Editing Cyberspace (section)

==Cyberspace as an Internet metaphor==
{{See also|Internet metaphors|Internet-related prefixes}}

While cyberspace should not be confused with the Internet, the term is often used to refer to objects and identities that exist largely within the communication network itself, so that a [[website]], for example, might be metaphorically said to "exist in cyberspace".<ref name=":0">{{cite journal |doi=10.1111/geoj.12009 |title=Geography/internet: Ethereal alternate dimensions of cyberspace or grounded augmented realities? |journal=The Geographical Journal |volume=179 |issue=2 |pages=177–182 |year=2013 |last1=Graham |first1=Mark |bibcode=2013GeogJ.179..177G }}</ref> According to this interpretation, events taking place on the Internet are not happening in the locations where participants or servers are physically located, but "in cyberspace". The philosopher [[Michel Foucault]] used the term ''[[Heterotopia (space)|heterotopia]]s'' to describe such spaces which are simultaneously physical and mental.

Firstly, cyberspace describes the flow of digital data through the network of interconnected computers: it is at once not "real"{{Em dash}}since one could not spatially locate it as a tangible object{{Em dash}}and clearly "real" in its effects. There have been several attempts to create a concise model about how cyberspace works since it is not a physical thing that can be looked at.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Bryant|first=William|date=November–December 2013|title=Cyberspace Superiority A Conceptual Model|url=http://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a589636.pdf|journal=Air & Space Power Journal|volume=27|pages=25–44|access-date=2018-10-29|archive-date=2017-03-04|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170304121456/http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a589636.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref> Secondly, cyberspace is the site of [[computer-mediated communication]] (CMC), in which online relationships and alternative forms of online identity are enacted, raising important questions about the social psychology of Internet use, the relationship between "online" and "offline" forms of life and interaction, and the relationship between the "real" and the virtual. Cyberspace draws attention to remediation of culture through [[new media]] technologies: it is not just a communication tool, but a social destination, and is culturally significant in its own right. Finally, cyberspace can be seen as providing new opportunities to reshape society and culture through "hidden" identities, or it can be seen as borderless communication and culture.<ref name=NM_1>{{cite book| title=New Media: An Introduction| author=Terry, F.| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DajYGAAACAAJ| publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]| date=2008| access-date=19 January 2024| isbn=978-0195551495}}</ref>

{{blockquote|Cyberspace is the "place" where a telephone conversation appears to occur. Not inside your actual phone, the plastic device on your desk. Not inside the other person's phone, in some other city. '''The place between''' the phones. [...] in the past twenty years, this electrical "space," which was once thin and dark and one-dimensional—little more than a narrow speaking-tube, stretching from phone to phone—has flung itself open like a gigantic jack-in-the-box. Light has flooded upon it, the eerie light of the glowing computer screen. This dark electric netherworld has become a vast flowering electronic landscape. Since the 1960s, the world of the telephone has cross-bred itself with computers and television, and though there is still no substance to cyberspace, nothing you can handle, it has a strange kind of physicality now. It makes good sense today to talk of cyberspace as a place all its own.|Bruce Sterling|Introduction to '''[[The Hacker Crackdown]]'''}}

The "space" in cyberspace has more in common with the abstract, mathematical meanings of the term (see [[space]]) than physical space. It does not have the duality of positive and negative volume (while in physical space, for example, a room has the negative volume of usable space delineated by positive volume of walls, Internet users cannot enter the screen and explore the unknown part of the Internet as an extension of the space they are in), but spatial meaning can be attributed to the relationship between different [[Web page|page]]s (of books as well as [[web server]]s), considering the unturned pages to be somewhere "out there." The concept of cyberspace, therefore, refers not to the content being presented to the surfer, but rather to the possibility of surfing among different sites, with [[feedback|feedback loops]] between the user and the rest of the system creating the potential to always encounter something unknown or unexpected.

[[Video game]]s differ from text-based communication in that on-screen images are meant to be figures that actually occupy a space and the animation shows the movement of those figures. Images are supposed to form the positive volume that delineates the empty space. A game adopts the cyberspace metaphor by engaging more players in the game, and then figuratively representing them on the screen as [[Avatar (virtual reality)|avatar]]s. Games do not have to stop at the avatar-player level, but current implementations aiming for more [[immersion (virtual reality)|immersive]] playing space (i.e. [[Laser tag]]) take the form of [[augmented reality]] rather than cyberspace, fully immersive virtual realities remaining impractical.

Although the more radical consequences of the global communication network predicted by some cyberspace proponents (i.e. the diminishing of state influence envisioned by John Perry Barlow<ref>John Perry Barlow, [http://homes.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100228062257/http://homes.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html |date=2010-02-28 }}, February 8, 1996</ref>) failed to materialize and the word lost some of its novelty appeal, it remains current {{as of|2006|lc=y}}.<ref name="georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov"/><ref>[http://news.findlaw.com/legalnews/scitech/cyber/ ''FindLaw Legal News'' site] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061115100949/http://news.findlaw.com/legalnews/scitech/cyber/ |date=2006-11-15 }}, Tech and IP: Cyberspace section, retrieved November 14, 2006.</ref>

Some [[virtual communities]] explicitly refer to the concept of cyberspace{{Em dash}}for example, [[Linden Lab]] calling their customers "[[Resident (Second Life)|Residents]]" of [[Second Life]]{{Em dash}}while all such communities can be positioned "in cyberspace" for explanatory and comparative purposes (as did Sterling in ''The Hacker Crackdown'', followed by many journalists), integrating the metaphor into a wider [[cyberculture|cyber-culture]].

The metaphor has been useful in helping a new generation of thought leaders to reason through new military strategies around the world, led largely by the US Department of Defense (DoD).<ref>Cyber Conflict Studies Association, [http://www.cyberconflict.org CCSA] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071013160121/http://cyberconflict.org/ |date=2007-10-13 }}</ref> The use of cyberspace as a metaphor has had its limits, however, especially in areas where the metaphor becomes confused with physical infrastructure. It has also been critiqued as being unhelpful for falsely employing a spatial metaphor to describe what is inherently a network.<ref name=":0" />