Paradoxically, these cafés, which are frequented by those interested
in tapping into the civics of cyberspace, at the same time annul the
embodied kind of civics for which cafés were originally invented. The café
table is replaced by benches and rows of terminals appended to coffee-
stained keyboards.
The other kind of café that is also intertwined with the advancement
of CMC is the on-line virtual café, where, in a MUD or a MOO, partici-
pants meet in an analogue representation of a café, present themselves to
other café revellers, and engage in hours of chat.
According to Marc Smith (1995), there are four aspects of virtual
interaction that shape the communication behaviours that go on within
them.- Virtual interaction is aspatial, whereby increasing distance does not
affect the kind of interactions possible. Because of this, the economies
of co-presence are superseded to the point where mutual presence
becomes redundant in cases where it was once a functional imperative.
Smith cites, for example, the growing trend for companies to relocate
to rural areas. - Virtual interaction via systems like the WELL is predominantly asyn-
chronous. With the exceptions of Internet Relay Chat, MUDs and ICQs,
CMC (e.g. conferencing systems and email) operates by the flexibility of
posting messages which can be replied to according to the convenience
of users’ own time zone or work schedule. - As with communities of scholars whose connection is mediated by
print, CMC is acorporeal because it is primarily a text-only medium.
The dual effect of the asynchronous and acorporeal features of CMC is
its facilitation of interaction between quite large groups of people, well
beyond, for example, what telephone conferencing could enable. - CMC is astigmatic; that is, social differentiation based on stigma tends
to be absent as there are few visible cues and markings or behaviours
which locate an individual with a particular social status.
The last point here is one which Tim Jordan employs in his book
Cyberpower(1999). For Jordan, CMC is inherently anti-hierarchical. He argues
that because identity in cyberspace is seldom identified with the off-line
hierarchies, differentiation based on status is very difficult (81). Secondly,
the many-to-many capacity of the Internet creates a much more inclusive
and participatory environment in which the culture of exclusion which
occurs in off-line life is difficult to sustain.^17CCMMCC aanndd tthhee pprroobblleemm ooff iiddeennttiittyy Smith (1995) contends that the four characteristics of
interaction that he advances combine to make virtual interaction reasonably
anonymous. This, he claims, leads directly to issues of identity in a virtual
space.Theories of Cybersociety 61Holmes-03.qxd 2/15/2005 10:31 AM Page 61