Hello readers. You have just entered my little realm of cyberspace. But what the heck IS cyberspace? I asked myself that very question and by the time you are done reading this report, hopefully you will get some sense to what cyberspace is. Before this report, I didn't know much about cyberspace. I never really thought about it much since I had no real need to. Boy was I in the dark! Heheh, now that I "kinda" know what cyberspace is, I feel so ENLIGHTENED! I feel like I just had a full cyberspace make-over treatment! Read on and you'll see my opinions about this subject too... Remember, boys and girls:
"Knowing is half the battle." - G.I. Joe
Where should I start? After reading the instructor's article on Cyber-psychology, I am like mentally drained! Here are my efforts in analyzing not what Leon James says, but what he MEANS! If it ever sounds like I don't know what is going on, you are probably right! Don't say you weren't warned...
I never really thought about what cybersapce was before I read the article. If someone asked me what the relationship between Virtual Reality and the mind was, I would probably laugh and change the subject. Well now I know (kind of) what these things have in relationship to our lives and existence.
The report explains that cyberspace is something that has no physical space, but it does in fact exist. Just like you can't point out to where your mind is. What they have in common is that they're there, and you KNOW that they're there. Another thing they have in common is that they are unlimited. Thoughts and feelings in both the mind and in cyberspace have no real boundary and can expand to no end! Brain size or Hard Drive capacity cannot tell the size of the mind or the size of cyberspace!
As far as similarities to the content of the two, Leon James states that because computers are convenient and powerful extensions of the human mind, "Every characteristic of the mind can be expected to show up as a property of cyberspace." Whoa. The amazing thing is that he also backs it up. Using words like Communal Mind, Virtual Realities and Communities, and stuff like that, I believe it. One part that made me really think was when he wrote: "Cyberspace is like mind in two important respects -- interactivity and organization."
Man, that is like so true. The internet provides all sorts of interactivity. accessing multimedia and text through links are perfect examples of interactivity. From there, you can go wherever you want, thus bringing back the unlimited nature. As far as Organization, everything in cyberspace is classified within different sections, and organized by topic. I guess that is why it is also called the information superhighway because of its "organized" structure. Did that make sense?
Anyways, I hope you now understand what virtual reality and the mind have in common. One last thing to recognize is its REAL similarity: They are both VERY VERY hard to explain. In words, that is. Like I stated earlier, they're there, and you KNOW they're there. Easy enough, eh?
Here are some topics that I found to be of much interest:
I never thought I would see a correlation between Hypertext and the mind. The part that interested me the most was where it said: "However it is NOT POSSIBLE to map out the information highway that people use to navigate the internet." This part goes really deep in terms of picturing this happening. But it IS indeed true. Something is going on in that transaction, but nobody can put a foot down on what or where it is. It goes on to say something about the physical network system embodying the internet as being limited in size and shape, but the virtual reality does not have size or shape. Okay, so there I see the similarity with the mind, but there is something missing here that I just can't place. It makes sense, yet is it REALLY not limited in size?
Here was another thing I never realized before. To think that my bookmarks in my Netscape file can be considered a virtual book. It is absoultely true and it is something personalized at that. The other amazing thing is the fact that it is also a product of hypertext. My virtual book would be the best, with links to what I like, and nobody else... That's cool.
This was the most fascinating of all. The report states that the "communal mind exists and grows in cyberspace." It also states that interlinking is what creates the communal mind. Again this was something I would never have thought of. I did see the similarity that the freeness of cyberspace is like the freeness of the mind. I still may not understand it in its entirety, but I kind of grasp the concepts. Hey, I'm a beginner at this, y'know. Don't expect to understand it all at once!
Looking back through previous Generations, I looked at what others have said about the relationship between cyberspace and the mind. As you will see, they didn't have much new material.
Shawna Honeycutt explianed that the mind and cyberspace are closely related. She felt that "Cyberspace is place free of the boundaries that are present in the real world, and it helps the mind to be creative."
May Rose Isnec suggests that the relationship is bonded from dualism, incorporating "Affective, Cognitive, and Sensory-motor areas of the mind or ACS." I guess that made sense. I don't see this in only a positive way, though...
As I read through each report, however, I think that Jill Umetsu explained it the most thoroughly. She talked about the concept that something can exist yet not be physically present. In comparison with the mind, she states that "Cyber-space does not physically exist, yet all the information that you read on the Internet is physically present through your computer monitor." That's as close as it gets, I guess. But haven't I read this somewhere before?
What it really came down to was that nobody in the whole class came up with their own original idea. I do not know what their instructions were, but it seemed that they simply skimmed through Leon's article and picked out the main ideas. In the actual subject of comparing the mind and cyberspace, NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON wrote more than a couple paragraphs. Thus it was hard to get anything out of their reports since I already read about it in Leon's paper!
After reading the article and the student's papers, it was hard to compare it with my view. Mainly because I had no real view. Why? Because it was too hard to argue with the views of the instructor. How can one NOT accept these views too? It makes perfect sense and is backed up with many arguments. I think this was the main reason that it seemed that G4 kind of "plagiarized" the whole part, and just changed a couple of words here and there.
I thought about this for several hours, because I too agreed with the instructor's views. However, I did have one major argument that stuck in my mind... Where I thought cyberspace and the mind were unlimited, and without boundaries, I feel I have have made a grave mistake. The report describes cyberspace with words such as "without extension, distance, or mass" and "It is free, like mind". There is also a part which states, "It does not belong to any person or group". These statements made me feel like it is like a natural and carefree environment, and one can do whatever they like in cyberspace. I thought to myself, "Is this true?"
I tried to figure out the main concepts and tried to venture depper into that realm. What I thought of was the apparent size of cyberspace. Is it natural and carefree? I thought about the various boundaries of both the mind, and cyberspace. Then something hit me. A huge difference in the two! What I mean is that in my mind, I can think about ANYTHING I want to. If I wanted to think about Cindy Crawford nude somewhere, nobody can make me NOT think about that. My mind is the only thing that I can say is unlimited, and with no boundary. If want to be a bigot or racist, I can conjure this up in my mind and nobody can touch that. (not that I would, but I could)
Now cyberspace on the other hand DOES have boundaries. There IS a limit to what one can do. Why? Well for one is censorship. I can't just have nude pictures on my homepage wherever I feel like it, or the ITS guys would cancel my uhunix account! A five-year-old kid who wants to look at nude pictures comes across this Cybersitter, which prevents that kid from entering the site. Why? Because his mother prevented it. Ah, and don't forget that certain places require membership to access certain places. Those places cost you (yup you guessed it!) MONEY! Try going to ESPN and see all the places you can't go without membership. It is true that the beginning to the report I too thought cyberspace was unlimited. However I just stopped to think how valid that actually was. I came to find out that in cyberspace there can be limitations. Even though they may seem like physical limitations, by not having hypertext links available to us, even for physical reasons such as no money or something, they are indeed limiting you in terms of a little "chunk" of cyberspace that you are being denied.
So, still think it is unlimited? Still think there are no walls or boundaries? With this in mind, my hypothesis would suggest that where there are many similarities between the mind and virtual reality, there are just as many differences as well. So where I may agree with the communal mind hypertext being correlated with the mind, with the simple fact that there are restrictions in cyberspace and never in the mind prevent me from agreeing ENTIRELY! But then again, isn't that how everything works in this world? Everything is objectable...
When I discussed this with others, they looked at me with a puzzled look. The first persons I talked to didn't even know how to view the mind as something inanimate. I keep telling them, brain is to mind as computer is to cyberspace, but still they didn't get it... But when I talked to classmates about it, they too looked puzzled, but only because they thought I was crazy. But when I explained it to them, they understood and agreed with my hypothesis. So after this I realized that I may be off-track a little, but it kinda made sense.
On the idea of censorship being the biggest difference, here are a few sites and excerpts from different sites to support my views:
FCC Telecommunications Act of 1996 -- It seems that our government wants to meddle in our lives more and more each day...
Cyberangels -- Kind of like vigilates in cyberspace, looking out for people's rights and stuff. Here is a clip of what the Cyberangels do:
HELPING PRESERVE INTERNET FREEDOM OF SPEECH:
"by showing global governments that the citizens of the Internet Community are prepared and willing to take both the responsibility and
the actions necessary to preserve our online personal safety, and in particular, the online safety of our children."
In my mind, I can think whatever I want WHENEVER I want and there's nothing out there that's gonna regulate me or any part of my mind!!! There are sooooo many linky links that will assure you that there ARE boundaries and problems getting what one may want. So do you see that one is capable of regulation and one can't? If the government really wanted to enforce a decency act on the internet, they probably could. Thus doesn't this mean that there could be more "boundaries" on the "unlimited" resource cyberspace is made up of?
Usenet was also loaded with newsgroups concerning censorship. alt.censorship was a beginning and when I looked inside, there were many concerns by everyone all over the world about how injust censorship is. Here is an example:
Question:
If a follow-up post is denied because the previous post was cancelled
by
a moderator due to a forged "approval",
is that not still censorship?
Would you call it justified?
Can someone please explain to me why I should be complacent if my posts
are "cancelled" in this manner?
Weird yeah? Well I could go on and on about censorship, but I only wanted to post a few to back up my hypothesis.
In my search for information, I actually only used Lycos and Yahoo. The only words I used were censorship and thinking. Since I use search engines quite often, it was pretty easy to find links and information. Generally I prefer Yahoo, because of its ease of use. IF I can't find what I'm looking for there, I then usually go to Alta Vista and do an advanced search. The only thing I don't like is typing out the address of the search engines, especially when I'm on another person's computer or something. So, I usually make a form on my homepage, so I can access the search engine from my homepage. I have made a page with forms to popular search engines here. There I can easily access the search engines, without typing or clicking all over the place. Oh well, enough about search engines.
Well, my final hypothesis looks something like this: The Mind and Cyberspace are similar in terms of intent and potential structure to be free of boundary and restrictions, but the mind is the only thing that is truly free of these things. Wouldn't it be cool if cyberspace could be the same way?
In my findings from the sources I found, it is apparent that the government wants to set more standards of what is "decent" for us to see and use on the internet, and the very future of cyberspace is at stake. I mean, at first I thought maybe EVERY household would have a way of accessing the internet in the future, but with all these new decency acts and censorship of everything, who would want to hook up to that? At any rate, my hypothesis (if it even relates to what Leon's article was saying) indicates that it is backed up by these many advocates that believe in free speech and Constitutional Rights. Heck, not only in the U.S., but all over the globe. Just type in "censorship" in any search engine, and see for yourself how big a problem this is.
As for the mind, it will just keep going on as always, and it will never have to answer to anyone, except for the person who owns it. Does that make sense? It's hard to put things into words.
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