|
|---|
What the instructor says What G4 says What I am saying What others are saying Final considerations |
This report is about cyberspace and its relationship to the mind. It takes a look at several different papers and ideas on what cyberspace is and its relationship to the mind. It starts off with summaries of Dr. Leon James, and his prior students who are in a group called G4a. It also contains my own views on cyberspace and the mind. Throughout this report there are several links to other pages and reports dealing with the, cyberspace and mind, topic.
Dr. Leon James believes that cyberspace is like the mind. Both are not physical, and require a physical presence for each to exist. The mind needs the brain, and cyberspace needs a hard-drive. Both cyberspace and the mind is similar in two important respects, interactivity and organization. According to Dr. Leon James "our mind communicates with other minds and the content of the exchange is organized by topic and by attitudes towards the topic. Cyberspace is made up of topics and access doors to these topics." In other words, both the mind and cyberspace are used for organizing data, topics, or ideas. Both are also used to communicate the stored data, topics, or ideas to others.
I found Dr. Leon James's idea of spirituality and cyberspace interesting. I believe the act of clicking on a certain site has some spiritual implications. One person may want to look at pornography on the Internet, and others may view pornography as a bad thing. To me this choice has spiritual implications as far as the morals of each individual. Like Dr. James, I too believe that "clicking is at once a moral, ethical, economic, and psychological act." From "surfing" the net on numerous occasions, I found that many of the pornographic sites have programs which allow parents to ban certain sites from their kids. I think that these were created because of a moral or spiritual idea of what children should be allowed to view.
Another topic I found interesting, in Dr. James's report, is the communal mind. The communal mind is a mind created not by one person, but by the ideas and interests of many people. This is kind of like an organized "brainstorm". I remember in school, having to discuss a topic and "brainstorm" with classmates. At least one student would have to take notes on the discussion and this could become very tiresome for these people. It was also a chore to keep everything organized. In cyberspace and the idea of the communal mind, everything is kept organized and the validity of those ideas are easily determined. "More angles are explored, more voices are heard, and more minds express themselves."(Dr. Leon James, Cyberpsychology) This may be very beneficial when deciding on a certain bill that needs to be voted on.
The forming of virtual communities, is another idea I found interesting, in Dr. James's report. Dr. James has found, most students choose to socialize under a virtual identity when they express their ideas on the net. I believe, I too would choose a virtual identity when socializing on the net. For one reason, I would not be under direct scrutiny by others, if one of my views were not deemed appropriate. My virtual other would be the one under scrutiny, people would not be able to argue with me about one of my ideas face to face. This may keep things from getting out of hand, like ending up in a fight.
Most of the students in G4a seem to agree with Dr. James, about the idea of cyberspace and the mind. Where either cyberspace is an extension of the mind or just similar to the mind. They all seem to feel cyberspace, like the mind performs in a virtual space, and both require a physical object, the brain, or a hard-drive, in order to operate. Ross Takara said "the mind and cyberspace lie in the realm of virtual reality, but require the "hardware" of the brain and the computer, respectively, as a tool to create themselves." Many also believe that since the computer as well as cyberspace was created from the human mind, many of the characteristics of the mind are found in cyberspace. Michelle Alonzo of G4a believed "The mind is something that helps human beings to think, to feel, and to show emotion. Cyberspace, on the same note, helps human beings to think, to feel, and to show emotion." Her example to back up this belief was about the effects a particular article found on the net could have on a person. And how this effect could also be caused by the mind.
One student seemed to have a somewhat different view of the relationship of cyberspace and the mind is Shawna Honeycutt. She believes, "Cyberspace is a place free of the boundaries that are present in the real world, and it helps the mind to be creative." This view could also be true, if cyberspace is not like a mind in itself, it at least provides the mind with a tool to become more creative.
Before reading any of the reports I didn't put much thought into cyberspace or its relationship to the mind. In fact, I didn't even think of making a correlation between the two. I believed that cyberspace was a place you could get information that you need, kind of like a library, where it's your thoughts and the information you got out of the books you borrowed. The mind I always thought of as a thing used to think, and basically live. In other words, I believed cyberspace was their for people to find information like in a library, and you used your mind to process any information that you found.
After reading the reports by Dr. James and the G4a students, I found cyberspace to be more closely related to the mind than I first believed. Where both the mind and cyberspace are virtual, yet present. And both need some physical object in order to operate. Cyberspace is also set up like the mind, where information is kept organized and is accessible whenever you need it. In fact, it is easier, in many cases, to recall information from cyberspace than it is with the mind. It is also easier to get rid of unwanted information in cyberspace, as with the mind you can't easily "unring the bell". So like a library, you can find any information you want, but unlike a library all the information you want is right there at your finger tips. This makes information retrieval from cyberspace a lot faster than trying to get information from a library. In cyberspace, you are also allowed to ask questions, which can be answered by anyone around the world. With a library you may not be able to find someone who can answer your questions, and by the time you do find someone who could answer your questions, you may forget the question you wanted to ask.
For me the hypothesis that works best, is cyberspace, is like a dream the mind produces. I can be whoever and whatever I want in cyberspace, just like I can be whoever and whatever I want in a dream. Of course since a communal mind exists in cyberspace, it contains a lot more information than I have in my mind. Therefore, cyberspace is limitless like peoples' imaginations are limitless. You can do just about anything you want, get just about everything you need, and even find a few things which you never knew about. As where imagination may have a limit as far as your knowledge goes, cyberspace is limitless as far as the information you can get.
I don't have a preference as far as search engines go, because to me they all produce similar results. One is just as good as the other. Here are some links to a few of the search engines that I used, Lycos, Yahoo!, AltaVista. I searched for the word "cyberpsychology," in most of the search engines that I used. I all the listings seemed to be basically the same, and there weren't many sites listed. A few of the sites were of great use to me and my hypothesis on Cyberpsychology and the Mind.
When searching for the topic of cyberpsychology, I used the words, cyberpsychology, cyber, psychology, virtual reality, and mind. I found the most links under the word cyberpsychology. The only problem I had when searching for relevant material was that most of the material, as stated in prior generations, stemmed from either Dr. James himself or his previous students. I had no more success than previous generations in obtaining new links. Here are some of the links which I thought were the most relevant to cyberpsychology.
Storm A. King's report, The Psychology of Cyberspace basically talks about the social aspect of cyberspace. He explains how the interaction between people, in cyberspace, is unlike anything ever experienced before. The article was very interesting, but it didn't touch to much upon my hypothesis on cyberpsychology.
Dr. Leon James' article, Cyberpsychology: Principles of Creating Virtual Presence. Was much more supportive of my cyberpsychology hypothesis. It was a comprehensive overview of Psychology in the world of cyberspace and had a section in it devoted to Cyberspace and Mind. Dr. James' homepage also has many links to other students homepages, each with information on cyberpsychology.
My hypothesis is that cyberspace and the mind are very similar. Both exist in a virtual reality, in other words, they are not physical entities. Yet both require a physical entity in order to exist. The mind needs a brain, cyberspace needs a computer. Both contain information that is organized and can be retrieved. Also cyberspace is like a mind's imagination or dreams. Only in cyberspace, can these dreams and imaginations, come to life, or kind of come to life. The importance of both the mind and cyberspace rely on their uses. If you don't use your mind or cyberspace, neither will do you much good, but you can benefit a lot if you use your mind and cyberspace.
Both my professor and the G4a students seem to have similar hypothesis. At least as far as the similarities of the mind and cyberspace, such as neither is a physical entity, and they only exist in a virtual reality. Both are also used to organize and store information. Both are used to communicate with others.
I think, in the very near future just about everyone will have some kind of life in cyberspace. Besides living their normal everyday lives, people will be able to use cyberspace as a means of escape from the harsher realities of our world. There is no limit as to what can be done in cyberspace, hopefully it will remain this way. In the future we may find our government trying to prevent people from doing certain things in cyberspace. I think this would contradict our idea of freedom, the way, in our everyday lives, the government, as well as, society has already taken away much of what I believe to be rights of every "supposedly free" citizen. The government is already trying to censor some of the things that appear in cyberspace. The way I see it cyberspace is like virtual reality, in other words not entirely real. So why does the government have to step in to protect virtual people, or not real people.
One problem I see occurring in the future is the lies that many kids may start to live. In cyberspace people can become something they only dream of being, if kids start making the mistake of bringing cyberspace to the real world then that could cause a few problems. One example is the problem we were having with the role playing game Dungeons and Dragons, where a kid killed some other kids over something that happened in this game. I'm not sure if this is still a problem, but I still remember hearing about it when I was in High School. I believe that if this could happen with a game, then this could surely happen with cyberspace where everything is a little more "real", than a simple game.
| Report1 | Introduction | Instructor | Generation |
| What I say | What other say | Final | |
| Other links | Leon's home page | My home page | 409a home page |
| Topics | E-mail me | 409b home page |