Cyberculture: The Key Concepts

David J. Bell, Brian D Loader, Nicholas Pleace, Douglas Schuler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781134539031
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Études ethniques

The only A-Z guide available on this subject, this book provides a wide-ranging and up-to-date overview of the fast-changing and increasingly important world of cyberculture. Its clear and accessible entries cover aspects ranging from the technical to the theoretical, and from movies to the everyday, including:

• artificial intelligence
• cyberfeminism
• cyberpunk
• electronic government
• games
• HTML
• Java
• netiquette
• piracy.

Fully cross-referenced and with suggestions for further reading, this comprehensive guide is an essential resource for anyone interested in this fascinating area.

CYBERCULTURE

THE KEY CONCEPTS

ABBREVIATION

A central feature of many forms of computer mediated communication (CMC) and related use of ICT s, such as text messaging on mobile (cellular) telephones. Used both to increase typing speed and to increase the information being conveyed (useful on the small screen of a mobile/cell phone), abbreviation is often the norm among groups such as young people when using various forms of CMC.

See also: Chat room , Computer mediated communication , Cues filtered out , Email , Internet Relay Chat

ACCESS

The primary economic and social roles afforded to computer networks in the emerging information society makes access to these new information and communications technologies (ICTs) a pre-requisite for commercial competitive advantage, social development and life chances. Increasingly large amounts of information are accessible via computer networks such as the Internet , and use of electronic mail (email) enables millions of people to communicate across the globe at any time of the day. Access to such channels of communication can be vital for a wide range of individual and communal opportunities, including employment prospects, educational achievement, health status, leisure experiences, political participation and business opportunities.

As Bill Dutton (1999) reminds us, access is also important as a way of understanding the information society and knowledge economy which are too frequently misperceived as ICTs creating new information or knowledge. Instead, what is distinctive about the new media and any social and economic forms it may facilitate is the manner in which it significantly changes people’s access to knowledge, information or expertise.

The Internet and ICTs are at present accessible to only a very limited proportion of the world s population. The diffusion of the communication networks is not uniform between countries or even within societies. Indeed, it is estimated that not even half of the people on the planet have ever made a telephone call. This uneven access to the new media is believed to be giving rise to a digital divide between the information-rich and the information-poor. For some privileged groups life-chance opportunities may be significantly enhanced by access to the Internet through greater bandwidth and high-speed connectivity. For the majority of less well off, access may be non-existent or at best limited to slow telecommunications links. As the rate of development of ICTs becomes faster and the competitive advantage to the information-rich increases, it is possible that the digital divide will act to reinforce and even extend existing social and material inequalities between people.

See also: Digital divide

Further sources: Haywood (1995), Loader (1998), Dutton (1999)

ACCESSIBILITY

see Usability

ADBUSTERS

see Culture jamming

AGENT

An application that can organize and undertake tasks in an independent or quasiindependent way. The term is quite commonly used to describe software that takes ‘decisions’ within the parameters set by those who authored it. An ‘agent’ can also refer to an alternative human—computer interface . Rather than giving instructions to the computer through an operating system, a user can interact with an agent, which can be represented as a ‘person’ or a character. One quite early experiment was the ‘Chatterbot’ written at Carnegie Mellon University in the mid-1990s. In this case, a MUD called TINYMUD, which allowed several people to chat with one another in real time, was the basis for an experiment using an agent. Those using TINYMUD were unaware that one of the participants in their chatting sessions was an application designed to mimic human responses. In these and other similar experiments, individuals could be fooled into believing the agent was another person, at least for short periods.

The usefulness of such experiments is in the information that they can generate about creating a non-threatening and easy-to-use human—computer interface. Educational applications, for example, can allow children to interact with an agent as if it were a teacher, asking questions in ordinary language and receiving an easily understandable response. An agent can also be given a ‘personality’ and other characteristics that a child, or whomever the target user was, would find reassuring and attractive. There is also a possibility that they may eventually replace the traditional operating system, users interacting with computers through a person-to-(synthetic)-‘person’ interface. A range of functions have been developed, are planned or envisaged, with variations including information agents, intentional agents, software agents, softbots, knowbots and infobots.

See also: Artificial intelligence , Robot

Further sources: The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) Agent Web: http://agents.umbc.edu/; Microsoft Agent Homepage: http://www.microsoft.com/msagent/

A.I. (MOVIE)

Directed by Stephen Spielberg, A.I. (2001) meditates on issues of love, family and what it means to be human. Set in a dystopian future, it tells the tale of David (Haley Joel Osment), a Mecha (robot) surrogate boy designed for human adoption. David is programmed with an Imprinting Protocol that makes him love his adoptive parents: but can humans love robots? David is adopted by a human family whose biological (Orga) son, Martin, is dead but cryogenically frozen. Later in the film, Martin is revived, and David is dumped by his ‘mother’. Along with other abandoned Mechas, David gets caught and taken to the Flesh Fair, where Mechas are tortured in a ‘celebration of life’. Here he meets a Loverbot, Gigolo Joe (Jude Law), and together they escape. David is on a quest to find the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio, convinced she can make him human. They head off to ‘the end of the world’—Manhattan, now flooded as a result of global warming. There they meet David’s maker, Professor Hobby (William Hurt). David discovers a production line of Davids, realises his status as non-human, and jumps into the ocean. On the seafloor he finds the Blue Fairy—a submerged fairground ride. He becomes trapped there, and the seas freeze. Two thousand years later, David is exhumed by extraterrestrial archaeologists, who read his memories. They clone David’s adoptive mother— so that they can learn about humans. But she can only live again for one day. The two share a perfect day, before she leaves him again—but during that day their love is restored. Like many sci-fi films, therefore, A.I. ponders the human—machine divide, using Spielberg’s usual motif of familial love. As in Blade Runner , a future society in which Mechas and Orgas live side-by-side introduces issues of the relative status and worth of different forms of life.

See also: Artificial intelligence , Blade Runner , Cyberpunk

A-LIFE (ARTIFICIAL LIFE)

Artificial Life (or A-Life) research centres on the possibilities for replicating biological processes, behaviours and life-forms in digital environments. Just as artificial intelligence research explores programming that can duplicate human thought processes, A-Life focuses on processes like replication, evolution and adaptation. Some forms of computer virus can be considered as primitive A Life forms, as writers like Mark Ludwig (1996a) or N.Katherine Hayles (1999) rightly suggest. Other programs use the principles of natural selection to evolve virtual life-forms. Even smart toys or cyberpets can be considered in this way—as first steps in combining robotics, AI programming and A-Life systems to produce post-biological life-forms. But it is in cyberspace where we are currently witnessing the fastest growth in A-Life forms—we can think of cyberspace as a new habitat, and like all habitats it is presently being colonized by different life-forms, most notably viruses. Of course, thinking about postbiological A-Life forms as though they are alive raises questions about what being ‘alive’ means, and whether our definition of life needs expanding beyond carbon-based biological forms. This expansion is seen by some critics as a positive thing, while others worry about future implications once new life-forms evolve.

See also: Artificial intelligence , Cyberpunk , Virus

Further sources: Hayles (1999), Ludwig (1996a)

ANIME

see Manga

APPLETS

see Java

ARPA (ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY)

US Department of Defense agency (later, ‘DARPA’, when Defense was added to the agency name) responsible for initial sponsorship of the ARPANET, which evolved to become the Internet.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)

The development of AI as an academic research field is concerned with addressing some fundamental cybercultural questions: Can computers think? What is thinking? What separates humans from machines? The term was coined in 1956, and the past fifty years have seen an explosion in activity. AI research focuses on the building of ‘intelligent machines’ and the writing of computer programs that in some way mimic or replicate human thought and behaviour processes. Among the most prominent uses of AI is in game-playing, especially for games requiring strategic thinking. The chess computer Deep Blue, which beat Chess Grand Master Gary Kasparov in 1997, is among the best-known AI devices. Other AI capabilities include mathematical problem-solving, language use, translation and reasoning, web crawling (using ‘knowbots’), medical diagnosis and conversation. A simple conversational program called ELIZA was even devised to provide ersatz psychotherapeutic advice. Another AI, Julia, presents itself as a (human) player in MUD s (see Turle 1997). When combined with research into robotics, AI can also involve work on locomotion and spatial perception, and then ‘higher-level’ processes such as learning and autonomy. Other human traits, such as emotion and empathy, have also been replicated (or impersonated) by AIs, leading to a further blurring of the human—machine distinction. The extent to which computers can pass as humans is the question behind the Turing Test, which asks whether a person can tell whether they are communicating with another human or with a machine. A similar test is depicted in the movie Blade Runner: the Voigt—Kampff Test, which looks for signs of empathy. Other sci-fi movies which explore the implications of AI include 2001, The Matrix and A.I.

See also: A.I. , Blade Runner , The Matrix

Further sources: Turkle (1997), Weizenbaum (1976)

ASYNCHRONOUS COMMUNICATION

see Internet

AVATAR

A graphic representation of a user within a graphical environment that is populated by other users. Avatars are used in graphical MUDs and have been employed in early experimental graphical chat systems like Microsoft’s VChat. Rather than simply ‘talking’, as would be the case if using IRC or ICQ , users can wave to each other, smile, frown and, in the case of VChat, flirt by making their avatar perform pre-set sequences of animation. The extent to which this added another dimension to CMC was debatable at first, as such online environments were slow and the level of graphical detail quite limited. However, as processing power continues to increase and broadband access to networks like the Internet becomes the norm, these environments may grow increasingly sophisticated. A variety of online games use avatars, particularly online role playing games, but these representations may often be referred to by the players using the less technical term of ‘character’.

See also: Games

BANDWIDTH

Bandwidth is an indication of the amount of information a telecommunication channel can carry (analogous to a measure of the bits-per-second rate of a digital channel). Typically the larger the bandwidth the greater the amount of traffic and speed of communication. Broadband telecommunication media, such as coaxial cable or optical fibre, can cope with the large volumes of data required for multimedia applications and media convergence . Currently however, access to broadband is unevenly distributed between urban and rural areas and between and within different countries. The roll-out of broadband is thus regarded as another major factor contributing to a digital divide .

See also: Access , Convergence , Digital divide

BIG SKY TELEGRAPH (BST)

The Big Sky Telegraph was launched in 1988 by Frank Odasz of Western Montana University in Dillon, Montana, a rural community of 4,000 inhabitants. The BST’s first role was electronically linking more than forty one- and tworoom schoolhouses and twelve rural libraries across Montana, using microcomputers and modems. Linking these schoolrooms provided a low-cost way for teachers to share information such as subject curricula, to ask questions and discuss concerns with other teachers, and to preview educational software before purchasing it. Big Sky Telegraph provided 600 K-12 lesson plans serving as a ‘telecurricular clearinghouse’ for K-12 projects running on networks all over the world. The system also offered online courses on how to use network and bulletin board services. Odasz used the telegraph as a metaphor for all aspects of BST, reflecting the communication technology of the last century that was influential in the rural American West.

See also: Community informatics , Community networks , Distance education

BLADE RUNNER (MOVIE)

One of the most influential sci-fi movies, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982; Director’s Cut 1992) virtually defined the ‘tech-noir’ mise-en-scène of the genre, with its depiction of post-holocaust Los Angeles in 2019. The film’s central character, Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a ‘blade runner’—a police officer tasked with tracking down and ‘retiring’ (killing) genetic cyborgs or replicants. These have been engineered by the Tyrell Corporation to perform menial labour in hostile environments. The replicants are designed to develop emotions, but carry a limited life-span of four years. Four renegade replicants are on the loose, led by Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer); they are in search of their creator, Tyrell. Central to the movie’s plot is the Voigt—Kampff Test, a kind of Turing Test designed to sort replicants from humans, based on emotional and empathic response. Deckard hounds the replicants through the city, killing them as he finds them. He also meets Tyrell and his assistant, Rachel (Sean Young). Rachel, it transpires, is also a replicant—but has prosthetic memories implanted, so that she thinks she is human (until Deckard proves otherwise). Eventually, Batty meets Tyrell, beats him at chess (a reference to AI chess players), and ultimately kills him, before setting off to pursue Deckard—whose life he saves, before Batty himself ‘dies’, his life-span coming to an abrupt end. The film has two endings—in the 1982 version, Deckard returns for Rachel, and the pair head off to a wilderness. In the Director’s Cut (1992), the audience sees a suggestion that Deckard, too, may be a replicant—although this is a matter of considerable debate (Bukatman 1997). The film’s core theme, then, is the question of what makes us human, and what marks others as non-human—a trope familiar to the sci-fi genre (Kernan 1991).

See also: Artificial intelligence , Cyborg , Cyberpunk , Memory , Prosthetics

Further sources: Bukatman (1997), Kernan (1991)

BLOGGING

Short for web logging, blogging is a recent and fast-expanding form of webbased writing and publishing. Blogs are a form of personal homepage, used to record in a chronological, diary-like form day-to-day life experiences, reviews (particularly of other websites) and personal opinions of the writer. It is estimated that there are around half a million blogs currently on the web. Downloadable software can be used to set up a blog, with sites such as blogger.com making this freely available. The software has its origins at the National Center for Super...