Cyber culture affects the way we act, think and live more and more. Its use –and therefore, power- have been prevalent as we could not conduct a research nor write a specific book if it had not been for the internet. So, Internet culture, as a subdivision of cyber culture, calls upon our attention so as to see the parameters emerging from its existence in everyday life; regarding society, politics and the public sphere, language and rhetoric.
Answers to these issues are given here:
Internet Culture is all about contemporary life. As exposed from scratch, in the introduction written by David Porter, ‘‘the essays collected in this anthology set out to examine as cultural phenomena the characteristic ways of being and interacting that have taken shape in the public spaces of the internet’’.
Due to Internet culture, arousing questions such as how the Internet affects our understanding and experience of community have come to the fore and shape the conceptual framework of the examining phenomenon. Given that, today, there is no absolute foundation about knowledge, because of the maximum speed of information, linked to the personal, human need for growing experience, we tend to conclude that this virtual word may be parallelized to a coffee place, where we can join any club members and experience this meeting but, at the same time, we are displaced from other, natural things. It is not a bet any more, as internet has prevailed. It is an experiment that asks more prerequisite time from our lives to such an extent that we fall in love not with an alien – as we do not compare earth with space - but we do fall in love with allied machines, imposing systems…The readers will find a lot of significant arguments, relevant to the subject, in the book.
Anyway, to me the word, which best fits internet culture, is Serendipity.
Serendipity meaning could be summarized into:
1.The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident
2.The fact or occurrence of such discoveries
3.An instance of making such a discovery
Reading about how internet colors social interactions between individuals and within groups, or even how communication is filtered in this new, cultural dimension, it is then important to notice that now it’s up to the individual to challenge proper life and broaden its horizons. For instance, if we ask ourselves the reason why blogs have become so many nowadays, one simple answer could be: even during the working hours, in front of the desktop – or screen- everyone needs a mirror…on condition that blogs, somehow, reflect upon their creator’s personality.
David Porter had sent me the book Internet Culture with a personal dedication some years ago. It was very nice of him to receive it at home. It was an unforgettable moment of joy, when something has been offered to you without pain, just because you found the right way to do so. If it had not been for the internet, incidents like this would never have been able to happen so simple, like postmodern or intermodern –derived from internet- myths. All I want to mark, as a follow-up conclusion, is that internet can offer new possibilities that we have to foster then. On the other hand, we must not ignore the other side of the coin, according to which the risk taken is high. Every time we surf online, we are dependent on machines, which may betray us and turn our souls into serfs. At-tension please.
1.The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident
2.The fact or occurrence of such discoveries
3.An instance of making such a discovery
Reading about how internet colors social interactions between individuals and within groups, or even how communication is filtered in this new, cultural dimension, it is then important to notice that now it’s up to the individual to challenge proper life and broaden its horizons. For instance, if we ask ourselves the reason why blogs have become so many nowadays, one simple answer could be: even during the working hours, in front of the desktop – or screen- everyone needs a mirror…on condition that blogs, somehow, reflect upon their creator’s personality.
David Porter had sent me the book Internet Culture with a personal dedication some years ago. It was very nice of him to receive it at home. It was an unforgettable moment of joy, when something has been offered to you without pain, just because you found the right way to do so. If it had not been for the internet, incidents like this would never have been able to happen so simple, like postmodern or intermodern –derived from internet- myths. All I want to mark, as a follow-up conclusion, is that internet can offer new possibilities that we have to foster then. On the other hand, we must not ignore the other side of the coin, according to which the risk taken is high. Every time we surf online, we are dependent on machines, which may betray us and turn our souls into serfs. At-tension please.
David Porter Internet Culture, Routledge, New York and London 1997
Routledge
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