Virtuality Of Internet example essay topic

... more subtle metaphorical figuration -- a virtual topography in which speed, motion, and direction become possible. Internet becomes a simulated territory we traverse via computer / modem roadster in which the computer screen replaces the windscreen. The scene / screen of simulation is a 'depth less surface' which allows for no play of images between metaphor and the world it (re) presents. No longer a metaphor for change, the simulated highway of Internet becomes a form of virtual reality. (Kamper, Wulff 106-119) In its 'real' material presence, the Internet consists of a complex redundant network of host machines which communicate over phone lines. As opposed to the elaborate system of bridges, jumps, and links that occur across real space, the geographical figuration's of host 'sites' and user 'addresses' creates a simpler virtual terrain for the user -- one in which travel amounts to a tracing of connections from site to site.

The metaphor of cyberspace presents Internet as a globe to its own world; virtual territory only exists once it has been traced onto a pre-existing code of connectivity. Jameson connects the development of the first navigational 'globe' in 1490 to an emerging conceptual model of 'the world' as totality, as well as the realization that 'there can be no true maps,' only 'dialectical advance in the various historical moments of map making' (52). This metaphorical topography offered up by Internet presents the simulation of a vast, undiscovered country in which only our imaginations limit our abilities. From a Brecht perspective, the immanence of this realm -- its very vastness and limitlessness -- is nothing more than the simulation of these significations, simulacra that perform a strategy of deterrence, holding back the realization of the spaceless, limited world of the code. Distance disappears into immediacy, and presence becomes a state of simultaneity and transparency. The hyper telic moment of postmodern technology simulates presence 'without even the faintest glimmer of a possible absence, in a state of radical disillusion; the state of pure presence.

' (Kamper, Wulff 106-119) Currently, writing is the dominant means of communication on the 'net, and as such, it finds its place within a general history of writing as a material presence for communication (as opposed to the more 'ephemeral' voice). As communication becomes more immediate, absence / presence and writing / speech distinctions lose meaning; the game of emergence and disappearance begins to implode. The written word takes on a more immediate nature and begins to function as though it were speech. No longer a counterfeit or a reproduction, writing achieves its 'transcendence' on Internet: as third-order simulation of speech. (Kamper 72) For literally millions of 'netters,' cyberspace is a real place with real potentials -- and it is precisely this blurring of the real and the unreal which marks Brecht's postmodern moment of the hyper real.

From this perspective, the compelling image of 'Internet as world' pushes us beyond the world, beyond its containment, all the while pursuing the same Enlightenment goals which drove the world beyond its own ends and into hyper reality. The challenge of Internet, one might argue, is in its potential to derail the very assumptions which have led to the postmodern moment. In other words, could be used to raise the stakes in that banal MOO question, 'Where are you in real life?' Might cyberspace, rather than providing a simulated, hyper potential world of hyper travel, provide for a '. ' (Kamper 61-71) On the 'net, one will expect to find the banal at every turn. One would also hope to find objects of seduction and artifice, objects that turn us away from our intended goals.

One might even find something resembling Lyotard's '. ' Lyotard refers to this resistance as an attempt to rewrite modernity, to displace determination and complexity by writing past the assumptions of its telos (Inhuman 28). He suggests a 'working through' (Freud's) in place of modernity's directed work; a free play in place of strategic play (Inhuman 54,117). Lyotard and Bertolt Brecht, while worlds apart in many regards, merge on this point: the desirability of escaping the containment of a totalizing system driven toward (and beyond) its own assumptions.

In Lyotard's words: 'Being prepared to receive what thought is not prepared to think is what deserves the name of thinking' (Inhuman 73). The virtual utopian sees the immediate and immanent fulfillment of Enlightenment ideals in a world liberated from itself through virtuality. Perhaps, though, the very immanence of the model can challenge the assumptions which have led to its creation. In this reversed image, then, Internet might offer a virtuality which resists our attempts to totalizer it as a world, presenting instead loci for playing with the assumptions that we have taken for granted in modernity: community, information, liberation, self.

In general, virtual communities pose more questions about how individuals construct connections than they answer concerning the ends of achieving an electronic democracy. Rather than working toward (re) producing a model community, cyberspace could just as easily keep us moving beyond our ends, toward new connections: new ' that would demand new discourses (Virgilio, Aesthetics 110). Likewise, the virtual body sets us astray from our assumptions about what it means to have a 'real' body. In the virtuality of Internet, our words are our bodies, an apyretic copula which forces a reexamination of 'the body' as both physiological (noumenal) entity and phenomenological experience. In each instance, Internet provides the medium for disrupting models, rather than confirming them. Following this other heading, Internet might present a seduction rather than a subduction: a challenge to modernity's assumptions of self and body, of individual and community.

Internet, rather than presenting a simulation of totality, might provide a space of play. Rather than pursuing ends through this technology, one might instead turn oneself over to the drift and derive of 'cyberspace. '

Bibliography

1. 'The Last Vehicle. ' Looking Back on the End of the World. Ed. Dietmar Kamper and Christoph Wulf. New York: Semiotext (e), 1989.
106-119.2. Brecht, Bertolt. 1964.
Brecht on Theatre, trans. John Willett. New York: Hill and Wang. 3. Fisher, Lawrence. 'The Geographic Interface Puts the World on the Desktop. ' New York Times 5 Feb. 1995: F 9.
4. Kap or, Mitch. 'Where is the Digital Highway Really Heading?' Wired July-Aug. 1993: 53-59, 94.
5. K roker, Arthur. The Possessed Individual. New York: St. Martin's, 1992.
6. Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Inhuman. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1991.