Reading Cyberbultures discusses the many ways internet culture mirrors life outside the digital world. It covers topics from globalization to race and gender and also the gap between those who have access to the digital world known as the digital divide. Cybercultures as described by the book are, “cultures formed in or associated with online social spaces” which include “the networked electronic, and wired cultures of the last three decades of the twentieth century”. This includes videogames, email, online chats and even spaces from mobile devices. Cyberspace refers to the worlds and domains generated by digital information and communication technologies. Within the cyberspace, users are represented though an avatar which is described as an online identity usually with a graphic representation of the user within the virtual environment. This avatar can be seen as an extension or augmentation of one’s life. I believe the non digital world is increasing transitioning is marketplace into the cyberspace as according with the book:
“Cybercultures are driven by material considerations of profit and power, and affect people in their real lives. All this goes to show how technology must always be seen as contextual, and treated as technoculture where meanings, values, and functions are integrally associated with the object. Culture and technology are thereforenot distinct but linked.”
A prime example of this and the concept of globalization is with Amazon.com. Although Amazon does not have a brick and mortar store, the company is still able to be local and global at the same time through technology and commerce. Rather than going to physical stores, consumers are increasingly using online stores and shops for commerce which saves time, travel and many times money.
As with the physical world, there is a divide among those who these cyberspaces are available to. With 14.7% of the world population, Africa only makes up 3.5% of the world’s internet use although they do have the largest growth between 2000 and 2007. Europe with 12.3% of the world’s population it has 27.2% of world internet use. Coming in with the smallest world population percentage is North America with 5.1%, but has nearly 70% of all the internet usage. There is a dramatic disparity among who has access to these cyberspaces and it is clearly more prevalent in Western nations, and much less so in developing nations.
With just about every aspect of the physical world able to be somehow represented in the digital world, cybercultures are a transforming the way people communicate and only seem to be getting stronger with time.
This is a good summary of some of the issues discussed in the reading, but you need to add more of your own critique, observations, and connections. You should link to the reading, explain that it is a chapter of a book, and discuss the background of the author.