Greetings from Helsinki! The big piles of snow have begun to melt down and the city seems to be floating on water... I would like to add my humble opinion to the discussion of spaces and places on the Internet. I don't see any problem in using these terms when we discuss Internet. More problematic from my point of view are those people who only look at the Internet as a form of technical invention and as a technical environment. For me it is primarily a social environment that is regulated by technical properties. I also find it problematic in the academic world that there is a constant need for terms that sound fine but are lightyears away from the terms that "normal" people use. The users have created a whole bunch of terms that are good and widely spread and I think that "cyberspace" is one of those terms. I think it is one of peoples basic psychological needs to "be at home"; to be a part of something that one can in some way get a hold of. Chat rooms are imagined to be real rooms because we deal with real people there. If someone starts to cry in a chat room other users offer her/him a handkerchief - acts are in other words regarded as real acts. "Space" is a great term because it let's us imagine things spatially but it also tells us that Internet users are aware of the non-spatiality of the net. They know that it is not a real world in a same sense as our physical world but a limitless space(!). I think my role as a researcher is to be a link between academia and Internet users and to try to get these two worlds closer to each other, not to separate them with terms that nobody understands or with theoretical junk that has nothing to do with reality. I am young, naive and unexperienced and not very good in expressing myself in English but I wonder if I am alone with these thoughts on this list... Jonna Ahti -- Ms. Jonna Ahti PhD student NORDICA - Department for Scandinavian Languages and Scandinavian Literature P.O.Box 24 00014 University of Helsinki Finland jonna.ahti@helsinki.fi tel. +358-40-5625497