Now We Are Different

Where do you want to explore today?

I’ve been going back through some of my earliest notes for this project, and struck this one, which raises some interesting ideas around online geography. It’s good to note that we have moved away from such overt travel and movement metaphors, which were always an ill fit, though a useful bridging metaphor until we worked out exactly how to conceptualise digital space as natives (or settlers) rather than tourists.

Wednesday, April 10, 2002
I said yesterday I’d give some thought to spatial relationships in as much as they reflect upon the question of how we know where an ‘Information Society’ starts. Manuel Castells seems a good kick-off point in this regard. His conception of the ’space of flows’ is an interesting one – far more so than the frontier metaphor espoused by the likes of John Perry Barlow, Alvin Toffler, Howard Rheingold, etc.

Despite the fact that the internet fails to stack up against ideas of ’staking a claim’ and ‘declarations of independence‘, you can’t get away from the point that human beings inhabit physical space. To go online does not obsolesce the human body, however much it expands or extends the human mind. Castells’ ’space of flows’ takes this into consideration, while observing that communication between parties happens in the space between – in the movement of information from physical place to place.

Although the quantity of ’space of flows’ information cannot reliably be measured and compared to the amount of ’space of places’ interaction – and therefore it’s difficult to pinpoint the precise spot at which we shift (or shifted) into an information society, it’s possible to assume that such a transformation is at least taking place – if it hasn’t already.

But what gets me is the fact that we rely on spatial metaphors when dealing with the Internet. We use an Internet ‘Explorer’ or a Netscape ‘Navigator’ when we wish to ‘go’ online [or on 'Safari'] and ‘visit’ a website. Is there any reason for this other than the fact that we are (at least for the moment) psychologically tied to a physical space of places? That is to say, if our mind derives information from a point outside of our immediate surroundings, must we necessarily have ‘gone somewhere’?

One of the holy grails of computing technology seems to be the illusion of physical co-presence – Virtual Reality. Much of the literature in this still emergent and largely speculative field seems to involve inhabiting an artificial space, then moving through it from place to place, seeking information, communicating with representations of other people inhabiting the space – moving in three dimensions – whether flying, walking, swimming or even driving in the digital realm. Imagine a VR shopping mall (as many entrepreneurs have tried). Is it necessary that we move from shop to shop, browsing through books, then moving past another couple of virtual stalls to look at clothes (for instance). Why is it necessary for us to have had to travel in a straight line or combination of vectors to ‘arrive’ at the clothing store?

That to me is the major flaw in the conceptualisation of VR technologies – especially those designed for personal and communicative purposes (VR surgery, scientific modelling and telerobotics have a somewhat different approach). Is there any reason that we should encounter distance in digital ’space’?

Surely it’s just as easy to consider a Godlike approach to the whole thing – to be omni-present online is no more technically difficult (in theory) than to be physically constrained (God never travels because he’s always already everywhere). Alternatively, it is just as feasible to create micro universes – everything co-present with the VR-connected user. Hypertext liberated the online world from sequential, linear processes, allowing for a world of signposts and destinations, but no roads – and no need for them (although one common criticism of the world wide web is that it’s a land of signposts and no destinations).

In other words, Digital Man has the option of being extended omnipotently – or to have his universe collapsed to the place he inhabits – a being whose borders are nowhere and whose centre is everywhere. In trying to emulate reality, VR lacks ambition.

That said, I think spatial relations play an important part in thinking about Digital Man for a number of reasons. The first of these is economic. The Digital Divide is a concept which revolves around technological manifestations of the ever-growing disparity between rich and poor. In the physical world, freedom of movement is restricted by poverty. There are things you can’t do, places you can’t go, areas you won’t live, countries and even neighbouring towns you’ll never visit. Likewise, the reflection of this in the online world revolves around the two phases of digital divide – access to technology (the ultimate online restriction of movement) and lower skillsets in using technology – akin to having a car, but not much ability to drive the damn thing.

Another reason that spatial relations are important to consider is that the way that space is interpreted by Digital Man is transformed according to the new sense ratios created by the new media. Just as a literate society, with its linear thinking, was able to develop vanishing point perspective, and as an electric ground was able to accomodate a new ‘acoustic space’, as McLuhan liked to call it, so too is the digital ground likely to change conceptions of space – perhaps on a more synaesthetic model (this will take some further consideration – I’m not sure yet where it’s going). However, it does suggest that perhaps the spatial metaphor (’going’ online / ‘visiting’ webpages) is not such a dud after all. If our conception of space changes to prove the metaphor appropriate, then navigating and exploring the online world are perhaps activities we undertake – even if we mean these terms in a whole different way than we use them in the ‘real’ world.