Psyberspace The Book - Contents > Introduction
Overview:
Overview of the whole book:
Psyberspace... the title conveys the essence - that cyberspace is a psychological space.
This is in the tradition of books that hype the digital revolution but not technology per se. It is a revolution of the soul and that is more true because it is revolutionising commerce, communication, social relationships and so on. The industrial revolution was agualbly also in this tradition, and no doubt our identity and the nature of god - and the nature of the imaginal space changed with that -
This one is both - a change in the mode of production and in the nature of the imaginal space. More directly a change in the space.
Links:
(Delete bits of the links once they are incorporated into the Draft)
Psyberspace ATP Conf Version - this is at
Eros and Psyche - link to photo
Books ! wl
Dans Notes for his psyberspace talk
Psybernet: Key Ideas : Cyberspace wl
Archetypes of the Internet - Dolores E. Brien
hayles - How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics.Notes:
(Delete bits of the notes once they are incorporated into the Draft)
"Psyberspace
Between people connecting, even while making love and sometimes
more so
then, is a space. The simple but rare ability to turn an
inner eye into this
imaginal space reveals a world that is not
consensual and not of our making.
That space, filled with
familiar contours and creatures, is
cyberspace."
What is a nation? What is globalisation? What is a neigbourhood? We answer these questions by looking at images. We each see different ones but we do not choose the ones we see, they come from a realm beyond our making. Plato had a name for it, and many philosophers no doubt and the idea is familiar to and psychotherapists. Whatever we call it, the imaginal world, the metaxy, the psyche, the soul, the matrix, heaven or hell, many every day realities are not exactly "out there" and nor are they purely in our head like a day dream they are in a realm that w now know as cyberspace.
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The book is not c the past *or the future* - no futurology
it is c what is now & forever
universal - peraps virtualization of the real can be left out!
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Psyberspace
1. The Net is the psyche - it is an inherently psychological space.
2. Psychotherapy has been called the quest for the symbolic - the search is over. The Net is all symbols.
3. The gold of the Net is like the gold of the alchemist, psychological treasure - many get it muddled up with literal gold, hence the inflated stock.
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Psyberspace ManifestoWe have had Technorealism, and Cluetrain ... here is Psybernaught manifesto:
Online groups are alchemical crucibles.
In online groups you can
cook up gold or get covered in lead. It is all a matter of getting the
ingredients, the temperature and the timing just right. The variables online
rarely relate to those of face-to-face groups.
Online groups have transformed the workplace and the learning
environment
Educational courses need to be re designed for online
groups. Online groups are not an add-on. Commercial practice needs to be
redesigned from the ground up now there is a new environment. This is the first
time there has been a new environment like this since the printing press, radio
and television did not count.
Online groups are imaginal space vessels.
Time, gravity
and energy conform to different equations in cyberspace. Think of solitary
silence while orbiting the world, or discover your own metaphor. It is hardly
ever sitting around a board-room table or a class of students looking at a white
board.
You can make them come but they will kill you!
They once
said "build it and they will come" and they did, and they still might. Creating
virtual space for peoplewho are already a groupis a different
story. An existing groupneeds to be be informed, invited, coached
and encouraged to work online. Some will love it, others will hate it and
put poison in the water supply.
Use low metaphor tools to create strong metaphors in the
mind.
Avoid tools that force a warm-up: office, desktop, blackboard,
board-room. Use tools that are more neutral such as mailing list, website
etc. and then use images that suited purpose of the group, studio, workshop,
basement... or office if it is one!
The NetisGroupware.
Email, mailing lists,
websites, are the basis for potent groups. Use Internet basic tools: the
skills are transferable, the standards are solid, software is stable, and they
are cheaper than propriety add-ons.
Social Design first, the rest will follow.
People make up
groups. Who are they? What are the sub-groups? What do they want? What do
they know? The tools to make it happen are already there, the art is to
know how to use them.
If it can be digitalised it will be done online.
Writing
and reading, once solitary tasks are now socialised online groups. This is
transforming education and work.
Literacy is Online Group literacy.
Literacy is complete
when it includes the ability to surf networks ofpeopleNow that the
alphabet is mutable and words are electronically searchable and moveable,
teaching the use ofpensis marginal. People have knowledge, finding,
belonging and contributing to suitable online groups completes a literacy that
begins with using a search engine.
Online authenticity is more important than offline
credentials.
Online we see into the mind directly. Knowledge
crammed for exams is no use in online work groups. Online we can see your
email!
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"serves these things and shold never draw attention to itself"
t&t p 36
again - the subject here is psyche (in this book)
serve that
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Amazon ad
When you sell a man a book ....
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N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman:
Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1999.
Reviewed by Andrew Kurtz
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Book: The Soul of a New Machine
Tracy Kidder
Report on The Soul of a New Machine
Tracy Kidder
p36 par 4 co ex
p37 last par re symbols
p110 no such thing as a perfect design
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