Friday 22 October 2010

CYBERSPACE

Cyberspace is a virtual digitized space created through advanced information technology in computer world as we enter into a different arena with the artifacts, practices and relationships spinning around the computing. It is a non-physical terrain created by the application of computer networks where, we tend to fall and create a ‘second world’ with familiar spatial images and encourages the sense of recognition and symmetry among individuals.

The word “cyberspace” first appeared in science fiction author and novelist William Gibson’s award-winning, Neuromancer (1984). According to Gibson, cyberspace is a ‘consensual hallucination’. It gives a sense of a different world through computers in the form of matrix with the bodiless consciousness living in it. ‘It can also explicate as conceptual space where, computer networking hardware, network software and users converge.’ (Gauntlett, 2004: 220)
Nicole Stenger (1991) described the concept of cyberspace as quoted by Featherstone & Burrows that ‘cyberspace is like Oz- it is, we get there, but it has no location’; it ‘opens up a space for collective restoration and for peace....our future can only take on a luminous dimension!’ Furthermore, they narrated the Sherman & Phil Judkins’s (1992) description about cyberspace that it as ‘truly the technology of miracles and dreams’ with the liberation ‘to play God’; through the creation and imbue of inanimate objects.’ (1995: 135)


‘Cyberspace is imaginary space, it has non-physicality, it is a spatial metaphor’ (Miller, 1999), and Michael Benedikt summarized the notion of cyberspace in his book Cyberspace: First Step (1991) as, “a new universe, a parallel universe created and sustained by the world’s computers and communication lines. A world in which the global traffic of knowledge, secrets, measurements, indicators, entertainment, and alter-human agency takes on form: sights, sounds, presence never seen on the surface of the earth blossoming in a vast electronic night.”

The mystification of parallel world comparative to real one, where, we physically exist seems as techno-jargon produced by and for our emerging digital culture. Advanced technological inceptions are strengthening the virtual world and sustaining the concept of second life in cyberspace. 

References:
--Featherstone, M. & Burrows, R. (eds.) (1995). Cyberspace/cyberbodies/cyberpunk. London: Sage.
--Gauntlett, D. and Horsley, R. (eds.) (2004). Web.Studies. 2nd Ed. London: Arnold.
--Miller, L. (1999). Architecture of Cyberspace. [Online]. Available from. http://www.usask.ca/art/digital_culture/miller/essay.html [accessed on: 17-10-2010]
Image:
1.The New Planet.
http://www.ronmartin.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/1-a-cyberspace-thenewplanet-ae12003_front.jpg [Accessed on: 17-10-2010]

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