ABSTRACT
In this chapter we provide a brief overview of a number of key aspects central to understanding the scope and importance of the spatialities and geometries of cyberspace.1 The ideas presented provide a broad context and overarching analytical framework for the analyses and discussion in subsequent chapters. As such, many of the themes are returned to throughout the book, where they are discussed in greater detail. We start by introducing briefly the basic building blocks of cyberspace, followed by a short history of their development. Next, we detail why cyberspace matters – why it is an important focus of study, through a dialectal analysis of how cyberspace disrupts a number of processes and foundational, particularly geographical, assumptions that underpin modernist society and epistemologies. Lastly, we provide a brief outline of the ways in which academics and commentators have theorised cyberspace, before detailing the approach we have used to underpin the analysis in subsequent chapters. In particular, we seek to theorise the role of space and the nature of online spatiality.
