Varieties of Cyberspace: Problems in Definition and Delimitation

Professor Strate's article "Varieties in Cyberspace" describes what he calls the three levels of cyberspace and their subdivisions. The first level is called zero-order cyberspace. The first of its categories is called paraspace, or nonspace. Paraspace deals with the paradoxical aspects of cyberspace: it exists, but at the same time it is unreal. The other category of zero-order cyberspace is cyberspacetime, which has to do with our perceptions of space and time. The second level is called first order cyberspace. Its three categories are physical cyberspace, conceptual cyberspace, and perceptual cyberspace. Physical cyberspace consists of the electricity, wires, modem, and anything else relevant in the physical world. Conceptual cyberspace deals with the "cognition" and logical qualities of cyberspace. Perceptual cyberspace deals with how we use our senses to obtain information about cyberspace. The last order is called second order cyberspace. This contains cybermedia space, which contains its own subcategories of aesthetic space, information or dataspace, and interactive or relational space.

Cyberspace and Communications Chapters 19, 20, 12, 13, epilogue

Chapter 19 is titled "Charting the Codes of Cyberspace: A Rhetoric of Electronic Mail." Author Judith Yaross Lee states that e-mail and other similar media heavily resemble formats from letter writing. However, according to Lee, this writing does differ from writing that took place before e-mail. E-mail allows for immediacy, but it lacks intimacy and often leads to misunderstandings, which can be avoided by the use of emoticons. Lee's point is that communication in cyberspace is new and different from any other form of communication and doesn't entirely compare to one medium or another.

Chapter 20 is titled "What's Fueling the Flames in Cyberspace? A Social Influence Model." In this chapter, Author Philip A. Thompsen argues that flaming involves a relationship between people that has been formed through any form of computer media, and that how one interprets a message is equally part of the flaming as the person who sent the message. He defines flaming as sending any insulting, profane, vituperative message through electronic media.

Chapter 12 is titled "Constructing the Virtual Organization: Using a Multimedia Simulation for Communication Education." Author Terri Toles Patkin discusses the psychological implications of Virtual Reality and what cognitive processes are involved. She also writes about the practical, real-life uses of VR.

Chapter 13 is titled "Online Education Unbound." Online education has become widely used, due to its low cost and flexibility. Author Paul Levinson writes that online education has many advantages: it doesn't require transportation, it is time-flexible so that people can take their class any time, it is usually inexpensive, and it allows students to interact with other students. There are also several drawbacks, including the fact that complex science courses with laboratory components do not translate well to online media.

Communications and Cyberspace Chapters 2, 3, 21

Chapter 2 is titled "CyberWalden: The Online Psychology of Politics and Culture." The author, John M. Phelan, writes, "Cyberspace is a new field for old dreams. It is the latest meeting place for both doing things together and trying to figure out, as we never cease to do, where we really are." Cyberspace gives people the ability to control devices to give them feedback and to live as if those devices are a part of them. The feedback is what gives users a sense of feel, and makes them demand much more speed than is necessary. 

Chapter 3 is titled "Who Shall Control Cyberspace?" The author states that cyberspace is for the most part decentralized and uncontrolled. Although those who first inhabited the internet are proud of its openness and libertarian, self-governing abilities, it is incredibly easy for political and commercial entities to exploit those who use it. The author believes that in the future, those who control society at large will control cyberspace, which in my opinion is a scary thought. 

Chapter 21 is titled "The Information Arms Race." Although cyberspace is supposed to be free and open, businesses have exerted much influence over the way we use the World Wide Web. We now have terms like e-commerce and e-shopping, as well as advertising all over websites. The author describes this as a form of information warfare and compares it to the history of cultural imperialism. Much of what we know and use in cyberspace, he argues, is becoming commercialized by business interests, which goes against the freedom and openness that cyberspace originally stood for. 

Communication and Cyberspace Chapters 1, 4, 10, 11, 18

Chapter 1 of Communication and Cyberspace is titled "From Locomotion to Telecommunication." It also details how many people find a life inside cyberspace in addition to their lives with their families and communities. I found it interesting that a NY Times obituary described a deceased computer programmer as being a part of two communities: the physical one that included his family and neighbors and friends in Astoria, and his cyberspace community in which he had friends that came together for an online wake. This chapter also talks about the effect of cyberspace on physical space, referencing a portion of Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame and the idea that "the book will kill the church." This meant that people feared that books would free people from dependence on church. The modern-day parallel is that cyberspace will draw people away from physical environments.

Chapter 4 is titled "Striking a Balance: Access and Control Copyright, Property, and Technology." There is an issue that states that electronic media have changed the way we think about publishing. On one hand, authors have control of their intellectual property, but the point of the Internet is that information is to be freely available and sharable. It is incredibly difficult to police cyberspace.

Chapter 10 is titled "The Digital Divide," which states that there is a massive gap between who has access to new technologies and who doesn't have access. Rural areas are much less likely to have access to the Internet than suburban and urban areas. White people are more likely than Black or Hispanic people to have access to new technologies. Elderly people are less likely than young people to have Internet access. Additionally, education level and email use are positively correlated. I found this chapter interesting and eye-opening, as most of the world does not have access to the internet; I think this is something most Americans take for granted.

Chapter 11 is titled "Risk and the Internet: Perception and Reality." The author discusses risks in cyberspace, such as fears of censorship, pornography, and risks involving children and the Internet. Parents often believe that their children should have internet access, but at the same time worry about what their children are viewing online. Censorship has come about due to pornography, which is what drives technology. The US government has passed several laws pertaining to required Internet filtering software in schools.

Chapter 18 is titled "Cinematic Representations of Cyberspace." In this chapter, the author discuesses how cyberspace has been represented in cinema. Symbolic form in cinema has lead to a class divide: more educated people prefer literacy, whereas the less-educated people prefer speech and imagery.

6/25 Electric Writing and Hypertext

 Hypertext has been the focus of discussions for many years. Even though interest in hypertext has died individuals try to pin point exactly what it is. Many say that definitions up until now have been very ambiguous. Many feel that it is time to stop living in the past and create the future with the use of cyberspace and hypertext. individuals have been going to colleges to examine students and their reliance on print ads versus the internet. Print ads have become less and less as the years have gone by and students are spending up to five hours on the internet each night. Hypertext can never exist in printed documents the only space that is capable of holding it is cyberspace. Many parents and other individuals who relate to education are very skeptical of how hypertext will be used in the classroom and what effect it will have on students. Many feel that the sources that are required with the display of hypertext lead students to be able to discover and vast variety of information from the sources that are cited. Others feel that there must be some structural evidence to why we have used a textbook for so long and what impact switching over will have on students. Of course there is no conclusive evidence of where our society will go, but with the trends that are being set now hypertext and other devices will replace what we know now as the printed textbook. Smart tags release radio frequencies that allow information related to the barcode to be found and directed to a database. In order for this information to be sorted and arranged an enabler needs to be put in place so that when the barcode is scanned the information can go directly where it is suppose to go. Smart boxes are used to receive information that may be highly confidential. The military uses drones to scout out their enemy and than this information is relayed to a smart box, which is than examined by the military. obviously this information isn't available to just everyone, but smart boxes can be programmed to work in either a private or public setting. As shown by Professor Strate in class Wikis can be created very easily and can be used in many functions. I was amazed to know that wikipedia was one of thousands of wikis that are being created everday. This enables individuals to create their own future and design exactly how they can go about completing their goals.

Chapters 1,4,10,11,18

     “The Internet is an unbelievable dense global matrix of 46,000 computer networks, 3.2 million host computers, woven together by telephone lines, undersea cables, microwave links, and gigabit fiber optics.  Touching down in 146 countries, linking 25 to 30 million people and growing by a million users each month, it’s doubling in size each year.”  Lewis mentioned this in the year 1994, where he thought these numbers were outstanding.  Living in the year 2012 and knowing how the Internet is today helps me to forget how complex these networks really are, yet how many people use it without thinking.  Gumpert and Drucker mention that safety is the primary reason by which people choose the spaces in which they work, play, live, and interact.  At one point, our social lives were divided by private and public domains, where as today there is a blurred line between the two.  I thought it was interesting to read about electronic mail.  People think that their emails sent one-on-one can be extremely private.  To a point this is true because there is a law called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1993 that protects email from illegal monitoring and makes it a federal crime to intercept emails.  But, the EPCA does not protect the privacy of messages sent through internal company electronic mail systems.  Therefore, authorized employees, supervisors, or system managers can read emails without breaking the law.  Many people need to be careful with that they say through company email because it could cause extreme problems and/or a standard for being fired.  An important distinction to know is the difference between cyberspace and the Internet.  The Internet is a “multimedia transport medium” whereas cyberspace is an environment of communication instead of transport system.

     Chapter 4 starts out by describing a few metaphors in our culture, including the Electronic Frontier, The Information superhighway, and cyberspace.  The Information superhighway suggests that it is a network that connects us is more important than what is moving on the road.  Cyberspace suggests that a universe of wormholes and feedback loops.  One important question is whether electronic media has changed the nature of publication.  It is difficult to maintain duration and scope with electronic media.  The two reasons for this chapter is to prove that it will be hard to regulate intellectual property in a digital environment through copyright and that copyright is utterly and completely wrong.  Copyright is a huge issue in the world today.  Stewart explains it perfectly when he says, “Property does not have rights.  People do.”  Copyright is not always a bad thing and can help businesses and other companies succeed, with the correct rights to do so.  The reason for copyright laws is to benefit society, making it a better place.  For communication purposes, copyright reflects a view of language, culture, and relationships.

     Chapter 10 discusses the important topic of the digital divide, a term coined in the year 1997.  Frank Dance breaks down the digital divide into some possibilities, including income, race/origin, age, education, and household type.  But there are many more reasons for this as well.  There are people out there who believe that there is no need or even no desire to close this gap.  The first reason for this gap is obviously the ability to access the Internet.  Not many people can get access to the Internet for many different reasons.  The social digital divide is another term used in this chapter.  If everyone did have access to the Internet somehow, the overall digital divide would not be filled.  But Dance believes that the “digital divide will be closed as soon as people find an all important and irresistible reason to be on the web.”  In my opinion, this could be a great prediction, but I do not think that people will find it completely necessary one day.  There are people out there who are stubborn enough to not use it.

     Chapter 11 starts out with a brief history of fear and censorship.  One of the driving forces of censorship today is pornography.  In the late 19^th century, publishers printed magazines on pulp paper that contained pornography and erotica and continues to do so today.  Along with pornography came photography.  Pornography then made it to the web: cyberporn.  This is where censorship came along.  Many parents with computers believed it was important for their children to use the Web, but many were scared as to what their children would find on the Web.  A man named Donald Roberts first introduced a way to rate websites called the standardization Recreational Software Advisory Council’s Internet rating system (RSACi).  This system has four content categories: language, nudity, sex, and violence.  Through this system, it was concluded that the Internet contains a very small percentage of offensive material.  The debate is still ongoing whether or not governments should block a percentage of content so they a smaller percentage of objectionable content will be erased.

     As discussed in class TRON in 1982 has become a major case study for those interested in the cultural impact of computer technology.  The most important fact about this movie is that it is all based on technology and a human trapped in a video game, which is impossible.  This movie changed the way people used to use print but are not engulfed in technology.

Chapters: 2,3,9,21 Questions of Control

 As we have learned, cyberspace is a meeting place for doing things but, there is so much more to it. Norbert Wiener realized in medical school that there is feedback in all interactivity. This concept of a feedback loop suggests that body parts project themselves into devices in order to allow for feedback. The example in the book made a lot of sense to me. It says that when a person drives a sedan rather then the sports car, one can so-called, “feel” the difference. This is because the sports car responds faster to the person, resulting in responding with higher feedback. In addition, I found the section of “who should control cyberspace?” to be interesting. As I was reading the passage it said, that the first citizens of cyberspace made their own rules with little control. The word that caught my eye was “citizens.” This suggests that cyberspace does not just contain physical things like the computer itself but its part of a bigger picture. The idea of citizens is another way of saying a community or system in which relationships emerge and there is a sense of togetherness. Even though this is true, the system has much vulnerability. On page 63, the passage said that in order to affect millions of people, we can publish an article but, since it is not directly personal, the effects are weak. I look forward to seeing if these vulnerabilities will change within time.

Chp. 1 and 4

6/13-strate 1, 4, 10

William Gibson originally coined cyberspace in 1984. It was used as a science fiction scenario where people can directly connect their nervous systems to a global computer, otherwise known as a virtual reality. Furthermore, Rosanne Stone suggests a different view of cyberspace. She said that it could only exist through social interaction with “communal agreement” between all parties. I also agree with Stone that in order for cyberspace to exist, both sides need to be involved. Since cyberspace functions as a substitute for public spaces, it impacts privacy and social interaction. A great example the book provides is the one of computer programmer David Alsberg. After he passed away not only did is family and friends come together in the physical world, but his online friends came together to form an online wake to mourn his passing. This shows the impact cyberspace has on people’s communication and social life. The friendships formed through these mediums seem to be just as valuable as face-to-face relationships. Chapter four as well as class discussion, shows the issues of metaphors in relation to cyberspace. I found it interesting that the book suggests that the “information  super highway” is a negative prediction of the Internet because, it suggests that information may not be free in the future. The metaphor is understood that way, but cyberspace is supposed to be a place where both user and viewer are in agreement and give feedback to one another. As a result this metaphor is not used that often to give people an idea of what cyberspace is actually about. Moreover I found the digital divide discussed in chapter ten to be very interesting. The statistics taken in 2000 said that 304 million people were online. Even though that’s a huge number, it is compared to the 6.1 billion people in the world. As a result, it is important to remember that everyone is not part of this virtual reality known as cyberspace and may never become part of this reality.

Questions of Control

As any new invention the Internet has had many advances through out its’ lifetime. In the beginning the Net was extremely slow and it was very hard to get and maintain a connection, but there have been three new ideas or developments that have changed this. First, Graphic User Interfaces (GUI’s), which were created by Xerox Parc and are now entwined into almost every Personal Computer. Also the advancements of micro chips and there speed has aided the innovation of Graphic User Interfaces. Lastly, the creation and improvement of the Information Superhighway has increased the sufficiency of the bandwidth and has helped with heavy signal loads. Cyberspace has been continually evolving and with that the history of cyberspace is easily forgotten. Those who are working in the Cyber field today is fresh faces and have not experienced past problems that have come about. This may be a problem in the future because of their inability to cope with problems they have never experienced. A huge overbearing concern of many is privacy and how it will be maintained because of the lack of control that is currently on cyberspace. An interesting thought from the reading was that through the Internet advertising companies have switched the way they advertise. It used to be about solving problems or filling the needs of people, but now they have found ways to create needs for products that were never needed before like the iPod. Even though space on the Web seems unlimited many have worries on what that space will be used for and what happens when and if it runs out.

Privacy, Copyright, and Other Issues

William Gibson created the term cyberspace in his novel “Neuromancer”, which he describes as the worlds compilation of data all available in a sensually vivid display. It is amazing that nearly thirty-five million people make up the population of cyberspace. With this vast of an amount of individuals it is bound to exponentially expand. Many in this industry call cyberspace an information highway. The only difference is that they are more concerned with regulating the highway and making it more efficient than the actual packages that our on the “highway”. Cyberspace also includes instances called wormholes. These wormholes consist of a relationship between the individual who created it and those who explore it, which enables them to learn from one another. There are many difficulties when it comes to cyberspace. One is the issue of true ownership. This ownership is based on laws like copyright and what is clarified as copyright infringement in the digital world. It is so easy to make clear copies of work and share them with friends and family. The big question is where do they draw the line. Once the information that you have created has entered the information highway there is very little that can be done to enforce copyright infringement and it is also very difficult to determine whether the document that is being copied is an original or a copy to trace it back to it’s true owner. People have become so engrossed with cinema that novelist have begun to graphically detail novels as if it were a movie. This makes it very difficult or skewed for an individual to alternate from fiction to non-fiction and from non-fiction to fiction. Cyberspace and all of its’ attachments have helped our society advance in many ways and will continue to do so as it grows and problems like regulating the information highway are resolved.

The Internet, Web, and Social media

Through out the beginning of the personal computer or the PC the leader of the industry was IBM. IBM is a company that is very regimented. They had all employees dress in Navy Blue pinstripe suits and encouraged their employees to communicate with each other as much as possible. This company decided to stay away from the software and manufacturing of PC's and decided to focus on teh hardware as they had always done. Apple, a competitor of IBM, had created a new image with the help of Steve Jobs. They created an image that was new and hip and attracted a very artistic and creative crowd. Apple had gone down hill when Jobs left the company, but when he came back with the invention of the iPod Apple once again flourished. In chapters 8 and 9 of "Communication and Cyberspace" individuals go on to describe the internet, which they call an information superhighway. William Gibson went on to coin the term cyberspace, which he describes as a consensual hallucination. His vision of the internet and cyberspace was that it is a transnational capitalism run amok. An obstacle in this era was Interface Message Processors or IMP's. IMP gives computers the ability to talk to each other if they were produced by the same manufacturer. The internet or computer network has been created from the beginning by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as a part of their defense strategy. Their thought was to create a decentralized network so that if one part of the network was attacked or went down the other parts would fill in and there would be no loss of connection. These networks consist of many components such as terminals and nodes. Terminals are not endpoints which are not connected to each other, but to a main frame. Nodes are interconnected within the network. In 1969 ARPAnet was commissioned by the department of defense and the key to this system was packet switching. Packet switching is where several packets are sent to one destination, the nodes reroute in accordance with how easy it is to reach its end point, and they come back together at their destination. Mosco has many views about the electronic age, but one that stood out to me was that in an electric age information has been increasingly modified. Another idea that intrigued me was the thought that cyberspace has no limits and or no barriers and will expand as information increases. With discoveries like prodigy, America online and the WEB our society has become greatly entwined in the internet and all that it has to offer. Within the text we have been reading they speak of a "digital divide, which is the gap between those who have access to and use the internet and those who do not(166)". This idea enlightens you on how the world has increasingly progressed through the years. Thoughts from the text and thoughts of my own hope that this gap is lessened each and every passing day