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This paper asks: what is the nature of cyberspace? Most discussions of the "information society" propose that through ICT and the Internet some kind of "virtual" or "online space" has been created. It should therefore be crucial to develop this idea correctly. How is cyberspace actually constituted, and what is its relationship to other aspects of human existence?
Throughout his summary of modern social theory as applied to the "information society", Webster [1] draws attention to the failure of social impact approaches to develop useful insights about the state of the informatised world. Social impact approaches take the emergence of the "information society" as a given, and invariably cast cyberspace as a new and distinct realm of human activity. Sometimes it is called a new "frontier". The consequences of these developments are examined, but there is little or no analysis of their cause. Webster notes how tempting this approach can be. It is straightforward and appears to deliver what it promises. Nor does it require readers to involve themselves with "arcane" social theory. Yet when reading populist declarations of an "information revolution" with some knowledge of this theory, as Webster says, there is often disappointment. Offline power relations (patriarchy, say, or the domination of capital, or North American culture) are reasserted online despite claims that cyberspace is a place where we can overthrow these old controls. Enthusiastic testimonies from users who have ditched their old identities and enjoyed new lives as radical "cyberpersonae" fade into the dull reality of a commercialised Web, hundreds of spam e-mails a day and Usenet abuse. It is as if we have ascended the last pass over to the new frontier but, looking down on its landscapes, see them already strewn with shopping malls and litter.
There should be no question that important changes in human relationships (social, political, economic and psychological) have occurred due to the widespread use of ICT. Capital, for instance, is now more mobile, to the extent that its accumulation is now far more based on information and mobility than territory [2]. It is necessary to account for such issues when formulating any meaningful insights about the state of the world in the 21st century. But the study of cyberspace is too often seduced by its novel aspects, and is blind to its earthier ones; meaning, those which are rooted in what has gone before, and in the world itself. Analysis without this deeper level of understanding will at best be flawed. At worst it will build but a house of cards. It would be unfair to suggest that analysts are deliberately working in a superficial way. But underlying assumptions always influence the end results, and if these are not clear, then readers have no easy way to work out how results may be constrained or limited by the assumptions [3].
The supplementary essay started to develop the idea of the noösphere as a model for thinking about the construction of social reality. In this model, despite our active role in continually constructing and reconstructing this stock of knowledge and values, it retains some objective, independent existence. The structures and patterns within the noösphere -- effectively a record of all previous human activity -- cannot but influence our day-to-day lives. Past history does not completely limit us, but nor can it be disregarded. The supplementary essay also suggested that the noösphere cannot be analysed independently of the other, material spheres on which it depends, and any productive analysis should be holistic, recognising both the influence of the global, macro-level on the individual micro-level, and vice versa.
This essay first reflects on how the noösphere model can be used to appreciate the nature of cyberspace. It then analyses two books on the subject -- Sherry Turkle's Life on the Screen and Tim Jordan's Cyberpower -- showing how each is more-or-less limited by certain assumptions, as already suggested. Finally, I suggest ways in which a "vulgar postmodernist" approach can be avoided. The trick is to do so without retreating into equally problematic methods that disregard different interpretations of cyberspace (or any other aspect of reality) and in their place impose some "objective" idea of "truth". The noösphere model can help here as well.
The similiarities between the noösphere and cyberspace are fairly apparent at a basic level, and have not gone unnoticed by previous commentators [4]. But to make this link and then stop, as if, analytically, it says all one needs to know, is to fall into exactly the trap I am trying to avoid. Cyberspace is not the noösphere in toto, and ICT certainly has not created the noösphere. The noösphere began to emerge along with human communication, and has therefore evolved along with humanity. It is nothing new, for all that much information previously stored by other means has "migrated" to cyberspace, and the mode of access that is ICT allows far more information to be at our fingertips. The novelty of cyberspace should therefore be called into question even at this early stage.
We must also note the interactions between the noösphere and the material world. As the supplementary essay observed, aspects of the noösphere (such as knowledge and values) can be encoded into artifacts. ICT is a conduit into the noösphere, and one constructed using knowledge and values which are stored there, as indeed is any other technology. All technological artifacts therefore reflect pre-existing knowledge and values at the same time as they may give rise to the possibility of new ones. There is not the space in this essay to explore the development of ICT as a political event -- that is, how the development of the technology was provoked by the systematic need to use the world's (physical and informational) resources more efficiently and more intensively [5]. But we should remember that the world's spheres all act as records of prior activities and events. The distribution of, say, mineral types across the world is a record of geological events, and the distribution of species reflects past evolutionary processes: so it is that aspects of human society reflect prior events, and the distribution of technology is one such record.
In a perceptive paper, Susan Leigh Star [6] describes how the world's information and communication infrastructure is an artifact, a record of activities, and a representation of the world. An information infrastructure will therefore unavoidably reflect the underlying social and political structures which gave rise to it, as any child will take on some characteristics of its parents: even if it then goes on to develop its own. Control over the production of ICT hardware or software means control over what values are encoded into the technology. Both access to and control over the technologies by which we improve our ability to shape the noösphere constitute, at different levels, power in the information society. (Note also the recent move towards more mobility of access -- laptops, mobile phones -- which Bauman correctly notes is an integral part of the new mobility of capital [7].)
One does not need to resort to conspiracy theories to recognise that ICT, despite the claims of more enthusiastic commentators, has not spread across the world because of its potential to change existing systems -- rather, it is implemented to help perpetuate them [8]. Systems which depend on certain environmental conditions for their continued health will (often almost unconsciously) react to dampen changes to those conditions if they can. Precisely because every human being contributes to the continuous evolution of the noösphere, dominant systems are engaged in a similarly continuous process of retarding change, and preventing minor fluctuations from gathering pace and thereby threatening the status quo. This control does not have to be overt -- in fact, it rarely is. More often it is indirect, exerted through:
All of these are mechanisms for control over the noösphere. None are perfect: there will always be the possibility to use or subvert them, in order that new values or élite-challenging discourses can spread through a society. But anyone seeking to do so must be aware of their existence and the reasons for their existence. And because they exist in the noösphere, they exist in cyberspace as well.
So far, then, we have developed a model of cyberspace as something very far from a "new frontier". Rather, it is a subset of the noösphere -- a communicative space and a record of prior activities -- and as such cannot help but reflect the social and material world from which it developed. Admittedly, this is something of a pessimistic view, and one which may seem to acquiesce to the status quo: we will return to this argument towards the end of this essay. In the meantime, let us take the model and use it to review the arguments of two important works of "cyberculture".
Unless specified, all references in this section come from Sherry Turkle (1995), Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, New York, Touchstone.
Life on the screen is one of the formative texts of "cyberculture". It has become a definitive work; virtually any book on the subject feels obliged to quote it. Many papers imitate it [12]. Yet it is deeply flawed. Admittedly an amount of hindsight is used in making this judgment. The book was first published in 1995, and therefore written and researched before the explosion of the WWW. Nevertheless there are reasons why it seems over-optimistic about the things it describes -- principally, Internet users' achieving a form of emancipation through shifting and manipulating online identities. These problems stem directly from Turkle's mode of analysis, and her failure to appreciate the links between the online "spaces" she describes and those aspects of offline life which constrain them.
Turkle's main theme is the ability of users of Usenet, MUDs and chatrooms to play with identity. The computer has become a "new medium on which to project our ideas and fantasies" (p. 9). Gender, race and sexuality can be manipulated within online communication, and "identity in the age of the Internet" is therefore no longer the constraint to social interaction that it may be in offline life.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with analysing these developments. But it is a purely psychological approach, with Turkle herself acting as the psychologist, and even considered as psychology, her analysis is flawed. The idea of "disembodiment" is a key theme for Turkle, but this is an impossibility. The "personae" being constructed and then deployed in the online spaces represented by MUDs, chatrooms etc., remain tied to their owners. For example, on p. 185, she asks:
"If a persona in a role-playing game drops defenses that the player in real life has been unable to abandon, what effect does this have? What if a persona enjoys success in some area (say, flirting) that the player has not been able to achieve?"
Her meaning here is not made explicit. Is she merely referring to the manner in which computer-mediated communication (CMC) makes it easier to break down the psychological barriers in the path of identity-play? Or does she in fact imply that the online persona has some kind of life of its own? The general theme of her book would suggest the latter, particularly when she goes on (p. 192) to suggest that online, the boundaries between the "real" self and a simulated self have been blurred. But what is the real self anyway? On p. 14 she writes that "the self is no longer simply playing different roles in different settings at different times..." But surely this is exactly what is happening. If a person finds it easier to flirt online than offline, this is of psychological interest, but it does not mean that the online persona is doing things which the offline person cannot.
Online selves are not "simulations", but the actual person themselves, their real thoughts and feelings at the time. If someone else wrote a computer program to pretend to be Drew Whitworth (or Sherry Turkle, or anyone else), or simply decided to impersonate me online, this might count as "simulation". But the facets of ourselves we present in CMC are merely another aspect of the multiple selves (parent, work colleague, socialite, sports fan) we present offline as well, depending on the circumstances of the interaction. Online, what is blurred is not the "self", but clues to identity that we are used to receiving in synchronous communication (yet have for millennia accepted as missing from other, asynchronous forms of written communication). ICT (and CMC) have not created the desire to "disembody", or to play with one's gender or identity. But they have made it easier and less risky. The only reason risks exist here is because of existing social norms. (Note how mediaeval masquerades or carnivals privileged these kinds of role-reversals for short periods of time, providing spaces where accepted social norms could be overturned without fear of censure; at the same time, note how these are licensed and temporary transgressions [13].) The "disembodiment" is purely figurative anyway, and is in fact no more than happens in ordinary communication. CMC merely takes place via a particular type of medium in which visual clues to identity are absent.
These are problems, but minor ones. Despite them, Turkle's psychological approach is valuable for considering how some people play with identity on line. Her biggest problems come about through her generalisations. For example, on pp. 30-35 she writes of the "engrossing power" or "holding power" of computers, akin to addiction in some users. But her sample is limited, as she investigates only regular users of CMC. What of those who are alienated by computers, or at best dislike them [14], even as they may be "addicted" to other technologies, including ones with a family resemblance such as the mobile phone or television? Even amongst those who feel comfortable with computers, Turkle's chosen media of interaction (Usenet, MUDs and chat rooms) are relatively unimportant compared to e-mail and the WWW (and once again we should include mobile phones and texting here) [15].Nor is there any mention of the overwhelmingly white, middle-class bias of her sample, except in passing and almost sympathetically (pp. 238-241). "We are all dreaming cyborg dreams", she writes (p. 264) -- all of us? Single mothers on sink estates? Poor Bangladeshis?
Let us accept, then, that Turkle's sample is limited. Even then there are difficulties. Turkle suggests that the online sphere can accommodate -- indeed encourages -- the kind of flexibility she is interested in because there, the "self is constructed and the rules of social interaction are built, not received" (p. 10). But there is a problem here. This detaches the sphere from all previous, constraining rules. This may indeed be Turkle's intention, but she is wrong -- and even as a psychologist, should know this. Our very ways of thinking, the possibilities and alternatives we can conceive of, let alone accept, are constrained by inbuilt assumptions, conformity, educational practices and many other examples of cognitive manipulation. It is possible that the flexibility and adaptability evident in her subjects is a sign of "developmental plasticity" of the sort Dobzhansky described (see the supplementary essay), and therefore possibly a psychological reaction to the demands of the modern (or indeed postmodern) world. But Turkle, probably being unaware of this connection, never makes it.
Turkle attempts to link her psychological approach to postmodernism, writing (p. 17):
"...the mechanical engines of computers have been grounding the radically nonmechanical philosophy of postmodernism. The online world of the Internet is not the only instance of evocative computer objects and experiences bringing postmodernism down to earth."
But she is, at best, a vulgar postmodernist, seeing only surfaces and simulations rather than the underlying realities from which different interpretations (and the need for them) spring. From such a perspective, all simulations have equal validity and equal force. Yet this is simply not the case. Decisions are taken about what simluations will take precedence over others, and these are political decisions, affected by power relations. It is true that postmodernism is "nonmechanical", but this means that when it is "translated" into mechanical form, it will take on board some of the features of the technology, and the values which have been encoded into that technology.
It is not only wrong, but actively dangerous, to say as Turkle does (p. 47): "With computers we can simulate nature in a program or leave nature aside and build second nature limited only by our powers of imagination and abstraction." It is exactly those powers of imagination and abstraction that are themselves limited -- by the computer systems we use, by the reality we inhabit, and by the cognitive manipulation that dominant structures in that reality engage in every day. There is no online tabula rasa. Immediately, she goes on to say, "The objects on the screen have no simple physical referent". Nor does Romeo and Juliet, however. It acquires meaning because we can personally identify with its themes of love, loss, rivalry as these apply to our everyday "offline" lives -- and because it is an important cultural icon with objective value in the noösphere as a whole. But in a physical sense it does not exist, as the supplementary essay suggested. So it is with the noösphere. In the last sentence of this short but highly problematic passage she throws away the line, "...life on the screen is without origins and foundation." Without origins? Did it spontaneously emerge like a particle? This is, frankly, awful analysis, and while I am sure it is not meant to be as dismissive as it sounds, suggests a great lack of care in the construction of her arguments.
To leave this discussion of what remains an important work of cyberculture on a positive note, Turkle does recognise (p. 71) that one way we can deal with the possibilities of simulation is as a challenge to existing, entrenched ways of thinking. We can and should be aware of the existence of simulation, and discriminate between different or competing simulations. She is right, but we need a much better political appreciation of the constraints under which the online sphere works in order to do so. Turkle is a classic example of social impact approaches to the analysis of cyberspace. She also believes herself a postmodernist (and the Net to be the technological harbinger of postmodernity) but she is at best a vulgar one. She is working at such an individualised level that everything seems fragmented. Yet this is classic "neo-Conservatism". By her total failure to recognise inbuilt structures in cyberspace, whether these emerge from its geographical (biosphere, material) roots or structures of thinking, methods of oppression and control already built into the noösphere, nothing she proposes will help anyone achieve emancipation. Where people seem to be achieving a level of this through identity-play, it is essentially reinforcing of the current system. What is being achieved is not self-awareness, let alone self-consciousness, but self-eradication.
Unless specified, all references in this section come from Tim Jordan (1999), Cyberpower: The Culture and Politics of Cyberspace and the Internet, London, Routledge.
Jordan's book immediately announces itself as a political work in a way that Turkle's never does. He starts with a clear and useful analysis of power, explicitly saying that power is a difference in ability (p. 8). This is helpful because it gives power both a relativistic element -- in other words, power may be held by certain people or organisations over other people or organisations in some circumstances, but the reverse be true in others -- but also roots it in some kind of end result, in an ability to do something in particular to transform the world (even if the ability remains an unexpressed potential). This idea of power is then taken by Jordan and applied to the analysis of cyberspace. He also announces early on (p.2) a better approach to the idea of "disembodiment"; that "we do not eliminate our bodies from cyberspace but reinvent them". So far, so good.
Unfortunately Jordan then repeats some of the other problems which affect Turkle's analysis. He is at pains to suggest the newness of cyberpsace, suggesting that "virtual societies have endured now for at least a quarter of a century and it is time their regular patterns of politics, technology and culture were described and analysed" (p. 3). It is as if there were no "virtual" elements to human communication before (say) 1980, but this is clearly absurd, and immediately cuts Jordan off from two thousand or more years of prior investigations into human relationships and the "patterns of politics, technology and culture" which have existed for much longer than his stated timescale. Certainly, existing ideas of power can and should be modified by their encounter with ICT as a particular set of technological artifacts. But there is already ample work on how power is embedded in communication, say, or technology [15]. Of course, this is not the only way power can be manifested: physical oppression and coercion remains its ultimate expression. But we have already suggested the ways in which the power to control access to communications media, to control the filtering and content of information blocks, and to control interpretations, are all viable and important expressions of what Jordan terms "cyberpower". Little or no reference is made to these existing structures of domination, and therefore, Jordan's attempts to generalise out from cyberspace and extend his analysis beyond those existing infrastructural and political limits on the use of cyberspace generally fail.
Cyberspace is not "a place where all can speak and all can be heard" (p. 4). One reason why Jordan's book is ultimately frustrating is that, deep down, he appears to realise this, but he never quite follows the insight through. Dotted throughout some of his descriptions of online activities are small but important caveats which hide deep-rooted problems. For example (p. 59, emphasis added):
Hierarchies in cyberspace are constructed on different bases than in non-virtual space and tend to undermine offline hierarchies. Online hierarchies must be constructed from the peculiarities of online life, such as the style of someone's writing in a newsgroup or the power of their software coding in a MUD. Offline hierarchies can be undermined by virtual lives because cyberspace spreads information more broadly and allows more inclusive decision making, though this requires offline hierarchies to allow full access to cyberspace."
Those last eleven words not only undermine the remainder of the passage, they explain exactly why his earlier words ring hollow and/or seem lacking in justification. Or (p. 80, emphasis added):
"It will become clear that while identity is not a certain basis for claiming cyberspace is anti-hierarchical, both many-to-many communication and anti-censorship cut across offline hierarchies and can only be negated by intervention in online life by offline forces."
Later on p. 80 Jordan notes the example of:
"an online group set up by and for women to discuss feminism that was open to men and eventually became populated solely by men demanding justifications for the simplest premises of feminism, thereby destroying the discssion as a useful resource..."
Throughout the book, Jordan states that expertise is the locus of "cyberpower", and those that are able to navigate their way around online spaces, modify their identities when appropriate and communicate in an erudite way are "powers" in online worlds. But to "troll" and thereby destroy a newsgroup -- whatever the original subject matter of that group -- is just as much a function of either ignorance or deep-rooted, "offline" repressive practices (such as misogyny, racism, or plain belligerence). The "offline hierarchy" that is patriarchy manifested itself online to destroy the online feminist space. This is perhaps a new medium through which patriarchy can assert itself, but it is precisely because of the belief that women could not successfully and productively interact in the presence of men that "consciousness-raising" groups were created at the time of the women's movement in the 1960s. The medium may be new, but the problems are not.
Certain types of power do flourish online. But this does not mean they have been created by ICT; indeed the reverse is possibly true (that they created ICT in order to enhance their health and vitality). To analyse cyberspace alone, as if it emerged spontaneously and then has impacts upon the rest of the world does not shed light on how the existence of cyberspace, and the structures which exist within it and thereby constrain online actors, are a function of the more general structures of power within the noösphere. Communications infrastructure is a physical reality, and political decisions have been taken about it which shape its form.
Credit should be given to Jordan for having a sophisticated enough framework to be able to appreciate the different levels of cyberspace and the way they interact, and how macro-level structures and decisions affect the micro-level and vice versa (see p. 114 or p. 140 for instance). And he is absolutely right to say the following (p. 112):
"If email software allows easy many-to-many communication, we can ask: Why? Who made the software do this? What results come from this? And in asking we may open up the inhumane appearance of the program to find humans who embedded their ethics or ideals in a program."
But there are frequent lapses in emphasis. It is distracting, and possibly demeaning, to equate "power" with the ability to "build" a virtual house in a MUD (p. 110) or to determine that the @ symbol is used as the separator in e-mail addresses (p. 112). Is this power in the information society in any meaningful sense? Jordan writes (p. 62) that:
"identity fluidity, renovated hierarchies and informational space constitute cyberpower as the possession of individuals, who can utilise the various abilities offered by these three to impose their will."
But impose it on what? Other online "avatars"? At best, trolling an open newsgroup? Yes, there is some "power" to be gained in minor incursions into, essentially, the personal communications of other middle-class white people, whom one may, or may not, ever meet. But it is far easier to exert power in any meaningful sense in the offline world, whether directly or through one's economic activities. Mythic events such as "virtual rapes" might be distressing for their "victims" but they have provoked academic interest out of all proportion. How many have there been, compared to real rapes?
To be fair, Jordan (unlike Turkle) does not limit his analysis to the individual level. He notes that Microsoft, Sun, Cisco and the other corporations which control ICT could simply decide to shift the "fabric" of cyberspace in virtually any direction they chose, and users (however "powerful") would have to follow their lead (p. 132). There are "particular technopowers that constitute the very possibility that cyberspace exists in the first place" (p. 113), and:
"If cyberspace is crucial to areas of offline life, then those that control or manage those areas will want some reassurance that cyberspace will continue to provide its services.... To do this, governments will legislate about cyberspace, corporations will build and rebuild it to their design, politicians will apply it to electioneering and consumers will demand its support."
There is no "diffuse" cyberspace, existing everywhere simultaneously. Some of the networks which make use of this "space", such as the international banking network or government intelligence networks, are closed off from the public eye in exactly the manner (and for similar reasons) as Swiss bank accounts (pp. 148-9). These are the informational spaces which help (literally) oil the wheels of government and capitalism, and not only is public participation discouraged within them, it would be oxymoronic.
Clearly, there exist alongside these networks entirely separate "regions" of cyberspace which are areas where individuals can meet, converse, socialise or do politics. But we should not be fooled into seeing a contradiction when "supposedly pro-Internet legislators have attempted to mandate government surveillance of cyberspatial communication" (p. 165). Political theory, stretching back to Ancient Greece, contains plenty of support for ideas that the autonomous activity of individuals, sharing and developing critiques of established powers, is fundamentally threatening to those powers and these activities can and will be controlled if at all possible. Social movements, underground publications, anti-road protest camps: all these are political sites, and these can just as easily come into being online as off (or, offline sites such as social movements develop an online element, such as an informational website). As Scott writes, "the strongest evidence for the vital importance of autonomous social sites in generating a hidden transcript [a challenge to the "public transcript" by which those in power justify their position] is the strenuous effort made by dominant groups to abolish or control such sites" [16]. It is therefore quite within the logic of 21st century state capitalism to repress some regions of cyberspace whilst simultaneously "liberating" others. What we need is a political theory that helps us judge both why this happens, where and when it happens, and how it can be resisted. Social impact approaches would do none of those things.
Jordan's is a good book, far more politically astute than Turkle's, and he also acknowledges its limits (see p. 143, for instance). But ultimately, his quest for what is new in cyberspace prevents him from making use of existing theories and analyses of power. We cannot simply reduce to a caveat the ability -- the inevitability -- of offline hierarchies' interventions in online spaces. As Jordan noted at the very start, power is a difference in ability, and it is the ability to shape those parts of the noösphere that we call cyberspace that must form the basis of analysis: what is cyberspace, how is it continually produced and reproduced, and who has the power to do this?
What the current paper must be wary of is getting too strongly locked in to a sort of feedback loop that denies the possibility of novelty or change. That is, existing political structures shape communicative spaces, these spaces therefore serve to perpetuate existing political structures, and so on. These statements are true, and yet this is not a closed loop. The conclusion of this essay will return to the biosphere/noösphere model to seek those "fractures" in the monolith where change can -- and does -- emerge.
Let us return to the subject matter of this essay -- what is the nature of cyberspace? I would like to suggest the following answer to that question: that cyberspace refers to the noösphere at the points of its interaction with a specific technology -- computing technology. Two important things follow from this definition. First, that this does not comprise the totality of the noösphere. It is as if we look upon a room through a small window; it would be incorrect to assume that what we can see comprises the totality of the room. Secondly, to continue the analogy, the glass in the window affects what we can see, as if it were stained glass, or some polarising filter. Similarly, the fact that our "view" of the noösphere has been directed through computing technology cannot help but influence the way in which we interact with cyberspace. This applies to us both as everyday users, and academic analysts.
Because cyberspace is best viewed as a particular kind of technological interaction with the noösphere rather than a distinct realm in its own right, analysing it in isolation cannot help but be limiting. This is the problem with the sort of psychological or cultural analyses epitomised by Turkle. Considered as psychology, her analysis is useful. But her generalisations upwards ring hollow because there are simply no grounds in her argument for making them. Jordan's analysis is better, but he wastes some opportunities to root the new opportunities offered by technological developments into existing theories of political power and communication.
Technological artifacts are not neutral. Meanings and values that have developed in the noösphere are encoded into them. Values can therefore be hidden in technological systems, and exert direct or indirect control over communication and the many sites of discourse which all contribute to the reproduction of the global noösphere. We must note again, however, the danger that this can become a closed argument, disallowing the possibility of change. Remember, then, that change is an inherent property of all the spheres of the Earth. When two systems interact, each influences the other, so new possibilities are created at the point of intersection. This is a very frequent happening, and sometimes does give rise to significant social or political change. More often than not, however, the new idea, species, business, or other system fails to overcome the negative feedback that arises because of the entrenched nature of other systems, and their dynamic relationship with the environment that sustains them. Systems manipulate their environment for the sake of their own self-perpetuation; what is important is that they may not always succeed in controlling change.
When considering the possibility of genuinely new cultural norms or forms of human organisation arising within cyberspace, one cannot judge them (or their likelihood) without a realistic assessment of the dampening forces which will attempt to lessen their impact, repress it, or absorb it. Bauman [17] observes, for example, how many (offline) public spaces, through commercialisation and surveillance, have become places where genuine interaction between people is either redundant or actively discouraged. Public places such as the Ancient Greek agora or the 19th century coffeeshop [18] were exceptional historical "outbreaks" of public, interactive, democracy. But as Carey says, "the periods when societies are not conservative are very short and very special" [19] and human history is characterised more by the lack of such spaces -- at least, their relative ineffectiveness. When people believe they have seen the analogues of these fora in online spaces such as Usenet, they must not forget, in the rush of enthusiasm, that they play no part in most people's everyday use of cyberspace. Their co-existence alongside more repressive or commercial "zones" of cyberspace is nothing more than the uneasy co-existence of democracy and less inclusive forms of rule (bureaucracy, oligarchy, elitism, emporiocracy [the rule of commerce]), all seen through the filter of ICT, but which have existed for some considerable time before those technologies were developed.
The scale of the topic under discussion demands selection and abstraction. This is an inbuilt problem with holistic views of the world -- philosophically, one claims to be discussing "everything", yet that immediately demands qualification and selection. Thus, we arrive at fragmented, individualised views of the world. But "vulgar postmodernism" is wrong to take this inevitable fragmentation and conclude that this means, underneath, there is no underlying reality. Instead, it is the diversity that is the reality. Full and sophisticated treatments of postmodernism, such as those offered by Bauman or Lyotard [20], recognise the salient features of the "information society" such as the need for mobility and the clash of differing interpretations of reality and "truth". But what we must remember is that new possibilities always arise at the point of interaction of previously existing systems. What develops from this interaction, if it can overcome the dampening forces of the status quo, will certainly be new: at the same time, it will be firmly rooted in what has gone before and will inherit some or all of the characteristics of its antecedents. So it is with cyberspace -- a new perspective on the noösphere, but not a new space in its own right.
1. Webster, Frank (2002), Theories of the Information Society, 2nd. ed., London, Routledge.
2. See, for instance, Bauman, Zygmunt (2000), Liquid Modernity, Cambridge Mass., Polity Press.
3. For a useful introduction to the role of ontology, epistemology and methodology in social science research, see Grix, Jonathan (2002), "Introducing Students to the Generic Terminology of Social Science Research", Politics 22/3, pp. 175-186.
4. For a summary see Samson, Paul R. and David Pitt (1999), The Biosphere and Noösphere Reader, London, Routledge, pp. 144-6.
5. Webster (op. cit.) provides many starting points here.
6. Star, Susan L. (1999), "The Ethnography of Infrastructure", American Behavioral Scientist 43/3, pp. 377-91.
7. Bauman, op. cit., p. 58.
8. See Sharpe, Richard, quoted in Webster, op. cit., p. 139.
9. for instance, see Crang, Mike, Phil Crang and Jon May (1999), "Introduction", in their edited collection, Virtual Geographies: bodies, space and relations, London, Routledge, p. 7.
10. Jordan, Tim (1999), Cyberpower: The Culture and Politics of Cyberspace and the Internet, London, Routledge, p. 1.
11. e.g., O'Brien, Jodi (1999), "Writing in the body: Gender (re)production in online interaction" in Marc A. Smith and Peter Kollock, eds., Communities in Cyberspace, London, Routledge, pp. 76-104: Danet, Brenda (1998), "Text as Mask: Gender, Play and Performance on the Internet", in Steven G. Jones, ed., Cybersociety 2.0: Revisiting Computer-Mediated Communication and Community, London, Sage, pp. 129-158: many others. See David Gauntlett (2000), web.studies: Rewiring media studies for the digital age, London, Arnold, p. 13-15 for a wry comment on the ubiquity of this academic sub-genre.
12. See Stallybrass, P. and A. White (1986), The Politics and Poetics of Transgression, Ithaca, Cornell University Press.
13. see, for instance, Selwyn, Neil (1998), "What's in the Box? Exploring Learners' Rejection of Educational Computing", Educational Research and Evaluation 4/3, pp. 193-212.
14. Though this is only a small and in some ways unrepresentative sample, students on the Web Design course I teach, who are surveyed at the start of each academic year, regularly report near-universal regular use (95%+) of the WWW and e-mail. Regular (defined as weekly) use of chat rooms is around 20% and Usenet, 10%. This suggests these latter media come, at best, a distant third and fourth in importance.
15. Once again the reader could take Webster, op. cit., as a starting point here.
16. Scott, J. C. (1990), Domination and the Arts of Resistance, New Haven, Yale University Press, p. 124.
17. Bauman, op. cit., pp. 97-105.
18. Stallybrass and White, op. cit., pp. 82-97.
19. Carey, Kevin (2004), "Language Engineering and Public Policy", Tangentium Jan. 2004.
20. Lyotard, Jean-François (1984), The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.