Links to Web sites mentioned in this essay are in References
...
I embed the moon, lake, skyline almost as a woodcut into my memory
The park is balanced - nature touched by man.
Man needs nature to survive, but every time the land is touched
it is changed
I used to want to be a cyberpunk, forging a new land for man.
An electronic nature.
One of delusion/illusion.
It has its place (don't get me wrong)
But as a means to an end, not an end in itself as I used to believe.
And while the people build the electronic high rises, overpasses,
virtual meadows
The cities, like engorging amoebas, kill the land.
I can't be a part of that (while I know that in part, I have no choice)
...
from The Golden Gate Ride of Paul Revere by Jacob Hawkins
The word cyberspace is commonly attributed to William Gibson. He said that the idea came to him as he watched some young players at a video arcade. He felt that those using video games and computers seemed to, "...develop a belief that there's some kind of actual space behind the screen. Some place that you can't see but you know is there." (Elmer-DeWitt, 1995). He first used the word in a science fiction novel called Neuromancer that he wrote in 1984, but John Perry Barlow claims to be the first to use it, "... to refer to something that already existed. And prior to that I don't think that people were thinking about it as a place, or a space or a condition of assembly at all."(Gross, 1996). In the opening selection, we can see that, not only has the word been accepted in common usage but it has become part of an extended metaphor. The question that I want to look at then becomes, not what is cyberspace, but why we have accepted this and other metaphors for electronic interactions. .
The relationship between electronic communication and the metaphors used to describe and talk about it is complex, and should be addressed as we try to understand this widespread method of communication. Most of the people using on-line communication have come to accept and extend the use of metaphors without thinking about the reasons. The metaphors give it substance; a location, if not in space, at least in the mind. The importance of metaphors to our lives and our actions is discussed in Metaphors We Live By written by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1960). Their argument that we look at the non-physical in terms of the physical can help us understand the strong tendency to talk about electronic interactions as a physical space, with comparisons to real actions and real places. They explain that their view of metaphor as a "primary mechanism for understanding" is not in agreement with contemporary objectivist views.
Though questions of truth do arise for new metaphors, the more important questions are those of appropriate action. In most cases, what is at issue is not the truth or falsity of a metaphor but the perceptions and inferences that follow from it and the actions that are sanctioned by it. In all aspects of life, not just in politics or in love, we define our reality in terms of metaphors and then proceed to act on the basis of the metaphors. We draw inferences, set goals, make commitments, and execute plans, all on the basis of how we in part structure our experience, consciously and unconsciously, by means of metaphor. (p.158)Are we shaping or being shaped by the metaphors that name electronic interactions "the Net" or "cyberspace", and call the people who are involved in this method of communication "Netizens" and "cyberpunks"? How does the idea of an "Information Highway" or "Virtual Reality" affect our desire to use it? Which of the metaphors are being used by the politicians, which by the media, and which by the people using the media? Working primarily from a selection of recent online communications; from e-mail, newsgroups, and the Web, I'll discuss some of these issues.
Many of the cyberspace metaphors have to do with interactions that would take place in a physical place or world. The idea that the Internet (online communications) is a communication media that affects social interactions is widely held by many people who use it. Richard Coyne explains that whereas the communication style of the mass media has traditionally been a "one-to-many", one source, many recipients, the new mass medium of the Internet is "many-to-many", any individual can communicate with another individual or with a group. This fact combined with the grassroots, "bottom up" growth patterns of the Internet contribute to the current thought that as Coyne says, "The new mass media heralds a new democratizing force for reconstituting the Enlightenment ideal of the active and informed public." (1995).
This is a widely held theme running through the communications of those using the Internet. Michael Hauben has written a book called Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet, which is available on-line. In the Preface to the book he writes,
In conducting research online to determine people's uses for the global computer communications network (i.e., the Net), I became aware that there was a new social institution developing and I grew excited at the prospects of this new social institution. In response to the excitement I discovered from those who wrote me (and which I also experienced), I felt that the people I was writing about were citizens of the Net. Sometimes people on the Net would call users of the Net, a net.citizen (read net citizen). This idea I transformed into Net Citizen, which in shortened form is Netizen. Netizens are Net Citizens who utilize the Net from their homes, workplaces, schools, libraries, or other locations. These people are among those who populate the Net and make it a human resource. These Netizens participate to help make the Net both an intellectual and social resource. (1995).He continues with the idea that access must be made available to the Net for everyone, that it is a tool to foster communication, and that its citizens should submit ideas into the public domain in order for the Net's capabilities to be fully realized.
This sharing of information and ideas is often found in e-mail and newsgroups where messages of interest are forwarded. Sometimes the author of the message will be listed and sometimes the messages are anonymous. As I wrote to people along the chain of forwards trying to track down the author of the anti-Information Highway metaphor, I was sent another message that the person thought I should know about. It was written by John Perry Barlow, whose signature identifies him as "Cognitive Dissident" and "Co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation Home(stead)". It is titled "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" and expresses both how vividly cyberspace is envisioned and how strongly the belief in its nationhood is felt. It was written as a response to the Telecom Reform Act of 1996, which has provisions for censoring communication on the Internet.
Comments in agreement with the statement had been added along the chain of forwards. In one of the comments, the writer expresses her agreement as well as the desire for the statement to get widely read, "look, my friends and angels, look what one voice can do! indeed i feel as if a revolution may begin in cyberspace, and all revolution is contagious. i encourage you all to send this on to everyone you know, because only if we unite together under one voice will we be able to defeat the tyranny of the Men Behind the Curtain." (anonymous) The statement by Barlow begins,
I have written something (with characteristic grandiosity) that I hope will become one of many means to this end. If you find it useful, I hope you will pass it on as widely as possible. You can leave my name off it if you like, because I don't care about the credit. I really don't.The Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, which starts out, "Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather." (Barlow, 1996) It goes on to talk about the differences between the "world" and "cyberspace", and how the people who have just passed the legislation don't understand those differences. The conflict in goals between what the people who consider themselves citizens of cyberspace, who are building a "global social space" and those who passed the legislation, who think of it as "a public construction project", is stressed.But I do hope this cry will echo across Cyberspace, changing and growing and self-replicating, until it becomes a great shout equal to the idiocy they have just inflicted upon us.
I give you...
This conflict is also seen in a recent message being forwarded around the Net. It takes the metaphor of the Information Highway, which is considered an outsiders' media and political metaphor, and looks at it from the perspective of those more interested in community and communication than information. We can consider this metaphor using Donald Schon's theory that related how social policy is affected by generative metaphors. He says that, "Things are named in such a way as to fit the frame constructed for the situation... They select for attention a few salient features and relations from what would otherwise be an overwhelmingly complex reality. They give these elements a coherent organization, in such a way as to set the direction for its future transformation."(Ortony, 1988, 264).
During the 1992 election, Gore and Clinton promised to increase access to information through the use of technology for all Americans. In official documents this program was referred to as the National Information Infrastructure, but most often it was referred to as the Information Highway, or sometimes the Information Super-Highway. By "naming" and "framing" the problem, according to Schon, a generative metaphor can take a complex situation and suggest an obvious solution. By identifying the Internet with the highway system the suggestion was made that this was a service that the government could and should successfully provide to improve life in America. For some Internet users this is in conflict with their perception of the true purpose of the Internet and the following extended metaphor is being forwarded around as an expression of this disdain.
"Think of the Internet as a highway."This metaphor identifies several concepts that are expressed by many users of the Internet. The overall image of self-rule fits well with another popular metaphor created by Barlow, "The Electronic Frontier". He started using the phrase years ago because, "I was looking for frontiers so when I got into the world that was being created I was immediately struck by "frontier" analogies and metaphors. I mean that this was an unsettled place, that was filled with wild wooly characters, that were social misfits and able to tolerate very austere conditions, and that the settlers were coming..." He explains how his ideas have changed as the Internet has changed, "... I went from being interested in civilizing cyberspace to keeping civilization out, as I gradually realized this was a condition of somewhat more noble savagery than I had ever encountered before. That there was a self organizing quality to its internal governance that would only be harmed by the imposition of laws of the sort that don't do a very good job regulating the physical world." (Gross, 1996)
There it is again. Some clueless fool talking about the "Information Superhighway." They don't know didley about the net. It's nothing like a superhighway. That's a rotten metaphor.
Suppose the metaphor ran in the other direction. Suppose the highways were like the net. . .
A highway hundreds of lanes wide. Most with pitfalls for potholes. Privately operated bridges and overpasses. No highway patrol. A couple of rent-a-cops on bicycles with broken whistles. 500 member vigilante posses with nuclear weapons. A minimum of 237 on ramps at every intersection. No signs. Wanna get to Ensenada? Holler out the window at a passing truck to ask directions. Ad hoc traffic laws. Some lanes would vote to make use by a single-occupant-vehicle a capital offense on Monday through Friday between 7:00 and 9:00. Other lanes would just shoot you without a trial for talking on a car phone.
AOL would be a giant diesel-smoking bus with hundreds of ebola victims on board throwing dead wombats and rotten cabbage at the other cars, most of which have been assembled at home from kits. Some are built around 2.5 horsepower lawnmower engines with a top speed of nine miles an hour. Others burn nitrogylcerin and idle at 120.
No license plates. World War II bomber nose art instead. Terrifying paintings of huge teeth or vampire eagles. Bumper mounted machine guns. Flip somebody the finger on this highway and get a white phosphorus grenade up your tailpipe. Flatbed trucks cruise around with anti-aircraft missile batteries to shoot down the traffic helicopter. Little kids on tricycles with squirtguns filled with hydrochloric acid switch lanes without warning.
NO OFFRAMPS. None.
Now that's the way to run an Interstate Highway system.
(author unknown)
Another idea that it portrays with the 'vigilante posses' and the 'ad hoc traffic laws', is the people in newsgroups who respond to messages that they don't like. Sometimes they may not be related to the subject that the group is discussing, or it may be an advertisement, or a troll (someone trying to get responses by deliberately saying something rude or inappropriate), or they may not agree with it. The terms for these responses are 'flaming' and 'spamming', both words with physical connotations. A flame is an angry outburst. And when someone is spammed it may be accompanied by a description of Spam, "Call you? What would you like us to call you? Formed pork shoulder and other pork by-products seasoned to absolute tastelessness and stuffed into a little blue can, perhaps? That's SPAM, baby!" (anonymous source) or a text picture of a can of Spam.
The anti-information highway metaphor also brings out an example of discrimination in cyberspace. The major stated prejudice is against people who are new to cyberspace, and the reason being given is that they don't follow the rules. The rules could more accurately be called customs, since they are mostly unwritten and agreed upon by general consensus, and are often related to asking basic questions, writing in capital letters (all capital letters represent yelling) or sending a message to the wrong group of people. The commercial service provider America Online (AOL) is most often cited as a cause of the decline of quality information and discussions, even though there are other commercial services with large numbers of new people. In this example AOL is portrayed as a "giant diesel-smoking bus" whose riders are trying to do harm to those "other cars....have been assembled at home from kits", giving the impression that the people not associated with AOL are so knowledgeable or so poor that they put their computers together themselves.
Even though the average person using online communication is most probably an American, white, college-educated, male, between 15-30 with his own computer, the idea that cyberspace is elitist or discriminatory is not popular. Recently there was a long message in a newsgroup under the subject heading 'Digitrash Unite-the net is not a rich mans toy!'. The writer was complaining about a statement by a speaker that the Net is still only used by affluent Americans. He countered this with the statement, "...he was ignoring all the broke college kids accessing thru .edu servers, cases of groups of people surfing from one IP address, and people Telnetting and MUDing on "obsolete" bargain-basement hardware, going from one giveaway trial disk to another, not to mention the countless office slaves netsurfing on their employers time." (anonymous source). Realistically cyberspace inhabitants do not represent a cross-section of the population but the ideal that they should is promoted (Stuart, 1995).
The ideal of cyberspace as a place for "a cooperative global community" or "the chance for the little person... to gain more control over our lives" recurs in many online conversations (Heuben, e-mail). Barlow calls it "...the new home of the Mind" and states, "We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity." The possibility of the creation of McLuhan"s global village and the question of whether cyberspace is a community contributes to the enthusiasm that many people express toward cyberspace.
At a supper I was discussing newsgroup communication with friends. One friend excitedly told a story about an experience he had with newsgroups. After going to see the movie Braveheart, he wanted to know more about the time period and had questions about the authenticity of the military facts that the movie was based on. When he got home he checked his CD_ROM encyclopedia, and then still wanting more information decided to try newsgroups. When he started looking for appropriate newsgroups to contact, he was astounded to find out that there are so many. He finally chose one in Scotland and one about war, and sent out a question asking if anyone knew about the military strategy of using pikes. He got an answer back from a professor with expertise in that time period, who not only corresponded with him on e-mail but sent his telephone number as well. This experience left him really excited about the possibility of getting information from a source that he wouldn't have had contact with otherwise. On the down side he also has problems with e-mail because he sends out notices and information to long lists of people and occasionally gets many negative responses to a message.
Not all social interactions are positive or have positive consequences. In an e-mail conversation a college student explained her personal involvement in MUDS (a virtual space for games or collaborative interactions), as a search for friends. She was shy, and when she moved away from home to college communicating online it was, "much easier to let my personality come across via printed word than through verbal communication.". She stopped because of carpel tunnel syndrome and started communicating with those around her. She found that, "it was like a deaf woman gaining her hearing" and found that she enjoyed real people more than "talking to people that I couldn't see or hear". (anonymous source). Problems described by others characterize cyberspace as the "graffiti wall of the world" and "a photocopier gone berserk". As the Web, with its focus on providing information, becomes a widely used part of cyberspace there is an increase in the presence of businesses and advertisements. This is not seen as a positive direction by some and messages circulate with suggestions for preventing it from becoming "a world wide shopping mall"or "cyber-Rodeo Drive".
Different kinds of online communication exemplify different metaphors. One person described newsgroup conversations as closest in style to academic journals, starting with an article, then proceeding with a counter-opinion and responses to the counter-opinion. Another person mentioned that he liked having a Web page as a soapbox for expressing his views. In an essay on The Web as a Cultural Phenomenon Prabhaker Ragde explains the difference in metaphors that people use for the Web (an online multimedia environment) and for the Usenet (newsgroups). He writes, "with the Web, a reader is "travelling" through text in other people's space; with Usenet, a reader is participating in a conversation (or series of conversations) in a public space belonging to no one (or everyone)." (1995). Both forums are seen to challenge authority, according to Ragde, with Usenet individuals have the power of broadcast capabilities, while with the Web they have a virtual printing press. In both cases there is the possibility that the writer may communicate with a large audience, but the actual audience is not only unknown but may be uninterested as well.
While newsgroups and e-mail can only use text, the Web can contain graphics, sound, hypertext and animation as well. The possibility of using new or different metaphors is occasionally used but the medium has become connected with the print metaphor and most Web pages mimic printed materials. The most extensive use of a graphical metaphor that I have found are at two commercial sites, MCI's Gramercy Press and MultiMedia Magic's CyberTown. Gramercy Press shows an office building and there is a hypertext story related to the employees. CyberTown shows a map of a futuristic city and there are sub-menus connected to the buildings and locations on the map. The CyberTown city metaphor is extended throughout the entire site, which is extensive. It is evident that the creator's of this site have spent time thinking about the medium and the metaphors. And while there are some advertisements, it also provides interesting and useful information, not just glitz and entertainment.
Other sites use graphics that look like a scene or object that relates to the information that you can find there, such as Paramount's Star Trek Voyager site which uses a graphic of a hand-held computer as an interface for choosing information about the television show. Another idea that was described by a college student that I spoke with is a web page that he is designing. It will have links to other sites embedded in stories. A story about two people talking at a cafe will have links to the Web pages of the friends described in the story. The main menu will be a stage that will be connected to other places, or stories.
Finding a metaphor doesn't mean that it will enhance the message that the creators intend. In a critique of the Gramercy Press site, Kevin Hunt discusses the confusion of the using this new medium, "The Gramercy Press site raises some issues about how commercial sites should take advantage of the medium to promote and conduct their business. At this point, it's apparent that businesses have sensed that there is value in this new medium, but they have yet to figure out what sort of message the medium can best deliver. So far, they've mostly tried to map messages they've traditionally delivered using old media -- print and television -- to the new medium of the Web." (1995). He goes on to point out that they've put a lot of work into developing a highly interactive and entertaining site but with very little useful content. The creators of the MCI site have gotten caught up in the appeal of graphics and hypertext without stopping to think about how it can best meet their goals.
Some of the metaphors about cyberspace are created deliberately to try to facilitate the way we think about things. In essays on educational technology David Thornburg writes that the new metaphor may be, "a rekindling of an ancient idea..."
To many of the indigenous peoples of the world, education took place in two contexts - that of the campfire, and that of the watering hole. Campfires were home to the didactic instructors - the shamans and storytellers who imparted culture, history, science and magic to the next generation. The watering hole was where peer-to-peer learning took place - where we learned what was going on in our village, in neighboring villages and, in some cases, in villages far beyond those....In the nebulous zone in which we now live, this period equivalent to that between Gutenberg and Manutius, our technologies have provided matching metaphors for the learning environments just mentioned. The glow of the campfire has become the glitter of multimedia. The CD-ROMed shamans of the electronic age regale and engage us with their stories, sweeping us up in a magic carpet of the mind on which we zoom through conceptual space at the speed of thought. Well done multimedia is truly magical in its ability to let us step through the looking glass - to break through the walls of perception to new worlds.. (1993).Richard Lanham, who writes about electronic text and its relationship to academics, uses an unusual metaphor to expand our understanding of hypertexts, "Hypertexts are, in more than a manner of speaking, three-dimensional. Fuguelike, they can carry on an argument at several levels simultaneously. And if we cannot read them simultaneously, we can switch back forth with great rapidity." (1993, p. 21). In explaining the difference between hypermedia and printed text, Terje Rasmussen says, "It is also a tool, like a pen or the text editor. It is a tool of production, a tool of a special kind. it is a tool which enables communicative interactivity with the original author. We may compare it with the telephone, which is precisely a tool for communication." (1995).
Because of the dynamic growth of the use of electronic communication,
the diversity of the people using it, as well as the rapid change of the
technology that facilitates it, this paper is just a glimpse at a moment
in this interesting phenomenon. I may not extend this work but I hope that
others will.
