Is the Concept of 'Cyberspace' Stupid? 292
frank_adrian314159 writes "In an article titled 'Stop Pretending Cyberspace Exists,' Salon writer Michael Lind notes that 'Some ideas make you dumber the moment you learn of them. One of those ideas is the concept of "cyberspace."' He says that analogizing cyberspace as a real place leads to an inability to think logically about laws, rules, and how and when the governments could or should intervene to regulate the Internet. He states that such a debate is essential, but that an '[invasion of] a mythical Oz-like kingdom called cyberspace is just as dopey' when talking about governments and corporations taking a larger role in online communications. Is Lind right? Does the notion of cyberspace make the debate over its governance less fruitful?"
Exception to Betteridge's law!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the concept of 'Cybespace' is quite stupid.
No. (Score:3, Insightful)
But it's not 1993 anymore. Instead of "cyberspace," just say "in the cloud" and you'll sound like you're living in 2013.
No (Score:5, Insightful)
The notion of "cyberspace as place" ala Neuromancer may be a bit out dated, but it paints an interesting picture. As someone who does understand how networking works, I find the concepts from early cyber punk to be valuable attempts to try to imagine the future of a data driven world. We don't see pictures in the raw data, there is no blond in the red dress. But we can take the numbers and extract the blond in the red dress and make her visible to everyone.
If, however, someone's notion of cyberspace starts and ends at Tron, then they're going to have a hard time understanding the lack of control they have over the system.
But, that's not to say the the idea of cyberspace as place has no, well, place. People create communities on line, both private and public. These communities have their own rules both written and unwritten. If a government wants to regulate it's place in cyberspace, then it can attempt to do so. It's when governments try to regulate the cyberspace of people outside it's jurisdiction, that we run into issues where the concept of cyberspace can muddy the waters.
just the word; not the concept. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Cyberspace" is a metaphor (Score:5, Insightful)
"Cyberpace" is a metaphor. Used as such, it is sometimes useful, but, like all metaphors, it can be misleading if taken as a literal description; the internet is obvious not a literal physical place.
Is "cyberspace" a stupid term? No. Is it sometimes used stupidly? Yes.
Yes (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously, none of the metaphors that come to mind when we are talking about a conventional "space" apply when you're talking about communications and networking. It's a different concept entirely.
Re:just the word; not the concept. (Score:4, Insightful)
And why not?
Because in the big scheme of things the internet isn't much more grandiose than a fancy telephone answering system like what any large corporation has.
When I'm on hold with AT&T I'm not in telespace. I don't have a virtual telepresence at AT&T. When my call is eventually connected to some fine chap in India I don't marvel that the two us are meeting in some virtual non-corporeal tele-reality.
Its also just as ubiquitous and just as democratic. Anyone can talk to anyone from anywhere, instantly.
I'm not looking to mock you, I'm just pointing out the logical flaw.
I remember BBS systems; and telneting into the university, and the rules back then were all perfectly rational without imagining being in some new space. The server was there. I was here. I communicated with the server. The laws that applied at the server applied at the server. The laws that applied where i was apply where I was.
The problem specifically addressed in the article is the idea that this isn't adequate, that cyberspace is 'somewhere else' where laws either don't go, don't apply, or need to be brought, or need to be fought off. The reality is the law applies and has always applied where the servers are, and where the participants are.
Some complexity arises due to instances where the law at the server and client but legally it really doesn't need to be more complicated then how we think about phone call.
Just like the "New World" (Score:5, Insightful)
Then a bunch of kings, princes, dukes, and their beneficiaries found about how there rules, titles and privledges where simply ignored in this "new world", they decided to let people know that that just because they are on the other side of the world, there powers, and hierarchies still exist awnd apply.
On a serious note, this concept of cyber space as a physical space never existed. There are, however decades of communities, with their own cultures that formed independantly of the TV culture of the time, and there have been unwritten rules about the internet.
The situation is the same, titleholders, owners, and the others who stat back while everyone else developed online, did nothing, but are now demanding controll of the internet, to make it an extension of the dull, boring, distraught, mainstream most of us sought to get away from 20 years prior. They also mean to press their statutory hierachy, in place of what used to be a meritocracy, destroying everything beautiful of the internet, and condemning us all to the same backwards, corrupt, dogmatic line of thinking the outside world uses
Re:Exception to Betteridge's law!! (Score:4, Insightful)
People spend money on virtual pets. They spend money on cool duds for their game avatars. The whole free-to-play concept depends on the sales of these virtual goods. And the pure vitriol when one of these places shuts down before they're bored with it...
Of course cyberspace exists.
Re:Exception to Betteridge's law!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Cyberspace isn't a stupid concept. It is a concept applied stupidly to the network and applications that we actually have.
Now, you'll excuse me as I jack my 'trodes into my deck...
Re:Exception to Betteridge's law!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Exception to Betteridge's law!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Exception to Betteridge's law!! (Score:4, Insightful)
"Yes, the concept of 'Cybespace' is quite stupid."
No, it isn't. The idea that the Internet is "cyberspace" is stupid. But those are two different things.
But what really gets me is that I don't know ANYBODY who really has that idea in their heads... except maybe Lind himself. There is no reason to rail against this idea unless you think it's prevalent... and I don't think it is. Methinks Lind is looking more in a mirror than out the window.
Space != place, e.g. mathematical spaces (Score:4, Insightful)
Lind treats countries and legal jurisdictions as "real," but says "there is no such place as cyberspace." It's a specious argument. A space is not the same as a place. I don't think mathematicians confuse the spaces they talk about with places. Geographer Manuel Castells, in his influential book series The Information Age, wrote about the conflict between "space of flows" - of networked finance, data and communication - and contrasted it with the "space of places" - physical locations where people live.
To be fair, Lind seems to be arguing tha cyberspace is not like a physical territory. The metaphor of cyberspace, by implying that it is, supports misleading conclusions. This is a reasonable argument. Metaphors are useful for description, but they are not predictive - though many people, journalists among them, take them too far. Lind is right that governments already have jursidiction over people acting on the Internet, though as others Slashdot commenters point out the Internet has raised numerous jurisdictional questions. However, we could not name or understand anything new if we did not compare it with something already known. I don't think the imperfection of a metaphor is sufficient grounds for discarding it.
But the motivation of the argument, it seems to me, is political. He writes: "it makes no sense to say that California and the U.S. are extending their jurisdiction 'into' cyberspace . . . The idea that corporations are 'invading' a mythical Oz-like kingdom called cyberspace is . . . dopey." I don't know about that. Scholars often use the language of colonization in cases like this. We could talk about government "invasion" into private or family space. Canada's then-justice minister Pierre Trudeau used a spatial metaphor when he said in 1967, upon the introduction of a bill to decriminalize homosexuality, "there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation."
He takes it for granted that these comparisons are reasonable. I don't think they are. I don't hear anyone talking about a "fax" community or a "telephone" community. But people do talk about an "Internet community," an "Internet generation" (more questionable in my mind) - even of belonging to an online "tribe". The Aaron Swartz memorial site is full of such statements. Note also the big-I: the Internet is a proper noun (even he spells it that way).
Benedict Anderson wrote Imagined Communities about the formation of new nations, such as Indonesia, following decolonization. He explains how arbitrary colonial lines drawn on a map gave rise to real feelings of national identity among people who did not know each other: but who had a sense that they had shared histories and experiences. I think the Internet has produced some similar feelings. I don't think Lind's argument is entirely clear, but it seems to me this is what he is really arguing against. But that's a judgment of what should be. Disguising it as an objective description of the Internet is problematic.
Or hey, just read China Mieville's The City and the City.
MOD PARENT UP (Score:4, Insightful)
You first-posted yourself some karma, Mitreya (at least for a moment), but as long as you use readily use similar devices, like "deskspace" and "screen real estate" and "folders" and "directory trees", you might want to reflect a little more before you say something as ridiculous as "the concept of "Cyberspace" is quite stupid". It's no less a troll than "people who use perl are stupid". Worse, I'll hazard a guess that you use the term "the Cloud" several times a day [note: I'm profiling here]
Now, if you want to say, as the writer of the Salon article at least tried to say, that "people have used the concept of "Cyberspace" in stupid ways", that might at least be a little bit defensible (if you gave sufficient evidence).
Where's mod points when you need it?
The concept of a "space" is widely used in many science disciplines, especially on the more abstract concepts, e.g. phase space, Hilbert space, address space, etc. But of course, any fool can use them in stupid ways such as writing fictions where people "enter" them (anyone who knew what a phase space is will see how silly it is to say it can be "entered", double bonus for quoting a novel with people entering an address space).
The concept of "Cyberspace" is no different. We mentally used that concept of a "space" every time we used the term "log in" or "log out" of a remote system. We talked about "going" from one node/server to another in online games, have terms like "server hopping", or even the most common usage of "surfing the web" (yuck!). All of them used the metaphor of a "space" to refer to computers connected to a network.
The concept of a space is not stupid, it is how people used it that is stupid.
Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, it's almost like the meaning of a word can change over time.