Sam wrote:
I apoligze for a terribly inarticulate question. If the Internet is defined purely as technology then with is the best term to describe that which is not technology. I'm struggle with the concept of space as used in social space, cyberspace, virtual space etc.
As scientist we seem to have a responsibility to operationalize the terms we use.
A few thoughts on this. First, a lot of people on this list would not define themselves as "scientists" but as humanists, artists, practioners, and other categories, though that does not lessen the need for definitional clarity. I would argue that, with the possible exception of those who are studying technical and macro-aspects of the internet (such as what it means to have 'access' to it, to be literate in it, to enact policy to govern it, and many other topics), most of the research done by people on this list benefits or would benefit from speaking at a level of granularity far more specific than "internet." Beyond the technical, I think it's easy to argue that there is no single phenomenon that is The Internet and which, by extension, can be assumed to have unitary meanings and consequences. Given a public discourse climate that treats THE INTERNET as one big bad thing (or one big wonderful panacea), it's our responsibility to clarify that there are many diverse and incomparable phenomena hiding beneath that label. MySpace is not parent-child email is not hotsexypornsite.com is not www.ku.edu The questions about "space" (I remember an interesting discussion on this list on that topic before, you might search the archives) are far more useful when thinking about some kinds of online phenomena than others. If you're trying to get at an essentialist definition of one internet-mediated virtual world that exists apart from the rest of life, I don't think it's there to be defined. Nancy