Conceptual Research & Reflection Project

Concept: 14. Cyberspace is informationally created ’space’

This sense of space, and the capacity of the talking human body to be represented within it, is formed out of descriptions and word-pictures (real pictures in the case of graphical worlds). The sense of space is essential for humans - or at least many humans - to be able to express their identities in special and rich ways.

Websites, indeed the Web generally, tend to work most effectively when they consciously declaim themselves as a space through which you move. However, we should also be alert to the way that the metaphors of navigation, moving, visiting, etc which make the web a ‘space’ can also mislead us: metaphors do not describe an experience but, rather, are one aspect of trying to understand it

People try to visualize concepts as familiar structures even if they don’t have a physical form. The internet and all information stored electronically is just a series of zeros and ones stored in the computers memory by transistors in either the on (one) or off position (zero). For most users of the internet there is no need for them to understand, or even know about the internal working of their computer. However the internet itself is complex and to understand it is common to view it as a form of “cyberspace”, giving it the illusion of a physical space when no such place physically exists.

Science uses models to explain concepts that often can not be seen, such as atomic structure. “To a physicist, a model is a combination of a mental image of what some fundamental (or not so fundamental) entity is like, and a set of mathematical equations to describe it’s behavior.” John Gribbin (1998). Using the model of “cyberspace” to explain the structure and behaviour of the internet, make it much easier to comprehend.

To make the internet seem even more like a physical space, it is often compared to existing structures. When Al Gore spoke of the “Information Superhighway” it described the internet in a way that didn’t require people to understand networking, fibre-optic cables, etc. People can view themselves travelling on this superhighway spanning the world.

“One of the technologies Vice President Al Gore is pushing is the information superhighway, which will link everyone at home or office to everything else—movies and television shows, shopping services, electronic mail and huge collections of data.” (New York Times, 26 October 1993 issue)

The desire to view the digital world in a more familiar form has also been influenced by movies and literature. William Gibson’s science fiction novel, Nueromancer, written in 1984, described a 3D world that users entered using a device to connecting their brains to the network, presenting them with a vision representing the online environment. Gibson’s short story Burning Chrome was the origin of the term “cyberspace”. The following is an extract describing the fictional experience: “Legitimate programmers jack into their employers’ sector of the matrix and find themselves surrounded by bright geometries representing the corporate data.” William Gibson (1982). The movie Tron presented a humanized version of the electronic environment. “The programs are only algorithms as human beings are only a collection of chemical” Brain Daley (1982).

Even the act of moving through pages on the World Wide Web has been likened to “surfing”. The term “Surfing the Internet” was made popular by Jean Armour Polly, a librarian, in 1992, when she wrote an article called “Surfing The Internet: An Introduction” for the Wilson Library Bulletin.

“The art to Web surfing seemed to be knowing how to skate like a waterbug across the surface of Webalicious sites, never lingering long enough in any one place to break through the crust, borne forward by the pursuit of media satisfaction, which always seemed to lie tantalizingly just beyond your feelers.” John Seabrook (1997)

A shared chat environment is likened to people speaking in a room called a “Chat Room”. Applications such as Second Life take this even further by creating a 3D representation where people can chat. The location of a person’s avatar within the 3D environment in comparison to other people’s avatars determines who can chat to each other. This mimics the real world were people can move closer to a other people to have a private conversation or join a group of people to become involved in a group conversation.

The idea of projecting oneself into cyberspace can mean different things to different people. People who have their own website or blog may consider it’s URL to be their home in cyberspace. Visiting a website could also be considered going into cyberspace, or going into a chat room or any of the many other activities on the internet. The ability to perform several tasks at once, view more than one website, chatting with more than one person allows a user to be in several places in cyberspace at one time. A user could be viewing a website in England, chatting to a friend in New Zealand, listening to an online radio station in the US and playing Chess with an opponent in China, all at the same time. This is an ability that can’t be compared to the real world and one which makes the cyberspace seem superior to the real world.

Site 1:
Title: Beati Possidenties
Adrian Mihalache (2001) Cultronix Retrieved May 3, 2008 from http://cultronix.eserver.org/beatipossidentes/beatipossidentes.html

Beati Possidenties is Latin for Happy Possessors. This article is part of the Cultronix website which describes itself as “a journal of art, art criticism and cultural theory.” Adrian discusses the concept of possession of property in cyberspace. He does so with enough passion that you almost see websites as individual territories on the vast continent of cyberspace, each one inhabited by its owner shouting out for tourists to visit.  It made me reflect on my own experiences of trying to find a domain name, and finding most of the already taken by domain name speculators. “Domain name speculation refers to buying domains with the intent of selling them later for a higher price.” Wikipedia (2008). This view of cyberspace as property reinforces the existence of “a ’shared hallucination’ of spatial context”.

Site 2:
Title: Does cyberspace exist?
Andrea Monti, (2001) The Networked Society, Connected Magazine. Retrieved May 3, 2008 from http://www.connected.org/is/andrea.html

This website is the transcript of an interview with lawyer Andrea Monti, who specializes in internet law. The opinions of Andrea actually dispute that “cyberspace” exists. “All Internet related things can be handled with existing conceptual categories. The Internet has nothing to do with technology. It is just a person talking to another person, using a different technology.” Andrea Monti (2001). His argument is interesting because in one way he is correct, cyberspace does not physically exist. However Andrea also states “You don’t need to create something if there is no need for it. And there is no need for cyberspace.” Andrea Monti (2001).I disagree with this statement, cyberspace is model to explain the internet in non-technical terms, it may not physically exist but it does exist as a concept or an idea. Andrea’s argument against the need for cyberspace helped me to reflect on why I do think there is a need for the existence of the idea of cyberspace to visualise the internet.

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Concept: 17. The impact of text-based real-time chat

What is the difference here that makes this mode of communication popular; and then what impact does it have of the kinds of communication and social interaction that take place? Communicating in real-time with text enables a form of ‘authoring of the self’ that is similar to the processes of face-to-face speech but which is much more amenable to authorial control, experimentation and reflection. Further, text-based communication carries with it the possibility for multiple, differing conversations occurring simultaneously, relying on the ability of the human brain to deal with text much better than speech. A skilled Internet user will appreciate that text is, in some circumstances, a highly effective mechanism for communication. In particular, because text can be captured so much more easily than speech, it provides a mechanism for preserving and reflecting on conversations.

In the early days of the internet, communication was text based due to limited technology and limited bandwidth. However, even with the emergence of more bandwidth intensive audio and video communications technology, text based chat is far from obsolete. Real time text chat has many characteristics that newer forms of internet communication lack.
The anonymity of real-time text chat allows users to participate in an environment where they can have a different personality than they may have in person. Inhibitions are discarded as they feel themselves free to express themselves without physical repercussions. They project a mental image to the other participants created only by their text. Physical appearance becomes unimportant. Unlike meeting someone in person, where judgments about a person are often made based on first impression, in text based chat users can provide only the information they wish. Information which the user does not want to disclose or is irrelevant can be kept private. This way they can tailor their own persona which may be quite different from their real life personality.
Text chat has also been incorporated into online games to allow players to communicate with each other. The advantage of text chat over voice chat in this environment is that the voice of other players can detract from the illusion of the environment in which the game is set. “Many players are now discovering that voice tweaks the social environment — and sometimes kills off part of what made their favorite world so much fun. After all, one of the great things about virtual worlds was that they were, well, virtual. You could adopt a brand-new persona, and leave your dull, dreary existence behind.” Clive Thompson (2007)

The timing of real- time chat is such that people can spend longer thinking about what they wish to say, and edit it before sending. There is not an expectation of an instantaneous response unlike a voice chat conversion. This is a major advantage of real time text chat over speech.

“Most speech moves so quickly and spontaneously that it is difficult to engage in complex advance planning. The pressure to think while talking promotes looser construction, repetition, rephrasing and comments clauses. Intonation and pauses divide long utterances up into chunks, but sentence boundaries are often unclear.” David Crystal (2001)

A chat room with many participants is equivalent to a busy room with many people speaking at once. They may not only be speaking to the entire room, they may also be having several private conservations at the same time. In this scenario the real room would a mass of garbled voices as everyone speaks at the same time. Even if each participant spoke individually in turn it would be very difficult to keep track of each conversation. In text chat the brain can filter this much more easily. Often the text history of each chat remains on the screen making it easy to continue a variety of conversation and switch between chat windows with ease.

“This complex social manoeuvre requires the psychological mechanism of dissociation - the ability to separate out and direct the components of your mind in more than one direction at the same time” John Suler. (2004)
Text chat provides a form of privacy that is much stronger than other forms of online communication. Unlike providing a photograph or video image, the user can’t be recognized in the real world if all they do is chat using text. However, the disinhibition effect of chat can lead to the user becoming too comfortable with other participants and providing more information than they should.

Site 1:
Title: The Psychology of Cyberspace
John Suler, Ph.D. (2004) The Psychology of Text Relationships. Retrieved May 3, 2008 from http://www-usr.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/psytextrel.html

This article is part of a hyper-text book that John Suler Ph.D from Department of Psychology, Science and Technology Center at Rider University has been updating since 1996. It has many interesting articles which he has written in way that is accessible even to those not studying Psychology.

The Psychology of Text Relationships is a very unusual article when reflecting on the concept of text based real-time chat. The main theme of the article is using text based communication in online therapy; however it successfully explains the concepts of the disinhibition effect and dissociations, which are important to understand to truly appreciate the difference between text chat and other forms of online communication.

Site 2:
Title: Voice Chat Can Really Kill the Mood on WoW
Clive Thompson (2007) Wired. Retrieved May 4, 2008 from http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/commentary/games/2007/06/games_frontiers_0617

This article by Clive Thompson provides a perfect example of the advantages of text chat over voice chat. He describes his experience using text chat on the online game World of Warcraft, and then his disappointment when changing to voice chat. While chatting in text chat prejudices are limited due to anonymity however voice chat changes perceptions and changes the experience.

“It conveys a lot of identity: Your voice instantly transmits your age, your gender and often your nationality — even your regional location too. (I can tell a Texan accent from a Minnesotan, and you can probably tell I’m Canadian by my nasal “oots.”)” Clive Thompson (2007).

I believe this is true also with stand alone text chat; users can create an illusionary personality that is another self. Voice chat and webcams don’t allow the same illusion.

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Concept: 23. Human-computer interfaces

The Internet was originally designed to enable humans to instruct computers to act at a distance. The Internet still has this capacity; thus, we begin to see the emergence of a cultural sensibility in which the hard and fast distinctions between humans and computers as different kinds of ‘communicating devices’ breaks down This phenomenon has been exploited, for fun and research, by artificial intelligence programmers and language program developers. The Internet lessens the recognition of difference between humans and computers because, at a distance, it is often feels similar to communicate and act on the Internet regardless of whether one is speaking with a human or a machine. Interacting with websites feels similarly impersonal or, more subtly, further indicates the extent to which humans readily accept the presence of machine-like ‘intelligence’ in their lives

The internet was created to allow computers to communicate with each other. The World Wide Web was created to allow users to contribute and distribute information across the world. Web 2.0 has made this even simpler. Social networks have become a very popular use of the internet, but they don’t provide the same direct contact with other people as real life. These websites allow users to have a social presence on internet that others can interact with. Users are interfacing with a computer but indirectly socializing with other people.

“A study of the sites revealed that while many users have hundreds or even thousands of acquaintances on their accounts, their core group of close friends is still unchanged at around five people.” Will Reader (2007)

Although communication via email and social networks may seem impersonal in some ways it also allows some form of bond between people who would have otherwise lost all contact with each other. Email has allowed users to communicate with friends and family across the world, these friendships and family bonds have been able to remain strong regardless of distance. In this situation email is simply another form of communication in an existing relationship.

Social networks such as Facebook are creating another form of interaction between people. They are also helping to re-establish old relationships. In an effort to increase their numbers of friends on their Facebook page, users are contacting people they have lost contact with, such as old friends from their school days. Theses online relationships may be impersonal compared to true friendship but they at least allow a link which would otherwise be lost.

A further example of the blending of interactions between both humans and computers is Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. MMORPGs provide an environment in which players can interact with both other human players and computer controlled characters. The computer controlled characters are usually there to give the players information for quests or sell them items. What makes MMORPGs special is the human interaction between players. The internet provides the framework on which these games can bring thousands of players together at once. Players create a character that they develop over time spent playing. The game is just a platform to create an artificial environment in which players can develop a character. These environments include objects which although they don’t psychically exist have a value to the players creating a real economy within the game.

However “bots” which try to imitate human players have found their way into many MMORPGs. Bots are used to perform repetitive tasks, either by players wishing to advance their own character without doing it themselves or by people wishing to obtain items in the games, such as gold coins, and sell them to other players for real world money. These bots have been a source of much frustration and heated debate by players of MMORPGs. Blizzard the makers of World of Warcraft have taken legal action against a company that sells a bot program.

“In its legal submission to the court last week, the firm said: “Blizzard’s designs expectations are frustrated, and resources are allocated unevenly, when bots are introduced into the WoW universe, because bots spend far more time in-game than an ordinary player would and consume resources the entire time.”” (Legal battle over Warcraft ‘bot’, BBC News, 26 March 2008 )

The internet is a global community, and as with any community there will always be those who don’t have consideration for others. Those who use bots in games or to advertise in chat rooms and other anti-social behaviours may be law abiding citizens in real life however on the internet they misbehave because the victims of such behaviors are distant and present no psychical repercussions.

Site 1:
Title: Social sites becoming too much of a good thing
Ellen Lee (2006) SFGate. Retrieved May 8, 2008 from http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/11/02/MNGG3M4KB31.DTL

There are many social networking sites to choose from and being a regular user of just one can be very time consuming. This article discusses “social networking fatigue” experienced by users trying to maintain a presence on many social networks. The initial excitement and enthusiasm for these websites does begin to wear off for some users. Although the technology is available for this new form of communication it relies on human relationships or it wouldn’t exist. I feel that the fact that humans are involved means the technology is limited by the amount of time they have to use these networks.

Site 2:
Title: The Turing Test Page
Ayse Pinar Saygin (2003) The Turing Test Page. Retrieved May 8, 2008 from http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~asaygin/tt/ttest.html

The Turing Test is one method of determining if a machine is intelligent. The Turning Test Page website includes information about the test and a variety of links to information about “bots” and artificial intelligence.

“When talking about the Turing Test today what is generally understood is the following: The interrogator is connected to one person and one machine via a terminal, therefore can’t see her counterparts. Her task is to find out which of the two candidates is the machine, and which is the human only by asking them questions. If the machine can “fool” the interrogator, it is intelligent.” Saygin (2003)

Computer programs that imitate human behavior such as “bots” are not actually intelligent but, when well made, they can simulate intelligence. These “bots” can be used to cheat in on-line games or send spam but also they also have applications that are helpful. A bot can be used to answer frequent online email for a company quicker than a human response, or perform automated tasks in a chat room.

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Concept: 33. Information and attention

One of the newest and most significant ways of thinking about the Internet is termed the ‘attention economy’ (Goldhaber). In this kind of economy, the most valuable commodity is people’s attention (which can be, for example, bought and sold in the advertising industry): successful websites and other Internet publications / communications (says Goldhaber) are those which capture and hold the increasingly The attention-capturing quality of Internet information is governed by a dialogue between the needs and desires of the reader and the readiness with which those needs and desires appear to be met in the first few seconds of evaluation. In the era of the ‘attention economy’, readers and users of Internet information must be carefully craft, in their own minds, the kind of metadata which will – almost instinctively – ‘fit’ with the metadata of the information sources they want, so that – in the few brief moments of initial exchange, when a seeker of information encounters information being sought, rapid, effective judgments are made that ‘pay off’ in terms of further reading, accessing and saving.

The interactive nature of the internet means that first impression of any media on the internet must grab the attention of the user because it is an only a few mouse clicks away to another website. This is true when the internet is being used for entertainment or for business or education.

Jakob Nielsen (1997) says research has found that vast majority of internet users only scan the website they are viewing rather than reading it word for word. If the website fails to meet their expectation during this brief scan they will probably move on to another website until they find one that is suitable.

Unlike television and print media the internet is not a passive medium. There are only so many channels competing for the viewer’s attention when channel surfing on television compared to the millions of websites on the internet. For a website that has a commercial interest in attracting users it is important to keep them viewing your website or risk losing the user to another website, which will also mean losing the opportunity to make money from the user.

“A key point is that The Attention Economy is about the consumer having choice - they get to choose where their attention is ’spent’. Another key ingredient in the attention game is relevancy. As long as the consumer sees relevant content, he/she is going to stick around - and that creates more opportunities to sell.” Richard MacManus (2007)

The internet has become so full of information that the same information is often available from several sources. A Google search of any topic will usually result in pages of links. It is so rare to perform a Google search that has no results that there is now a word for it: googlethwack. The daunting and often time consuming task for the user is to click through the results to find the website that grabs their attention. The task for website designers is to be the site to grab the user’s attention and hopefully want them to come back often.

“Perhaps sophistication shouldn’t be confused with time spent online—many users remain perpetual novices who trust the search engines to do all of the hard work.” Carol Tenopir (2007)

Viral Marketing campaigns have become another way of drawing attention to a website that is perpetuated not by the website but by internet users. This involves releasing information on to the internet with the intention of letting it spread by people forwarding it to others. The buzz generated for the movie The Blair Witch project is an example of how successful such attention grabbing campaigns can be. Hoax reports of students lost in the woods were spread through the internet before anyone knew the movie was being made. Websites promoting movies may not make money from the actual website but gain the attention of the user to influence them to go and watch a movie or buy merchandise.

Site 1:
Title: Net video ads: Attention vs. annoyance
Anick Jesdanun. (2008 ) MSNBC. Retrieved May 8, 2008 from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23674780/

This news article on the MSNBC website shows the challenges faced by advertisers adapting to using internet video as a medium for advertisement. There is a now vast amount of free video on the internet waiting to grab the attention of users. One method of trying to advertise to the audience of these videos has been to force the viewer to watch a television style advertisement before the video plays. This can turn away the viewer before the actual video has grabbed their attention.

“Marketers and Web sites alike are struggling to bring to the Internet ads that resemble television without turning off viewers the way TV ads often do.” Anick Jesdanun (2008 )

Site 2:
Title: How Users Read on the Web
Jakob Nielsen. (1997) Writing for the Web
Retrieved May 8, 2008 from http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html

The information on this website provides advice for making websites more readable and therefore much more likely to attract the attention of the user. The more readable the website is, the easier it will be for the user to evaluate if it meets their purpose. Nielsen provides examples of the same text using Concise text, Scannable layout, Objective language and a combination of all there styles. It demonstrates how important it is for readability to be considered when creating a website to ensure its success by getting the attention of the user.

Bibliography:

Gribbin, J. (1998). Almost Everyone’s Guide to Science, London: Phoenix

Gibson, W (1993). Burning Chrome, London: HarperCollins Publishers

Daley, B (1982). Tron, London: New English Library

Seabrook, J (1998). Deeper, A Two-Year Odyssey in Cyberspace, London: Faber and Faber Limited

Beati Possidenties, Adrian Mihalache (2001) Cultronix Retrieved May 3, 2008 from http://cultronix.eserver.org/beatipossidentes/beatipossidentes.html

Does cyberspace exist?, Andrea Monti, (2001) The Networked Society, Connected Magazine. Retrieved May 3, 2008 from http://www.connected.org/is/andrea.html

The Psychology of Cyberspace, John Suler, Ph.D. (2004) The Psychology of Text Relationships. Retrieved May 3, 2008 from http://www-usr.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/psytextrel.html

Voice Chat Can Really Kill the Mood on WoW, Clive Thompson (2007) Wired. Retrieved May 4, 2008 from http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/commentary/games/2007/06/games_frontiers_0617

Social sites becoming too much of a good thing, Ellen Lee (2006) SFGate. Retrieved May 8, 2008 from http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/11/02/MNGG3M4KB31.DTL

The Turing Test Page
Ayse Pinar Saygin (2003) The Turing Test Page. Retrieved May 8, 2008 from http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~asaygin/tt/ttest.html

Net video ads: Attention vs. annoyance,Anick Jesdanun. (2008 ) MSNBC. Retrieved May 8, 2008 from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23674780/

How Users Read on the Web, Jakob Nielsen. (1997) Writing for the Web Retrieved May 8, 2008 from http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html

Information superhighway (2008), Retrieved May 4, 2008 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_superhighway

Domain name speculation (2008), Retrieved May 4, 2008 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_speculation

Attention Economy: All You Need To Know, Richard Macanus (2007), Retrieved May 8, 2008 from http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/attention_economy_primer.php

Googlethwack, Matthew Rhodes (2005), Retrieved May 8, 2008 from http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=googlethwack

Online Databases: Getting the User’s Attention, Carol Tenopir (2005), Retrieved May 8, 2008 from http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA527981.html

Legal battle over Warcraft ‘bot’ , BBC News (2008), Retrieved May 4, 2008 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7314353.stm

It’s hard to make close friends on Facebook, study says, Will Reader, CBC News (2007), Retrieved May 4, 2008 from http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/09/10/science-websites.html

Crystal, D. (2006), Language and the Internet, Cambridge University
Press