CYBERSPACE---THE LAND OF NOWHERE ELSE

By Jharna Dh. Majhi:

‘Cyberspace’ is “the total interconnectedness of human beings through computer and telecommunication without regard to physical geography”. Cyber space is a term coined by science fiction author William Gibson to describe the whole range of information resources available through computer networks. Or in other words cyberspace is a realm in which communication and interaction between two individual and between one individual or between one individual and computer is facilitated by digital data exchanged over computer network. As the legendary John Perry Barlow, rock singer, co founder of the Libertarian Electronic Frontier Foundation, internet prophet and champion of the humanitarian causes, state that:

“We are now creating a space in which people of the planet can have a new kind of communication relationship; I want to be completely interacting with the consciousness that’s trying to communicate with me”.

Two general metaphors are often used to explain and define cyberspace. In the first cyberspace is viewed as a geographic ‘place’ to which one can go. Much of the end user terminology relating to cyberspace is based on this metaphor. For example one can ‘visit’ a website and enter a ‘chat room’. The second metaphor focuses on communication, viewing cyberspace as a conduit for information, this view emphasizes the actual network technology rather than the community aspect of technology.

Despite its multitude of cables, routers and switches, and the wide variety of applications layered upon it, fundamentally the internet is the means by which one computer communicates with another.

Virtual side of the cyberspace

For the people of 21st century, cyberspace is like a dream Utopia, where the user has control over everything else. It has revolutionized every aspect of modern man: general information to health, education to environment, tele-banking to tele –shopping, ecommerce etc. sitting in the room clicking the button of the mouse, we can bring the whole world into the horizon of our screen. As in 1944 address in Kyoto, Japan, American vice president Al Gore said:

“The effort to build the GII provides us with an opportunity to reach beyond ideology to forge a common goal of providing an infrastructure to help our respective economy and to promote health, education, environmental protection and democracy”. [Remarks, (as delivered) by vice president Al Gore, as a satellite to the international tele communication, Union Plenipotentiary Conference Kyoto, Japan; 22 September 1994].

In the cyberspace the geographical space is decentralized and replaced by a distinctly non geographical “hyperspace”. It has enabled people to socialize together even when they are not physically located in the same place. The users of internet are organized around communities made of people that may know each other in real life or people that have never met in persona and so forth. This raises the notion of “Global village”, as people transcend their physical limitation and communicate with people possessing a similar interest. Similarly internet with its multifacet incarnation helps people, although temporarily, escape from realty, to a different kind of fairy land. One of the interesting about the internet is that it opens the door for its user to such a virtual place, where they can present themselves in variety of different ways. It is a stage where one can just alter one’s style of being or indulge in wild experiment with one’s identity by changing one’s age, history, personality, physical appearance even one’s gender. The user name one choose, the details one do or do not indicate about oneself, the information present on one’s personal web page- all are important aspect of how people manage their identity in cyberspace. In cyberspace, different facet of one’s self is intermingled. A person’s identity embodies multiplicity. Or in other words we just deconstruct ourselves on net. For example when we join an online community, we often have a choice about how much personal information we place into the member’s profile database. We don’t even give our real picture in our profile. As in my case I have posted a photograph of Amrita Rao, a bollywood actress in my Orkut profile. Though in reality I have nothing to do with her and none of my characteristic including my physical features resemble with her. I have given that particular photograph, because in that photo she seems to me as pretty. In this way we user, of internet easily hide our real appearance. This desire to remain anonymous reflects the need to eliminate those critical features of our identity that we do not want to display in that particular kind of environment or group. The desire to lurk- to hide completely indicates the person’s need to split off his entire personal identity from his observing of those around him; he want to look but not be seen. Thus one’s online identity can be real, hidden or imaginary. We assume altogether a different imaginary persona, where no one will know especially in text only environment. This is simply impossible in real world where we have to be present physically in our face to face communication. This power to alter one can be possible only in the make- belief world offered by the cyberspace, where we can be the authority to redefine our identity.

The cyberspace has also greatly influenced the political domain. On the one hand email is being used for mass diffusion of targeted political propaganda, with the possibility of interaction. Electoral campaigns in all countries start their work by setting of their web page. Politician display their promise, on their internet home page. On the other hand local democracy is enhanced through experiments through electronic citizen participation. More over it has also changed the rhetoric of Nation –state, where even the minority can speak on the internet and where anybody can voice their opinion. In the international arena, new trans-border social movements rising to define women’s causes, human rights, environmental protection and political democracy are making the internet as essential tool for disseminating, organizing and mobilizing.

THE DARKER SIDE OF THE CYBERSPACE:

All these fanciful stories which I have narrated here is only the surface reality or we can more radically say the ‘virtual reality’ of cyberspace or the partial reality of cyberspace. This is just the one side of the coin, the glamorous side, to attract the audience to create their own home or space in this utopia. But while believing in the story, we should not forget that Utopia means the “the land of nowhere” also. We have to acknowledge that there is also the other side of the coin, the “darker side” (as named by Ziauddin Sardar), and the hidden reality behind the screen. As Mannual Castells has described:

“The culture of first generation of users with its Utopian communal and libertarian undercurrents, shaped the Net in two opposite directions. On the one hand it tended to restrict access to the minority of computer hobbyists, the only people able and willing to spend time and energy living in cyberspace. From this era there remains a pioneering spirit that looks with distrust at the commercialization of the network, and watches with apprehension how the realization of the dream of generalized communication for the people brings with it the limits and misery of human kind as it is”. (Mannual Castells.385).

Now let us discuss, what is the other side of the cyberspace, what is its impact on society and culture. We the people of third world country, and also the rest of the world are always thankful and grateful to the west, because it has helped a great deal, in the developmental programme in the third world countries. And cyberspace or more specifically the opening up of internet is a great step in this direction. It is just a kind of blessing given by the western civilization to the whole world. But if we think deeply and seriously, distancing one step beyond this glamorous space, we will be able to find out that it is not a blessing of the western civilization, but cyberspace is rather a conscious reflection of the desires, aspiration, experience, yearning and angst of western man. It is resolutely being designed as a new market and it is an emphatic product of the culture world view and technology of the western civilization. It is just a different way of colonization in the post colonial era. When the colonization of the physical and mental place is over and no place left, they create themselves a new space, the “CYBERSPACE” to once again dominate the rest of the world, but this time by acting behind the screen. The theme of colonization is better reflected in a more serious document, ‘Cyberspace and American Dream; A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age’:

“The bioelectronic frontier is an appropriate metaphor for what is happening in cyberspace, calling in mind as it does the spirit of invention and discovery that led the ancient mariners to explore the world, generation of pioneers to tame the American continent and more recently, to man’s first exploration of outer space”. (Progress and Freedom Foundation, ‘Cyberspace and the American Dream: A Magna Carta for the knowledge Age’ available on the World Wide Web: http://www.pff.org/).`

In this way cyberspace acts as a kind of ‘frontier’, through which power elites get everyone to do their work while thinking they are acting on their on volition. This cyberspace ‘frontier’ has greatly influenced to the domain of re writing history. We are said that cyberspace is a great step toward the archivization or musemisation of the world. But this is not true. We can only see digital form of history in the mode of information and data and not the real history and of course we can explore this history from our computer lab, sitting on the arm chair and just clicking the button of the mouse. Is not it a different form of colonization? How can one store and preserve the country’s culture and history in digital form for the purpose of commercialization? What about the hard won new spaces of discourses of third world perspective created in conventional field, which is gradually disappearing into the oblivion of cyberspace? The history itself is also greatly filtered as we witness it on the screen:

“the Archivo General de Indians in Seville harbors hundreds of thousands of historical sources in the form of decrees, instruction , letters, regulations, case records, maps, petitions from Indian chiefs, etc. which refer to the historical ties between Spain and its former colonies in Latin America. The whole archive is now being digitalized. The manuscripts are being recorded on interactive, optical video disc, not only to protect the original collection [to preserve the past for posterity- the present is once again discarded], but also to increase their accessibility for the researcher: the documents discoloured by time, can be on the screen via the computer (stains can be removed, creases smoothed out colours changed, letters enlarged or reduced, etc..). In a way a ‘contaminated’ and guilt laden episode of history is being relieved of its blood, sweat and tears, and being given a false air of innocence. In the unbearable lightness of the realm of data, things are being relieved of their stoutness and weightiness: as ‘bits’ and ‘bytes’ they all look the same. It is not about whether the originals speak the truth, but about their disappearance into a retouchable ‘image’: the act of copying makes the originals artificial, too. At the same time the ‘real thing’, having become inaccessible, is entrenched in secrecy for fear that it will be touched by life, so that its existence becomes insignificant”. ( Jorinde Seijdel, , Mediametic, 8 (1), pp.1862 9.). In this way the cyberspace has presented a false history before us, a colonized version of the real history.

Now let us discuss about the notion that ‘the cyberspace has generalized or democratized information and knowledge’. But how far is it true? One of the most pernicious myths about the internet is that it provides free access to all the information about everything to everybody everywhere at any time. But it’s not true. Access to the internet is not at all free. For individual without institutional support, more specifically in the third world country, internet access is beyond their capacity. And hence internet is only available to those who can afford a computer and the connection and telephone charges that go with it. The time to invest in learning how to utilize net.resources is also a privilege for the few, as is the access to the specialized education that comes in the forms of institutional education, mentorship, or expensive books that become outdated as the next piece of software arrives. Access to the decentred, seemingly boundless virtual space of the net has a hidden price tag attached to it: the offline privilege of wealth. It is the power domain of only the elite class people. Thus the cyberspace provides a platform for creating two opposite section of people. On the one hand we have a small determined group, well financed and well informed who strike at the nerve centre of our livelihood. On the other hand there is the larger section of the society, excluded from all the knowledge and information of the world, people who have to struggle even for their daily survival. In this era of information technology, those people generally fall behind in this competitive race, position themselves for the next round of downsizing of that shrinking middle that made the strength of the advanced capitalist society. Thus the marginalized has become more marginalized. Rather than democratizing knowledge, the cyberspace has provided the base for the universalization of the marginalized community.

“LANGUAGE BARRIER...only English translation FREE!!! Sorry you need to pay in advance for no-English languages (...accordance with internet rule) [OK]”. This reminds us that the Internet is very much dominated by the English language, and that those who do not use this language can be penalized and restricted. Guillermo Gomez-Pena writes in his text The Virtual Barrio @ The Other Frontier “How else could a Mexican communicate with an African or a Hindu? How else would you, whoever you are, be reading this text right now?” English is the language of globalization, and translocal linguistic politics rarely emerge as victors in the realm of the Internet. Thus the notion that cyberspace democratizes knowledge is nothing but a myth , a false romantic view.

Crime is never the less minimum in cyberspace. You might have heard about ‘orkut death’. Some time people give their personal information on this open space and taking the advantages of that information, many people indulge in all short of criminal activities. ‘Hacking’ has become the day to day affair of cyberspace. Cyberspace creates opportunities for identity theft. One inherent property of digital media is that it can be duplicated perfectly and easily. Exact copies of everything sent over a digital communications channel can be recorded. Consider the act of sending a signed letter to someone. In real space, I reveal to the recipient the exact form of my signature, but the difficulty of mastering the art of forgery protects me from the possibility that the recipient would begin signing letters with my signature. However, if I send a digital letter that contains the digital representation of my signature, the recipient could easily duplicate and use my signature to assume my identity when signing documents. These biometric characteristics are protected in real space because they are embedded in the physical body of the person. This is lost in cyberspace. Thus, cyberspace needs a system that allows individuals to verify their identities to others without revealing to them the digital representation of their identities.

E-mail addresses are currently the most widespread form of digital identity in cyberspace. People use an e-mail address as an identifier because e-mail is the most direct and easy way to reach a person in cyberspace. However, the current e-mail architecture has little security and includes no reliable identity verification. The dominant protocol for sending e-mail (SMTP) does not facilitate verification of the sender's identity, and therefore does not facilitate authentication: an e-mail message may purport to be from "billgates@microsoft.com" there is no certainty that Bill Gates actually sent it. It is a trivial technical task to forge the source of an e-mail message under the current architecture. Likewise, e-mail is not safe from tampering enroute and can be repudiated after it is sent or received.

In many cyberspace contexts, passwords are used to verify a person's identity. However, passwords are easily shared or distributed. Providing a correct password proves only that the user has knowledge of the password, not that the user really is any particular person. There is no certainty that after issuance a password remains only with its intended holder and has not been distributed through innocent or malevolent means. There is thus no secure link between a password and any particular real world or cyberspace identity. Nonetheless, passwords are easy to implement and perhaps are better than using no security measures (although they may give false confidence), so they have become by far the most widespread method for cyberspace identity verification.

‘Posthumanism’ is a term that finds its greatest applications within the discourse of the cyberspace. At Posthuman.com, Sabine describes ‘posthumanism’ as “a sentient being that started out as a human or as a mind with a human way of thinking - and then by use of technology changes into someone who is no longer human”. Internet technology allows humans to interface with a machine in such a way that they become somewhat disembodied within their relationship to the virtual, demonstrated in my own experience of the way in which I can spend hours wrapped up in my Internet activities, denying the fact that I am hungry, that my hand hurts, and that my eyes are tired of looking at the screen. My thoughts lie elsewhere, between the pulses of my monitor, my imagination, and the html code released through a faraway server. Though, however ‘posthuman’ my mind appears to be, my bladder eventually catches up to me, and I must return my attention to the reality that, yes, I do have a body, and it demands my attention. My skin is still white when I look down at my hands on the keyboard, and I am still a woman, no matter what other bodies I flirt with inhabiting on the web. This notion of the posthuman is furthered in its extreme utopianism by a group of ‘transhumanists’ called the Extropians, whose posthumanist theory goes as far as to posit that one day human consciousness could be downloaded into a computer, and the body could be absolved, thus freeing humans not only from the classic philosophical problem of the mind/body split, but perhaps of the human condition itself. Thus in cyberspace, human being is reduced into a set of binary codes.

We are said that cyberspace allows its user to build community. But how far is such kind of community interacting? What responsibilities does the “electronic neighborhood place on its member? Can one simply resign one’s membership from a community? And the answer is yes, because in cyberspace, everything depends on clicking the mouse of the computer. Communities are built by a sense of belonging to a place, a geographical location, by shared values by common struggling by tradition and history of a location. The essence of real community is its presumptive perpetuity-you have to worry about other people because they will always be there. In a cyberspace community, however, you can shut people off at the click of a mouse and go elsewhere. John Gray has thus rightly described the difference between real community and cyberspace community:

“We are who we are because of the places in which we grow up, the accents and friends we acquire by chance , the burdens we have not chosen but somehow learn to cope with. Real communities are always local- places in which people have put down roots and are willing to put with the burdens of living together. The fantasy of virtual community is that we can enjoy the benefit of community without its burden, without the daily effort to keep delicate human connections intact. Real communities can bear these burdens because they are embedded in particular places and evoke enduring loyalties. In cyberspace, however, there is no where that a sense of place can grow, and no way in which the solidarities that sustain human beings through difficult time can be forged” (John Gray “The sad side of Cyberspace” The Guardian, 10th April).

Thus a cyberspace community is contingent and transient.

Now let us discuss the question of autonomy with regard to cyberspace. All of us entertain the thought that ‘cyberspace’ is the dream land where we are the authority to govern every thing. But beyond the rupture of free access of unlimited information and the dream of controlling all human knowledge lies the reciprocal thought of total enslavement. Whatever activities we performed on the stage of ‘cyberspace’ is managed by an invisible system operator who ensure that the system runs smoothly and who hold unrestricted power to deny entry cut delate on censor any communication, and who observe all that is going on their system. Private email is not that is private. Those who control the system economically, technically and politically have access to everything on the system. And it is nothing but virtual colonization.

Hence I would like to conclude that the cyberspace is nothing but a marriage…… a stream on the desert. Of course it gives of the hope of water but in reality there is no water. In writing this paper, I am not discussing the virtual side of cyberspace, the various potentialities related to cyberspace. I have just tried to highlight certain specific issues that are regarded as the darker side of cyberspace. We all consider cyberspace as dream Utopia and want to rule over it. But just think seriously that “can we ever conquer the land of nowhere else?”