An Experience in Cyberspace an lnvalid One?

Sorry y'all for the late post....My selected passage is as follows:

Kevin Robbins. CyberCulture's Reader: (middle) p. 230 - (beginning) p. 231

In Robbins' article "Against Virtual Community," he points out many potentially negative things about virtual community and the virtual experience that he dubs in the passage I selected as 'that which does not exist'. He states that those that favor the immediacy of 'that which does not exist' over real experiences are escapists: people who seek to get away from life's unpleasant realities by retreating into other realities or fantasies. He says that if we seek to truly master the virtual realm, then we are headed towards a collective disavowal of true experiential community.

On one hand, I can see his point. Communicating through a digital space to someone else who exists in meatspace isn't as personal being in the physical presence of that person. Also, people could very well lead lives quite disconnected from a typical person's involvement in physical society with the ever advancing virtual tools and technological progressions perpetuating that..

On the other hand hand, however, I most definitely want to argue in favor of our collective access to virtual community as something that exists as a compliment to how we (humans) are naturally programmed. I'm not saying that it was natural for us to inevitably integrate the virtual and the physical (we could just as well have not have had the industrial revolution and been fine), but it is an allusion a generalization that I believe to be justified: all people are made to relate to other people, and it is true meaningful relationships that we are naturally drawn to.

I, along with many of you I'm sure, are drawn to new tech and new spaces because they are intriguing and it feels adventurous to explore new things, but if not for the people that inhabit virtual space, why bother? I know many who might not be the most technologically savvy or even interested in the idea of a Facebook or Twitter account for example, yet they pioneer the space because the prospect of connecting with people drives them to do so (even if they don't ever post and just follow people). Robbins' words hold credence when thinking critically about the dangers of these new and unexplored things, but if there wasn't something fulfilling about the virtual experience and the relationships experienced in virtual space, only then would his words be fully valid in my opinion.

Take Twitter for instance. How foolish, right? It glorifies the mundane; who honestly cares about you having to take your cat to the vet because she has the sniffles? Yet, over time, the fragments begin to collectively create a sense of the person who is putting those fragments out there. I can have a dim sense of what is going on in the life or mind of someone who I realistically wouldn't get to ever talk to save a couple times a year maybe because of the problem of distance. Using Twitter, I could have a sense of how that person is doing and have a wider basis of conversation the next time I see that person. Things like Twitter allow for maintaining a range of contact not possible apart from the virtual even if it isn't as pure as it could be relationally speaking.

If experience is the issue, I believe Robbins misses the idea of the virtual experience being better than no experience. Time moves on, and with it, people do too. Staying connected to those people requires participation through media whether we're talking about a phone call, texting, skype, or a simple letter. Communication over distance requires mediation. The lines are continually blurring because people care about legitimate communal experience, not because we want to escape it.

Eggs Benedikt - Retrospekt, Prospekt

Prospect - "The possibility or likelihood of a future event happening."

The definitions of cyberspace in Michael Benedikt's essay "Cyberspace: First Steps" didn't really leap out at me; that is to say, there wasn't really one in particular that leaped out at me that made jump for joy or made my heart go pitter-patter. Instead, it was a line or phrase from this one or an idea touched on in that one that made me go "Hmmm," not because of the language being perfect at describing it, but because it touched on the more ethereal soul-level concepts that make up the basis for cyberspace.

In his referenced definitions, there is a theme [in some] of limitlessness and ubiquity, like a place with no line on the horizon in any given direction. This is interesting to me. One definition likened cyberspace to a "parallel universe" which, interestingly enough, is quite like our own. Our universe has been expanding in a spherical 'every way at once' trajectory since either the "big bang" or the "let there be light" episode (if really there is a difference between the two in this context), much like cyberspace since its onset; information is always discovered, generated, and inputed from this universe to that one.

I prefer to stick with ambiguous and ethereal terms like "limitless" and the like in referring to cyberspace, because, like Benedikt developed in the essay, cyberspace is an evolving project of ridiculous scope and subconscious ambition that spans ages, not decades. Its story can be followed through the journey of technology - from cave paintings to the global village, from the stone tablet to the scroll, to the book to the blog; cyberspace pays homage to the massive trek in its entirety.

I've never thought of cyberspace as the most evolved version of this "third world" like Benedikt talked about it when I first logged onto the internet or even got immersed in a video game, but tracing the broad idea of cyberspace, there are very important pillars that come into play that he discussed that really enlightened my perception when thinking about it: mythology, history, architecture, and mathematics. The merging of the idyllic on one hand with the psychological underpinnings of architecture and the logic of math has allowed for this parallel universe to come about in such a 'real' way in the past 30 or 40 years even though it is virtual. "It" was inevitable.

We come, we partake of intimacy and "security" all at once. Where are we? We're on our computer our we're on our phone or we're playing as our avatar in our video game in front of the television. Right? In world number one, sure. In an increasingly legitimate world number three? Hell if I know. If cyberspace were laid out in a cartesian coordinate system (in an X, Y, and Z graph), where do those locations fall? More important yet, where is (0,0,0)?

Genesis

Hello there my fellow digitally diverse human beings. My name is Josh Colby and I am the fellow in charge of writting this I'm sure to-be incoherent yet hopefully amusing and intellectually stimulating blog..

A couple things about myself: I love Jesus but I drink a little and, 60% of the time, I'm right EVERY time (yes, idiotic comments like this should be prevalent for my own amusement).

I am currently in my senior year of the DTC program. I'm hoping that this semester will be the funnest and most challenging yet, and I believe it will be. Should be fun.

Generally speaking, I really enjoy and center my life around things dealing primarily with the right side of the brain: music, art, being creative, and being "sensitive" at the right moments (really hit and miss on the last one). I have been involved in several musical projects over the past few years and have played at several different local venues, the most memorable of which have been the few times playing at the Toyota center. I don't really feel that my design skills are very good, but that's kinda the point of being in the program. Again, really looking forward to this semester.

Since my hard drive that stored most of my music and my iPod simultaneously decided to fail on me, I've only really been listening to one record by 30 seconds to mars - This is War. Taste and see..



Some extra extraneous information for ya:
- I'm 23
- I'm 5'10''
- I'm Norwegian and Scottish

Thanks for reading.