CYBERSPACE; A wedding
By Barbara Joans, Ph.D

This article originally appeared in CyberEdge Journal Monograph #1. © 1991

Editor's note: This article is the slightly edited text of Dr. Joans' presentation at the Second International Conference on Cyberspace. Because of the relevance it has to the emerging culture of cyberspace, we are printing it in its entirety as our first mongraph.

I have lived within many cultures. Some were legitimately mine; I was born into them. Others were adopted through downward cultural mobility, life-changing choices, and extraordinary good luck. Some were byproducts of my work as a practicing, urban Anthropologist. Analyzing the cultures I have lived within is not a new game. It has been my profession and my passion for twenty-five years. It has paid the bills. I recently presented a paper where I compared four cultures in terms of authenticity and transcendence. The four cultures were the San Francisco world of SM, the roadworld of bikers, the psychospace of Esalen and the machinery of cyberspace. I visited cyberspace through the largess of VPL labs. That paper was fun. Fun to research, fun to write. While all four cultures were viewed in terms of authenticity and transcendence, only cyberspace gave me serious pause for serious concern. Something new was happening here; something very new.

As the hand, attached to me, and knowing it was attached to me, came up into the world I was viewing, experiencing, and that world was in a computer, I knew that I had passed into a different realm. The world, the machine world, I played in, was someone else's pre-created world. I could act only minimally within it but the indications for expanded activity are already present. How that world will be shaped when it achieves greater flexibility and maneuverability is a serious concern. Here is the stuff of sci-fi.

I, as BIOFORM, had just met some part of myself as CYBERFORM and it was disconcerting. In the world of Cyberpunk, meat had just met machine. In the interfacing, interconnecting infant word of ordinary reality, confronting created reality, an entire culture was, in an instant actualized. Meat, through the creation of the Machine, was creating culture and reshaping the body of the creature inhabiting that culture. As an Anthropologist, I was enthralled. Entering into a machine-human world catapulted me into another dimension. Cyberspace carves a space in the material world of high technology, but you designers of the meat-machine are also creating a culture for humans in a lock box. This is the part I'm interested in. What worlds do we find when we enter that lock box? What cultures wait there for us? Who ARE the people who are inputting these cultures into the machine? And do they know what they are doing? They are all sophisticated about the machinery of this material world. Are they also sophisticated about the anthropology of these cultural worlds? What do they know about the stuff of culture? This is about the humans who have created cyberspace and their imprinting of themselves upon that world.

Communities share a number of cultural markers including common language, values, views and visions. The Cyberspace Community shares only some of these markers but adds one very special dimension. It shares CYBERVISION. Because of sharing a world, a world of cyberspace, members believe that they are one community. I am here, with all the arrogance of social science, to say that they do not. In real-time, one half of them do not recognize the existence of the other half. In real-time, the other half does not recognize the differences of the first half. The first half thinks that all are the same. The second half also thinks that all are the same. The funny thing is, in cyberspace all are the same. There is trouble in New Paradise.

Trouble in New Paradise

Cyberfolk are made up of two very distinctive groups: Creative, Outlaw Visionaries and Law-and-Order Practitioners. Both groups inhabit cyberspace, create within this medium and appear absolutely necessary for the survival of this universe.
We know the visionaries; social movers and rabble rousers. Revolutionaries whose visions of justice and equality prepare our feted souls for freedom. We know the visionaries; artists and artisans whose visions of reality stir our imaginations and prepare our lusting spirits for life. We know the visionaries; intellectuals and saints whose visions of mind games inflame our limp brain cells and prepare our flagging bodies for transcendence.

We know the practitioners; builders and business folk. Applicators whose uses of cooked and concrete materials keeps our bodies fed and our shirts stuffed. We know the practitioners; doctors and do-badders. Military and medical folk who patch us up and pitch us out. We know the practitioners; service servers and paper pushers. Bureaucratic armies who keep the culture going and make the trains run on time. Without them, society slumps.

There is a category beyond visionary and practitioner and it is relatively new in human history; the visionary practitioner. The cyberspace scientist. We will return to this in a while.

In traditional cultures, creative outlaw visionaries usually give the practitioners shit. Law and order practitioners usually package it and sell it for a profit. Cyberspace, is not, however, a traditional culture. Cyberspace is a place where revolutionary outlaw visionaries and law and order practitioners unite, in ignorance, and create intelligent worlds.

Historically, in traditional societies, visionaries created their work in contempt of practitioners. The law and order practitioners usually ridiculed, persecuted and later prosecuted creative outlaw visionaries. Then, they stole their works.

Historically, creative outlaw visionaries lived lives that permitted them a measure of distance from law and order practitioners and the practitioners avoided the visionaries unless they went slumming.

Cyberspace changed all that.

Creative, outlaw visionaries need the machinery of the law and order practitioners to create the very stuff of their dreams. Practitioners find themselves on the same projects as visionaries. Practitioners hear the language of the visionary and perceive another practitioner. Because they are all speaking the same language, practitioners believe the visionaries to be no different from themselves.

Cyberspace will be a public world. This will be a world of public domain. Who gets to colonize this world is not an idle question. Cyberspace is a world up for grabs. How to prefigure it? What values, ideologies, implicit assumptions and explicit rules to impose within it?

How much consciousness does one need to gather in order to build these worlds? This is not so much a matter of ethics but of sensibilities. How much are the two groups willing to first look at, and then talk to, each other? At the meetings in San Francisco in December [The San Francisco Virtual Reality Conference], an audience member asked panelists how they were going to handle the differences in sensibilities expressed by both women and minorities? These differences were questioned because the majority of cyberfolk were neither women nor minorities. All the panelists took the question seriously. Do not worry, spoke the visionary, we are aware of social problems and are not going to make the old mistakes. Do not worry, spoke the practitioner, we are going to pay special attention to these issues so that none will feel that he is left out. After they spoke, I was really worried. The visionary dreamed a world of racial, sexual, gender and power equality. How this would be accomplished was never addressed. These were the visionaries' gut-level feelings. The visionary believed that the other cyberfolk felt this way, too. The practitioner structured a world of ethical intellectual choices. How minorities and women would get access to these worlds was never addressed. The ethical questions of military missions within cyberspace were not addressed. The linguistic oxymoron was never acknowledged. Neither visionary nor practitioner realized that each had a different AND contradictory view of cyberspace. Visionary saw cyberspace as a place to share egalitarian morality. Practitioner saw cyberspace as a place to shape ethical systems through competence, competition and individual excellence. These are different realities. Both practitioner and visionary answered the question in the same way. Both thought the issue of inequality was being addressed. Both were satisfied. I, however, was not. I was scared.

Historically, visionaries and practitioners would have never belonged to the same social group. Historically, each would have known right away that their answers would, by necessity, be different. They would have recognized these differences immediately. The differences would have sprung from the very stuff of their worlds. The differences would have reflected their sensibilities, life choices and life experiences. Only on a panel at a cyberspace conference, could both these groups have believed each to be a mirror of the other. Only in cyberspace can a marginalized group like the visionaries and a mainstream group like the practitioners actually believe that they understand each other.

Cyberfolk are made up of two very distinctive groups: Creative, Outlaw Visionaries and Law and Order Practitioners. Both groups inhabit cyberspace, create within this medium and appear absolutely necessary for the survival of this universe.

We know the visionaries; social movers and rabble rousers. Revolutionaries whose visions of justice and equality prepare our feted souls for freedom. Artists and artisans whose visions of reality stir our imaginations and prepare our lusting spirits for life. Intellectuals and saints whose visions of mindgames inflame our limpid brain cells and prepare our flagging bodies for transcendence.

We know the practitioners; builders and business folk. Applicators whose uses of cooked and concrete materials keeps our bodies fed and our shirts stuffed. Doctors and do-badders. Military and medical folk who patch us up and pitch us out. Service servers and paper pushers. Bureaucratic armies who keep the culture going and make the trains run on time. Without them, society slumps.

Creative, outlaw visionaries elevate madness to art, dare AND dream, reword the world and refigure reality. Law and order practitioners keep the trains on time, indeed build the trains, pay the bills and make business happen. In traditional cultures, creative outlaw visionaries usually give the practitioners shit. Law and order practitioners usually package it and sell it for a profit. Cyberspace, is not, however, a traditional culture. Cyberspace is a place where revolutionary outlaw visionaries and law and order practitioners unite, in ignorance, and create intelligent worlds.

Historically, in traditional societies, visionaries created their work in contempt of practitioners. The law and order practitioners usually ridiculed, persecuted and later prosecuted creative outlaw visionaries. Then, they stole their works.

Historically, creative outlaw visionaries lived lives that permitted them a measure of distance from law and order practitioners and the practitioners avoided the visionaries unless they went slumming.

Cyberspace changed all that

Now, creative, outlaw visionaries need the machinery of the law and order practitioners to create the very stuff of their dreams. Practitioners find themselves on the same projects as visionaries. Practitioners hear the language of the visionary and perceive another practitioner. Because you are all speaking the same language, practitioners believe the visionaries to be no different from themselves.

Cyberspace will be a public world. This will be a world of public domain. Who gets to colonize this world is not an idle question. Cyberspace is a world up for grabs. How do you want to prefigure it? What values, ideologies, implicit assumptions and explicit rules do you want to impose within it?

How much consciousness do you need to gather in order to build these worlds? This is not so much a matter of ethics but of sensibilities. How much are the two groups willing to first look at, and then talk to, each other? At the meetings in San Francisco, in December, [the San Francisco Conference on Virtual Reality, 1990] an audience member asked panelists how they were going to handle the differences in sensibilities expressed by both women and minorities? These differences were questioned because the majority of cyberfolk were neither women nor minorities. All the panelists took the question seriously. Do not worry, spoke the visionary, we are aware of social problems and are not going to make the old mistakes. Do not worry, spoke the practitioner, we are going to pay special attention to these issues so that none will feel that he is left out. After they spoke, I was really worried. The visionary dreamed a world of racial, sexual, gender and power equality. How this would be accomplished was never addressed. The practitioner structured a world of ethical intellectual choices. How minorities and women would get access to these worlds was never addressed. The ethical questions of military missions within cyberspace were not addressed. The linguistic oxymoron was never acknowledged. Neither visionary nor practitioner realized that each had a different AND contradictory view of cyberspace. Visionary saw cyberspace as a place to share egalitarian morality.

ractitioner saw cyberspace as a place to shape ethical systems through competence, competition and individual excellence. These are different realities. Both thought the issue of inequality was being addressed. Both were satisfied. I, however, was not.

Historically, visionaries and practitioners would have never belonged to the same social group. Historically, each would have known right away that their answers would, by necessity, be different. They would have recognized these differences immediately. The differences would have sprung from the very stuff of their worlds. The differences would have reflected their sensibilities, life choices and life experiences. Only on a panel at a cyberspace conference, could both these groups have believed each to be a mirror of the other. Only in cyberspace can a marginalized group like the visionaries and a mainstream group like the practitioners actually believe that they understand each other.

Let's look at other worlds

Let's look at other histories. There are many ways of dividing a culture. We can understand it immediately. Leaving aside the bulk of most populations, social groups in the 20th century fall into the major categories of visionaries and practitioners.

Historically, the visionaries make the breakthroughs, create the creatables and inspire the visions. While they number only a small percentage of any population, their influence is profound. The society-at-large, uses their visions and then tosses the visionary. Visionaries, however, are never complete outcasts and rarely born lumpen. The artist has to learn the craft, apprentice, get materials and survive. The revolutionaries, intellectuals and saints have to learn to read, write and polemicize. Mainly such folks come from some strata of the middle classes. THEN COMES PERSONAL RENOUNCEMENT, DOWNWARD MOBILITY AND RISK. The visionary risks all for the vision. The visionaries enjoy their visions and build their lives around them. Part of that enjoyment comes from thumbing their noses at the practitioners, living lives of separation from the mainstream. Historically this has been possible, because the visionaries needs could be met in separation from the practitioner. The ghetto, the garret, the grove always turn out to be the grooviest part of town anyway. The material needs and materials needed by the visionary were often immaterial. A lot of creative people could get by on very little.

Historically, the practitioner applies the visions of visionary. While numbering a huge percentage within the population, their influence is one of enabler rather than creator. The creator, the visionary, after learning the craft usually drops out of the mainstream world of the practitioner. The practitioner relies upon the visionary to keep that mainstream world vital and alive while at the same time destroying the visionary. The propensity of the practitioner to destroy the visionary keeps most visionaries dropped out. The practitioner keeps things moving, takes pride in pragmatic accomplishments and enjoys living a comfortable, safe and secure life. Practitioners appreciate their power, enjoy the works of visionaries and run their world. They make the laws, regulate the culture and live by their own rules. There is genuine comfort and security in the practitioner's world.

Enter cyber-age and cyberspace visionaries. Situations change. The visionary's needed materials become prohibitively expensive. None outside of the mainstream can afford them. Life in the underground remains available but not so the tools. In order to work at visionary craft, practitioners tools are necessary. The creative visionary needs the very expensive machinery of Cyberspace. The visionary and the practitioner begin to live in each other's hip pocket. This new reality is so untenable that neither visionary nor practitioner can cop to it. Visionary pretends that home is still an alternative culture milieu. Practitioner pretends that the tools have practical, real world, applications.

Enter the new CYBER-FOLK

The community of cyberspace is composed of both visionaries and practitioners. They have never understood each other, never liked each other nor respected one another. Mainly they have existed by mutually ignoring each other. The visionaries refuse to believe that the practitioners exist and the practitioners believe that the visionaries really think just like practitioners. What a mess! The first task for the cyberspace community is to acknowledge the existence of the other half. Then mutual exploration can begin. Since these worlds are so comically polarized this task is simpler than it seems.

The following is a caricature of the cyberspace visionary. The CV (cyberspace visionary) scorns others, especially practitioners (known as the military-industrial-bourgeois-corporate-multi- national complex) The CV sees the practitioner as narrow, death dealing, selfish, dumb, hierarchical, unenlightened and square. The CV sees self as groovy, open, politically correct, avant garde, left wing, sexy, in the know about society's secret structures and hip. CVs wear trendy clothes, scorn the nine to five groove, are known by how au currant chic they look and are openly disdainful of authority. CVs, of course, fancy themselves. They are mainly white, both male and female and no longer young; though they wish they were.

The following is a caricature of the cyberspace practitioner. The CP (cyberspace practitioner) also fancy themselves. But instead of scorning others, they don't acknowledge the existence of others. They really think that every one around thinks just like they do. They really do not comprehend that others can have opposite values and can experience the world differently. They expect their lives to turn out just fine. They obey the laws and expect that society will take care of them. They never question the basic premises of the rules they obey, because the rules work for them. The world they live in is seen as just, proper, complete and good. CPs see others in only two ways. Others, are either really just like themselves, or they are inferior. Since CVs share the world, they are seen as just like CPs, only funny looking. All others, people who are poor, minority, women or working class, are seen as inferior. The world does not work so well for these other people. Since the world is just, fair, proper and good, their bad fortune must be their own fault. Practitioners are not deliberately ageist, sexist, racist nor elitist. Their very success, however, leads them to a world view that says, "there's loads of good opportunities out there, if you don't take advantage of those opportunities, you have only yourself to blame".

Cyberspace practitioners are scrupulously fair within the limits of their world, but have problems seeing the limitations placed upon others trying to enter that world. They are usually known for the suits they wear and for the comfort with which they wear them. They are overwhelmingly male, all ages, but most comfortable with middle age, and white.

The Cyberspace Scientist

Cyberspace. It is a world about to be colonized. But I look at both groups and kind of shudder. I don't want either colonizing this new land. But I don't have a choice. They got here first. They can go on as they started: each in ignorance of the other. Or they can create a third alternative. They can transcend each other's natural flaws and cultural limitations and create a visionary practitioner, a Cyberspace Scientist.

This create-able creature would be able to colonize the new worlds of cyberspace with the visionaries' dreams but without their narrowness, self righteousness and arrogance. This creature would be able to colonize cyberspace with the practitioners' practicalities but without their ignorance and insensitivities. The cyberspace scientist would start with the knowledge that inequality exists and that shit happens.

A cyberspace scientist would be an impressive person. This person would know that perspective and opportunity and language matter. Gender specific words would be tossed, (no more MANKIND), stereotypes of all kinds would be examined and chucked and attention to access would be prioritized. Different kinds of folk could be invited to play in cyberspace to assure diversity of perspective.

Empathy training will not do. It will not do because it is easy to put on the trappings of the marginal OTHER when we know that we can remove those trappings whenever we want to. Marginality is painful. Marginality, in America means being Black, or poor or gay or Buddhist. Marginality, in America means being female. In fact, marginality, in America, means just about ANYONE who is not white, male, heterosexual and middle class. People in the center have just no way of knowing this.

Most people who play in cyberspace belong to the center. While visionaries add women as players, the cast still remains predominantly white and middle-class. If we are to have diversity within this Cyberspace Community, the diversified OTHER, must be invited within. Creating cultural access which can lead to cultural equality is a problem of such monumental proportions that it will make all the hardware problems seem like a piece of cake.

Finally, my task here is to suggest that the walls that exist between visionary and practitioner must be trashed. Both are legitimate here. Each has much to say to one another. Once they are talking to each other, creativity and applicability will increase. Once the recognition dawns that the differences can, for the first time in human history, be put to productive use, perspectives on cyberspace will change. The rest is up to you.

Dr. Barbara Joans is the Director of the Merritt Museum of Anthropology and Head of the Anthropology program at Merritt College, in Oakland, California. She is active in community programs, especially those which work to empower women and minorities. Dr. Joans is currently completing a major comparative research project on four cultures: The San Francisco World of SM, The Road of Bikers, The Psycho-Space of Esalen and the Machinery of Cyberspace. Her intention is to become one of the social chroniclers of cyberspace culture.

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