Cyberculture
All I did: folded words as
DAVID BELL
A neologism derived from a neologism, cybercul-
ture welds together the “cyber-” from cyberspace
with “culture.” It is important to understand what
happens when cyber- and culture are brought
together, and in order to work toward that under-
standing we need to begin by saying a few words
about cyberspace (and some related things). The
term cyberspace was famously coined by cyber-
punk novelist William Gibson in his 1984 novel
Neuromancer, to describe the imaginary “datas-
cape” which his characters entered by “jacking
in” – connecting their consciousness directly
to networked computers. The well-known and
often-quoted formulation in Neuromancer runs
like this:
Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experi-
enced daily by millions of legitimate operators.
… A graphic representation of data abstracted
from the banks of every computer in the human
system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light
ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and
constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.
(Gibson 1984: 67)
This vivid description offered a powerful
fictional portent for the future, a future of
unthinkable complexity and constellations of
data. However, the computing science realities of
what was then emerging as cyberspace were little
known to Gibson; nevertheless, the term and the
way cyberspace was depicted in Neuromancer
have had a profound influence upon its devel-
opment and its representation – an influence
Gibson did not foresee when he cobbled the word
together. As he put it:
Assembled word cyberspace from small and read-
ily available components of language. Neologic
spasm: the primal act of pop poetics. Preceded
any concept whatever. Slick and hollow – awaiting
The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. Edited by George Ritzer.
© 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2007 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781405165518.wbeosc195
received meaning.
taught. Now other words accrete in the interstices.
(Gibson 1991: 27)
Other words have indeed accreted in the
interstices of Gibson’s cyberspace – including
cyberculture. Moreover, cyberspace came to be
the preferred term for scholars writing about
particular configurations of media and com-
munications technologies, most especially the
Internet (though others prefer an expanded def-
inition that encompasses other realms of digital
technology and digital culture; see Bell 2001).
Cyberspace became a hot topic across a range of
academic disciplines in the 1990s, as more and
more researchers turned their attention to the
many ways that the Internet was transforming
ever greater parts of people’s lives. Through the
course of the 1990s, research and writing on
cyberspace began to branch and specialize, and
there was something of a publishing boom. Aside
from computer science research, a large body of
work emerged which focused on the social and
cultural aspects of cyberspace. These “cyberspace
studies” have morphed over time, particularly as
scholars have brought ideas and theories from
other disciplines – psychology, sociology, cultural
studies, or geography, for instance – into contact
with the Internet and related technologies.
In terms of the subject area we might call
“cyberculture studies,” David Silver (2000) has
tracked the development of cyberculture as a
field of study across the 1990s, identifying three
distinct phases. His typology offers a useful way
of introducing the trajectory of these diverse
studies in this important decade, during which
the foundations of cyberculture studies were
solidified. Silver names the first substantive phase
“popular cyberculture,” characterized by journal-
istic writing, personal accounts of being online,
popular history publications about the develop-
ment of the Internet, and large numbers of “how
to” books helping people make use of computers
and networks. Accounts from this phase tend to
be descriptive, often experiential, but are split in
2 C YBERCULTURE
terms of how their authors view the impacts that
the Internet is having on people’s lives. At the most
extreme ends of this divide are what Silver calls
technofuturist writings, which tend to be over-
whelmingly optimistic, even utopian, about the
promises of online life. Journalists writing in new
US magazines like Wired or Mondo 2000 typify
technofuturism for Silver, as do writers describing
cyberspace as a new frontier ripe for pioneers
to colonize (see, e.g., Rheingold 1993). Writing
from a polar-opposite, profoundly dystopian,
perspective are the “Neo-Luddites,” who see in
cyberspace multiple threats to human existence
(see, e.g., Sale 1995). Of course, most writing
during this phase falls somewhere in between
these “dystopian rants or utopian raves” (Silver
2000: 20). Nevertheless, this fundamental binary
divide – is cyberspace good or bad? – continues
to structure many scholars’ thinking; indeed,
later periods in the development of cyberculture
studies revisit this in their own terms, and rants
and raves continue to appear from both sides.
However, as the field of study has evolved, it has
refined both the theoretical and methodological
tools brought to analyze the Internet, as well as
focusing in on more specific domains and effects
of cyberspace.
The second phase of cyberculture scholarship is
called by Silver simply “cyberculture studies,” in
recognition of a shift away from populist accounts
(though these continue to be published) toward
a more scholarly approach to understanding
the Internet. Crucially, two major focuses were
brought center-stage in this phase, both of which
are concerned with the relationship between
online and offline life: studies of community
and studies of identity. Here we see one way in
which cyber- and culture are brought together:
by exploring how some of the key concerns of
cultural studies (such as identity or community)
are transformed in cyberspace. Silver rightly
identifies the ur-texts here as Rheingold’s The
Virtual Community (1993) and Turkle’s Life on
the Screen (1995) – these are the “twin pillars” of
second-phase cyberculture studies (Silver 2000:
23), hugely influential books whose impact can
be felt to this day. Turkle’s book is an important
illustration of the second way that cyber- and
culture are brought together in this phase: the use
of cultural theory to think about cyberspace. In
her exploration of online identity, Turkle draws
heavily on psychoanalytic, poststructuralist, and
postmodern theories of self-identity, which help
her to understand how online identities are frac-
tured and multiple. Other scholars also began to
bring their own favorite theories and theorists
into cyberspace, leading to a productive period
in which cyberculture studies diversified: soci-
ologists brought social network approaches to
understanding online communities, for example,
while geographers brought theories of space and
place into contact with cyberspace and feminist
scholars introduced ideas of cyberfeminism (see,
e.g., Plant 1997; Crang et al. 1999; Smith & Kol-
lock 1999). At the same time, there was also a
diversification in terms of research methods used
to study cyberculture, as researchers brought
their own methodological traditions and innova-
tions into cyberspace: qualitative and quantitative
methods, linguistic and textual techniques, and
so on.
Silver notes that studies produced in this phase
tend to be more positive and optimistic about
cyberspace, seeing productive new possibilities
for identity and community online. However,
many accounts rest on a problematic separation
of online and offline (sometimes called “real
life” or “real world”) experiences – another
dualism which continues to haunt many studies
of cyberculture to this day. Nevertheless, this
second phase marks a consolidation of academic
cyberculture studies marked by diverse theories
and methods, intersections with diverse dis-
ciplines, and a gathering momentum in terms
of both volume and growing sophistication of
published material. We could say that this phase
marks the beginning of something of a discipline
of cyberculture studies itself, in fact, as degree
courses, conferences, and networks blossomed in
academia.
In the latter part of the 1990s, a third phase is
identified by Silver. This he labels “critical cyber-
culture studies.” Marked by continuing growth
and diversification, Silver tracks four themes
which rose to dominance in this period (for an
overview of the breadth of this phase, see Bell &
Kennedy 2000). The first is in part a counter to the
problematic online/offline split of phase two, and
is concerned with contextualizing cyberspace and
cyberculture, in terms of how economic, social,
and cultural interactions occur simultaneously
in cyberspace and in “real life.” Empirical work
 C YBERCULTURE
bridging online and offline field sites – such as
Miller and Slater’s (2000) ethnographic study of
Internet use in Trinidad – has been particularly
important in bringing back together the two
worlds split apart in earlier studies. Detailed
empirical work has also performed a valuable
hype-busting function, replacing the rants and
raves of earlier phases with more balanced,
empirically grounded studies.
The second theme of critical cyberculture stud-
ies picked out by Silver focuses on discursive
constructions of cyberspace – the stories we tell
about it. This means unpacking the ways that
cyberspace is imagined and represented across
a wide range of cultural texts, from cyberpunk
novels and movies to Internet service providers’
adverts or pop songs (see Bell 2001). It also
involves exploring the dominant discourses via
which the Internet is talked about, whether
the frontier mythology mentioned earlier or
the “gold rush” discourse that provoked and
sustained the dot.com explosion. Thirdly, Sil-
ver notes an increasing emphasis on questions
of access and inequality – another valuable
dose of hype-busting, since it replaces the dis-
course of information freedom and the Internet’s
democratic “worldwideness” with studies high-
lighting patterns of uneven development, issues
of marginalization, and barriers to access to
technology at all levels, from the global to the
individual. Access questions bring into focus
the extent to which axes of social identity such
as race, class, gender, and sexuality are either
reproduced or challenged in cyberspace, with
studies concluding both that cyberspace rein-
forces existing divides as well as bringing in new
ones, and that it can provide space for new and
productive kinds of identity work to take place
(see, e.g., Nakamura 2002).
Finally, Silver notes an increase in studies
exploring design and visual culture aspects of
cyberspace, particularly around the idea of the
interface: how cyberspace is represented to us on
the screens of our computers – a neat return to
Gibson’s originary formulation. Work on inter-
faces has also returned to themes introduced in
earlier phases, such as the role of web pages in
expressing self-identity, and the role of partici-
patory design in facilitating online communities.
Crucially for Silver, critical cyberculture studies
finally acknowledges the messy commingling
3
of online and offline life and experience: “cy-
berculture is best comprehended as a series of
negotiations that take place both online and
off. … In the new millennium, it is the task of
cyberculture scholars to acknowledge, reveal and
critique these negotiations to better understand
what takes place within the wires” (Silver 2000:
30).
Having described Silver’s useful brief history of
cyberculture studies, attention can now be turned
to an essay which attempts to define a program for
cultural studies of the Internet, Jonathan Sterne’s
“Thinking the Internet: Cultural Studies versus
the Millennium” (1999). This is an important
article in that it attempts to lay out a specifically
cultural studies approach to cyberspace, there-
fore productively exemplifying Silver’s critical
cyberculture phase. It provides a road map of
what cultural studies as a discipline uniquely
brings to analysis of cyberspace, urging scholars
to “move beyond the commonplaces and clichés
of Internet scholarship and [to] reconceptualize
it in intellectually challenging and politically vital
terms” (Sterne 1999: 260). It is, perhaps, in the last
part of that statement – about being politically
vital – that Sterne’s essay is most insightful; he
reminds scholars of the deep political commit-
ment at the heart of the cultural studies project,
arguing that if it is (or should be) about anything,
then cultural studies is about culture and power.
Any critical study of the Internet should therefore
have at its heart an analysis of culture and power
since, as Poster (2001: 2) suggests, “without a
concept of culture, the study of new media incor-
porates by default the culture of the dominant
institutions in society” – the state and the market.
To advance his argument, Sterne places empha-
sis on the need to understand and critically
analyze the politics of knowledge production
(asking what is at stake in studying the Inter-
net, and how new knowledge of cyberspace
can advance emancipatory politics), the need
to be acutely aware of context (the manifold
relationships between people, place, practices,
and things), and the need to produce a theory of
articulation (how things are connected together).
Such a theory would have as its central concerns
“(a) what counts in a cultural study of the Internet
and (b) how to think about and represent the
Internet” (Sterne 1999: 263, emphasis in origi-
nal). Finally, and echoing points made earlier,
4 C YBERCULTURE
Sterne reinforces the necessity of a commitment
to theory as a way of finding new and more
effective ways to describe and analyze cyberspace
and cyberculture.
Making a point resonant with Silver’s discussion
of critical cyberculture studies, Sterne calls for
a move beyond the simplistic online/offline (or
virtual/real) split which has for so long impaired
analyses of cyberspace, toward a conceptualiza-
tion that emphasizes understanding the place of
the Internet in everyday life. Equally importantly,
Sterne argues for the need to reconnect the Inter-
net to other media, and to techniques of analyzing
other media. This is particularly crucial in the
current period, given the increasing convergence
of new (and old) media. As new digital devices
such as MP3 players and palm pilots become
more and more ubiquitous, and as existing media
are repurposed for the digital age (mobile phones,
for example), so the idea of separating out the
Internet as an object of study becomes redundant.
At the same time, the uses to which we may now
put our computers – from listening to the radio
to editing home movies to shopping – calls for a
broader rethinking of what it is we are studying
when we are studying cyberculture.
This last point is worth exploring in a bit more
detail. Some researchers have suggested that we
need to track the myriad sites where we encounter
digital culture beyond the narrow emphasis on
the computer screen: cyberspace exists in all
kinds of places, from CGI-heavy movies to imag-
ing technologies used in biomedicine (see Bell
2001). Moreover, the kinds of contact that we
have with these new technologies is equally var-
ied: we may be transformed into data and lodged
in databases thanks to the manifold technologies
of data collection that monitor our habits and
routines (from our shopping practices to our
workplace productivity); equally, we may have
particularly intimate relationships with devices
that become part of our everyday lives, even part
of our bodies – leading some scholars to theorize
the body–technology interface by using ideas of
the cyborg or the post-human (see Gray 1995;
Badmington 2000).
Cyberculture must be about critically analyzing
all of these sites, and the discourses and represen-
tations that surround them. In part that means
attending to the mundane interactions we have
with technologies such as word processors or
console games; but it also requires an awareness
of the cutting edge of new and future technolo-
gies, such as nanotechnology, artificial life, and
artificial intelligence. To fully encompass all that
cyberculture means is no easy task, therefore.
While some scholars have called for junking the
term cyberculture studies in favor of newer, more
inclusive terms like web studies or new media
studies (or even new media cultures; see Marshall
2004), others continue to see valuable mileage
in working with and through cyberculture as a
“contested and evolving discourse [whose] dis-
cussants include activists, politicians, computer
geeks, social scientists, science fiction writers,
digital artists, etc., all of whom are involved in
the creation of new concepts and ideas” (Bell
et al. 2004: xiii). To that end, the concept is still
very much alive, indeed teeming with life, and
we need the open, even promiscuous, approach
to theory and method, as well as the political
commitment, of critical cyberculture studies to
continue to engage creatively and critically with
the past, present, and future of cyberculture.
SEE ALSO: Consumption and the Internet;
Cybercrime; Cybersexualities and Virtual Sexu-
ality; Digital; Information Technology; Internet;
Simulation and Virtuality
REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED
READINGS
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