WHY CYBERSPACE? - Wendy Chun - Angela and Matthieu

In "Why Cyberspace?" Wendy Chun analyzes the construction of cyberspace and the Internet. She begins by exploring notions of space in cyberspace. Chun compares cyberspace to a shopping mall, a privately owned, publicly accessible space. Cyberspace emerged from Gibson's science fiction and thus it is a space imbued with mythical qualities. Cyberspace "is a free space in which to space out about space and place"(43). It challenges space and place. Chun investigates how the Internet is about time and points out that the Internet has erased the difference between viewing a storing data. Chun explores how different Gibson's Utopian cyberspace differs from the Internet. She shows how capitalist systems of control operate within the Internet and the broader computer industry, from the production of components by Asian women, to High-tech Orientalism, to the effect of the TCP/IP protocol. She interrogates the question: who is is the user who uses and who is the user who is used by the system? She also questions how the systems of control operating within the Internet effect democracy.