Cyberspace First Steps #1

Ahh! Adjectives….I like this guy already! Benedikt allows me some latitude to “dream a little” when describing what I think cyberspace emerges as or dwells in my mind. I purposely chose, “The realm of pure information, filling like a lake, siphoning the jangle of messages transfiguring the physical world, decontaminating the natural and urban landscapes`, redeeming them, saving them from the chain-dragging bulldozers of the paper industry, from diesel smoke of courier and post office trucks, from jet fuel fumes and clogged airports, from billboards, trashy and pretentious architecture, hour-long freeway commutes, ticket lines and choked subways…from all the inefficiencies, pollutions (chemical and informational) and corruptions attendant to the process of moving information attached to things-from paper to brains-across, over and under vast and bumpy surface of the earth rather than letting it fly free in the soft hail of electrons that is cyberspace."


Wow! As a visual type, the long passage screams of fiction and a great opening to a science fiction flick…There is nothing unadulterated anymore about how society uses information or how it is perpetrated upon any medium. What it is reminiscent of is clear cutting the world of words that once were used submissively for communication but now are pimped on every billboard, sidewalk, airwave, moving vehicle, reader, desktop, bottle, pen, and even your toilet paper. Dragging them to the underbelly of the physical world and letting them fly free is somewhat presumptuous. Nothing is free nor was it ever! But I like the saying, so “fly.” I also like the meaning behind, “Is it real or is it Memorex.” Old school I know. What I derive from Benedikt (What a name!) is that what we see is like the “inward eye.” It is a reflection of what we think, an illusion of what was, something that is not existent but existent. Wordsworth says it the best:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed---and gazed---but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Cyberspace is not this line upon line concrete, tangible entity that we can master or control. It allows us to play within its parameters (whatever that will be) and it is what we are willing to put in and pull out is the thrill of the medium. Finding the right door or door is a challenge at time but it is real I think. The digital age is a new rebellion that will clash with the physical world and is the driving entity of our cyber world.

As a side note, my first computer was a Vic 20 by Commodore (5 K Ram) Smoking!