ABSTRACT

The internet has recently grown from a fringe cultural phenomenon to a significant site of cultural production and transformation. Internet Culture maps this new domain of language, politics and identity, locating it within the histories of communication and the public sphere. Internet Culture offers a critical interrogation of the sustaining myths of the virtual world and of the implications of the current mass migration onto the electronic frontier. Among the topics discussed in Internet Culture are the virtual spaces and places created by the citizens of the Net and their claims to the hotly contested notion of "virtual community"; the virtual bodies that occupy such spaces; and the desires that animate these bodies. The contributors also examine the communication medium behind theworlds of the Net, analyzing the rhetorical conventions governing online discussion, literary antecedents,and potential pedagogical applications.

part One|67 pages

Virtual Communities

chapter |18 pages

An Archaeology of Cyberspaces

Virtuality, Community, Identity
ByShawn P. Wilbur

chapter |15 pages

Community and Identity in the Electronic Village

ByDerek Foster

chapter |14 pages

Cyberspace and Place

The Internet as Middle Landscafe on the Electronic Frontier
ByDave Healy

part Two|58 pages

Virtual Bodies

chapter |14 pages

Flesh Made Word

Sex, Text and the Vikeual Body
ByShannon McRae

chapter |23 pages

Virtually Embodied

The Reality of Fantasy in a Multi-User Dungeon
ByMizuko Ito

chapter |18 pages

The Postmodern Paradiso

Dante, Cyberpunk, and the Technosophy of Cyberspace
ByJeffrey Fisher

part Three|68 pages

Language, Writing, Rhetoric

chapter |12 pages

Spam

Heteroglossia and Harassment in Cyberspace
ByCharles J. Stivale

chapter |15 pages

I Flamed Freud

A Case Study in Teletextual Incendiarism
ByWilliam B. Millard

chapter |19 pages

IMHO

Authority and Egautarian Rhetoric in the Virtual Coffeehouse
ByBrian A. Connery

chapter |17 pages

Essayistic Messages

Internet Newsgroups as an Etectronic Public Sphere
ByJames A. Knapp

part Four|77 pages

Politics and the Public Sphere