Week 3 - Response to Content

"How do you know you're not an onion?

Because I don't feel like one.

How would you know how it felt to be an onion?

Because if I were an onion I would know.

You are claiming an onion is conscious of itself?

I didn't say that.

Well you did.

No I did not.

I'm sorry, but you said you would know if you were an onion.

I would feel it.

How could you feel you were an onion without thinking?

Maybe I would bring tears to my eyes.

No, I think you would bring tears to my eyes.

If I were an onion, I would be a human onion.

A human onion?

Of course.

How could you be both human and an onion at the same time?

Well you brought up cyberspace.

And?

I could be both human and cybercreature."

The psychoanalytic review Vol. 94, No. 1 feb 2007

Bollas, C 'Cyberspace'

The above is only a segment from a large anecdote about the possibilities in cyberspace from a psychoanalytic viewpoint, and I thought it was an amusing way to simply yet cleverly discuss a very complex, intangible concept.

So what is cyberspace? When I looked the word up on Oxford Dictionaries online this is what I got: "the notional environment in which communication over computer networks occurs." This explains it in a way that both confuses and helps me. Just using the word "notional" is tentative, not definitive.  Stephen in his lecture described it better, but admitted it is a hard word to pin down and define. I find this occurs with language in general, but when it comes to something as immense and quite recent as the cyberspace forum, it's quite understandable. I think the lack of consensus on a definition is because it's an ever-changing, ever-expanding hyper reality which appears to be limitless in capability as technology advances seemingly in the background.  I say in the background because people appear to attach value to a new communication technology in regards to how much it enables us to connect with and join online or offline communities. I think I once saw an ad for a fridge that connects to the internet?! Somehow the fact that it has the ability to access this 'cyberspace' makes it more attractive of a technology.

William Gibson, who coined the word cybernetics and in turn the word cyberspace reflects on how Google has changed the way we interact with cyberspace.  He states that it "was a specific elsewhere, one we visited periodically, peering into it from the physical world. Now cyberspace has everted. Turned itself inside out. Colonised the physical. Making Google a central and evolving structural unit not only of the architecture of cyberspace, but of the world.” I chose that quote in particular because it the perfect example of the way new communication technologies have created new worlds, and how those worlds now effect the physical world to such a startling degree. He’s right. Google has changed the world, especially in how with interact with it. Cyberspace is now essential thanks to the creators of Google. I know I couldn’t live without it, especially at university. Could you?


Bibliography

Gibson, W 2010, The New York Times, 'Google's Earth: Op-Ed', 10th September, viewed 19/08/2011 via ProQuest Central

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/cyberspace