Is the Concept of 'Cyberspace' Stupid?

frank_adrian314159 writes "In an article titled 'Stop Pretending Cyberspace Exists,' Salon writer Michael Lind notes that 'Some ideas make you dumber the moment you learn of them. One of those ideas is the concept of "cyberspace."' He says that analogizing cyberspace as a real place leads to an inability to think logically about laws, rules, and how and when the governments could or should intervene to regulate the Internet. He states that such a debate is essential, but that an '[invasion of] a mythical Oz-like kingdom called cyberspace is just as dopey' when talking about governments and corporations taking a larger role in online communications. Is Lind right? Does the notion of cyberspace make the debate over its governance less fruitful?"

Comments

remove the term - remove the thought

[Anonymous Coward]

He says that analogizing cyberspace as a real place leads to an inability to think logically about laws, rules, and how and when the governments could or should intervene to regulate the Internet.

So what he says is that if you stop using certain words, it becomes harder to think about things in ways that the author doesn't like. This is a classical Orwellian exercise.

Actually, cyberspace exists - just like many other intangibles exist. The reason we're Homo sapiens rather than some other primate is precisely because of our ability to work with intangibles. Some sophomoric selective limitation of this ability which suits a partiuclar belief system isn't going to make it go away.

"Cyberspace" is the soul of the Internet

[Rinnon]

It occurs to me that the concept of "Cyberspace" is not too distant from the concept of a soul in the individual. The soul seems to have originated, and continues to be accepted as a valid metaphysical concept, because we do not want to believe in ourselves as merely the firing of synapses in the brain. We want to believe that there is more going on there, something that supersedes those physical boundaries and makes us more than that. Thus, we think of the soul as a real thing, even as it's directly linked to our brains in some way. Thinking of Cyberspace as being more than the a mere collection of the computers, pathways between then, and signals being sent, is very similar. We seem to want to think of the Internet as more than the merely the the sum of those parts. Where the analogy breaks down of course, is that unlike the human brain, there is nothing we do not know about how the Internet functions. As such, it seems to me like the author is right, and we really should be taking a physicalist approach in order to have a meaningful conversation: The Internet really is merely the sum of it's parts, and nothing more. There is no "Cyberspace," it is a metaphysical mistake to think there is one, and it is a result of the way we use our language that lends credence to the concept.

Wrong.

[Forty Two Tenfold]

It's a big NO. The concept of cyberspace is not stupid. It's some people's understanding of it that is. As is the concept in some undeveloped minds that a "hacker" is a term for cyber-locksmith instead of cyber-craftsman. Eastasians alltime unknow and badsay words.

Re:Exception to Betteridge's law!!

[PopeRatzo]

Yes, the concept of 'Cybespace' is quite stupid.

It's no surprise that there are people for whom visualization is difficult, and that might explain your frustration, Mitreya. But for most people, visualization is a very useful way to think about abstract things. From Newman Projections to Giordano Bruno's use of loci to create "memory palaces" people have extended the reach of intellect using imaginary constructs such as "cyberspace". In fact, such abstractions are among the most powerful tools that human beings have in their mental toolset.

It does not surprise me that there are those whose lack of imagination and frustration with abstraction would lead them to say something like "the concept of "Cyperspace" is quite stupid". Nor does it strike me that there is someone writing for Salon who craves attention so much, and that the best they could come up with to farm hits would be a criticism of such a useful device. Such "web magazines" are well-known for such desperate trolling to promote readership.

You first-posted yourself some karma, Mitreya (at least for a moment), but as long as you use readily use similar devices, like "deskspace" and "screen real estate" and "folders" and "directory trees", you might want to reflect a little more before you say something as ridiculous as "the concept of "Cyberspace" is quite stupid". It's no less a troll than "people who use perl are stupid". Worse, I'll hazard a guess that you use the term "the Cloud" several times a day [note: I'm profiling here]

Now, if you want to say, as the writer of the Salon article at least tried to say, that "people have used the concept of "Cyberspace" in stupid ways", that might at least be a little bit defensible (if you gave sufficient evidence).