Michael Benedikt,"Introduction" to Cyberspace: First Steps. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991.Cyberspace: Accessed through any computer linked into the system; a place, one place, limitless; entered equally from a basement in Vancouver, a boat in Port-au-Prince, a cab in New York, a garage in Texas City, an apartment in Rome, an office in Hong Kong, a bar in Kyoto, a cafe in Kinshasa, a laboratory on the Moon.
Complete equality is part of the Utopian view Mitchell discusses in City of Bits. Cyberspace can create a greater equality because there are no certainties of gender, age, social position, or education. Many feminist theorists such as Haraway believe that understanding how cyberspace and the creation of cyborgs equalize shows how women gain power from such technology. The counter-view is to see that by becoming equal, individuality is lost.
My personal experience is that cyberspace equality gives an equal sharing of ideas without losing individuality. For example, in class I usually don't speak because I get the feeling that everyone else knows what they are talking about and I'd sound trite or ill informed. When we write a mini-web of student essays, however, I have time to read carefully over the text discussed, think through my ideas, and discourse with the writings of my classmates in a way I'd be too shy to do in person. These ideas of equality bring up the importance of feminist theory and the issues of genders in cyberspace. This path leads to this site's discussions of gender.
