Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Digital Spaces: Poststructural Topography of Neverland?!

Cyber Space: Disembodiment or Transcendence of Places?
How do we go about places in the cyberspace, where everything is connected to everything else via invisible or imaginary threads of Os and 1s? Do we actually go places when we embark on a journey through time and place in this world of Windows and Apples?
I would think of a cyberspace as a threshold, a postmodern or poststructural edge, which marks a boundary of physical place and imaginary space. It may be seen as Neverland, Utopia, Door of No Return, Landscape of manifested fantasies and fear, space of social production and reproduction of meanings..or all of the above. What do we do with cyberspace? Do we make maps of its hidden fractal dimensions? or do we simply browse through without any point of departure nor destination?
It is also a space between actual world of the body and virtual world of imagination. Is there a
potential danger in such vision? Indeed, it is again that dualistic mode of thinking that becomes problematic. Cyberspace may be a space of liberation for some, but also a space of imprisonment for others. Yet, it is there.
Digital geography may become one of the disciplined at York in the future. How to navigate through landscapes of manifested imaginations, fantasies, utopias and dystopias, images and blogs...Brand says " I have no destination..I am simply where I am, the next thought leads me to the next place" (150). I would suggest that this quote represents some of the elements of digital psychotopography.
Do we enter digital spaces, or does the space let us in via wires or wireless roads of connection?
Anyways, I thought it would be interesting to ask these questions in relation to the notion of digital spaces, utopias, thresholds, and boundaries between experienced places and abstracted space.
Digital Space is also opened to...and into itself. So are these questions, they are opened to multiple answers...The point is not answer though, but to question.

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