Cyberspace and our contemporary society

Essay question: The idea of the internet as cyberspace has been a part of our contemporary culture for some time, particularly in the popular medium of film. But is the concept of cyberspace still relevant to our contemporary society? Discuss with reference to your own experience of contemporary media.

Canadian educator, philosopher and scholar Marshall Luhan once said, “All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values”. He believed that all media creates an abstract and symbolical environment in which the changes in its experiences affects us as a result. Media studies are strongly connected to the concept of cyberspace and now with the introduction of web 2.0, the effects of media on society have never been so emphasized upon. This essay will examine the idea of internet as cyberspace and its relevance to our contemporary society in terms of social networking.

To argue the relevance of cyberspace with the contemporary society we must understand what is meant by the term cyberspace. Cyberspace was first originated by William Gibson referring to an environment where users mentally travel in a world of data. Now however the phrase is used to refer to the World Wide Web (WWW). Nevertheless, internet and cyberspace cannot be defined as one. Internet refers to a network within other networks such as servers, mainframes and personal computers that use CMC technology and links users into an information sharing system. Although Gibson’s definition might sound fictional, it nonetheless mostly relates to and contains a sense of reality of what is being experienced now by users especially with the rise of web 2.0 and popularity of social media. Some people agree that using the net takes them on a journey, a different world or environment where they can share information, express their thoughts and feelings, chat, send emails and play video games. In that way, it takes the user on a journey of virtual reality.

The internet allows you to experience a different reality where you are free to do anything and therefore it affects the actual reality we live in outside of cyberspace. For example, critiques and psychologists believe that using social networking and chat sites such as Facebook and MSN could change the relations between people in a way that, it could not only create less conversation in reality because everything’s been said through the internet but they deny a community actually exists between people communicating only through machines (Wellman, 2004, p. 26). Three dimensional chat sites such as Second Life and IMVU offer a virtual experience and allow the user a freedom to become anyone and communicate with the virtual community in any way. It is as close to reality as possible, yet according to Dystopians, users don’t use their senses to communicate and that cannot be regarded as a community. Speaking from personal experience, I believe IMVU offers a sense of reality where you relate to your character because your character represents who you are in real life. Some people however do not agree that cyberspace or any form of media work in that way and does not affect our lives in any way. That said, is virtual reality an experience of anything at all or what Gibson calls ‘consensual hallucination’ (Bell, 2009. P. 22)? The question lies within how cyberspace affects our individual identities. The internet attracts so many users on a universal level and offers endless options for creativity; people are becoming more enfolded with the net. Users create and share videos through YouTube, images through Flickr and Photobucket, characters in 3D chat rooms, music through Myspace and much more. This type of creativity expresses people’s individual identities and therefore influences others’ identities. ‘Internet slang’ for instance, has grabbed the attention of so many users around the world due to its creativity. It contains words such as “LOL”, “BRB” and the recently popular “FTW” (an abbreviation of “for the win”) which are created by arbitrary users and shared worldwide. Telegraph.co.uk reveled that The Wisconsin Tourism Federation (WTF) was forced to change its name after it was noticed that its initials had a foul ‘cyber term’ definition (Moore, 2009). This is a good example of how much the internet does affect not only the public but businesses as well. Many users however use internet slang today and it has become a trend that expresses people’s personalities in addition to emoticons. This is evident that the net does influence people and has an effect on users. Another evidence of this is when frequently used sites such as Twitter or Google crashed on June 25th at the death of Michael Jackson; its users went off the deep end and freaked out because they could not use the service to get information on Michael’s death. This shows that the internet does affect people’s lives because they are so relied upon it and use it very frequently for communication especially social networking websites (Lees-Bell, 2009).
Technology has long been used as a method of communication.

This essay has shown that cyberspace is still relevant to our contemporary society as it affects users’ lives in a number of aspects. People now rely heavily on the internet for news, blogs, networking with friends and businesses, consuming, producing and sharing information and software, gaming and much more. Many people are influenced by what they see, read and experience on the internet because content spreads widely and rapidly. Social networking and content sharing communities such as Facebook and YouTube have been the main aspects of this relevance because both are a wide network of communication and sharing centre that attract a huge number of users.

References

Bell, David (2001). An introduction to cybercultures. http://books.google.com.au/books?id=MRNlLK6ZlMYC&pg=PA22&dq=consensual+hallucination#v=onepage&q=consensual%20hallucination&f=false
Lees-Bell, Heidi (26 Jun 2009). Google & Twitter crash at news of Jackson’s death. http://news.icm.ac.uk/technology/google-twitter-crash-at-news-of-jackson%E2%80%99s-death/2322/


Moore, Matthew (29 Sep 2009). WTF? Wisconsin Tourism Federation changes name after internet jokes http://connect.in.com/internet-slang/article-wtf-wisconsin-tourism-federation-changes-its-name-123977 9f5422d8e86c0548ab64102e5fa0c13361c4047b.html

Smith, Mark and Kollock, Peter (1999). Communities in cyberspace. http://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=harO_jeoyUwC&oi=fnd&pg=PP15&dq=cyberspace+and+society&ots=JWSM5N6sAQ&sig=6q9B63tBYw65HoAY5hy7WCTknXo#v=onepage&q=cyberspace%20and%20society&f=false


Wellman, Barry (2004).The Global Village: Internet and community Vol 1. http://www.ideasmag.artsci.utoronto.ca/issue1_1/idea_s01-wellman.pdf

Week 8, CyberPolitics and eDemocracy

Internet has always been known as a tool for communication opening endless possibilities to businesses and organisations, normal everyday communications and social networking, military communication and now more than ever political mass communication and perticipation. Democracy especially is known as a true form of communication on the net and is greatly priviliged from cyberspace. CyberPolitics is the political activities carried out in cyberspace including blogging, fundraising, online journalism and electronic voting. It is a strategic form of communication that links the world of politicians and democratics with citizens to have their say in political practices. To be continued...

Week 7, Creative Commons, FLOSS

We all know that everyone wants free stuff. After all, people say all the good things in life are free. So why can't we have things for free? At least to unleash our creative side. Did you know that in the period from the 1960s to the 70s software was completely free? Any one could change the instructions in the program, create different things within the program and share it with others who will add and change other characteristics of the program and share it with other people as well. That was until businesses became aware of the capabilities of what this offers and decided to make their own programs and sell them. That is when Creative Commons came about in 2000.

Creative commons allow people to share free or libre, open source software (FLOSS)for people to be creative. While these software are free, they only own some rights, unlike Copyright, who has all rights reserved and Public Domain, who have no rights at all. Open source software include Open Office, Mozilla FireFox, Linux etc... Closed Source software however include Microsoft programs, Internet Explorer and Windows programs. Creative Commons helps break the barriers put in place by copyright and allows users to be creative and share their creativity with others and therefore allows others to become creative. So why can't we get the same thing for free?

week 6 Consumption And Production

We are all consumers of media and thanks to technology, we can also be producers of media. In the past, cinema and theaters were the primary media provider and we share it with the public within the theater. Television brought a whole new perspective into media consumption where we can watch privately or with the household. The personal computer also brought big changes to the way we consume media. The name says it all, however as much as it is private, it is also shared world wide with the use of Internet that connects people with the public. An example of sharing with the public using the personal computer is through uploading videos using Metacafe.com, YouTube.com, google videos and a lot more. Now and more popular than ever is the mobile phone. As more and more things become available on mobiles, the more people rely on them for media consumption especially news, sports and entertainment as whole.

Personal computers and mobile phones allows people to become producers of media. People upload movie advertisements, fan films, mash ups/ recap, concerts, music videos, parties and other small videos that can be recorded on a video or phone camera. News rooms such as CNN's ireport.com relies on people to gather news using their phones or cameras to record what is happening. Although technology has become more mobile these days, there still are some constraints and limitations on what can be filmed on a phone or a video camera. Problems can occur with the quality of the camera and the audio. Technology has come a long way from audience being just consumers to audience becoming producers of popular videos uploaded on the net.

uploading videos on the internet

This video that I've created myself shows just how easy it is for anyone to make a video and upload it online for the whole public to view. It is basically a short and simple story about a date gone wrong. I've used movie maker, paint and music to compose it together to create the story. There are also many features on movie maker to help people create a video such as transitions, affects and text options that allows a still picture to be developed into something more than that. Enjoy.

Week 3, new comm tech

New communication technologies are continuiously growing. Users start using communication technologies today are mostly as young as 12 years old. I've been using Facebook for friends, Myspace for music and Twitter to check on celebritys' every move. I've been using myspace since I was 13 years old. The most influence or motivation were from friends who have these websites and want to stay in contact. Privacy issues are not of concerns to me and I think websites such as Facebook and Google should collect information about their users for safety and backup. For example if there is a criminal group planning out criminal activities on the net, the website can keep the information as evidence. I would however encourage people to have a private profile to protect from certain users in the public network from viewing personal information about other users. Having a private profile does not stop the user from adding 'strangers' but it all comes down to how much you trust that person when you get to know them. I have one or two friends whom I've met on the internet, we'd chat and send messages but I never intend to meet them in person, especially if that person is from overseas. Even though some people might not turn out to be how you thought they'd turn out to be, you must remember that meeting people via cyberspace is not the same as meeting them in person. Misunderstandings might occur when chatting on the internet because you cannot see how the other person is reacting towards you. This is communication in my perspective.

Qualitative Differences between 3D and IM

Questions of social identity in the socialising space always arise when people talk about social networking. social identity is however viewed differently according to the quality of network socialisation. The 3D experience is very different from an IM experience. Although you can express emotions with both through text and emoticons, the user does not get a full picture of who you are as a person and your identity. The 3D world offers a very realistic chat experience where there are avatars, scenes and a complete virtual world. A good example of 3D space are Second life and IMVU. MSN, Skype does not offer any virtual experience, it is simply a mean of communication between people as well as an image sharing tool. The way people understand others is different according to what service they are using, neither however can give a clear picture of the person's exact identity. For some people, their social networking identity is different to how it is in reality. Some people tend to be someone they are not as an affect of who they are communicating with as well as the medium used for the communication.