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Abstract
Elvis presided over the birth of a great new means of expression, one of three such flowerings in America since World War II. The second was television from broadcast to cable to music videos. The third is the net.
The lived meaning of space, time, and subjectivity has been radically altered by electronic technologies in an experience that may be described, and cannot be denied/
1The Greek word ekstasis means standing outside or beyond oneself. Baudrillard first used the term “ecstacy” in relation to the “hyper‐real” of electronically mediated communication in>The ecstacy of communication (1984). According to Baudrillard, in an environment where nothing is hidden or secret but all is made public, transparent and excessively visible through the spectacle of mass media, information and communication implode into an ecstatic obscenity: a total exteriorisation of being outside and beyond itself. Baudrillard was talking about non‐interactive mass media, particularly TV. Electronic textuality, subjectivity and sociality in networked interactive communication systems such as the Internet are also ecstatic: “An ecstatic document is one whose value is not what lies within it but what it points to ... You read it not so much for what it shows but for the links it shows you to other information. This change in documents is itself ecstatic ‐‐ it points beyond itself to changes in our culture at large ‐‐ for documents can condition our way of thinking and acting in vastly different ways” (Weinberger, Wired, 1995, p. 108). My use of the term ‘ecstatic’ accords with Weinberger's notion of exteriorisation.
Cybernetics is the study of human control functions and of mechanical and electrical systems designed to replace them. It is derived from the Greek word kybernetes which means a pilot or navigator of a ship, and hence is associated with concepts of travel and steering. William Gibson first coined the term cyberspace in Neuromancer (1984), which explored the sense of virtual space and place, and the cultural formations behind the screen and inside the video games then sweeping the country. A useful definition of cyberspace is offered by Novak (1994, p. 225): “Cyberspace is a completely spatialized visualization of all information in global information processing systems, along pathways provided by present and future communications networks, enabling full copresence and interaction of multiple users, allowing input and output from and to the full human sensorium, permitting simulations of real and virtual realities, remote data collection and control through telepresence, and total integration and intercommunication with a full range of intelligent products and environments in real space”. My use of the term ‘cyberia’ is meant to denote such a realm of technologically and textually mediated virtual co‐presence and interaction, and derives from Douglas Rushkoffs Cyberia (1994b).
Notes
1The Greek word ekstasis means standing outside or beyond oneself. Baudrillard first used the term “ecstacy” in relation to the “hyper‐real” of electronically mediated communication in>The ecstacy of communication (1984). According to Baudrillard, in an environment where nothing is hidden or secret but all is made public, transparent and excessively visible through the spectacle of mass media, information and communication implode into an ecstatic obscenity: a total exteriorisation of being outside and beyond itself. Baudrillard was talking about non‐interactive mass media, particularly TV. Electronic textuality, subjectivity and sociality in networked interactive communication systems such as the Internet are also ecstatic: “An ecstatic document is one whose value is not what lies within it but what it points to ... You read it not so much for what it shows but for the links it shows you to other information. This change in documents is itself ecstatic ‐‐ it points beyond itself to changes in our culture at large ‐‐ for documents can condition our way of thinking and acting in vastly different ways” (Weinberger, Wired, 1995, p. 108). My use of the term ‘ecstatic’ accords with Weinberger's notion of exteriorisation.
Cybernetics is the study of human control functions and of mechanical and electrical systems designed to replace them. It is derived from the Greek word kybernetes which means a pilot or navigator of a ship, and hence is associated with concepts of travel and steering. William Gibson first coined the term cyberspace in Neuromancer (1984), which explored the sense of virtual space and place, and the cultural formations behind the screen and inside the video games then sweeping the country. A useful definition of cyberspace is offered by Novak (1994, p. 225): “Cyberspace is a completely spatialized visualization of all information in global information processing systems, along pathways provided by present and future communications networks, enabling full copresence and interaction of multiple users, allowing input and output from and to the full human sensorium, permitting simulations of real and virtual realities, remote data collection and control through telepresence, and total integration and intercommunication with a full range of intelligent products and environments in real space”. My use of the term ‘cyberia’ is meant to denote such a realm of technologically and textually mediated virtual co‐presence and interaction, and derives from Douglas Rushkoffs Cyberia (1994b).