Jesper Taekke

First Name = Jesper

Last Name = Taekke

University/Country = University of Aarhus, Denmark

Dissertation Title = Human, Space and Society

Emphesis = Cyberspace as a parallel space for social processes
Year = 1999

English Summary:

In this thesis I am dealing with the concept of space through which I want to conceptualise cyberspace. I will work with philosophy, sociology and the history of technology as perspectives on space to find out what space means to humans and society. My motivation is to declare cyberspace as a parallel space to the space of geography. In my argument the socioevolution is described as human colonisation of the geographical space by the dynamic interplay of technological innovations and the differentiation of society. The space of geography is reduced by technology in the process of socioevolution. At the same time this process is the genesis of cyberspace which becomes a space in itself by the invention of the computer connected by the Internet. 

Historically we can see that the invention of writing combined with transportation technology (e.g. the horsemen and the ship) and infrastructure (e.g. the road and the bridge) opens the possibility for the creation of empires with a large extension in space. At the same time writing enabled administration and stratification in the differentiation of society. The reduction of space meant that the emperor became able to communicate through the geographical space with reduced time consumption and without moving bodily from his centre of power. Due to the differentiation of society the privilege of reducing space by technology becomes available to ordinary people and the revolution in transportation technology by the invention of the train standardises time. These events had social consequences and a process of disembedding and restructuring of social relations on a more and more global scale started. In the long run it meant that society got functionary differentiated and that s!
ymbolic generalised communicationmedias such as money became global semantics which functions as the binding force of the regulation of a world society consisting of individualised persons.

With the development of mass media and the networked computer the colonisation of the geographic space was ended, but with the networked computer humans have access to a parallel space for externalising fundamental potentials. My argument for this statement is that it is possible from a philosophical phenomenological point of view to applicate the abstracted concept of space from geographical space to cyberspace. The experienced space is different in cyberspace and gives a different frame where communication must take place in a different mode. 

My theoretical basis is the theory of social systems by Niklas Luhmann who claims that society is nothing else but a network of communications. I try to apply the sociology of Luhmann to cyberspace to investigate how social systems maintain and reproduce themselves under the conditions of cyberspace. When humans reduce geographic space by communication technology it does not only mean changes in society on a macro level but also implies a shift from co-presence in interaction to interaction between absent people. When people interact in cyberspace they are not co-present in geographic space and must use a different mode when communicating (e.g. to identify, to understand and to have confidence in each other). The aim of this thesis is to understand what space means to humans and society by explaining the genesis of cyberspace as a consequence of socioevolution, and to conceptualise cyberspace as a parallel space for social processes.

posted Sept. 30, 1999 Return