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Cyber-Space: Theoretical Approaches and Considerations
Conference Paper · June 2002
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International Conference
'Typography and Visual Communication: History, Theory, Education'
26-30 June 2002, The University of Macedonia Press and alterVision, typography &
visual communication ltd, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece
Dr. Vassilys Fourkas
Spatial Development Research Unit
School of Architecture
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
PO Box 491, 54006 Thessaloniki, Greece
Tel: 0030 310 995584
Fax: 0030 310 995592
Email: vfourkas@estia.arch.auth.gr
Cyber-Space: Theoretical Approaches and Considerations
Abstract
This paper serves as a critical review of the literature and existing research in the
area of spatial, in particular urban, approaches and geographical studies of cyberspace.
Therefore, it develops a theoretical debate regarding the spatial conception and
embodiment of cyberspace. The central point of the debate is concerned with the
provocative question of the ‘end of geography’. Under this very fundamental question
two interrelated issues are examined: the prospects of ‘urban dissolution’ and ‘virtual
community’. The paper then proposes an integrated cyber-spatial approach, by refuting
utopian/ dystopian considerations and technological determinism, and arguing that
cyberspace is an alive virtual space applied within rather from outside society. Thus, it is
suggested that place/space and cyberspace are interrelated and must be seen to influence
and shape each other.
1. Introduction
When you log into cyberspace, either Web sites or other online services, through
screen interfaces of connected to Internet computers, you use new tools for a very old and
common activity. Even with all the screens and wires and modems and lines, it still comes
down to people talking to each other. This is a new type of communication; in this
conference this is referred as visual communication. On the other hand, the language used
in visual communication is either spoken or written. However, and thanks to the huge
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popularity of e-mail and chat-rooms, it is mostly written. It is mainly about talking by
writing. Here we get a relation to the other branch of the present conference: typography.
Online conversation is about writing and thus about typography because you type it on a
keyboard and people read it. But because of the ephemeral nature of luminescent letters
on the screen, and because it has such a quick - sometimes instant – turnaround, it’s more
like talking and in general like interacting. And this is where the very fundamental
elements of convincing cyberspace as a new spatial system are lying on.
Electronic mail in particular is quite useful for maintaining and enlarging a
personal network because, in practical terms, it allows you to conduct a larger volume of
personal correspondence over a given period of time than any other media, such as
writing paper letters and talking on the telephone. The text display that still dominates
cyberspace appeals to people who love wordplay, language and writing, and the study of
their evolution over the time. Just like people attending this conference. The act of
interacting over the Internet is such a new twist that the lasting term for what it is has
been mostly related to cyberspace as a new alive but virtual space. The new with the old.
It is new because you often feel a real sense of place when logged in, though it exists
virtually in each person’s imagination while they stare into a PC screen. It is old because
even if the place is virtual, when it is working right it fulfils for people their need for a
new space away from home or work where they can conduct their personal and
professional affairs (see Coate, 1992).
But how can we accurately approach cyberspace as a new spatial system? Which
are these distinctive characteristics that support such a discussion? How the mainstream
theories deal with this? Is cyberspace substituting the real space? Is it autonomous from
social, economic and cultural geographies? Is it indeed all about the “end of geography”?
Do we witness the way toward the end of urban civilisation and the rise of independent by
place/time restrictions virtual communities? Eventually, can we speak off an integrated
cyber-spatial approach that would help cyberspace researchers to form more reliable and
thorough conceptual and methodological frameworks, avoiding misleading utopian/
dystopian and deterministic approaches?
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2. ICTs, Internet and WWW
The term ‘cyberspace’ was first coined by the, American, cyberpunk1 writer
William Gibson in his 1982 short story ‘Burning Chrome’ to refer to a computer
generated virtual reality. However, the term became popular in 1984, after its use in
Gibson’s novel ‘Neuromancer’. Etymologically, cyberspace is a compound word and the
origin of the first term ‘cyber’ comes from the Greek word kybernetes (κυβερνήτης),
which means pilot, governor, and ruler. The root ‘cyber’ is also related to ‘cyborg’, a term
that describes a human-machine synthesis resulted by connecting the human body in
advanced high-tech devices. According to Gibson, cyberspace is the name of a real
nonspace world, which is characterised by the ability for virtual presence of, and
interaction between people through ‘icons, waypoints and artificial realities’ (Gibson,
1984: 67).
Eventually, cyberspace has become one of the most world-widely over-hyped
terms of the 20th century’s last decade. cyberspace has been cast into reality and it is
generally conceived, as the integration of the connectivity provided by Information and
Communication Technologies (ICTs) networks. Figure 1, illustrates the historical timeline
of cyberspace, starting from the first inventions of telecommunications and computer
devices. The 1990s is the ‘gold decade’ of cyberspace, as the Internet with its
exceptionally fast diffusion and popularity – in terms of size, transmission capacity and
users– leads and defines by far the cyberspace’s development (NUA, 2000; USIC, 2000).
This is the raison d' être that makes the author of the paper and many researchers as well,
to focus on the Internet while speaking for cyberspace. The widely recognised fact that
lent wings to Internet’s diffusion was the invention of the World Wide Web (Web or
WWW) in 1989, which has made access and navigation through the Internet significantly
easier, using a graphical user interface, a network system of nodes and links that can
contain any combination of plain text, images, sounds, and video.
1
The cyberpunk literature movement, a subgenre of science fiction literature, is mainly considered as an
underground literary response to the explosive proliferation of media and computers technologies in 1980s
and 1990s. Cyberpunk could be also viewed as the paradigmatic literary expression of Jean Baudrillard’s
provocative theory developed in 1970s and 1980s, that describes the emergence of a new, postmodern
society organised around simulation and hyperreality created by the effects of new information,
communication and media technologies (see Baudrillard, 1983; 1988). According to Kellner (1995: 298327), both Baudrillard and cyberpunk became phenomena of media culture that provided theoretical and
fictional visions of a ‘techno-capitalist’ society increasingly dominated by media and information, and in
which human beings merge with technologies and lose the control over their new techno-environments.
3
Figure 2.1. The development of cyberspace throughout the timeline of Information and Communication Technologies
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The Web performed a tremendous growth in the 1990s: the number of Web sites
has risen from 130 in June 1993 to approx. 137 million in December 2001 and more than
204 million (!) in February 20022. Eventually most of private or public bodies, as well as
many individuals and communities have now their own Web site. The development of
digital or wireless telecommunication networks, the liberation of telecommunications
market, an unprecedented production of relevant to Internet and VR software and
hardware, and the growth of educational, governmental, commercial and community
networks and Web sites, back up the process of the exponential growth of cyberspace in
the 1990s. At this point it is important to note that up to April 1995 selling and
advertising things over the Internet was effectively discouraged, because the American
government that largely financed the Internet, did not allow commercial use of any kind.
In April 1995 the US government removed the barriers to commercial use by converting
Internet from government-funded to private-funded network, in the context of the
American National Information Infrastructure (NII) policy (see D’ Haenens, 1999). The
future of the Internet and the Web is certainly to be much promising, exponentially faster
in multiple multimedia platforms, accessible not only by connected to the network
computers, but also by mobile devices (the Wireless Access Protocol -WAP- is already in
use) and by digital televisions. A recent estimate predicts, “handheld mobile Internet
terminals will quickly outnumber Internet-connected personal computers as well as voiceonly mobile phones” (IDC 2000, quoted in Townsend, 2000: 2).
3. Place-Metaphor and Real Virtuality
Therefore, cyberspace no longer strictly refers to the fictional ‘matrix’ in William
Gibson's novels; it is not science fiction but rather a science fact. It has now entered into
common speech on and off the Internet, as shorthand for the conception of computer
networks as a virtual space. Most of definitions given refer to cyberspace as an artificial,
computer-sustained, computer-accessed, and computer-generated, virtual space, in such a
way so to give people the potential (illusion, for others) of control, movement and access
to information, and allowing them to interact with others, or with the computer-simulated
worlds, at any time of day and night (see Benedict 1991; Rheingold, 1994; Featherstone
and Burrows, 1995; Loader, 1998; Kitchin, 1998). Instead of the human-parts metaphors
(brains, memories etc.) that were basically used to describe the first appearance of
2
See http://www.netsizer.com/
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computers, the literary term cyberspace is used as a virtual place-metaphor to describe
and understand the function of ICTs networks. It concerns a metaphor flip from the
human body to real-world places and these place-metaphors have been directly or
indirectly used to describe systems that support people communicating and collaborating
on the Web. Thus, cyberspace in general depends upon a subtler metaphorical figuration a virtual topography in which speed, motion, and direction become possible (Adams,
1997). “One doesn't ‘go’ somewhere when picking up the telephone. But when the
computer couples with these same telephone lines, suddenly spatial and kinetic metaphors
begin to proliferate” (Nunes, 1995:1).
According to Vinton Cerf, one of the inventors of Internet, the ‘information
superhighway’ metaphor has very little ability to explain either where the Internet arose
or where it could go (Cerf, 1997). Stefik complements that politicians, especially the
American ones (i.e. Gore, 1991), use the highway metaphor in their rhetoric in an attempt
to persuade people that large-scale investments on the Internet will, similarly to highway
system, benefit the common good. Stefik, instead, teases out four other metaphors from
current discourse about the Internet: First, the digital library metaphor shows up in digital
libraries, databases and other archival information services. It emphasises the publishing
and storage of collected knowledge for preservation and access by a society. Second, the
electronic mail metaphor shows up the Internet as a communications system. Third, the
electronic market metaphor is used for thinking about issues of digital commerce, digital
money, and digital property. Finally, the digital worlds metaphor shows up in description
of geographical and social settings and navigations on the network, groupware and multiuser virtual environments, augmented reality, tele-presence, and ubiquitous computing
(Stefik, 1997: xx-xxi).
Indeed, as Figure 2 illustrates, the development of Internet/ Web technologies
have formed a virtual space that is based on the operational integration of the above
spatial metaphors and which is concerned with information, communication and various
types of interaction, as well as the diversity of personal interests and values. It is able to
embrace and integrate many forms of human activities that are related to real places and
physical proximity/ movement (i.e. online shopping and banking).
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Figure 2. The Basic Aspects of Internet/ WWW
Eventually, as the Internet technologies become more capable, the electronic
spaces become more accessible, “more experientially rich and more like places in the
sense that people can become perceptually immersed within worlds constructed by
software” (Graham and Marvin, 1996: 68). “But the price to pay for inclusion in the
system is to adapt to its logic, to its language, to its points of entry, to its encoding”
(Castells, 1996: 374). Thus, through the powerful influence of the Internet as a new
communication system mediated by social interests, government policies, and business
strategies, a new culture is emerging: the culture of real virtuality (ibid: 461). Therefore,
Castells emphasises upon the emergence of a new, global in scope, culture in which
reality will be entirely captured within virtual places in cyberspace and eventually,
“screen experiences become the experience” (ibid: 373). He further explains that “it is
real virtuality, and not virtual reality, because when our symbolic environment is, by and
large, structured in this inclusive, flexible, diversified hypertext, in which we navigate
every day, the virtuality of this text is in fact our reality, the symbols from which we live
and communicate” (Castells, 1997a: 10-11).
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4. Cyber-Space: Theoretical Approaches and Considerations
In considering the electronic environment of cyberspace as a spatial system, the
first question is inevitably concerned with geometry and topography. Unlike the real
space, cyberspace appears to be a vast chaotic space, characterised by a unique spatial
flexibility because Web sites, or in general virtual places, can be easily modified, replaced,
united, or moved with relative ease. Mitchell (1995:8) asserts that the Internet negates
geometry, which is true since cyberspace has no gravity and cardinal points and neither the
basic axiom of a distance from A to B is equal to the distance from B to A, nor the allied
triangle inequality (AB+BC>=AC). Distances in cyberspace are seen as measures of how
long it takes from one Web site to another or how long it takes to download something.
Accessibility depends thoroughly on the cyber-topological linkages and consequently the
cyber-spatial order is free from gravity and physical distances. “In fact, directions and
magnitudes of gravity or time consequence could be arbitrarily defined and easily altered”
(Shiode, 1997:4).
On the other hand, many theorists and geographers have been arguing that space is
not absolutely defined in terms of location and physical limits (Cartesian space); it is not
only understood in terms of Euclidean geometry, but is also definable in terms of socioeconomic
and
cultural
structures
and
their
space-time
system of
extended
communications (Williams; 1975; Harvey, 1989; Lefebvre; 1991; Foucault, 1997;
Kitchin, 1998). In 1960s, besides, American planners started to develop new
problematisation suggesting the concept of planning as a process with the use of abstract
models to represent conceptual systems or subsystems, and involving the use of computer
programmes (see Hall, 1988: 326-335). Similarly, Batty (1990; 1990a; 1997a) argues
upon the development of the computable or abstract city: a city that is becoming
simulated, abstracted and highly invisible to us, through the extension of many of its
operational and living features over the virtual space of electronic networks – the
cyberspace.
Regarding the spatial conception of cyberspace, therefore, the significance of the
bi-pole place-metaphor/ real virtuality is interrelated to the fact that our ‘internal sphere’
is making use of the network topology of virtual places. However, our body cannot
experience any actual movement in the real sense but only metaphorically. Consequently,
“at first glance, cyberspace would appear to be the antithesis of the body because it is
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where our minds can go but our bodies cannot” (Warf, 1998:5). Cyberspace could then be
notionally linked either to the Platonic definition of space as the totality of geometric
relations possible, or to the Aristotle’s more topological definition of space as the
generalized sum and place of all (virtual, in our case) places. We should then perceive and
study cyberspace as a spatial system (Adams, 1998).
Within this context, the focal point of the debate regarding the spatial embodiment
of cyberspace and its implications on real places, especially on cities, is inevitably
concerned with the provocative question of the ‘end of geography’. Under this very basic
question two supplementary interrelated issues are usually highlighted and co-discussed:
the prospects of ‘urban dissolution’ and ‘virtual community’.
4.1. The End of Geography?
Under a technologically deterministic viewpoint, the tendency within futuristic
writings on the information society is to see cyberspace as completely abolishing
problems of space and distance: ‘anything, anytime, anywhere’. Thus, it is suggested that
geographical and locational limits can be overcome through the immediate channels of
ICTs networks, creating a new provocative spaceless place that “calls into question the
significance of geographical locations at all scales” (Benedict, 1991: 10). Mitchell (1995:
8-10) claims that cyberspace destroys the geocode’s key and is profoundly antispatial,
because ‘the Net is ambient – nowhere in particular but everywhere at once’. You do not
go to it; you log in from wherever you physically happen to be”. On the same framework,
Negroponte (1995: 163) argues for the ‘end of geography’ because the manufacturing of
bits could happen anywhere, at any time and such as the ‘digital life’ depends less upon
being in a specific place at a specific time. Thus, cyberspace may replace physical
concentration and may also overcome the need to travel. Negroponte characteristically
portrays a future where using Virtual Reality systems the transmission of place itself will
become possible, “if I really could look out the electronic window of my living room in
Boston and see the Alps, hear the cowbells, and smell the (digital) manure in summer, in
a way I am very much in Switzerland (1995:165).
These approaches are not a priori unreasonable or meaningless but are poles apart
from scientific and empirical justification. More precisely, it is widely recognized that
cyberspace is transforming space-time relations and creating new social, cultural and
economic spaces that lack the formal qualities of geographic spaces because of their
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ability to transcend spatial and time barriers instantaneously (Lash and Urry, 1994;
Morley and Robins, 1995; Graham and Marvin, 1996; Adams and Warf, 1997; Kitchin,
1998). Basically, cyberspace and physical space are incongruent because what is near in
physical space is often far in cyberspace, and vice versa. Thus, some aspects of the world
are becoming cyber-spatial (Berry, 1997) and, as already discussed, this fact is of great
significance in developing new spatial perceptions and theories. Batty (1997), for
instance, discusses the spatial magnitude and embodiment of cyberspace into the concept
that many facets of geography are becoming virtual. New electronic media redefine
notions of social ‘position’ and ‘place’ divorcing experience from physical location (Batty
and Barr, 1994: 699), and thus, the real virtuality is generating a new dimension to
geography – the virtual geography that encompasses both the geography of real spaces
and cyberspaces. Accordingly, the maintenance of geography and its characteristics
(people, space, time) are considered important means to draw conclusions regarding the
basic features of cyberspace’s embodiment in contemporary society (Batty and Barr,
1994). As Gould (1991:4) accurately argues “you cannot have a geography of anything
that is unconnected. No connections, no geography”. Besides, we must not forget that
“advanced communications networks are being developed and introduced within an
existing economic and social context that displays stark geographical inequalities:
between, for example, rich and poor nations, central and peripheral regions, cities and
rural areas” (Gillespie and Robins, 1989:7). Not accidentally then, the growth of
cyberspace is not equally concerned with all places and social groups, and eventually the
culture of real virtuality and its geography – the virtual geography – is marked by the socalled ‘digital divide’.
According to the geographical distribution of Internet hosts the number of
countries connected to the Internet has risen from 24 in July 1991 to 211 in June 2002
(ibid.). This universality though is not concerned with all parameters of Internet growth.
Figure 3 shows spokes scaled according to estimated operational international Internet
bandwidth as of mid-2001. Hubs and lines are sized on a logarithmic scale according to
number of Internet hosts in each continental region, and we can clearly observe that USA
and Canada constitute the core of the international Internet bandwidth.
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Figure 3. International Internet Bandwidth, 2001 (source: © TeleGeography, Inc. 2001:
www.telegeography.com/Publications/)
Europe
U.S. &
Canada
Africa
Asia/Pacific
Similarly, Alexa Research (2001) reports that 80 percent of all Web traffic goes to
about only 0.5 percent of all Web sites and the, US-based, top seven sites alone account
for 20 percent of the total page views. On the other hand, the, roughly estimated, number
of 304.36 millions of Internet users in July 2000 (NUA, 2000) corresponds to less than
10% of the world’s population (5,3 billion people). Correspondingly, the USA leads the
world with 166.14 million Internet users, followed by Japan with 46 million, the Germany
with 35 million, UK with 33 million, and Canada with 17 million users. In order to better
portray the geography of Internet Map 1 follows, that faces the colours of countries
according to the latest estimated percentages of online population. As shown, 165 out of
209 countries have less than 5% of their population online. Only 18 countries have more
than 20% of their population as regular Internet users. Scandinavian countries, Iceland,
USA, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Netherlands and the UK present the higher
percentages of online population. In general, countries that deployed high amounts of
roads, railways, electrical power, phones, and television broadcasting in earlier
generations are also leaders in the current generation's deployment of Internet hosts and
Web pages (USIC, 2000). This fact verifies our theoretical assumption that the one is the
result of the other: extensive transportation and communications infrastructures enabled
commerce and created wealth, and these indicators in turn produced a demand for the
Internet.
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Map 1. Global Internet Connectivity by Users, June 20023
Categorisation of world countries according to percentage of their online population
> 40% (7 countries: USA, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Canada, Singapore, Finland)
20-40% (11 countries: Bermuda, Australia, Denmark, New Zealand, United Kingdom, South Korea, Taiwan,
Netherlands, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Slovenia, Austria, Ireland, Italy)
5-20% (26 countries: Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, Greenland, Israel, Japan, France, Estonia, Slovakia,
Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Virgin Islands, Spain, Andorra, Poland, Portugal, Malaysia,
Faeroe Islands, Hungary, Seychelles, Bahrain, Antigua & Barbuda, Czech Republic,
Bahamas, Kuwait)
< 5% (165 countries)
Furthermore, Map 2 illustrates the geography of Internet penetration rate
(measured in hosts per 1,000 people) in EU, and highlights the differences between
Nordic and Mediterranean countries. Nordic countries started the development of their
Internet infrastructure much earlier than Central European and Mediterranean countries
and now are in a position of advantage. Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal have all attained
penetration rates less than 10 hosts/1000 people, while the EU average rate is 37
hosts/1000 people. Besides, the state budget for the telecommunications sector in Greece,
Spain and Portugal – the ‘cohesion countries’ – is 40 per cent lower compared to the
average in all other countries-members of the EU. Another study by the European
Commission (EC, 2002), which assessed the overall degree of online availability of
3
Based on data provided by the NUA Internet surveys: www.nua.com/surveys/
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public services in 18 European countries, proves this geographical digital division.
According to this study, although the overall availability of “e-government” services
increased by 10% since October 2001 to 55% at the end of April 2002, southern regions
and countries are far behind the Northern ones as well as the average score.
Map 2. Internet Penetration in European Union4
In general terms, therefore, while cyberspace is difficult to be geographically
captured due to its largely invisible and intangible form, somewhere beyond computer
screens and cable networks, it is also connected to telecommunications networks that are
themselves materially and physically fixed in particular places. Technological linkages,
cables, network hubs and nodes, connected computers (access points), registered Internet
addresses, and of course the users, are all located somewhere in physical world, especially
in cities. The availability, speed and price of connection, as well as the quality of
hardware and software are very much dependent on national, even local,
telecommunications infrastructure. Besides, many information sources on the Web are
relevant primarily to specific geographical communities. For instance, Web sites
containing information either on governmental programmes, transport schedules and
urban planning applications, or on restaurants, theatres and apartment rentals, are relevant
4
Based on data provided by RIPE NCC: RIPE Region Hostcount (www.ripe.net/pubservices/stats/hostcount.html
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primarily to Internet users in geographical proximity to these locations (Buyukkokten et
al, 1999).
Despite also the disregard for borders, cyberspace cannot exist without the people
and bodies that create, regulate, distribute and consume the flows of data and
communications. Indeed, no single body owns, rules and governs the Internet and the
Web. However, individual networks, Web servers and hosts that comprise large part of
the Internet, have often their own ‘acceptable use’ policies regarding whom, how and for
what purpose, is going to use their network facilities. For instance, Chinese authorities in
Shanghai have shut down around 200 Internet cafes on May 2002, Turkey has passes a
law making Web sites subject to the same censorship as print media, and in Singapore
political and religious Web sites are strictly controlled by the government (see NUA,
2002).
All the above spatial patterns of cyberspace reflect its very basic embodiment in
real spatial organisation. Instead, therefore, of the ‘end of geography’ we should rather
talk for the new experimental field of geography, which has been named
cybergeography5. It involves researchers from both geography and computer sciences and
is concerned with geographical analyses and cartographic visualisations of the cyberspace
(see Gigardin, 1996; Jiang and Ormeling, 1997; Skupin, 2000; Dodge and Kitchin, 2000).
Inferentially, despite the pervasive application of real-time informative and interactive
applications of cyberspace, constrains of space, place and time still exist and, therefore,
geography still matters (Graham and Marvin, 1996: 69). In addition, while information
on-line might seem geographically dislocated, information is only as useful at the locale
within which the body resides (Kitchin, 1998: 15-16).
4.2. The End of Cities?
Following the ‘end of geography’ theory some Internet enthusiasts like Dertouzos
and Moses (1991), Sterling (1993), Harasim (1993) and Negroponte (1995) argue that
geographical propinquity ceases to matter and eventually cities are likely to simply
dissolve. People will not need to live necessarily in cities because ICTs allow many urban
activities to decentralise in a virtual world where all information will be available at all
times and places to all people (Toffler, 1980; Naisbitt, 1995). Thus, the ‘end of
5
An excellent source for cyber-geographic analyses and cybermaps is the ‘cybergeography Web site’
(www.cybergeography.org), which has been constructed and maintained by Martin Dodge from Centre for
Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA, directed by M. Batty) in UCL.
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geography’ approach identifies also a historical trajectory through which the intractable
reality of actual urban environments may be surpassed or superseded. Within the same
framework of convictions but on the opposite side, some others argue that the
unavoidable ‘end of geography’ is anti-urban because it will eventually cause the ‘death
of cities’. French architect and philosopher Paul Virilio is by far the most influential
intellectual from this field as he claims that, “unity of place without unity of time makes
the city disappear into the heterogeneity of advanced technology’s temporal regime”
(Virilio, 1985:19).
Nonetheless, those speaking, either cheerfully or gloomily, of the ‘end of
geography’, and eventually the ‘dissolution of city’ in a simple, linear manner, first of all
disregard something critically important: the process of urbanisation across the world
continues briskly so to be characterised as an ‘infinite process’ (Skeates, 1998). United
Nations (UN, 1993) projections show that by 2025, more than three-fifths of the world
population will live in urban areas. We should also consider that the function of the large
cities as destinations of migration flows, and as centres of governance, administration,
tourism, and business (especially of media and cultural industries) cannot be substituted
or even mediated by ICTs networks.
Major cities around the world host significant concentrations of Internet content
production and consumption, since users, hosts and domain names remain highly
concentrated in these urban areas, which the USIC (2000) report name them as ‘global
Internet venture capitals’. More precisely, although the top 100 cities (46 of which are
outside the USA) contain only 6.7 percent of the world's population, they host over half
of the world's Internet domains (Zook, 1999:7). According to another survey by
CyberAtlas6, New York is by far the city with the higher number of Internet users (3.48m)
in the world, followed by Los Angeles (2.31m) and Washington, DC (1.86m). The
tendency of the electronic information industry to concentrate in leading financial centers
has been observed in other parts of the world as well. Thus, London, and particularly
Central London, was shown to be peaking Internet centers, hosting over 29 percent of
Britain's domains (Dodge and Shiode, 1999), and is ranked fourth after the three leading
U.S.
cities (Zook,
1999).
Similarly,
Tokyo
was
identified as
the leading
telecommunications center for the Pacific Rim (Kellerman, 1999). Of course the
geographic distribution of Internet activity is analogous to population size of cities –
6
http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/geographics/us_cities.html
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which reflects also the concentration of telephone connections – and that is why Henkel
(1998) argues that the development of Internet has a tendency to be geographically
rationalised.
Map 3. Location of Domain Names Allocations in USA and UK
(Sources: Moss and Townsend, 1998: www.informationcity.org/research ; Dodge and Shiode, 1999:
www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/casa/martin/internetspace/paper/telecom.html
Moreover, each round of technological innovations breaking the barriers of space
and time have actually allowed a radical shift in the way that space is organised and
therefore opened up radically new possibilities for the urban growth (Harvey, 1996;
Thrift, 1996; Townsend, 2000). Not paradoxically, cyberspace simultaneously facilitates
the intense concentration of people, businesses and movement within extending urban
regions, whilst allowing metaphorical movement and interaction across the globe, even in
real-time conditions. Graham and Marvin (1996: 169) have summarised upon these issues
by providing a comprehensive illustration of how the cyberspatial and spatial
development processes are recursively linked (see Figure 4). Thus, they argue that “these
processes can be considered as parallel ‘virtues circles’ – where advantaged core cities
and high-technology zones increase their attractiveness – and ‘vicious circles’ – where the
disadvantaged of peripheral and deindustrialised cities are magnified by their lack of
competitive telecommunications infrastructures” (Graham and Marvin, 1996: 170).
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4.3. Virtual Community
Based on the ‘end of geography’ theory, utopian assumptions identify cyberspace
as the new social frontier. Here, the spatial metaphor on the Internet has been seen as a
new public space of human interaction, democratic participation, and cultural
development (i.e. Sterling, 1993; Harasim, 1994; Bellamy, et al, 1995; Kellner, 1999),
which is characterised by a universal in scope equity, transcending social and
geographical inequalities (Schuler, 1995; Day, 1998). Thus, individuals will be able to
form their communities through networks of social relations that are not necessarily tied
to a place but are based upon common interests, ideologies and affinities (Turkle, 1995;
Friedland, 1996).
Perhaps the most influential advocate of approaching cyberspace as a new virtual
public space is Howard Rheingold, the author of the book ‘Virtual Community’.
Rheingold (1994) argues that cyberspace provides the virtual space for a community
where people come together creating a web of personal relationships, but unlike
Negroponte (1995) and Sterling (1993), he does not try to stimulate a priori desire for
digital technology. In contrast, he sees cyberspace as offering some of the important
elements of an intentional community “as more and more informal public spaces
disappears from our lives” (Rheingold, 1994:6). To Kitchin (1998a:396), Rheingold’s
arguments seem in line with theorists such as Sennett (1970) and Habermas (1989), who
suggest that the notion of community is in transition as the public arena merges with the
private and personality over-rides opinion. Rheingold’s arguments is rather closer to what
Ray Oldenburg calls the ‘third place’: “a neutral place which is located out of home and
work and where people can meet members of their community, leaving possible divisions
such as class or industrial rank at the door in the spirit of inclusion rather than
exclusivity” (quoted in Hamman, 1998:2).
However, it is still unclear how much sociability is taking place in virtual
community networks and what are the cultural effects of such a new form of sociability.
Robins (1995) suggests that we should rather talk for an invocation but not for the
production of community over cyberspace, as it would be a misnomer to equate
communications directly into the real senses of communion and community. Holmes
(1997: 17) strengthens this view by arguing that “community is not something to be
constructed through a piece of technology, it cannot be consciously made by some
collective realisation that we are in danger of ‘losing’ it”.
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Within this perspective, the discussion on the virtual communities and the ‘third
place’ is inevitably accommodated within the wider debate and radical philosophical
rethinking of the community in post-industrial or information societies. For instance, the
development of virtual community over the Internet follows a conception of community
that can be found in theories of postmodernism, as that of Jean-Francois Lyotard. In The
Postmodern Condition, he suggests that ‘grand narratives’ which once held communities
together have become difficult to sustain in computerised societies and have been
replaced by the ‘temporary contract’ in ‘professional, emotional, sexual, cultural, family,
and international domains, as well as in political affairs’ (Lyotard, 1989).
Graham (1997:41) develops a similar approach, arguing that the development of
virtual communities is related to the culture of home-cottage and ‘cocooning’, based –
especially in the USA – on the rising feeling of fear for urban violence and the increasing
commodification/privatisation of public urban places. He claims that virtual communities
have in a sense developed as an electronic antidote to the depressing reality of real urban
life. The use of the ICTs for electronic surveillance and monitoring is well documented in
early studies on the information society and its urban aspects (i.e. Lyon, 1994; Davis,
1990; Wilson, 1997). For Graham (1999a: 142), the importance in trends towards the
widespread application of ‘surveillant-simulation’ techniques and databases technologies
is that they support increasingly co-ordinated, extensive and comprehensive systems of
surveillance and social control.
But the criticism does not stop here. Sociologists like McBeath and Webb (1997)
emphasise that there is a danger that cyberspace may finally promote the further
withdrawal of real human communication from real places on to optical fibre networks,
growing the problem of the increasing absence of real social interaction and solidarity. In
contrast, recently conducted research by Wellman and Hampton (1999; 2000), found out
that actually Internet does not harm physical interaction, but it rather strengthens and
extends existing social links, providing also a ramp onto the ‘global information
highway’. Another recent report (Harvey, Green and Agar, 2000), verifies that, in local
level, both social and technical networks are required to generate cyberspace connection.
Similarly, the published overview of results from the Virtual Society Project7 (ESRC,
2000), states that the cyberspatial technologies depend crucially on their local social
context and tend to supplement rather than substitute existing practices and forms of
7
www.virtualsociety.org.uk
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community organisation. In addition, there is evidence that some technologies intended to
create new virtual systems of social organisation actually reinforce non-virtual practices.
For example, systems implemented to enhance virtual learning turn out to generate more
‘real’ interaction between students (ibid.).
On the other hand, the sharpest, most clearly enumerable divides in cyberspace are
those based on where one lives and how much money has. Personal computers, telephone
calls, and subscription to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) cost a considerable amount of
money despite the price having dropped significantly over the last few years. According
to numerous published surveys of Internet demographics in the 1990s, Internet users are
in their majority white young males (18-40 years old), they have a higher than average
personal income, and a high level of education and literacy when compared to their ‘offline’ neighbours (see NUA, 2002). Recently published research (Καρούνος και Γουσίου,
2002) on the growth and use of Internet in Greece proves that the development of the
Greek virtual community (Internet users) is not concerned with more than 10% of the
country’s population. Furthermore, the 55-60% of them have approximately 700.000 Drs
monthly familial income, they are university-graduated and they reside in the Prefecture
of Attica. The research characteristically also reports that certain and remarkable regional
and intra-regional inequalities exist regarding the use of Internet in Greece" (jbid: 12). In
Northern Attica for example the rate of Internet use is 33% while in the entire region of
Sterea Hellas does not exceed the 3% (jbid: 16).
Consequently, we should be aware that the social geography of the virtual
community is much more complicated than a north-south divide. The switched-off areas
are culturally and spatially discontinuous: they are in the American inner cities or in the
weak Greek regions, “as much as in the shantytowns of Africa or in the deprived rural
areas of China or India” (Castells, 1996:34). In any case, over-generalisations about
‘virtual community’, like over-generalisations about ‘the city’ and ‘the community’ are
problematic. People’s experiences online differ, and “just as the city does not mean one
thing to all people, the Internet, and cyberspace while singular worlds, are not monolithic
things” (Light, 1999: 127-8). For some people the Internet recalls notions of social
interaction and even solidarity; for some others, important means to extend their
knowledge for their interests (interest-based virtual communities); for others like the
contemporary, either socialist or conservative, European parties the Internet represents a
new means in marketing their ideas and doing policy; and for some others Internet
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represents a new means to make profit doing business in the global market-place that is
extended over time-space restrictions. The student demonstrations in Tienanmen Square,
the Chiapas uprising in 1994 and the, recently emerged, international ‘anti-globalisation’
movement have all rallied an international community of supporters and participants
largely organised through activities on the Internet, providing examples of the
possibilities and limitations of the Internet as a tool for social movements (Castells, 1996;
Froehling, 1997). But as with any open-access communications medium, the Internet can
be as well used in ways by which the more distasteful facets of contemporary society can
proliferate and flourish. If the Internet can foster communities of like-minded artists and
poets, youth movements and scientists it can simultaneously give space to groups of neoNazis and paedophiles, as well as “to be trumpeted as a new space of ‘white-collar’ crime
(camouflaged embezzlements, fraudulent payments, falsified reports and inventories
etc.)” (Kitchin, 1998: 401). Actually, such kind of coincidence of views regarding the
importance of Internet, coincidence between the ‘libertarian’ and ‘neoliberal’, the
‘capital’ and the ‘rebellion’, the ‘legality’ and the ‘illegality’, form a distinctive feature of
our postmodern society.
5. Concluding Remarks: Towards an Integrated Cyber-Spatial Approach
Based on the above discussion, the paper argues that those spatial approaches of
cyberspace speaking for the ‘end of geography’ are firstly inadequate, because they
oversimplify the relationship between electronic and physical space. Secondly, they are
disorientating, because they suggest that cyberspace development is somehow separated
from society, rather than being designed, applied and shaped within specific geographies
of political, social, economic and cultural structures and processes. In cyberspace,
therefore, “places do not disappear, but their logic and their meaning become absorbed in
the network” (Castells, 1997a: 13). Cyberspace does not simply substitute or displace
space – “it redefines how space is perceived, used and controlled” (Graham and Marvin,
1996: 336). Thus, it is suggested that instead of indulging in futurological statements such
as the vanishing of space, and the ‘end’ or ‘death’ of cities, we should rather attempt to
conceptualise the new forms of spatial arrangements under the new technological
paradigm of cyberspace.
Cyberspace, the new space of visual communication, is intrinsically spatial. This
assertion is neither based only on the significance of the place-metaphor and its real
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virtuality, nor it only means that cyberspace can alter the relational distances between
places. It suggests that geography is a constitutive element of cyberspace because, “new
communication technologies do not just impact upon places; places and the social
processes, and social relationships they embody, also affect how such technological
systems are designed, implemented, and used” (Gillespie and Robins, 1989: 7). Thus,
cyberspace does not substitute other means of communication and interaction nor it
creates new networks: “It adds to telephone and transportation communication, it expands
the reach of social networks, and makes it possible for them to interact more actively and
in chosen time patterns” (ibid: 363). “Once technologies are available, political and social
struggle and actions can redirect their application and change their political effects – just
as political and social influences can redirect the shaping of urban politics and the built
environments of the urban places” (Graham, 1999: 28).
Therefore, what we need is a clear and operative theoretical model, an analytical
tool that its functionality will not be restricted by technological or social determinisms,
but will cover, portray and explain the complex interplay between physical space and
cyberspace. Having that cyberspace is perceived as a spatial system, we should approach
it not by treating it as an artefact but as a serious ontological challenge to modern spatial
studies. In other words, if the use of virtual place-metaphors or their applications invoke
places experiences, this fact has important implications for the development of the socalled information society, and studies of cyberspace should make an effort to respond.
Moreover, the present paper underlines the importance of continuity and stresses
the need for critical acceptance of either utopian or pessimistic visions regarding the
future of human visual communication in relation to the development of cyberspace. This
is not to deny that, “the digitalisation of human interaction and social mediation through
telecommunications will doubtless have profound influences culturally, economically,
and geographically (Adams and Warf, 1997:144). Though, it is vital to note that, contrary
to early, simplistic expectations that cyberspatial technologies would eliminate space,
rendering geography meaningless through the effortless conquest of distance, “such
systems in fact produce new rounds of unevenness, forming new geographies that are
imposed upon the relics of the past” (Warf, 1994:373). Besides, rather than simply
substituting electronic for physical flows and face-to-face interactions, cyberspace can
generate new demands for movement within and between real places, new arrangements
for face-to-face meetings and express older human visions.
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