I had originally posted a blog entry prior to the class which amounted to what now seems to be complete gibberish. So... away it went. With that said, I think today's class gave me a bit more ammunition for being able to succinctly sum up what I think of Cyberspace.
Having been around long enough to witness the (r)evolution of Cyberspace and computer technology in general, I would have say that Benedikt was right on target in every description he provided. Cyberspace is a constantly evolving set of technologies that mash themselves together in order to facilitate human communication in all of its various forms.
To that end, Cyberspace is a metaphorical digital highway made up of coaxial, fiber, and wireless communications networks upon which all modern communication technologies strive to hitch a ride on. It is Cyberspace that allows individual communications "vehicles" such as email, instant messaging, and even cellular phones to deliver their content payloads.
As our technology improves, we strive to increase the amount of information we can deliver in various vehicles (email, IM, etc) requiring larger and larger network infrastructure to support the amount of traffic from these "vehicles" riding on it.
What Benedikt was saying (at least I think so), is that humans have always had an idea of Cyberspace, although it wasn't always digital or even thought of the same way it is today. The invention of writing, arguably the first component of Cyberspace, gave rise to the need to transmit that information. Since digital technology didn't exist at that time, the original information highway was on the feet of men and the backs of animals. Over time, collections of written documents gave rise to the necessity of storing these documents, leading to the creation of libraries.
As technology evolved, humans have simply continued their quest to communicate and store information in faster ways. Digital technology has facilitated this in an amazing array of ways, but the concept has remained the same. Instead of building libraries to store documents, we use databases. Instead of using hand written documents to deliver messages, we use phones, email, and IM.
The only real difference in Cyberspace since the dawn of written language is what we humans invent to speed up and increase our capacity for communicating and storing information.
This is what Cyberspace is.
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I think this was a very interesting post, there are many things that I agree with and see the world changing in cyberspace, although I wasn't around to see it evolving quite as long. The most interesting part I found was, "Instead of building libraries to store documents, we use databases. Instead of using hand written documents to deliver messages, we use phones, email, and IM." This is a very relevant point when discussing the changes being made, and although they are quite great advances being made, there is some concern as to where this escalating pattern will end. Although, I believe so far it has yet to have many negative effects.
ReplyDeleteGood post, Maurice, and I would agree with your interpretation of what Benedikt was getting at with regards to the past. It's sort of like something that's discussed in "new media", the fact that "new media" is actually "old media" (see Gitelman, "Always Already New"). I'm also going to enjoy reading your posts for 375.
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