Conceptual Research & Reflection Project

Cyberspace is informational space
The term “cyberspace” was first coined by science fiction novelist and cyberpunk author (Gibson, 1984) in his 1982 story "Burning Chrome" and became popular after his 1984 novel Neuromancer.
From Neuromancer:
The term is still widely used to describe the internet and it is probably the human minds attempt to classify the simultaneous transfer of electrons, reading of magnetic media, flipping of logic gates and the multitude of other processes involved in the operation of a computer network. (Gibson, 1984)
Like trying to visualise the universe, our minds cope better with the spatial concepts that we are used to.
So, at the risk of being delusional, let’s put reality aside for a moment and take a trip through “cyberspace” to see for ourselves.
We log on and our home page pops up. We’re not sure of its actual physical location but we give it a vague sense of place in our minds eye. Although we’re supposed to be working, it’s Friday morning and a bit hard to get motivated. Let’s take a surf (another comfortable metaphor) through our favorites to get us going.
There’s the webcam at that ski resort we’re planning on visiting at Christmas. “Wow, -15degrees and 20cm of new snow, you can almost hear it crunching under your feet. It’s 30 degrees here at 9 am. Anyway, on to Times Square, 6 in the evening there, looks wet and cold but there are still lots of people and Yellow Cabs in the cameras view. Hear the honking of horns and smell the street vendor’s carts”.
Check the forums, see who’s online. “There’s gtb48, she’s always got something interesting to say”. But enough of this!
Time for work.
Check emails first. One enquiry from a customer in the UK, an update from a supplier in Spain, and confirmation that the photos from Capetown have gone up.
Now process the orders. They’ll be sent from the warehouse in Europe to the customer in Chicago. Send off the confirmation email and move on to the next.
Time to get back to the family for a while and enjoy the holiday. We’re not in the office today. Not any day in fact because the office is in cyberspace and can be anywhere we want it to be.
Yes, cyberspace is an illusion, a shared hallucination. But is that really important? Is it any different from the other shared illusions we experience every day?
The illusion that we have actual money in the bank and not just figures on a speadsheet. The illusion of being stationary while standing on a rock that is spinning at a 1000 mph while hurtling through space. Seeing a scene on a screen and not just thousands of different coloured dots.
Cyberspace is a place where a business can have a world wide presence without the limitations of geographical location. It’s a place where we can see, in real time, events occurring on the other side of the world. Somewhere we can meet others, leave messages for friends, or have conversations anytime we choose.
It may not be a real place in the physical sense but cyberspace is probably the closest definition we have.



Information and attention.
The free ride enjoyed by web designers when the WWW first became commercial is long gone. In those days the internet audience consisted mainly of either technically competent enthusiasts (geeks) who created and populated their own online communities, or new users who were totally unfamiliar with the technology and somewhat awed. Animated gifs or quirky mouse-overs and other annoying gimmicks were considered cool.
Over the last decade the average internet user has become far more sophisticated and demanding . These users want up to date, quality, original content. They want it delivered in a straight forward manner and they want it to be free.
Most experienced users rarely delve deeper than the first two pages of search engine results which has spawned an entire industry devoted to search engine optimisation, the sole purpose of which is to put their clients sites onto those first two pages of results. It is no longer sufficient to flood pages with (sometimes irrelevant) meta tags to get up there. If the search engine bots don’t see through this, most of the users will with a quick glance at site descriptions and URL.
Although, as mentioned earlier, users generally don’t want to pay for their online experience, the fact remains that websites cost money to create and maintain. Most need to generate income and the method used is almost universally advertising.
Like free to air television broadcasters, commercial websites attempt to provide content that people want to view or use, hopefully a large number of people. The websites then sell these people to advertisers. Unlike television, advertisers on the internet have access to very accurate statistics to help them target their advertising budgets effectively. The can track not only the number of visitors to a site (and whether these are people or bots) but also the visitors location, time of the visit, what parts of the site they visited and how long they stayed. They can even see what browser the visitor is using.
Though still sometimes seen, the questionable traffic capturing methods are no longer sustainable. Successful commercial websites need to attract and hold the attention of large numbers of visitors.
Currently the hot sites are the search engines (Google, 31.01% of worldwide users , Yahoo, 27.08% ), and the social networking sites , Youtube, and Wikipedia.( It is interesting to note that aside from the search engines the other top performers are user driven sites.) (Website Traffic Comparisons, 2009)
To survive in the attention economy websites have to be highly aware of the needs and wants of their chosen market and their web usage habits. With this sort of information designers can create sites that announce clearly and immediately that they have the content the audience desires and then they must follow that up by delivering quality material.
The attention economy brings benefits to the consumer by forcing the web as a whole to evolve into a more useful resource and deliver what users want.



Public space and regulation.
From the perspective of the real world with its highly produced and edited media, the internet appears as a largely unregulated medium. Anyone with a computer and access to a service provider can self publish anything from simple text to photos, music and video files that can be viewed by a world-wide audience.
This is a far cry from the traditional model of publishing houses and production companies where an unknown has very little chance of their material even being reviewed let alone published.
Any unregulated space with 1,463,632,361 users, often with the same amount of different purposes, should quickly descend into anarchy. (INTERNET USAGE STATISTICS, 2009) (Illegal and harmful content, 2004)
Why hasn’t the WWW?
Well technically the web is a highly regulated space. Transmission protocols, programming standards, domain name registrations all help to keep the vast amount of data moving and arriving at its destination.
Of more concern to most observers and users is content regulation. Government regulation on internet content exists to varying degrees and with varying success in many countries. Although the internet is a world-wide network without boarders as such, there is no universal content regulation policy in place.
An EU paper on illegal and harmful content on the internet outlines the concerns of most governments:
*National security (Bomb making, terrorist threats)
*Protection of minors (Abusive forms of marketing, violence, pornography)
*Protection of human dignity (Incitement to racial hatred or racial discrimination.)
*Economic security (Fraud etc)
*Information security (Malicious hacking)
*Protection of privacy (Unauthorised communication of personal data, electronic harassment)
*Protection of reputation (Libel, unlawful comparative advertising)
*Intellectual property (Unauthorised distribution of copyrighted material)
As can be seen the above activities are already illegal and subject to prosecution in most jurisdictions. So it would appear that the issue is one of enforcement rather than regulation.
Though dealt with in different ways, it can be said that the concerns outlined in the EU paper are almost universally accepted around the world.
A major problem with enforcement is that it generally involves some form of monitoring. This raises the greatest outcry from critics, who though largely agreeing with the laws, disagree with the erosion of civil liberties.
Though most users probably agree there is a need to regulate criminal behaviour on the internet, there is huge opposition to any form of cultural or political censorship.
Though probably fighting a losing battle, a number of regimes around the world do practice direct internet censorship. It is often argued that internet companies that allow their sites to be censored in these countries are actively condoning such behaviour. The argument used in their defence, is that having a presence in these countries is the start of the slow transition to democracy.

In addition to statutory regulation of the internet there is also an often fiercely enforced etiquette among users of online communities. Aside from administrators and moderators, users themselves are quick to banish transgressors.

Communication is not complete upon receipt
Sending an email without knowing if it will ever be read, understood or acted upon is the cyber equivalent of a message in a bottle
Did they get the email?
Did they read it?
Do they care?
Maybe they hate me?
Sending an email needn’t be a totally passive activity however. With care and attention to detail we can influence the actions of our recipient.
In face to face communication we have instant feedback about the effect of our message. Facial expression and body language allow us to judge how well we are being received and we respond accordingly. The art of conversation is a constant transfer of subtle signals that we sometimes aren’t even aware of.
Non face to face communication robs us of these visual cues. The best we can do is empathise with our audience. By virtue of our ego we are all guilty of assuming our thoughts, because they are of interest to us, will be of interest to others. This is not always the case. It is up to the author of an email to step back and excercise a little objectivity. We know what we want to say and because we thought of it, we think it is pretty interesting and important. Our recipient may have a different opinion. They may be unaware of the background of the subject and probably have a head full of their own ideas and thoughts.
There is one action we can take to help tip the scales in our favour when sending email. We can create better quality email. The very attraction of the medium, its ease of use and speed of transfer are what devalues the quality of what we write. Emails, by their nature, are short, quickly written and read messages. Once the send button has been clicked, we often think of something that should have been attached or a better way of wording the text.
So lets look at our email before it gets to the outbox.
Is that subject line as informative as it could be? The subject line is, after all, the book’s cover.
Does the content make sense to someone who doesn’t know the full background?
Are the attachments attached?
A little time and care, as well as putting ourselves in the reader’s position, can go a long way towards more effective email communication.
Websites allow their creators far more feedback than most users imagine. Like a chef watching the diners in his restaurant savour their meals or push their uneaten portions away in disgust, a webmaster can monitor the tastes and appetites of her audience with a quiver of analytics tools. Every visitor communicates to her by their actions or lack of them.
The webmaster sees how the users arrived at their site, where they are located, what they are interested in and for how long.
If actions really do speak louder than words then website- analytics is a very effective communications medium.

Gibson, W. (1984). Neuromancer. Ace Hardcover.
Illegal and harmful content. (2004, march). Retrieved 02 05, 2009, from European Commission : http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_203_en.pdf
INTERNET USAGE STATISTICS. (2009, 02 05). Retrieved 02 05, 2009, from INTERNET USAGE STATISTICS: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
Website Traffic Comparisons. (2009, 02 05). Retrieved 02 05, 2009, from Alexa the web information company: http://www.alexa.com/