Abstract
Computer mediated communication (CMC) is fundamentally different from other modes of informational exchange. The presence of those with whom one communicates is not completely known. Their identities are in question, easily created, and changed by CMC users themselves who are not constricted by geographical or political boundaries. CMC represents a new form of communication—a “cyborg discourse” consisting of dynamic interplay of words, symbols, and metaphors. Participants in CMC engage in a unique human/technology interface that operates in a disembodied environment. It appears as a world without a history, dominated by connections. This chapter seeks to briefly describe and assess CMC’s philosophical significance and its influence upon communication theory. Once regarded as either the advent of a blissful utopia or the death of human intercourse, CMC has come to be seen as a phenomenon with wide-ranging possibilities, one that has recast communications as a coding problem.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Poststructuralist: Pertaining to that branch of postmodernism which maintains (among its other contentions) that meaning is created through discourse.
Threads: Conversational topics on the Internet.
Cyborg Discourse: Computer mediated conversation.
Postmodernist: Pertaining to the rejection of systems of thought based on absolute truths and/or rationalism.
Simulacrum: In social theory, a copy of something for which there is no longer (or for which there has never been) an original.
Cyberspace: A term that has become a synonym for the internet and/or the world wideWeb.
Cyberculture: The patterns of human activity and symbolic structures that have emergedfrom the use of computer mediated communication.
Cyborg Discourse: Computer mediated conversation.
Cyborg: A human who has certain physiological processes aided or controlled by mechanical or electronic devices (from the terms cybernetic and organism).
Disembodiment: A state of freedom from one’s material existence.
Threads: Conversational topics on the Internet.
Poststructuralist: Pertaining to that branch of postmodernism which maintains (among its other contentions) that meaning is created through discourse.
Disembodiment: A state of freedom from one’s material existence.
Postmodernist: Pertaining to the rejection of systems of thought based on absolute truths and/or rationalism.
Cyberculture: The patterns of human activity and symbolic structures that have emergedfrom the use of computer mediated communication.
Cyberspace: A term that has become a synonym for the internet and/or the world wideWeb.
Simulacrum: In social theory, a copy of something for which there is no longer (or for which there has never been) an original.
Cyborg: A human who has certain physiological processes aided or controlled by mechanical or electronic devices (from the terms cybernetic and organism).