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Cyberspace • This chapter examines the ‘weirdness’ of cyberspace by looking at the ways in which it, as a heterotopia, plays with notions of place and space. It then discusses the congruities and tensions between cyberspace and internet protocols in order to explore the ways in which the internet is public.(38) • Privatization: transformation of public/private to open/closed
Where’s the space • Coined in 1982 by William Gibson (sci-fi) • US judiciary’s Communcations Decency Act used it as a legitimate name • Includes configurations that do not necessarily link to the internet • Emphasizes the importance of user experiences rather than network technologies • Cyberspace mixes science and fiction: as a hallucinatory space that is always in the process of becoming, but ‘where the future is destined to dwell’. (43)
Cyberspace now • Space is a practiced place: do place • Cyberspace practices space • Loosens place • Loosens space from tours through navigation • Teleporting: locations in a new manner
Timing space • Television: organized around time • Internet: organized around space and memory • Despite the differences between surfing and zapping, using categories like flow, live and segmentation to analyze the internet offers new theoretical possibilities(...) All these differences and the importance of time is repressed by ‘cyberspace’. (50,51)
Othering Space • Outside all places and cannot be located yet it exists • Represents, contests, and inverts public spaces and places • Its mirroring function is not indexical • Cyberspace functions as a utopia because it enables one to see oneself where one is not. And it functions as a heterotopia because it actually exists. • Cyberspace enables virtual passing
Gawker • Flaneur sustain fiction of users as spectators, everyone leaves traces • Instead: Gawker • Not independent • Impersonal being: part of the crowd • Part of flood of information • Object of someone else’s gaze
Controlling Code • Internet is public because it is a protocol • The effectiveness of censorship depends on local configurations and routing protocols both of which have been dramatically affected by the privatization of the internet. (66)
Controlling Code • Lessig:perfect control signals the demise of democracy • Galloway:the principle of the net is control, not freedom • Chun: control and freedom are not opposites (...) control is the matrix that enables freedom as openness.
Controlling Code • Openness enabled by communications protocols can point toward freedom • Public space belongs to no one which garantees democracy • Private/public/political • Private/public - open/closed • Internet opens up possiblities for reimagining democracy and democratic structures.
Rather than explore the utopian possibilities of a space in which anything is possible, I argue that by refusing this myth, the Internet can enable something like democracy