air-l] hallucinating cyberspace -origins

> hi gang,
>
> correct me if I am wrong but didnt Gibson, when he created the word
> "cyberspace", define it as "a consensual hallucination experienced daily
> by legitimate operators".
>
> So when I refer to anybody "hallucinating" about cyberspace I am indeed
> being correct as per the true meaning of the word. Cyberspace is,
> according to the author of the word, an hallucination. To create
> cyberspace, one hallucinates. Nobody was being insulted, nobody was
> being ridiculed when I suggested some hallucinate about cyberspace, I
> was merely describing cyberspace as the author intended.
> I trust the confusion has now ended.
>
> Of course, if some people want to take the word cyberspace and then
> re-invent its meaning.... well, thats another issue :-)
>
> note to Jonathan - I did put forward a project in the online discussion
> group in one of my internet studies units but it was suggested to me
> that I might like to keep it under my belt for a post graduate effort.
>
> to conclude...
> I'm sure the famous modern philosopher, Bart Simpson, if asked his
> opinion on this matter would remark...
> " hundreds of billions of web pages to study and you want to talk about
> cyberspace????"
>
> see ya
>
> Eero Tarik
>
>
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