Living on Cybermind
Chapter abstracts
Introduction
The Introduction describes �culture� as a form of interpretive knowledge about how one should act with other people and the world and how they are likely to react in turn. There will be many cultures operating in a society and we cannot assume that there is a pure ideal type of culture which everyone possesses in part. Disagreement is as important as agreement. The introduction points to the book�s interest in: the wider processes that social action is embedded within; the organisation of communication; the ways boundaries are conceived, broken and maintained; the way systems control or disrupt themselves; the way that power ratios operate within these systems; the ways that exchange is conducted; and the advantages provided by the group to its members. Finally, it is suggested that doing ethnography is similar to the kinds of process that people engage in to function in online societies, that is, finding out the culture of others.
Chapter 1: Towards an Analysis of Communication
This chapter introduces and explains some of the theoretical terms used in the rest of the book. It explores the unfixed nature of human communication, and discusses how, given the expected variation in culture and the shifting nature of signs, there can be any consistency in meaning, or collaboration, at all. To deal with this question it is necessary to discuss the ways that linguistic and social categories are formed, and the consequence of these modes of formation. Recent work on category formation suggests that rather than linking things or events which are all the same in some way, categories can link things which are similar in different ways. Thus category formation depends upon possible modes of manipulation and presentation of the things or events being classified, and the context of use. The chapter explores the ideas of prototypes, terminators, category boundaries, and framing, to provide a series of tools to allow us to analyse the ways that people go about trying to stabilise communication, persuade others of something, evaluate their place within a group, or make a category identity for a group.
Chapter 2: Cybermind: A History
This chapter outlines the history of the Cybermind from the period before its inception, when the co-founders met on the FutureCulture and deleuze mailing lists, to the current day. It discusses the politics of the group�s instigation and birth in the Spoon Collective � briefly outlining the statistics and demographics of its first month. Events leading to the move away from Spoon are described and the context is provided for all the events which are discussed in the rest of the book, up to the partial breakdown of the List in the period leading up to the second Iraq war and after.
Chapter 3: The Internet and the World
This chapter attempts to describe the ways that people on Cybermind see the world, by quoting their opinions and engaging with mails they forward. One way of looking at this data seems to be that changes in capitalism and its structures of communication, which have been enabled by the spread of Information Technology, have altered the power ratios in society in favour of the corporate sector. This change of power ratios has further enabled the separation of classes, furthered the unequal distribution of wealth, led to diminished participation of non-corporate actors in the State, and lessened the support provided by the State to those non-corporate actors. These factors can be perceived as producing a diminution of opportunities for the survival of many of those who constitute the �intellectual middle class� who make up most of the membership of Cybermind as well as narrowing the range of places which allow people to engage in the propagation of �liberal�, �leftish�, or other non capitalistic, humanistic values. Many Cybermind members seem to feel that the current disjunction in power could result in the destruction of their society through either ecological crisis, fruitless wars, or acts of terror and the responses to them. These processes are also linked to wider concerns about the decline in kinship as a support structure, and about alienation from political processes. Forming Internet groups is one way in which people attempt to deal with these problems. The internet is a symptom of these changes and provides a way of dealing with them
Chapter 4
This chapter introduces and describes the two main types of Internet group structure (Mailing List and MOO) which were used by members of Cybermind. Differences in the ways that communication is organised in these groups affect the kinds of behaviour that are easy to manifest; the ease, or difficulty, of establishing internal hierarchy and internal differentiation (such as in the formation of subgroups); and the ways that groups interact with each other and maintain their boundaries. As a result of these differences, people may use different groups for different purposes.
Chapter 5: The Virtual Life, Asence and Experience
The book now turns to those experiential aspects of living online which result from these structures. The mode of being I have called �asence� arises from the way in which a user�s presence is largely marked by the responses of others as there is no mark of presence other than the act of communication itself. Offline, human communication is resolved, but given the structures of online communication we do not know the nature of another�s response unless they deliberately signal it. This suspension of response and of confirmation of one�s presence, tends to leave people unsure, leading them to try and provoke response. Sometimes, it can also lead to feelings of intimacy with others with whom you have not interacted. A person�s status in a group � particularly in a mailing list or newsgroup � must be continually earned as there is nothing to continue the markings of status beyond the act itself and people�s memories, and there are always new people arriving. This need for the resolution of asence is argued to be a much better explanation for the behaviour known as �flaming� than are the explanations of anonymity or innate aggression. Another feature discussed is the necessity for many people on a list to �lurk� (read without responding), not only because if everyone responded the list would crash, but also because of the problems of asence. Sensations of �burnout� can also be related to the continual pressures of self presentation. Finally the common lack of group history is discussed, along with the ways that this lack functions within the group.
Chapter 6: The Reign of Authenticity
Although it has frequently been suggested that people use the Internet to explore a �postmodern� multiple or decentered self, this does not appear to be the case in practice. On Cybermind and the other lists and MOOs I have experienced, the main aim, or expectation, seems to be to uncover, or display, the authentic self. This causes problems because authenticity has to be indicated by conventions, whilst at the same time defining itself in opposition to conventions, etiquettes or rules. It will be argued that ways of indicating authenticity on Cybermind make use of references to the body, to gender, to breaking rules, and to the public/private division.
Chapter 7: Bounding the Body: Moods, Intensities and the Haunting
This chapter explores problems deriving from using body references in an environment subject to asence. The online body often is described as �ghostly� when contrasted with a virile and active offline body. Online, personal boundaries appear fluid, which contrasts with offline moves to make boundaries impermeable and which reinforces the appearance of immateriality. On other occasions the body may be described as cyborg, which also expresses difficulties with boundaries and borders. Due to the use of the body as an interpretive mechanism, mood becomes a potent mode of framing online, and shapes people�s responses when mail repeats a constant subject or style, as with flame, mourning, or netsex. In netsex gender exaggeration is frequently used to give charge to the experience, and thus deletes authenticity, at the same time as supposedly allowing the most authentic contact.
Chapter 8: Existence and Exchange
In Chapter 5 it was suggested that identity and status are gained through the constant prestation of messages in a status war similar to that of Melanesian exchange. In an email list, the prestation of text gives the space of prestation, and the existence of the prestator and the group. The hierarchy of prestation both gives, and expresses, accepted status of people among the group, in a feedback process, such that if people without status make more mails than they should, the list protests, ignores them or people leave. Gender is tied to exchange. Studies of offline exchange suggest that female List members will tend to be active in offlist mailings between List members. Finally the chapter draws attention to the conflict between a gift economy and the capitalist economy.
Chapter 9: Control and Crisis
Points made in earlier chapters about list structure, authenticity, framing and exchange, are applied to analyse a dispute which arose on Cybermind. The analysis shows the interrelationship between identity categories and norms, and demonstrates the ways people make sense of events online by reference to offline history. In this dispute different framings produced a positive feedback loop as people misinterpreted one another. �List values� were actually generated in a condition of crisis � these values were not explicit or coherent before the conflict � they intensified in opposition. The dispute ultimately has its origin in cultural, rather than personal factors, rather than personal.
Chapter 10: Invasions, Fragmentation and the Mobilization of Gender and Politics
Further examples of stress in the life of Cybermind are presented in considerations of occasions when the group was deliberately attacked, and occasions when the group fragmented into independent lists. Again modes of framing such as gender and politics were important to the course of dispute. The attack first involved a single person, who was removed from the list after a great deal of argument as to whether this was an appropriate action. However when this person reappeared with several other people working together, the response from the list was different. List authority and communicative structure was temporarily altered into a form more suitable for giving the moderator support, and the attack was repelled with greater ease. Although it proved easy to deal with external disruptions, internal disruptions were hard to resolve. The structure of a list implies that as it is hard for subgroups to temporarily separate or for dispute to be ignored by list members, there will be a tendency to form separate breakaway lists. The origins of two such breakaway lists are then considered to show the circumstances which engender this kind of splitting off. The Chapter concludes with a discussion of the dispute over the Iraq war and of incompatible ways of building community in the face of argument.
Chapter 11: Constructions of Online �Community�
The category of �community� is not only inherently unclear and disputed, but is deeply implicated in Western political and social discourse. Although the term is almost useless for analysis, it is interesting to analyse how a group constructs itself as being �community�. In contrast to those interpretations which see �virtual community� as arising out of a decline in offline community, it is more useful to recall that westerners get a sense of �gemeinshaft� from their leisure groups and that this forms the basis for the nostalgia and lack experienced elsewhere. People in the West have great practice in forming new groups which they call communities, and many features of these groupings are also features of online groups. The first time the term community was used with respect to Cybermind was during a flame war in the first week of the list�s existence. List members were aware of the problematics of the term yet were unable to find another term more suitable for the processes that were going on. This difficulty was intensified by the death of the List co-founder. The death provides a transition point for some people to propose a distinction or transition from community from non community. Another part of the process which creates what is recognised as community is off-topic posts, display of personal factors or display of �caring�. These factors can simultaneously lead to stress which weakens the sense of community.
Chapter 12: Intersection of the List with the Offlist and the Offline
Problems around the application of the term community are now discussed in relation to people�s lives offlist. The group attempts to organise offline meetings and these were important to list life. However it is difficult to organise the List as a whole to do anything � even for them to specify a MOO on which they can interact. Leadership and facilitation in organising offlist events is extremely important. List structure also makes it so that most offlist contact will be as pairs, and the dynamics of this semi-secret list �aura� is described and explained along with the relationships and love affairs which grew around the List. People recognised many benefits to being on Cybermind, and it is shown how this relates to the social pressures of their lives offlist.
Conclusion
Appendix I: Demographics and Statistics
This Appendix gathers together various attempts to elucidate the ethnography through statistics. I use data from three biographical surveys of list members, and surveys conducted by other list members. Posts are also counted and analysed for four months of 1994 and three months of 2004. Thus, it is possible to demonstrate the approximate distribution of members by country of origin, gender, age, education, profession, interests, political inclinations, and mode of access. Other questions investigated include: the time people spend on the list, modes of reading, how people discovered the list, the rates at which people post, the relation ship between gender and rate of posting, volume and length of threads.
Ages have ranged between late teens to late 60s, with average age in the thirties. At least 70% of the population is male, and the posts by gender tend to reflect this distribution: there is no evidence of male monopoloy of List space. Education is high, though career is relatively insecure. The list is dominated by a fairly small percentage of posters. About 5% of the posters in a month make one third of the posts, the next most prolific 15% of the posters make the next third of posts. Between 20-40 posters could be classified as clearly visible in any one month, although about 100 people are likely to post in total.