Jay Fienberg has a nice distinction between the definition of a space and our concept of participants in that defined space. This very much belongs in the discussion on the death of cyberspace. We, or at least I, have been narrowing down to a conclusion that Cyberspace was never a term with a universally accepted definition.
Some people resented it. Some people embraced it. And in good existential form, excellent arguments of equal weight could be made to both prove and disprove its existence.
Jay is looking at the Blogosphere. He says:
Blogs are like cars. They are something useful to people because, like cars, blogs give people access to personal use vehicles (personal communication vehicles in the case of blogs, personal transportation vehicles in the case of cars).
...some people talk about the autosphere just as some talk about the blogosphere (note: the word "autosphere" isn't in widespread use, but it helps me make this point). That is, there are people who are in the auto industry or who are car enthusiasts who see a "world of cars" and are interested in what's going on with it—"what's happening in the world of cars".
This is not dissimilar from my notion that now we have many Cyberspaces - where the definition of the community creates the space. The Blogosphere isn't necessarlily a creation or residence of every Blogger ... but various Bloggers use the term to define a certain space within Cyberspace. The Blogosphere, as Jay defines it, would be a kind of Cyberspace.
In other words, a Cyberspace is a semantic or functional zone in which certain rules are enforced. Blogs can be about anything from Fundamentalist Christianity to Canibalism - but the rules of blogging are generally enforced. Those are usually that the blog is a personal entry, produced on a system presenting content in reverse chronology, in which you get community capital by extending the remarks of others and providing relevant links to other information.
Taseratti: Cyberspace Blogosphere Blogs
"my notion that now we have many Cyberspaces - where the definition of the community creates the space"
Yes! I am slowly beginning to promote the idea of "different webs", which I created, in part, as my own way to reconcile how definitions like the blogosphere, web 2.0, the semantic web, microformats, web standards, etc., suggest conflicting ideas for what is "the web".
I haven't written much about it yet, but I introduced "different webs" in this blog post:
http://icite.net/blog/200506/web_idiom_different.html
Posted by: Jay Fienberg | 20 January 2006 at 12:36