Cyberculture

From Includipedia, the inclusionist encyclopedia

For the cyber subculture, see Cyber (subculture)

Cyberculture is the culture that has emerged, or is emerging, from the use of computers for communication, entertainment and business.

1 Overview
2 Cyberculture studies
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Overview

Since the boundaries of cyberculture are difficult to define, the term is used flexibly, and its application to specific circumstances can be controversial. It generally refers at least to the cultures of virtual communities, but extends to a wide range of cultural issues relating to "cyber-topics", e.g. cybernetics, and the perceived or predicted cyborgization of the human body and human society itself. It can also embrace associated intellectual and cultural movements, such as cyborg theory and cyberpunk. The term always incorporates at least an implicit anticipation of the future.

Basically, it can be said that cyberculture encompasses the social and cultural levels of human-computer interaction involved in what is popularly known as cyberspace (a neologism coined by cyberpunk author William Gibson) and cipherspace. It is a wide social and cultural movement closely linked to advanced information science and information technology, their emergence, development and rise to social and cultural prominence between the 1960s and the 1990s. Numerous specific concepts of cyberculture have been formulated by such authors as Lev Manovich,^[1]^[2] Pierre Lévy, Margaret Morse, Arturo Escobar and Fred Forest, "Pour un art actuel, l'art à l'heure d'Internet"

However, most of these concepts concentrate only on certain aspects, and they do not cover these in great detail. Some authors aiming to achieve a more comprehensive understanding distinguish between early and contemporary cyberculture (Jakub Macek),^[3] or between cyberculture as the cultural context of information technology and cyberculture (more specifically cyberculture studies) as "a particular approach to the study of the 'culture + technology' complex" (David Lister et al.).^[4]

Early cyberculture (from the beginning of the 1960s to the first half of the 1990s) developed outside the cultural and social mainstream (or in a kind of dialectical relationship with it). This early cyberculture produced its own representations of an emerging world of advanced information science and technology. Contemporary cyberculture can be understood, on one hand, as a set of cultural practices enabling us to deal with new forms of information, and, on the other hand, as the segments of civil society forming a discursive opposition to the governmental and commercial interests in information science and technology.

[edit] Cyberculture studies

The field of cyberculture studies examines the topics explained above, including the communities emerging within the networked spaces sustained by the use of modern technology. Students of cyberculture engage with political, philosophical, sociological, and psychological issues that arise from the networked interactions of human beings by humans who act in various relations to information science and technology. The field is being developed in numerous educational institutions, with the European Graduate School being one of the most prominent and dedicated, since its faculty contains many staff who have worked on closely related fields of thought.

Donna Haraway, Sadie Plant, Manuel De Landa, Bruce Sterling, Hendrik Speck, Kevin Kelly, Wolfgang Schirmacher, Victor J.Vitanza, Gregory Ulmer, Charles D. Laughlin and Jean Baudrillard are among the key theorists and critics who have produced relevant work that speaks to, or has influenced studies in, cyberculture.

[edit] References

^ Manovich, Lev (2003). "New Media from Borges to HTML", in Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Nick Montfort: The New Media Reader (PDF), MIT Press, 13-25.
^ Manovich, Lev (2001). The Language of a New Media. MIT Press.
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^ Lister, David; Jon Dovey, Seth Giddings, Iain Grant, Kieran Kelly (2003). New Media: A Critical Introduction. Routledge.