One need not wander far from home to find that each culture constructs its own particular space. Space is a codified view of a culture's prevailing social, historical, and political contexts. Space is also a symbolic organization of material conditions. The symbolic organization of public space has long been used to create norms, as well as to assert and contest power (see Darier [(Darier, 1999)] on Foucault and governmentality via the increasing control of populations living within spaces).

Additionally, scholars such as Putnam (2000) point out that public space is important for the building of social networks. Public space provides the potential for the gathering of people who might not otherwise come in contact with one another in their daily lives. In this way public space is crucial to the public sphere (Jacobs, 1999). In public space, action gains publicity because it is visible to others, or the public (Mattson, 1999; Putnam, 2000). Cyberspace has been named as the surrogate public space (Gumpert & Drucker, 1992, 1998) or the "electronic agora" (Rheingold 1993, 14).

Although a textual and audiovisual narrative, cyberspace discourse is filled with space metaphors. We argue that what is found in cyberspace is not so much a virtual space, but rather a limited, (audio)visual space, in which senses such as touch, taste, and smell, and non-mediated forms of communication such as proxemics and nonverbal communication are not experienced by the human user. However, when discussing physical space and culture in real life (iRL), we understand space as comprising multiple senses in the creation of a community experience.
Many often culturally specific elements lead to one's conception and use of public space. The use of the space metaphor for cyberspace is thus arbitrary, culturally connotated, and partial and excludes certain senses and experiences in favor of others. Henceforth, we will use the terms cyberspace and (audio)visual space and reality interchangeably.

We further problematize the use of the space metaphor by applying Gramsci's (1971) concept of hegemony to the framing of the Internet as space. For example, does the conception of the Internet as space instead of a network of text allow for the Internet's governance? Does the metaphor further allow for a colonialist approach to the Internet or for a neo-liberal capitalist appropriation? We examine whether the space metaphor discourse is dominated by hegemonic concepts of space and therefore is not cross-culturally representative. If physical space may vary across cultures, we also ask what implications might these cultural differences have on the conceptualization of cyberspace as a space. How do these cultural physical spaces relate to (audio)visual space on the Internet?

When we refer to culture in our discussion, we refer to it in the broadest sense. For specific examples, however, we look at culture in the national sense, focusing our comparisons on Mexican and U.S. spaces. We acknowledge these national cultures are by no means homogeneous nor can they be generalized. We therefore engage culture in its national form heuristically, as a practical guide to form an analysis.

We investigate the discourse of space and culture in regard to the socially constructed nature of cyberspace. We believe that cyber scholars should study the Internet as a cultural form, much as Williams approached the study of television in his generative work Television: Technology and Cultural Form (1974). In addressing television, Williams explored technology and specific modes of representation as socially constructed. In the case of the Internet, one of the most evident cultural aspects of symbolic organization is that cyberspace is referred to as space, while referred to space is not tangible nor does it hold physical territory. In the present study, we investigate the organization of cyberspace in its symbolic dimension.

As the organization of signifying materials does not entirely stem from the technical characteristics of a medium, but from specific needs or tendencies of the social system in which the medium is embedded, it follows that the choice of a certain symbolic organization corresponds to the choice of a certain experience. This certain experience may be potentially exclusive for marginalized individuals, groups of people and, ultimately, cultures. In addition, as a technology, the Internet also "enframes" what it represents in its own terms and within its own limits. In other words, technology is not a neutral means of representation because it functions within a set of social, historical, and cultural constraints (Heidegger: 1955/1977). Technology is informed by and informs a certain, limited understanding of the world. For this reason, discourse in cyberspace only reveals particular vantages of a certain world, while inevitably excluding others.

When thinking of culture in relation to cyberspace one of the first issues we must visit is community. Bell (2001) points out, "We can make productive use of Anderson's insight at scales other than the nation, to consider the extent to which all communities are imagined and held together by shared cultural practice (rather than just face-to-face interaction). When we come to explore online communities in detail, this will be an important thing to remember" (p. 95). We need to be cautious in pursuing this line. When we think of a community as a group of people who share symbols, we tend to relegate those symbols to the members' psyches without considering material contexts. When we apply imagined communities to cyberspace we tend to leave out material and lived aspects of culture. In addition, as scholars we need to be reflexive when we research culture in cyberspace as we bring to the study our own cultural lenses and limitations. A dialectic exists between the material/physical and symbolic/ideological manifestations of culture. This interplay between ideological constructions and material/physical capacities informs one another.

Our central question is how do discourse and uses of space vary across cultures and how do these differences affect discourse and experience of cyberspace? We look at how culture, embedded in its historical, political, social, and economic contexts, shapes public space in the physical world. Specifically we look at open air markets in Mexico and one example of an open air market in the United States, Seattle's Pike Place Market. We discuss these spaces and their relationships to the (audio)visual spaces found on the Internet.

In order to examine the concept of cyberspace as it relates to culture and space we look at two main dimensions: the use of spatial metaphors and narrative in textual forms and the organization/conceptualization of space in visual forms. We also look at these dimensions' relationships with the use and conception of physical public space iRL and the physical/spatial modalities of the user's cyberspace experience (e.g. cybercafes vs. personal workstation). Specifically, we investigate the translation of vital elements of physical space into metaphors and functions of cyberspace.

We look at concepts such as the agora and the body, as well as other shared elements of space, such as text, texture, and hybrid. Each of these aspects is explored in detail in the corresponding linked sections in conjunction with relevant images. In completing this project, our goal is to denaturalize the spatial assumptions of cyberspace and to examine their cultural and ideological implications. We also want to start a cross-cultural academic and public conversation on this topic. To begin this conversation, as part of our project, we've created a blog and a web site, exposing both the process and the fruit of our scholarly labor. In doing so, we would also like to set up a creative and emergent (audio)visual space for other scholars to engage in our discussion by posting visual and textual cultural representations of cyberspace and physical space.

a project for
COM 538 Theories and Criticism of Communication Technologies
Professor David Silver

University of Washington
Spring 2003