Slashdot Mirror
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?"
Yes, the concept of 'Cybespace' is quite stupid.
The use of the word "cyber" is stupid in any computer-related context.
The notion of "cyberspace as place" ala Neuromancer may be a bit out dated, but it paints an interesting picture. As someone who does understand how networking works, I find the concepts from early cyber punk to be valuable attempts to try to imagine the future of a data driven world. We don't see pictures in the raw data, there is no blond in the red dress. But we can take the numbers and extract the blond in the red dress and make her visible to everyone.
If, however, someone's notion of cyberspace starts and ends at Tron, then they're going to have a hard time understanding the lack of control they have over the system.
But, that's not to say the the idea of cyberspace as place has no, well, place. People create communities on line, both private and public. These communities have their own rules both written and unwritten. If a government wants to regulate it's place in cyberspace, then it can attempt to do so. It's when governments try to regulate the cyberspace of people outside it's jurisdiction, that we run into issues where the concept of cyberspace can muddy the waters.
Laugh all you want at the retro-ness of the word 'cyberspace', of course, but let me just say this: I was born in 1986, so during my childhood the internet grew with me. I only barely remember there being a time when the internet was not widely used. Consequently, I essentially do think of the internet as a 'place', or least I imagine that an MRI scan would see the same area of my brain lighting up. And why not? It's infinitely more democratised, instantaneous and ubiquitous than any other prior communication medium. Which, at least in my subconscious, makes me think of it as closer to real life and place than to '0s and 1s on wires and in computers' in the same way I think about real life itself as such, rather than 'matter and energy bumping around in a universe of space-time'.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
What I really learned from this submission is that:
1) Salon still exists and, apparently, people read it?
2) This "Lind" guy was desperate for something to write an article about, at the last minute.
"Cyberpace" is a metaphor. Used as such, it is sometimes useful, but, like all metaphors, it can be misleading if taken as a literal description; the internet is obvious not a literal physical place.
Is "cyberspace" a stupid term? No. Is it sometimes used stupidly? Yes.
When a bunch of rebels and outcasts when searching for gold, and good soil in the new world, it was cheered until it was found that some of them saw this as an oppertunity to do away with the cruel, tiered, hiearchial system of europe, and all its entitlements and entrapments.
Then a bunch of kings, princes, dukes, and their beneficiaries found about how there rules, titles and privledges where simply ignored in this "new world", they decided to let people know that that just because they are on the other side of the world, there powers, and hierarchies still exist awnd apply.
On a serious note, this concept of cyber space as a physical space never existed. There are, however decades of communities, with their own cultures that formed independantly of the TV culture of the time, and there have been unwritten rules about the internet.
The situation is the same, titleholders, owners, and the others who stat back while everyone else developed online, did nothing, but are now demanding controll of the internet, to make it an extension of the dull, boring, distraught, mainstream most of us sought to get away from 20 years prior. They also mean to press their statutory hierachy, in place of what used to be a meritocracy, destroying everything beautiful of the internet, and condemning us all to the same backwards, corrupt, dogmatic line of thinking the outside world uses
Just to put time into perspective.
Wikipedia:"The word "cyberspace" (from cybernetics and space) was coined by science fiction novelist and seminal cyberpunk author William Gibson in his 1982 story "Burning Chrome" and popularized by his 1984 novel Neuromancer."
That what we have today does in no way resemble what was envisioned then, thus the use of the term, to me, just denotes ignorance.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Bandwidth literally refers to the width of band of radio spectrum, which can be measured in units of length. The term has continued to be used in communications for similar purposes since then. Cyberspace has never been a space, neither by the conventional definition, nor the mathematical definition, nor any other definition I am aware of.