So, this is Cyberspace?
Introductions
I have been involved in "cybercultural studies" for over a decade now. This page provides links to my own work as well as the research of others. If you know of any sites that I just have to link to, please let me know. If you're looking for more formal introductions, you can have a look at my departmental bio.
My online explorations began with MOOs (that stands for Multi-User Dimension, Object- Oriented). Intrigued by the way in which these "text-based virtual realities" created the impression of simultaneous absence and presence, I decided to go by the name of FortDa at 1k+1, a virtual space sponsored by the online journal, Postmodern Culture. You can also check out the homepages of folks from pmc-moo (most of which are defunct), the forerunner of 1k+1. To get more information (technical or theoretical) about MOO's, check out Xerox's PARC/LambdaMOO MOO Archive.
Theorizing the Space(s) of Network Culture
When I first posted this page, there were very few resources online related to the emerging field of "cyberculture." Now, of course, there's a wealth of information across the web. Here is a small sampling of material that deals directly or indirectly with the spatiality of network communication.
My Work
In my own work, I have argued that much of the writing on cyberspace has tended to perpetuate a dualism that places "real space" and "cyberspace" on opposite sides of an ontological divide. I would suggest instead that cyberspace maps an event involving material, conceptual, and lived processes--that cyberspace is a real, lived space. My earliest work on this topic was a piece on Baudrillard in Cyberspace (Style 29[1995]: 314-327, available online through Ebsco). A revised, expanded version of that article appeared as "What Space is Cyberspace, " in the collection of essays, Virtual Politics: Community and Identity in Cyberspace (Sage, 1997). I started working with the concept of "topography" to describe the performative element of spatial production, which eventually became the basis for my article, "Virtual Topographies: Smooth and Striated Cyberspace" in Cyberspace Textuality (Indiana, 1999). Henri Lefebvre began to figure more prominently in my writing as I tried to make sense of "virtual urbanism" (see below). This line of thinking culminated in a piece entitled “Ephemeral Cities: Postmodern Urbanism and the Production of Online Space” in Virtual Globalization (Routledge, 2001). I bring all of this work together in Cyberspaces of Everyday Life( Minnesota, 2006).
I am currently working on a series of projects revolving around the concept of "error" and the poetics of noise. I address some of these concerns in a piece entitled "Failure Notice," which I wrote as guest editor for the error issue of M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, published in October, 2007. I also have a piece on "digital
dis-trophe," which appears in M/C Journal 7.6 (Jan. 2005).
I have also done some work exploring the
collaborative potential for online exchanges, both in the
classroom and within a scholarly community.
To explore the results of the latter, see the Postmodern
Spacings project, which appeared in the online journal Postmodern
Culture. I gathered and edited the following online
discussion on the WWW, Deleuze+Guattari, and
Smooth Space, which provides a good archival example of list-serv
scholarly exchange--although it does not capture the fluidity and
"noisiness" that are very much a part of any list exchange.
I also have a body of work that explores the intersection of new media
studies, critical theory, and literary criticism, via James Joyce and
hypertext.
Of Some "Historic" Interest
The following links still hold considerable value
for an understanding of the spatiality of network communication:
Vannevar Bush's "As We May Think": the oft-cited 1945 article on the "memex" machine
Ted Nelson's Xanadu Archives page,
including his 1967 "Hypertext Notes," plus "probably the first
public uses of the word 'hypertext'"
Also from Ted Nelson: Computer
Lib/Dream Machines, scanned and excerpted by Digibarn
Tim Berners-Lee's original proposal
for the CERN information management system, precursor to the WWW
A chapter from Michael Heim's The
Metaphysics of Virtual Reality, on Leibniz, monads, and
cyberspace
Two seminal works of cybercrit: N. Katherine Hayles's "Virtual
Bodies and Flickering Signifiers" and Mark Poster's "CyberDemocracy"
and
UT Dallas's 1995 COLLAB-1 online seminar, Cyber
Wars entitled "Cyber Wars"
Pierre Levy on collective
intelligence (in french)
Urban Metaphors
Centre for Advanced
Spatial Analysis's (CASA) Online
Planning and Virtual
Cities projects
CASA also has research on mapping cyberspace
and
constructing virtual
worlds
William Mitchell's City of Bits--and
Marcos Novak's critique
The "transphysical
city": Novak's own vision of the electronic urban
Dodge, Smith, and Doyle: "Virtual
Cities on the World Wide Web"
Urbanism and the Internet: Ken Friedman's Essay "Restructuring the City"
Cybercafes
I used to have a number of links here to various
cybercafes around the US--but now they are all defunct!
I am very interested in the public use of the Internet and the various
forms it takes. Back in 1998, I found a piece in the New York Times that discussed Eva's
Cafe, a cybercafe in Belize. The description of two very different
classes of users--tourists, researchers, and business folk looking for
contact "back home" and locals making contact with friends and
relatives who had moved north for work--helped shape my thoughts on
cybercafes as zones of interpenetrating social space.
Here's a paper I gave on the
realities and virtualities of cybercafes, presented at the 1999
Popular
Culture Conference. For the most part, the social use of Internet in
the US has taken the form of free or for-pay
wireless access in coffee shops, restaurants, and other spaces of
consumption. At the same time, in Europe and Asia, cheap public
internet access tends to flourish in tourist
districts and near clusters of youth hostels.
.
Other Useful CyberSites
Body, Body, Who's Got the
(Virtual)
Body?
Brown's Modern Culture
and Media
Home Page
Association of Internet Researchers
(AoIR)
Georgetown's Communication,
Culture, and Technology Program
UVA's Institute for
Advanced
Technology in the Humanities
Virginia Tech's Center
for Digital Discourse and Culture
The Resource Center for
Cyberculture Studies--and in particular, their featured links
The Electronic Freedom Foundation
And of course, Howard Rheingold's Virtual
Communities Page
Last updated: November 8, 2007