Sheenagh Pietrobruno
Department of English, Fatih University, Istanbul, Turkey
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Published in: Inter: A European Cultural Studies : Conference in Sweden 11-13 June 2007
Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings 25:53, p. 501-508
Published: 2007-11-27
ISBN:
ISSN: 1650-3686 (print), 1650-3740 (online)
The Internet is shaped through metaphors into spaces that have their counterparts in the “real” world such as the global city; superhighway or library. Although the generation of online space can be produced by lived embodied practices as users download or upload videos; read and write texts and create and view images; the production of space in this context is primarily phenomenological; produced through the imagination of its users. This paper argues that the Internet resembles the “real” world yet in miniature. A key facet of miniaturization applied to the creation of virtual space is that enclosed within the tiny is the immense. Consequently; by virtue of the imagination of its users; the boundary between large and small dissolves: contained within the miniature controlled world of a computer screen is a vast sphere of seemingly endless possibility. This research builds upon a central concern in cyberculture studies of whether the Internet is a locus of control or freedom; while incorporating an array of fields and disciplines beyond media studies namely philosophy; literary theory; cultural theory and linguistics.
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