29 Cyberspace Cultures

Dr. Arjun Choudhury

First part of this chapter, will concentrate on locating the term ‘cyberspace’ within a contemporary cultural context by focusing first on the origins of the term and then the ways and contexts in which it has been configuredfrom the early eighties down to the present. In second part, it will then attempt to introduce, through illustrations and preliminary discussions, the notions of virtual environments (as contrasted or in relation with physical space/ environments, and how these operate on an individual and a societal level), processes of transmission, signalling and reception within social networks and how the cyberspace has come to influence both individual and collective social-cultural existences and identities through various forms of social media In third part, this module will focus on looking at the social media of the cyberspace and examine the illustrations introduced in the preceding section through certain key theoretical perspectives in cyberculture studies.

The Idea of ‘CYBERSPACE’

The word ‘cyber-space’ would primarily seem to signify a non-physical space, or ‘-scape’. It also may be seen as suggesting, given the prefix ‘cyber’, a purely technological avatar (aspect/ nature), one that by lexical definitions would connote a confining of the meaning of the term to computers and computer networks, mostly online, besides being strictly electronic and virtual. The earliest definitions, or rather, the literary origins of the term, as used by William Gibson in his short story “Burning Chrome” (1982) and later in his debut novel, Neuromancer (1984) bespeak an idea that the cyberspace, for all effects and purposes, is mostly something that is hallucinatory, and experienced in a regular fashion by millions of communicating agents within a complex network of connected databanks (forming, therefore, a larger idea of a unifying bigger data-scape) (ID 1). It was in his essay “Academy Leader” (1991) published in Michael L. Benedikt’s critical anthology Cyberspace: First Steps that Gibson first spoke in detail about the formulation of the term, about how the word was ‘assembled’ using “small and readily available components of language” in a sort of “Neologic spasm”. (1991: 249) Though Gibson did apparently coin the term ‘cyberspace’, there have been other antecedents as well. John Brunner is also credited with inventing the concept in his novel The Shockwave Rider (1975). That book, in turn, derives many of its elements, including part of its title from Alvin Toffler’s novel Future Shock (1970). In Toffler’s narrative, there is a section named “The Cyborgs Among Us” in which he speaks of the possibilities of human-machine integration and even of human brains functioning independent of their bodies which is something that returns in Gibson’s idea of the cyberspace in his novels like Count Zero and Neuromancer. Much earlier than that, George Orwell also projected the vision of an invasive cyber-presence called Big Brother in his novel 1984.

The prefix ‘cyber’, of course, predates this ‘Gibsonian cyberspace’ (ID 2), as commentators have called it. Its first recorded usage can be traced to Norbert Wiener who, in the 1940s, used the word ‘cybernetics’ (from which the prefix is derived) to describe the system of regulatory communication in biological, social and technological systems and frameworks chiefly manifested as a system of messages to control machines and mechanisms, or automata. Control and communication were the key concepts in Wiener’s formulation while in Gibson’s idea of the cyberspace, the steering notion was the idea of a vast interconnectedness on a highly imaginative level between millions of agents using millions of networked computers to receive and send data. Gibson’s use of the prefix in his neologism also may be seen as incorporating these basic processes of communication that Wiener also spoke of within a complex system of received responses and controlled counter-responses but it also veers away into a different space, or rather a different embodiment altogether, one that evinces a virtual structure parallel to the real and the physical spaces lived in by those millions of ‘operators’ who participate, according to Gibson, in the experience of the cyberspace.

However, in contemporary usage, the idea of cyberspace encompasses a more complex system of nodes and agencies than just a vast virtual data-scape, or virtual domain of interconnected databanks, or exchange of messages (virtual communication). It is certainly more than that, especially in the context of the contemporary human society where the computer as a complex mechanism can be said to have ceased to exist in its haloed receptacle of regulated accessibility (Note: Gibson’s use of the word ‘legitimate’ in his definition of the cyberspace in Neuromancer). It has also been defined variously as incorporating physical, alongside the nonphysical structures that allow for the expansive nature of the cyberspace to complicate beyond just a virtual interconnectedness. This would mean that the contemporary notion of the cyberspace also may include the Internet (the World Wide Web), organizational intranets, individual electronic devices like tablets and smartphones used by millions of people across the globe in the real world, access nodes and intermediary router nodes like Wi-Fi, and also social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, Instagram as well as electronic mail providers and search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing, or listservs (ID 3) and newsgroups as well as online universities and libraries.

It is, however, important to understand that the culture of cyberspaces (or the cultures of cyberspace) are not only implicitly electronic or virtual in nature or behaviour, though that is predominantly what ‘cyberspace’ is. A clear and inherent connection between ‘real’, physical spaces and ‘virtual’ cyberspaces also exists, thereby influencing human behaviour, identity, language and similar other socio-cultural aspects. Whereas the real, ‘physical’ world and its spaces are non-expansile, all cyberspaces are inherently prone to expansion. This is again because the world of the cyberspace, independent of the limitability of physical space, exists through networks and networked communication, and which in turn exist because they must connect, node by node, receptor by receptor, sensor by sensor. That in itself implies an expansive nature, not limited by physical boundaries and temporal constraints. Thus, while the physical space is limited by its inherent nature of tangibility and temporality, the cyberspace, or environment is beyond such limitations by virtue of its inherent nature of connectedness. And while this is the case, just as the real influences the many metamorphoses of the cyber, the cyber also influences the changing patterns within the manifold aspects of the real, leading to the aforementioned idea that the cyberspace is not just a ‘virtual reality’ but also, as Manuel Castells calls it, a real virtuality (ID 4) in describing which he alludes to the primal human cultural need to communicate and interact.

The scope of the idea of cyberspace, and cyberspace cultures is vast, and multifarious. Instead of concentrating on a general overview of cyberspace cultures, therefore, the following sections in this lesson will focus on the area of social communication within the cyberspace, looking at its fundamental aspects and understanding them with the help of illustrations from popular culture and everyday living in the contemporary world, particularly from the lives people live in connexion to the cyberspace.

Types of Social Media and the Cyberspace

As the many contemporary aspects of the cyberspace grow more and more complex and innovative, the early Gibsonian cyberspace of hallucinatory images and a world of connections between databanks seems to have been absorbed into a greater reality of networked networks and complicated systems. An example of this is the Internet’s vast segment of social networking sites, email providers, mailing lists, chat rooms, bulletin boards, and networked virtual game environments. This vast segment of social media platforms and networks are used and ‘inhabited’ everyday by millions and millions of people all over the world. Inhabited because each user in, say, an email provider like Google (Gmail) occupies a limited space that is particular to himself/herself, almost like a house in real life. Though the occupancy is limited (like the space assigned to each email user), the scope of communication is definitely not limited, irrespective of where and how the physical presence of the user might be located. Social media technologies in the cyberspace may manifest in many different forms. These may include online magazines (called ezines or webzines),

Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, micro-blogging, social networking websites, podcasts, photographs or artwork, video, social bookmarking. Technologies include blogging, picture- sharing, vlogs, wall-posting, music-sharing, crowd sourcing and so on and so forth. There are social media like virtual libraries and virtual universities which also help in the transmission of specialised knowledge to groups and individuals.

A very apt example of how the cyberspace has changed the way social communication occurs is the social networking website Facebook, and its antecedent, the now to-be defunct Orkut. Whereas it was verily impossible for a person living in Sao Paolo to connect with and communicate with a person living in Hampstead at one point of time in the past, websites like Facebook have made it possible for people living in different geographical locations to meet and connect with each other without having to meet physically. Whereas at a point of time, epistolary communication used to be time consuming and limited in its scope even with FAX, electronic mail (Email) has made it possible for people living thousands of miles away to communicate with each other in an instant, making production processes faster and smoother. Thus, it is possible to conclude that the cyberspace has singlehandedly managed to vastly alter community relations across the world while creating new bases for personal identity for individuals (an example is the spreading of awareness about LGBTQ orientations through social media in geopolitical locations like Uganda where such a culture never took root at all in the same way it did in the United States or Europe).

The social media of the cyberspace has also helped to destabilise and/or significantly reform political and democratic structures across the world (an example is the 2011 Egyptian Revolution centred in Tahrir Square in Cairo during which a Facebook page called “Tahrir Square” was maintained by a rotational staff team in order to offset the state sponsored media outlets which reported negatively against the peaceful movement). It has also brought about significant changes in urban and regional economies and patterns of employment and the masses response to an increasingly exploitative corporate culture (an example is the Occupy Movement which has since its inception spread very fast across the world and has been operating in more than several locations at a time in a manner that is not so surprisingly uniform) and has globalised culture and information services to an extent that would have been unimaginable even a couple of decades ago. In this section, I consider the nature and scope of the social media of the cyberspace by focusing on two primary communicative aspects, 1) the number of receptors and signallers involved in the transference of a communicative signal across a social network, or a social medium, and 2) the temporal- functional aspect of social media.

On the basis of the first aspect, we can attempt a preliminary categorization of social media into 1) one signaller- one receptor media and 2) one signaller – many receptors media. Social media processes like emailing and private one-on-one chatting rooms are examples of the first category, in which communication takes place between two agents, one signaller who transmits the message as a signal or a set of signals and one receptor who receives the message. Communication in this case is not open to the public gaze, and there is a distinct measure of privacy that is being ‘controlled’ by the individual. For example, an email from A addressed and directed to a specific recipient B will not be delivered to another potential recipient C unless it has been ‘CC-ed’. A chat on Google Talk between C and A will not include B unless one of the former create a Google Hangout and invite B in it as well.

In the second category come social media processes like group chats, broadcast messages on bulletin boards and listservs, public posts on Facebook and other such social networking websites, networked online games and virtual fantasy worlds for RPGs (ID 5). In such cases the transmission of signals takes place from one signaller to many receptors, which ultimately is also tantamount to many signallers signaling to many receptors (though the act of signaling initially involves only a single signaller for a single signal). An example of such social media would be the public posts on individual Facebook profiles. When A and B announce the birth of their new born son with a photograph of the baby as a public post on their wall, the message (verbal-visual) is being transmitted by one signaller, of course. However, the many responses that arrive soon to that post (as comments on the post, or as ‘likes’ to the post) prove that the message has been received at the same time by at least a number of other individuals. In case of networked games, similarly, there is a central player and a number of peripheral players who interact and compete against each other. Adding links to these competitions online create further communication and interaction in the game world. This brings us to another point, the identification and categorization of social media on the basis of their temporal-functional aspect.

On the basis of this temporal-functional aspect, social media can be classified into, again, two types – asynchronous and synchronous (ID 6). Examples of synchronous social media would be Skype, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger and similar IM platforms wherein the transmission of messages takes place through verbal, audio and audio-visual signalling. For example, in Skype, A who is in New York is speaking to B who is in Delhi. In this case, it might be a different time zone in each of these individuals’ cases, but the moment of transmission in which a message is sent and received and responded to by the receptor is the same, unlike emails where the receptor may or may not see the message sent until some time has passed. Another important example of this sort of social media is the online classroom where students from different parts of the world may overcome their handicap of inaccessibility (due to socio-economic reasons or otherwise) and participate in courses which they would otherwise not have been able to access. This aspect of social media has singularly accelerated the dissemination of specialised knowledge across the world over the last one decade. The instantaneity of the transmission is the key factor here. This synchronicity, or absence of it, is what determines whether a particular social medium will be called synchronous or asynchronous. Asynchronous media include electronic mailing, online mail lists, listservs, bulletin boards and Internet discussion forums.

It is nearly impossible to chart or map in exhaustive detail the entire scope of the social media of the cyberspace within this single lesson. However, it has been my intention here to introduce a broad classification of the same here with specific attention to how these various modes of social communication within the cyberspace are structured and how they can be categorized in order to understand the different hierarchies of time and space that influence social communication in the cyberspace. The next section will examine these examples and classifications using key theoretical propositions from contemporary cyber-culture studies.

The Network Society: Ideas and Theories

Two words (rather, ideas) that are of primary significance in the context of understanding cybercultures and cyberspaces are ‘network’ and ‘virtuality’. Why this is so may be understandable in course of a brief glance through the development of what could be called the third stage of cyberculture studies, after that point when the possibility of the existence of a cyberspace ceased to be a possibility any longer and instead became a reality, a necessity to be negotiated with, its very existence a pointer to a somewhat futuristic idea that the human world will have to, at some point of the time in the future, harness the technological worlds and make them part of itself in order to achieve a furtherance on the evolution graph. This was at the ‘end of the millennium” (also the title of a multi-volume work by Manuel Castells, End of Millennium, in which he speaks of a network society and the culture of real virtuality) when, as Castells identified them, three particular processes facilitated the inauguration of a new world of networks. These were, in Castells’ words, the information technology revolution; the economic crisis of both capitalism and statism, and their subsequent restructuring; and the blooming of cultural social movements, such as libertarianism, human rights, feminism, and environmentalism. The interaction between these processes, and the reactions they triggered, brought into being a new dominant social structure, the network society; a new economy, the informational / global economy; and a new culture, the culture of real virtuality.

Hence the immense significance of the word ‘network’ when it comes to understanding the cultures of the cyberspace. This “network society” that Castells speaks of is one that is structured on the fundament of an informational economy. As a surge of global competitiveness led, during the final decades of the last millennium, to the metamorphosis of an over-industrialised society into a post-industrial (ID 12) society, information became the new mode of capital, and human communication, in fact all of social communication steadily became influenced by a rising wave of informational operations, in which knowledge generation and information vending were primary constituents. This new economy, as one can call it, required a newer mode of working as well. The answer was ‘network-ing’, comprising ‘net-workers’, an impersonal model of communication in which the primary logic of being was a simplistic binary of connected-disconnected. Either one was part of the network, connected to other networkers and networks, or one was disconnected, entirely excluded from the diverse forces of production and distribution in the new economy. This network society that Castells talks about has destabilised cultural identities that once were rooted in traditions and cultural communities, instead giving way to a distinct cyberspace oriented global culture where, again, being connected is the key factor to a fulfilled sociocultural existence. The social media of the cyberspace, as discussed in the preceding section only is one part of this network society where communication, cultural and social, takes place only through a connected signalling, and a connected receiving of messages, symbolic or otherwise. For example, for a member of a business network that relies entirely on online asynchronous communication, to be connected to the network is of elemental importance since their capacity to produce is directly dependant on their ability to respond and signal their appropriation of information which in turn will lead to the operation of new knowledge on existing knowledge. In contemporary corporate spaces across the world, thus, online webinars (ID 13) and video conferences have become necessary tools of operation and information dissemination. Without regular access to these tools, it is almost impossible to imagine a corporate professional at work.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in India, the BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi was projected in almost a thousand holographic shows across the country, on almost 750 stages, with a hundred shows every three days during the election campaigns. Though it is not to say that this political strategy was the reason for the party’s resounding victory later, yet it is indeed an example of how integral a part of contemporary living has that other word, ‘virtuality’, become. In 2012, a posthumous performance by the late rapper Tupac Shakur was staged at the Coachella Music Festival in California, USA through a very convincing hologram projection alongside the real-life performers Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. The late rapper, who died in 1996, almost fifteen years ago, entered the stage (via the holographic projection) and seemingly interacted with the living performers in a way that did not suggest that he had been dead for at least more than a decade. These examples are just the tip of the iceberg, obviously, since 3D projection has been a part of pop culture for quite some time now.

Virtuality, or real virtuality, as Castells calls it, thus creates a distinct space for the understanding of the culture of the network society which is, after all, a culture heavily modified, negotiated and controlled, almost, by the diverse modes of new multimedia (or even micro-media) which have all but replaced the previously existing standard modes of mass media and their standardised, homogeneous production of information and knowledge. Castells’ premise that culture is negotiated (or mediated) through social communication is at the core of his premise of real virtuality. That with changes and shifts in modes (and the medium) of communication invariably come shifts in cultural identity, or locationing is something that Castells holds as given.

If this is considered, then a close revision of at least some of the previously cited illustrations (in Section Two) of synchronous and asynchronous social media in the cyberspace may be necessary in order to see how real virtuality operates in case of the social media of the cyberspace. Castells’ view gives rise to a couple of important points regarding culture and communication in the context of social media. First, existing cultural forms and practices are appropriated by the network society, and are ‘reworked’ to be incorporated as part of the network. An example of that would be the asynchronous social medium of online bulletin boards. Bulletin boards (or even kanban boards) are physical spaces used in universities, colleges, institutional residences and corporate workspaces in order to cater to the necessity of information dispersal within the ambit of the physical network in question here. But the scope of such bulletin boards are understandably limited. They also do not allow for one-to- one, or many-to-many signalling in the ways that online bulletin boards (BBS, or bulletin board systems) do. An online BBS is a computer software that allows users to connect and ‘jack into’ into the larger network of online users hosted by the BBS in question. A logged in user can perform various communicative functions (ones that physical bulletin boards do not allow) such as uploading and downloading data, accessing information and bulletins, exchanging information with other users through emails, public message boards, or through direct one-on-one synchronous chatting. The ‘old’ practice of bulletin boards, so much a part of fraternity/ sorority cultures, college/ university cultures and workspace cultures across the world has thus been appropriated by the network society as a networking practice accessible and usable only by ‘logged in’, included agents.

Secondly, the changes affected by the changing modes of multimedia in the context of cultural identities and spaces are those which evince a distinct cultural differentiation and a close knit, subtle (but also very distinct at the same) social stratification. While the first is based on the predominance of cultural capital (ID 14), the second sort of change is based on both financial and non financial capital. The phrase ‘tech savvy’ may be used to illustrate this point here. A person who can affect their production of information on a developing level using social media tools like electronic mail and blogs may be called ‘tech savvy’ while someone who cannot do that may be labeled ‘old school’ by those who can or even generally. For example, in educational institutions like universities and research institutes, instructors and faculty members now are increasingly inclined towards the use of email lists and online reading material instead of the traditional print media associated with graduate teaching or research work. A ‘tech savvy’ instructor would prefer to post information about upcoming classes and seminars on their Facebook profiles, or if they already have a Facebook page for their courses, instead of relying on a printed announcement on the physical bulletin board at the campus. Chances are that the online message signalled by the teacher will be received faster and by more students. This sort of ‘multimedia culture’ has seemingly pervaded almost every aspect of contemporary human living. But there are also limitations that are imposed, by default, on those who do not possess the capability of shaping media content, because they may lack resources that are financial as well as cultural.

And finally, the blurring of traditional forms and genres and the indiscriminate availability of cultural capital and its many manifestations that multimedia cultures have made possible. Where once traditional forms of cultural expression were regulated by specialised ‘professional’ individuals, now, with the increasing spectra of data transfer via the Internet, the signalling of these specialised agencies and these cultural forms and genres are becoming more and more convergent, thereby leaving very little space for a clear differentiation between what were once ‘different’ forms of cultural expression. An example is the online messaging platform called Whatsapp. Where previously MMS (multimedia messaging service) and SMS (short messaging service) were the only available tools on a mobile network other than the telephonic conversation, now with the advent of smartphone devices which can work seamlessly within WiFi hotspots and 3G spectra, Whatsapp has made it possible for audio-visual data to be transferred along with textual data messaging between members of the network, even if they are living on two different hemispheres entirely.

Instructional Design: Glossary

Databank (Data-scape): A vast depository of accessible (or private) data on one particular topic sometimes formed from more than one database. A data-scape, on the other hand, would be a visual representation of all the mensurable agencies that may determine, direct or regulate the work of the architect.
Gibsonian cyberspace: Gibsonian cyberspace refers to visions of cyberspace which trace back to Gibson’s vivid descriptions in his novel Neuromancer as contrasted with the idea of the Barlovian cyberspace named after John Perry Barlow.
Listserv: Refers to certain early electronic mailing list software applications, which allowed one sender to send one email to the list, and thereby forwarding it to the addresses of the other subscribers to the list.
Real Virtuality: Reality that is experienced in a primarily virtual manner, being embodied and manifested through symbolic expression.
RPGs: Role playing games in which participants assume roles in order to compete with each other.
Synchronous/ asynchronous: Occurring at one time; coinciding in time; contemporaneous; simultaneous. Opposite is ‘asynchronous’, which indicate different and varying times of occurrence.
Capitalism: An economic system in which the means of production are largely or entirely privately owned and for profit
Statism: In political theory, the belief that the state should exercise control over either economic or social policy or even both.
Libertarianism: A political philosophy that upholds liberty as its primary object and aim.
Feminism: An aggregate term for historical movements and definite political ideologies aimed at establishing, and defending a state of equal rights for women.
Environmentalism: A philosophical ideology and social movement that concerns itself with environmental protection and the care and improvement of the health of the environment.
Post-industrial: Connotes a shift in human economy and society as they move from a manufacturing industrial base towards more knowledge and information oriented sectors.
Webinars: Online audio-visual conferencing, from ‘web’ (World Wide Web) and ‘seminar’.

References

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Castells, Manuel. and Catterall, B. The Making of the Network Society. London: ICA. 2002. Digital.
Castells, Manuel. The Rise of the Network Society: The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. NJ: Wiley Blackwell. 2nd Edition. 2009. Print.
Dant, Tim. Materiality and Society. Maidenhead: Open University Press. 2005. Print.
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Lessig, Lawrence. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. New York: Basic Books. 1999. Print.
Smith, Mark A. and Kollock, Peter. Communities in Cyberspace. London: Routledge. 1999. Print.
Spinello, Richard A. Regulating Cyberspace: The Policies and Technologies of Control. Westport: Quorum Books. 2002. Digital.