Communication and Cyberspace-Social Interaction in An Electronic Environment

This anthology brings together studies on computer-mediated electronic space and social interaction and thus expands the available research on cyberspace and its social, cultural and psychological impact. Section 1 addresses broad issues and theoretical positions relevant to this new area of study, provides a theoretical and philosophical basis for the more specific analyses of cyberspace, and links those analyses to larger issues in the field of communication. Section 2 covers the functions of cyberspace, especially the ways in which cyberspace is used as a functional alternative to a place or set of places. Section 3 covers the form that cyperspace takes in comparison to the forms of physical space and other types of mediated space such as writing, print, and film. Finally, section 4 covers the forms of communication and characteristic of cyberspace, the emergence of a new cyberculture, and the ways in which it alters more traditional meanings of the self or subject, sexuality, and community.

Contents, Description, and Reviewer Comments
Table of Contents: Surveying The Electronic Landscape: An Introduction To Communication And Cyberspace. Section I CYBERSPACE IN PERSPECTIVE: THE THEORETICAL CONTEXT. Chapter 1 From Locomotion To Telecommunication, Or, Paths Of Safety, Streets Of Gore, Gary Gumpert and Susan J. Drucker. Chapter 2 CyberWalden: The Inner Face of Interface, John M. Phelan. Chapter 3 Who Shall Control Cyberspace, James R. Beniger. Chapter 4 Don’t Fence Me In: Copyright, Property, and Technology, Neil Kleinman. Chapter 5 Back To Plato's Cave: Virtual Reality, Herbert Zettl. Chapter 6 Dramatism and Virtual Reality: Implications and Predictions, Charles U. Larson. Chapter 7 Virtual Reality And The Redefinition Of Self, Jay David Bolter. Section II FUNCTION: CYBERNETWORKS AND CYBERPLACES AS ALTERNATIVES TO PHYSICAL LOCATION AND TRANSPORTATION. Chapter 8 From The ARPAnet To The Internet: A Cultural Clash And Its Implications In Framing The Debate On The Information Superhighway, Mark Giese. Chapter 9 "Are They Building An Off-Ramp in My Neighborhood?" and Other Questions Concerning Public Interest In and Access to the Information Superhighway, Ronald Jacobson. Chapter 10 Killing Time: The New Frontier Of Cyberspace Capitalism, Joseph Barrett. Chapter 11 Constructing the Virtual Organization: Using A Multimedia Simulation For Communication Education, Terri Toles Patkin. Chapter 12 Playing At Community: Multi-User Dungeons And Social Interaction In Cyberspace, Michael P. Beaubien. Section III FORM: VIRTUAL REALITY AND HYPERMEDIA AS NEW FORMS OF SPACE AND NAVIGATION. Chapter 13 Cyberspace: Creating Paradoxes for The Ecology Of Self, Sue Barnes. Chapter 14 The Cybergym: Virtual Reality in the Health Club, Lizzy Weiss. Chapter 15 Experience in the Age of Digital Reproduction, Margaret Cassidy. Chapter 16 Getting Over the Edge, Stuart Moulthrop. Chapter 17 Pedagogy and Hypertext, Stephanie B. Gibson. Chapter 18 Cinematic Representations of Cyberspace, Paul J. Lippert. Section IV MEANING: CYBERCOMMUNICATION AND CYBERCULTURE. Chapter 19 Charting the Codes of Cyberspace: A Rhetoric of Electronic Mail, Judith Yaross Lee. Chapter 20 What's Fueling The Flames In Cyberspace?: A Social Influence Model, Philip A. Thompsen. Chapter 21 Technologies, Relations, and Selves, Richard H. Cutler. Chapter 22 Forgetting The Body: Cybersex and Identity, Mark Lipton. Chapter 23 Cybertime, Lance Strate. EPILOGUE Cyberspace, Shmyberspace, Neil Postman

Excerpts from Book Reviews:

From James A. Capo, INTERPERSONAL COMPUTING AND TECHNOLOGY "...COMMUNICATION AND CYBERSPACE offers a photo of what is known or hypothesized now about this inter-networked reality according to 25 established and emerging communication scholars.... This collection of original essays approaches the phenomenon of CMC as communication, culture and identity construction itself. Its depth and range, critical distance and humanistic orientation distinguish it from available texts." (http://www.helsinki.fi/science/optek/1996/n2/capo.txt)

From Richard Barbrook, THESIS (reviewed with two other books). "...surprisingly, the most dialectical analysis of cyberspace is found within the US collection of essays: COMMUNICATION AND CYBERSPACE. The book presents more than one side of the argument. Some essays are almost English in their miserabilism.... At the same time, the collection also has its moments ofpoststructuralist hyperbole.... But alongside such heady rhetoric there are also some more thoughtful articles. When not entranced by formalist philosophy, cultural studies can provide a way of examining how people act within their everyday lives, including within virtual worlds.... Communication and Cyberspace includes the most interesting articles on the use of the Net by actual people... Because it covers both sides... Communication and Cyberspace is the only one of these books worth recommending. For once, US academics provide the most dialectical analysis of a social phenomenon." (http://thesis.newsint.co.uk/MULTIMEDIA/barbrook.html)

From Sharmila Pixy Ferris, MEDIA ECOLOGY "At a time when new technologies are the focus of much media hype, a text like COMMUNICATION AND CYBERSPACE is unique in that it provides a forum for informed opinion in addition to empirical research and critical theory. With its essays on various aspects of cyberspace, including telecommunications, cybernetics and computer technology, computer-mediated communication, virtual reality and telepresence, hypertext and hypermedia, and cyberculture, COMMUNICATION AND CYBERSPACE offers an interdisciplinary approach, with an overall emphasis on human communication in the new electronic frontier.... In its exploration and elucidation of the various issues surrounding cyberspace, the text serves three audiences: the researcher, looking for knowledge and insights that can inspire research and direct future research; the student, seeking knowledge from informed and expert sources; and the layperson, seeking a guide in his/her initial venture into the new electronic frontier. The text is skillfully oriented towards all three audiences, and successfully treads the fine line between comprehensibility and comprehensiveness.... COMMUNICATION AND CYBERSPACE has something to offer anyone interested in cyberspace and CMC, and the editors are to be commended on both their choice of contributors and structure of the book." (http://raven.ubalt.edu/features/media_ecology/reviews/97/ferris1/ferris_1.html)

Thomas Gencarelli, NEW JERSEY JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION ...the editors and their contributors have culled together a substantive and challenging body of work, the focus of which is to examine how computer media alter the space across and within which we communicate, and the consequence of this change for the nature of our communication and ourselves... The contributors include a number of recognized, influential theorists within the subject area. They include: James Beniger, who, continuing his highly regarded work on the machinations of societal control, argues that while the emergence of cyberspace "might be seen as the single greatest reversal in human history of the trend towards centralized social control" (p.52), this is only a temporary situation; Jay David Bolter, who postulates that virtual reality is another, perhaps ultimate step in forcing the redefinition of ourselves as it pushes us further away from the Cartesian recognition of self grounded in discursive reasoning; and Gary Gumpert and Susan Drucker, who further embellish their arguments for how media--and especially computer media--redefine social and public space. Also included are some other well-known writers and thinkers who are traditionally found working in other areas of the communication discipline, such as Herbert Zettl, who takes on not only the aesthetics of virtual reality, but also its philosophical and ethical implications.... Strate, Jacobson and Gibson, and their contributors, have done an admirable an d important job of trying to explain this to us: where we are, where we may be headed, and why we need to know these things. We have a great deal to learn from their book and a great deal that it offers for us to still think about." (http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/njcaabst_f96.htm#gencarelli)