Original scientific paper
Cyberspace and Virtual Reality as Social Use of Information and Communication Technologies [THE ARTICLE HAS BEEN RETRACTED]
Vjekoslav Afrić
; Odsjek za sociologiju, Filozofski fakultet, Sveučilište u Zagrebu
Abstract
Cyberspace is a space that is rising from use of new information technologies and it can be defined like a name which certain people use for conceptual space, in which, when people use technology they mediate communication, manifest words, human relations, data, well-being and power. Concept of Cyberspace has arisen in science fiction literature by William Gibson, and poet John Perry Barlow, they described it figuratively and simply like that place, where we are when we are speaking on telephone. Confusion is often between concepts of cybernetics space and mental state and visual image of virtual reality. Totally unquestionable virtual reality can be found in cyberspace, but these two concepts are totally different like articulate sound words and radio programs. Cyberspace like space between communications is of course very significant but more important is that it is a symbol of a promise of new social spaces.
Cyberspace can be understood like the last state in Poppers “World III, evolution that from social mechanism, across language leads to cyberspace.
This evolution goes on in more separate evolution threads: in myth evolution on which lies the human society structure, in the evolution of communications media, in the evolution of construction and humanization of space and in the evolution of space understanding.
Cyberspace, like a state in evolution “World III”, like space of a new form of communication is definitely a totally new space of social interaction and a new social space of social reality. Like a part of social reality it can be defined as a conceptual world of net interactions, a complex form of different technologies that evolve very quickly, making representations of language and sense experience. As a fictive physical space in which minds dive, in a trance like coordinated hallucination. And in that way as a state of mind that communicating people share using digital representation of whole human spirituality and because of that as a space of evolution of the type of social interaction that is manufactured by social use of information and communication technologies.
Understanding and definition of cyberspace is a start point on the road of exploration of its social actuality and its meaning for social development.
Keywords
social interaction; information and communication technologies; cyberspace; social space
Hrčak ID:
154393
URI
Publication date:
31.12.1999.
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