John Perry Barlowonce used
the word “meatspace” to identify the physical world we live in everyday, where
we sense contacts with each other and see the images, hear the sounds, smell
and taste different scents and textures for “real”. However, the development of
cyberspace and the ever increasing number of rods and poles that link people
together virtually forever changed the way we conceptualize space and time. For
me personally, I think that makes a lot of things easier to understand because
on cyber space, we are looking at a huge, meta-space with the same methods of
how we look at microscopic things, like particles, electrons, etc.
Just to point out one simple
example: our bodies are all made up of particles: the solid, seamless nature of
our beings is just an illusion of the magnetic fields created by electrons
circling around the neutrons. I’ve heard some of the wildest thoughts, saying
that if at one moment, just one single moment, if all of the particles that we
are made of are perfectly aligned with the brick wall in front of us, we can
walk through it.
In Cyberspace, our actions are
understood and transmitted in carefully calculated computer languages,
perfectly fine for factual, exact information without nuances or ambivalence. I’d
like to imagine the way we communicate in cyberspace more like the way people
with Asperger syndrome communicate: it’s extremely difficult and unlikely to
deliver a piece of message and at the same time, its intonations and underlying
meanings. Emotion icons were thus born to fix that problem, which is what we’ve
been leaning all these past months: translating the language of one dimension
to another for the purpose of mutual understanding.
The existence of Cyberspace
seems pretty vague to me. In the text it is basically described as the space
and connection between internet surfers as they are linked through computers.
However, the distances between individuals are now measured now by the miles,
but by the speed of the internet, the frequency of communication and the types
of media you use for the communication. For example, the space between two
people communicating through email is larger than two people using webcam or
skype to talk (even if they’re in two extreme corners of the world, while an
email unanswered for several days brings the distance between the sender and
the receiver infinitely large.
The texts also offer the
discussion of the safety of Cyberspace communication, which brings about
another difference between reality and virtual reality: in virtual reality,
everything is retrievable and have imprints as soon as it got turned into
computer language. In physical world, however, at least we haven’t found the
way to retrieve those fleeting data from our complicated mind.
In the last book Windows and
Mirrors, we were introduced to the interactive nature of virtual reality and
cyber space and the use of it in arts. In this book it was discussed that cyber
space has positive educational purposes. I believe that’s another proof of how
the concept of space changes. The space of a classroom, in particular, becomes
extremely flexible. The participants can be in various places and might
participate in one discussion at different point of the day or week.
It’s a wonderful prospect for
the people of 21st century that we are no longer limited by physical
space and time differences thanks to cyberspace. Of course there will be problems
surfacing as we explore, but that’s the cost of moving forward.
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