Cybercultures

Needing guidance and seeking insight, the Council of Europe approached Pierre Lévy, one of the world's most important and well-respected theorists of digital culture, for a report on the state (and, frankly, the nature) of cyberspace. The result is this extraordinary document, a perfectly lucid and accessible description of cyberspace-from infrastructure to practical applications-along with an inspired, far-reaching exploration of its ramifications. A window on the digital world for the technologically timid, the book also offers a brilliant vision of the philosophical and social realities and possibilities of cyberspace for the adept and novice alike. In an overview, Lévy discusses the distinguishing features of cyberspace and cyberculture from anthropological, philosophical, cultural, and sociological points of view. An optimist about the future potential of cyberspace, he eloquently argues that technology-and specifically the infrastructure of cyberspace, the Internet-can have a transformative effect on global society. Some of the issues he takes up are new art forms; changes in relationships to knowledge, education, and training; the preservation of linguistic and cultural differences; the emergence and implications of collective intelligence; the problems of social exclusion; and the impact of new technology on the city and democracy in general. In considerable detail, Lévy describes the ways in which cyberspace will help promote the growth of democracy, primarily through the participation of individuals or groups. His analysis is enlivened by his own personal impressions of cyberculture-garnered from bulletin boards, mailing lists, virtual reality demonstrations, andsimulations. Immediate in its details, visionary in its scope, deeply informed yet free of unnecessary technical language, Cyberculture is the book we require in our digital age. --Publisher.

Japan is rightly regarded as one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world, yet the development and deployment of Internet technology in Japan has taken a different trajectory compared with Western nations. This is the first book to look at the specific dynamics of Japanese Internet use. It examines the crucial questions: * how the Japanese are using the Internet: from the prevalence of access via portable devices, to the fashion culture of mobile phones * how Japan's "cute culture" has colonized cyberspace * the role of the Internet in different musical subcultures * how different men's and women's groups have embraced technology to highlight problems of harassment and bullying * the social, cultural and political impacts of the Internet on Japanese society * how marginalized groups in Japanese society - gay men, those living with AIDS, members of new religious groups and Japan's hereditary sub-caste, the Burakumin - are challenging the mainstream by using the Internet. Examined from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, using a broad range of case-studies, this is an exciting and genuinely cutting-edge book which breaks new ground in Japanese studies and will be of value to anyone interested in Japanese culture, the Internet and cyberculture.

Cybercultures: Mediations of Community, Culture, Politics, is a collection of essays that critically examine the role that digital media and online cultures play in the rearticulation of contemporary societies, cultures and polities. This volume interrogates the nature and effects of the existence of cybercultures in the world of Web 2.0, new media and media convergence, and mobile digital networks. It does so by examining the effect of cybercultures upon the contemporary articulation of phenomena as diverse as bodily experience, memory, the imagination, history, political participation, the nature of community, artistic creativity, and the instability of rhetoric, language and meaning.

This introduction to cybercultures provides a cutting-edge and much needed guide to the rapidly changing world of new media and communication. Considers cyberculture and new media through contemporary race, gender and sexuality studies and postcolonial theory Offers a clear analysis of some of the most complex issues in cybercultures, including identity, network societies, new geographies, and connectivity Includes discussions of gaming, social networking, geography, net-democracy, aesthetics, popular internet culture, the body, sexuality and politics Examines key questions in the political economy, racialization, gendering and governance of cyberculture

An Introduction to Cybercultures provides an accessible guide to the major forms, practices and meanings of this rapidly-growing field. From the evolution of hardware and software to the emergence of cyberpunk film and fiction, David Bell introduces readers to the key aspects of cyberculture, including email, the internet, digital imaging technologies, computer games and digital special effects. Each chapter contains `hot links' to key articles in its companion volume, The Cybercultures Reader, suggestions for further reading, and details of relevant websites. Individual chapters examine: · Cybercultures: an introduction · Storying cyberspace · Cultural Studies in cyberspace · Community and cyberculture · Identities in cyberculture · Bodies in cyberculture · Cybersubcultures · Researching cybercultures

Moving beyond traditional cyberculture studies paradigms in several key ways, this comprehensive collection marks the increasing convergence of cyberculture with other forms of media, and with all aspects of our lives in a digitized world. Includes essential readings for both the student and scholar of a diverse range of fields, including new and digital media, internet studies, digital arts and culture studies, network culture studies, and the information society Incorporates essays by both new and established scholars of digital cultures, including Andy Miah, Eugene Thacker, Lisa Nakamura, Chris Hables Gray, Sonia Livingstone and Espen Aarseth Created explicitly for the undergraduate student, with comprehensive introductions to each section that outline the main ideas of each essay Explores the many facets of cyberculture, and includes sections on race, politics, gender, theory, gaming, and space The perfect companion to Nayar's Introduction to New Media and Cyberculture

The papers in this volume reflect the debates that progressed during the 4th Global conference on Cybercultures: Exploring Critical Issues, held as a part of Cyber Hub activity in Salzburg, Austria in March 2009. The edited draft papers make up a snapshot for the actual publishing.

In the early 1960s, computers haunted the American popular imagination. Bleak tools of the cold war, they embodied the rigid organization and mechanical conformity that made the military-industrial complex possible. But by the 1990s—and the dawn of the Internet—computers started to represent a very different kind of world: a collaborative and digital utopia modeled on the communal ideals of the hippies who so vehemently rebelled against the cold war establishment in the first place. From Counterculture to Cyberculture is the first book to explore this extraordinary and ironic transformation. Fred Turner here traces the previously untold story of a highly influential group of San Francisco Bay–area entrepreneurs: Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth network. Between 1968 and 1998, via such familiar venues as the National Book Award–winning Whole Earth Catalog, the computer conferencing system known as WELL, and, ultimately, the launch of the wildly successful Wired magazine, Brand and his colleagues brokered a long-running collaboration between San Francisco flower power and the emerging technological hub of Silicon Valley. Thanks to their vision, counterculturalists and technologists alike joined together to reimagine computers as tools for personal liberation, the building of virtual and decidedly alternative communities, and the exploration of bold new social frontiers. Shedding new light on how our networked culture came to be, this fascinating book reminds us that the distance between the Grateful Dead and Google, between Ken Kesey and the computer itself, is not as great as we might think.