By Caroline Kealey Presented at Communication Technology and
Culture Seminars Graduate Program in Communication Carleton University.Excerpt:
Telecomputing has swept onto the scene as a radically new form of communication which
challenges traditional notions of time and space. Computer networking's multipoint to
multipoint format is an attack on the liberal-democratic forms of linear communications.
In its "hypertextuality", networks muddle the norms of communications in liberal
society. At root, cyberspace is a challenge to the fundamental structure of liberalism --
the dichotomy between the public and private spheres.
This paper will examine three central debates surrounding cyberspace, namely the issues
of community, authorship and revolution and illustrate that these concerns are symptoms of
the fluid nature of the public and private spheres in computer networks. Because
cyberspace seems to defiantly wriggle itself out of traditional theoretical boxes which
have been staples of communications research (including sociology, critical theory and
political economy), a new model of analysis is needed to capture the essence of the issues
rising from this technology. Hannah Arendt's paradigm of the ideal types of the public and
private spheres offers a helpful framework to understand the central debates surrounding
cyberspace. Using Hannah Arendt's typology, I posit that cyberspace is currently neither
public nor private -- it is a social phenomenon which muddles the classic distinction
between the public and private realms. As social space, cyberspace confuses the roles of
individuals in mass society, stifling the technology's potential for facilitating true
political action...
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