Culture is defined as 'the customs, beliefs, art, music, and all the other products of human thought made by a particular group of people at a particular time.' Technology, as a science, has often been infused with an air that counteracts culture. As a society moves nearer to the spectrum of technology and the Internet, it is felt that it is moving further away from its culture. We see such a proliferating trend in this 21st century as statesmen fret over the trade-off between the advent of technology and the deprivation of humanities.
But, we have all missed out the fact that technology, too, falls within the category of 'human thought made by a particular group of people at a particular time.' As a peripatetic travelling in Cyberspace, there is a need to get familiar with its culture. Otherwise, a common syndrome known as 'Culture Shock' will take effect.
Cyberspace actually encompasses all the culture around the world at different periods of human history. The usage of the World Wide Web enables a peripatetic to understand the culture of ancient Romans, while at the same time appreciate that of the Hans in ancient China.
However, no matter how extensive such coverage can be, culture needs to be experienced. Thus, the true culture of our destination: Cyberspace is not simply a semblance of what reality already has. The true culture it represents cannot be found elsewhere but when a peripatetic embarks on his or her travel.
No one really lives in Cyberspace, without participation outside of Cyberspace. By living, one means that actual existence, body and soul, interact with other bodies and souls. We may depend on the Internet and confine many of our daily activities there, but that is not living. We always go home. Homes that are beyond the virtual networks.
Yet the exact presence of Cyberspace is maintained by semi-permanent hypertravellers like us. Some more permanent than others. We meet fellow travellers, some new, some old, some known, some unknown. We converge, by some electronic interaction of matrix and connections, brought upon by different maps and finding different destinations. The one binding similarity is not how much we love/hate this place, but how we ultimately are merely visiting. The next time you hear someone exclaim that 'I depend so much on the Internet that I live in it!' Do not believe him, you and I both know that this is not home. The 'Home' that many web pages have which allows a peripatetic to return to the main page is not his or her actual "Home". That is merely the domain of an unreal, dead, nonliving web page.
A 'home' of a real, living person is ultimately unvirtual.
To sum it up, the culture of Cyberspace is in its non-obligatory stay. That is the draw pulling people like us to visit habitually. It is the destination that everyone returns to, and everyone goes home from.
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