Good series of questions. I guess the interesting thing to me is why the hell people need to construct using the Internet as a spatial thing in the first place? We don't talk of 'phone space' or 'TV space'. So if I can cheat here, I'd say Cyber'space' is affected by the intersection of at least four factors. Firstly, by the use of offline space Secondly, by the use of the 'locale' for the reduction of communicative ambiguity. Thirdly, by the structures of communication employed online and Fourthly, by the use of space metaphors as a topos for persuasion, Offline space effects online space in that it gives the routes for wires, and the relevant social boundaries which affect the composition of the different types of offline groups (ethnic, class, politcal or subcultural, etc) which influences the composition of online groups, and the ways that people interpret each others messages. These offline space factors determine ease of access, delay, time of day people are online etc and therefore also affects the population composition of online groups which in turn gives the sense of the group's space through the emails or message they emit. (ie this is a way of saying onine groups develop cultures, and these cultures are not independent of the offline world) Offline the 'locale' often gives indications of expected behaviour, (ie bank, public park, person's home etc) which allows interpretation of communication, and a similar idea becomes important in the construction of Cyberspace, as is the distinction made between locales of public and private action - and the behaviour allowed and expected there. The ambiguities which arise are part of the dynamics of onlilne life. Online 'space' is also created by the structures of communication (ie whether the online forum is a Mailing List, MOO, Newsgroup etc) and the patterns of naming and exchange which eventuate. For example, people on a List define list locale by the volume and style of their posts and this might be quite different from other lists - giving it a sense of place and hence (to us) a sense of space. The involvement of communicative organization in the construction of space means that List space differs from MOO space and from Web space and has consequences for the kinds of social action and conflict which can easily eventuate. Online social space in many ways revitalizes the metaphorical similarity between topic and place which features in the rhetoric of Aristotle (ok :). Topos determines the method of persuasion, or poetic figuration which determines the nature of place which in turn determines topos. Topos (topic) is a tool of persuasion in rhetoric theory. People making political arguments about the Internet, or commercial organisations trying to exploit the Internet, often try to define it as a particular type of place to mobilize the persuasive topos associated with that locale. ie whether it should be free or controlled, or how people should behave. For example I was on a list once where people were arguing whether the list was like a lounge room or a pub, in order to say what kind of behaviour was appropriate or allowable. to self promote. I wrote about this at length in: "Cyber-space or Cyber-topos: the Creation of Online Space", Social Analysis, Special Issue on the Cultures of Cyberspace, No. 45(1), pp81-102. which may be completely irrelevant :) jon UTS CRICOS Provider Code: 00099F DISCLAIMER ======================================================================== This email message and any accompanying attachments may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use, disseminate, distribute or copy this message or attachments. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this message. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender expressly, and with authority, states them to be the views the University of Technology Sydney. Before opening any attachments, please check them for viruses and defects. ========================================================================
And now that civility has returned (thanks, Randy!), let me add here: I've long been impressed with the stubbornness of the spatial metaphor, beginning with early efforts in hypertext. Despite the radical intentions of poststructuralists (such as my friend and mentor George Landow and others) and affiliated postmodernists to overcome what were argued to be artificial boundaries of space and time, spatiality just didn't seem to go away. In addition to the points Jonathan makes, I would add an epistemological one that has yet to surface. Dear ol' Kant argued in the Critique of Pure Reason that human beings are basically built in such a way that we shape all of our sensory impressions through the frameworks of space and time. He argued this on the basis of simple thought experiments (inspiring Einstein and Bohr a century or so later), e.g. a) can you imagine a space with items in it? (sure) b) can you imagine a space with no items in it? (sure) c) can you imagine items with in no space, with no space to "contain" them? If you have trouble answering "c" with yes, be comforted. In quantum mechanics, for example, where there _are_ entities that exist in a 'space' of zero dimensions, no one claims to be able to imagine what they might "look like". (Nicely enough, the physicists can simply trust the mathematics at that point...) Presuming your answer to "c" is no - then this suggests that space is indeed a necessary condition/framework for our constructing/imagining our knowledge of the world. (Contra the jabs of some postmodernists against putatively excessive rationality in Kant, the old Chinese of Königsberg developed a sufficiently strong account of imagination in human knowing as to inspire the foundations of German Romanticism.) The stubbornness of spatiality as a metaphor, despite some of the best efforts by some of the best people to go beyond it, has seemed to me to be to at least be consistent with Kant's point. But consistency, of course, is not confirmation. Has anyone reviewed the literature - not just in CMC but also cognitive science, etc. - to see if anyone has tried to examine this issue from an empirical point of view, i.e., to study controlled efforts to test whether or not most of us are indeed equipped with such spatial and temporal frameworks as necessary conditions of our knowledge? Whatever the outcomes of such studies, they would directly contribute to this discussion as well. Cheers, charles ess ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jonathan Marshall" <Jonathan.Marshall@uts.edu.au> To: <air-l@aoir.org> Sent: Monday, February 02, 2004 10:31 PM Subject: Re: [Air-l] first post
Good series of questions.
I guess the interesting thing to me is why the hell people need to construct using the Internet as a spatial thing in the first place?
We don't talk of 'phone space' or 'TV space'.
So if I can cheat here, I'd say Cyber'space' is affected by the intersection of at least four factors.
Firstly, by the use of offline space Secondly, by the use of the 'locale' for the reduction of communicative ambiguity. Thirdly, by the structures of communication employed online and Fourthly, by the use of space metaphors as a topos for persuasion,
Offline space effects online space in that it gives the routes for wires, and the relevant social boundaries which affect the composition of the different types of offline groups (ethnic, class, politcal or subcultural, etc) which influences the composition of online groups, and the ways that people interpret each others messages.
These offline space factors determine ease of access, delay, time of day people are online etc and therefore also affects the population composition of online groups which in turn gives the sense of the group's space through the emails or message they emit. (ie this is a way of saying onine groups develop cultures, and these cultures are not independent of the offline world)
Offline the 'locale' often gives indications of expected behaviour, (ie bank, public park, person's home etc) which allows interpretation of communication, and a similar idea becomes important in the construction of Cyberspace, as is the distinction made between locales of public and private action - and the behaviour allowed and expected there. The ambiguities which arise are part of the dynamics of onlilne life.
Online 'space' is also created by the structures of communication (ie whether the online forum is a Mailing List, MOO, Newsgroup etc) and the patterns of naming and exchange which eventuate. For example, people on a List define list locale by the volume and style of their posts and this might be quite different from other lists - giving it a sense of place and hence (to us) a sense of
space.
The involvement of communicative organization in the construction of space means that List space differs from MOO space and from Web space and has consequences for the kinds of social action and conflict which can easily eventuate.
Online social space in many ways revitalizes the metaphorical similarity between topic and place which features in the rhetoric of Aristotle (ok :). Topos determines the method of persuasion, or poetic figuration which determines the nature of place which in turn determines topos. Topos (topic) is a tool of persuasion in rhetoric theory.
People making political arguments about the Internet, or commercial organisations trying to exploit the Internet, often try to define it as a particular type of place to mobilize the persuasive topos associated with that locale. ie whether it should be free or controlled, or how people should behave. For example I was on a list once where people were arguing whether the list was like a lounge room or a pub, in order to say what kind of behaviour was appropriate or allowable.
to self promote. I wrote about this at length in:
"Cyber-space or Cyber-topos: the Creation of Online Space", Social Analysis, Special Issue on the Cultures of Cyberspace, No. 45(1), pp81-102.
which may be completely irrelevant :)
jon
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At 05:59 AM 2/3/2004 -0600, Charles Ess wrote:
I've long been impressed with the stubbornness of the spatial metaphor,
Someone may have mentioned this already in this discussion, but Margaret Wertheim's 1999 book, "The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet" (New York: W.W. Norton & Co.) addresses this in an interesting historical analysis drawn from art and literature and then into the digital realm. Space has been a stubborn metaphor for several centuries. ----- Mark D. Johns, Ph.D. Asst. Prof. of Communication/Linguistics Luther College, Decorah, Iowa USA http://faculty.luther.edu/~johnsmar/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- "Get the facts first. You can distort them later." -- Mark Twain
See Max Jammer: "On the Concept of Space." Probably THE definitive historical work on the history of the idea from the perspective of an historian of science. This is a classic. Jammer also wrote on the concept of force and on one other concept (which escapes me now) which hold a central place in physics. Rita Lauria, Ph.D. Associate Professor New Media North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University Dept. Journalism & Mass Communication NCB-A 1601 E. Market Street Greensboro, NC 27411 336.334.7900
Dear All, I just want to tell you that I made an article on cyberspace as a space parallel to geographical space in 2002. In that article I worked with philosophy, sociology and the history of technology in order to explore the possibility of building on the definition of space. My goal was to describe cyberspace as a space parallel to geographical space and to tell the story of its genesis by exploring space in the context of humans and their society. I argued that social evolution describes human colonisation of geographical space as the dynamic interplay between new communication techniques, technological innovations and the differentiation of society. Communication techniques and technology in the process of social-evolution I think redefine space from a geographical context. At the same time this process generates a separate space in cyberspace by forming a conceptual space by virtue of the Internet connecting computers. Parallel space, in a philosophical context, results when the space-transforming technology alters geographical space then critical mass is reached assisted by the Internet. The paper concludes with the idea that a parallel space exists for social systems when the new demand placed upon individual psychic systems requires an explanation of how society functions differently in cyberspace. Also Espen Aarset has a concept namely non-local space but I think that he has only written about that in Scandinavian language. Tække, Jesper. 2002. Cyberspace as a Space parallel to geographical space. in: Virtual space: The spatiality of virtual inhabited 3D worlds. Lars Qvortrup, Springer Publishers, 2002. Best Regards Jesper Tække -- Jesper Tække - MA. Ph.D.-Student - IT University of Copenhagen - Dept. of Digital Aesthetics & Communication - Glentevej 67 - DK-2400 NV Copenhagen NW - Phone +45 3816 8888 - Direct +45 3816 8881 - Fax +45 3816 8899 - http://home16.inet.tele.dk/jesper_t/ - e-mail: jespert@it-c.dk Rita Lauria wrote:
See Max Jammer: "On the Concept of Space." Probably THE definitive historical work on the history of the idea from the perspective of an historian of science. This is a classic. Jammer also wrote on the concept of force and on one other concept (which escapes me now) which hold a central place in physics.
Rita Lauria, Ph.D. Associate Professor New Media North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University Dept. Journalism & Mass Communication NCB-A 1601 E. Market Street Greensboro, NC 27411 336.334.7900
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Just let me add my two cents (of euros, not dollars) in this growing collection of Lance Strate articles about the metaphor of "space". In the book "Communication and Cyberspace" (Hampton Press, 1996), there is a very interesting article by Strate, called "Cybertime", in which he says: "we tend to stress the similarities between computer technology and more traditional notions of physical place; we view computer media as a where, not a when. ... [W]hereas the emphasis on computer-mediated communication points us in the direction of cyberspace, as our focus shifts to computer-mediated culture, to the long-term construction of communities, psyches, and shared systems of signification, we need to consider the concept of cybertime". The concept of "cybertime" is an alternative and a complement to that of "cyberspace". In his article, Strate talks about the computer as clock (measuring time) and as a medium (representing time), and then goes to on to analyze the experience of time in the activities related to computers and the corresponding changes to conceptions of self and of community. The other articles are worth reading, and the book as a whole has stood well the test of time. Rgrds, Luiz Carlos Baptista lucabaptista@sapo.pt lucabaptista@hotmail.com ----- Original Message ----- From: J Sternberg To: air-l@aoir.org Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2004 6:45 PM Subject: Re: [Air-l] first post Let me second Meghan's recommendation, and add that there's an even more relevant article by my colleague Lance Strate that offers a comprehensive and rigorous analysis of numerous definitions and categories of cyberspace: Strate, L. (1999). The varieties of cyberspace: Problems in definition and delimitation. Western Journal of Communication, 63(3), 382-412. As he explains it, "The phenomena in question is better understood as a plurality rather than a singularity. As a collective concept, cyberspace can then be defined as the diverse experiences of space associated with computing and related technologies. Thus, it would follow that we can refer to the varieties of cyberspace." (p. 383) For those interested in grasping the complexity and multi-dimensionality of the online environments afforded by CMC, this article should be required reading. Janet Sternberg, Ph.D. Fordham University Media Ecology Association mdocx1 wrote:
reading suggestion for the space/no space debate:
the most recent issue of the Media Ecology Association's journal - Explorations in Media Ecology (EME) has some interesting questions about the space created by media - particularly Lance Strate's "The Cell Phone as Environment"
No we, dont talk of 'phone space' or 'TV space' but we certainly use these devices as if those spaces existed. meghan dougherty University of Washington Department of Communication
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participants (6)
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Charles Ess -
jespert -
Jonathan Marshall -
Luiz Carlos Baptista -
Mark D. Johns -
Rita Lauria