The Metaphysics of Cyberspace!

     So many would lead you to believe that they must actually convince us of cyberspace being an actual reality; almost innately any one who interacts in an online environment already recognizes this but almost none can tell us why. What is reality? Who is really qualified to define reality? What is real? In physics everything is relative so with that being said if I can interact with with this pen and paper just the same as I can interact with the keyboard and monitor what makes it any less real? Common sense indicates reality is what can be interacted with using our 5 senses, right? Oh well that's it then, I can't smell what is being typed so it can't be real. The fact is, that is absolutely not a valid description of what is real and what is not? You can't smell energy and you can't see the molecules that make up the air, why are they more real? Fordham Professor Lance Strate has done a fantastic job disseminating the taxonomy of cyberspace in order to better establish and define this "Virtual reality" that we have come to accept as Cyberspace.

Strate's Mapping of the Cyberspace Territory 

       Professor Strate defines Cyberspace as the diverse experiences of space associated with computing and related technologies but goes on to break down the 3 Orders of Cyberspace which are then broken down into 6 more specific types of "space". The initial order is called the Zero Order Cyberspace which refers directly to the ontological status of cyberspace and includes the concepts of paraspace (a fake space or simulation of space) and cyber space time (totality of events between the computers themselves and the computer and the user). The next order is called the First Order Cyberspace which breaks down the building blocks of space (and cyberspace alike): the physical (computers, modems, wires, users, etc), the conceptual (the sense of space generated within the mind as we interact with the computer) and the perceptual (the sense of space generated by the computer-user interface, through one or a combination of our senses). Then the last being the Second Order Cyberspace which specifically references the Cybermedia Space (the sense of space generated through the user's communication with and through the computer).

       I find the most inclusive of the 3 Orders of Cyberspace being the First Order and it is this I feel represents the true nature and ontology of the cyberspace environment. It is this order that encompasses the true physics of the real world relative with those of cyberspace. It explains the physical cyberspace in which it is easy to comprehend through comparison; the material base of the computer itself as well as the wires, network and other physical components is similar to the nerve structure of the human body. The impulses sent through the superhighway of nerves in our body is the simply the most efficient analogy; what makes the transfer of information interpreted by our brains any less real than the information interpreted and presented to us by our monitors? What better describes the conceptual space than to say it is simply a product of ideas or an idealistic space that allows us to physically demonstrate the theories or ideas we imagine through our mind's eye, our individual perceptual space. 

        Through the realization and acceptance of our "real" reality can we truly utilize the "cyberspace" reality as an expansion on our own. The Zero Order of Cyberspace explains this theory best when you define it as a paraspace or nonspace. As a fictional or seemingly paradoxical space that is not a space at all but a fake space or simulation is very much similar to that of our individual imaginations. 

"Disneyland is there to conceal the fact that it is the "real country, all of "real" America, which is Disneyland (just as prisons are there to conseal the fact that it is the social in its entirety, in its baal omnipresence, which is carceral). Disney is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation." Baudrillard (1983, p.25)

       Understanding the Zero Order of Cyberspace is a little more difficult to understand in the space of cyberspacetime unless you understand at least in definition the theory of spacetime. In physics, spacetime is any mathematical model that combines space and time into a single continuum. Spacetime is usually interpreted with space as existing in three dimensions and time playing the role of a fourth dimension therefor can not exist independently (Einstein, 1954). Strate defines Cyberspacetime as the totality of events involving relationships between humans and computers, between humans and computers and between computers themselves. In other words the physical time that passes in the time you spend reading this blog is real and not only temporal.