Old Email Archive

digest 1996-08-26 #001



11:24 PM 8/26/96 -0700
From: "Society for Literature & Science" 

Daily SLS Email Digest
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Date: 26 Aug 1996 06:34:18 -0700
From: Donald Theall 
Subject: Re: Earliest concept of "cyberspace"?
I've just caught up with the discussion on cyberspace.   The
background of the concept of cyberspace (and of the associated virtual
or
artificial reality) from the cultural side is part of a rather complex
history.
Almost a decade before William Gibson coined the term cyberspace, a
term he defined as "unthinkable complexity.  Lines of light ranged 
in the
nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data.  Like city
lights
receding", McLuhan had said that the computer:
steps up the velocity of logical sequential calculations to the speed
of
light reducing numbers to body count by touch. ...   It brings back the
Pythagorean occult embodied in the idea that "numbers are
all"; and at
the same time it dissolves hierarchy in favor of decentralization. ...
When
applied to new forms of electronic-messaging, such as teletext and
videotext, it quickly converts sequential alphanumeric texts into
multi-level
signs and aphorisms, encouraging ideographic summation, like
hieroglyphs.
McLuhan's particular use of  hieroglyphs here derives primarily from
Joyce and Giambattista Vico.
But this is just part of what I have called the pre-history of
cyberculture in an article entitled `Beyond the Orality/literacy
Dichotomy:
James Joyce and the pre-History of Cyberspace' published electronically
in _Postmodern Culture_ and available through their web site at
.  I have just
completed drafting a sequel to this article showing how that pre/history
is
related to concepts of synaesthesia and coenaesthesia (or syncretism)
and to the avant-garde response to the emergence of electric
technologies.
There is also some very preliminary discussion of this
issue in the conclusion as well as aspects of the background throughout
the
argument in my recently published _Beyond the Word: Reconstructing
Sense in the Joyce Era of Technology, Culture and Communication_ (U
Toronto, 1995).  These items might of interest to someone wanting to
explore one aspect of the background of Gibson's vision of
cyberculture.