Innovation Management and Education Excellence Vision 2020: Regional Development to Global Economic Growth
The Cyberspace in relation to the cultural memory
Olga Loiko, Tomsk Polytechnic University, Tomsk, Russia, [email protected]
Olga Mashkina, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia, [email protected]
Svetlana Dryga, Tomsk Polytechnic University, Tomsk, Russia, [email protected]
Valentina Tolkacheva, Tomsk Polytechnic University, Tomsk, Russia, [email protected]
Yuliya Zeremskaya, Tomsk Polytechnic University, Tomsk, Russia, [email protected]
Abstract
The aim of the article is to analyze the relationship of the modern Internet space and the cultural memory.
The analysis of cultural memory at the beginning of the XXI century underwent essential changes. The
modern space of the cyberspace even more often acts as a source of obtaining the information, which has a
decisive impact on the formation of mental structures of the modern society. The beginning of the third
millennium is marked by basic change of research trajectories of the cultural memory. Specific research
projects are put in the forefront. Nowadays the modern world considers the cyberspace as an independent
component of the contemporary everyday life. So this work builds upon the given overview and
establishes a theoretical construction between cyberspace and cultural memory. The study argues that
cyberspace potentially constitutes an external memory. The contemporary status of the cultural memory is
elaborated, and a discussion is given to emphasize the importance of the sustainability of the cultural
memory and collective identity.
The research of the cultural memory and the identification of mechanisms of the influence on it becomes
the matter of the state importance for many countries. In our modern century of high technologies many
politicians, scientists, actors involve the most powerful instrument of influence – the Internet resources.
Keywords: Cyberspace, cultural memory, the Virtual World
Introduction
The transformation processes of the maintenance of the cultural memory in the cyberspace act as the
dominating way of the formation of the cultural identity. The time of the common memory and,
respectively, undifferentiated identity has lost its positions. In modern society there is a gap in
understanding, estimating and interpretations not only the remote past, but also the actual present. For the
maintenance of a steady condition of society the events of cultural memory have to be built and
interpreted so that members of a social group felt participation in the past as to the vital space.
The modern Internet society allows joining into the processes of collective identity formation to almost
unlimited number of subjects. Thereby it promotes the formation of its active participation and partnership
in processes of understanding of the valuable and semantic world of the cultural memory (Loiko &
Dementieva 2014). The cyberspace is available to all people, that is why it is capable to make popular
and/or unpopular some social contexts in which the phenomenon did a way from drowsiness to life and an
event.
Analyzing the current situation, it is possible to draw an idea about the impossibility to be fenced off from
so-called “virtual world”, “cyberspace” or so. It is necessary to analyze advantages and shortcomings, as
well as to reveal the potential of the Internet technologies for the further development of the country, for
the preservation of cultural identity of the society.
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Innovation Management and Education Excellence Vision 2020: Regional Development to Global Economic Growth
The phenomena of the Cyberspace and Virtual world
The Internet forms a new community, which unites people of different nationalities, beliefs, cultures and
the social status. The society for which there are no frontiers. It gives the opportunity to hold global
referenda on actual problems of the mankind which will allow to hear the opinion of the certain person
where it wouldn't be and to provide feedback. The Internet gives us a new way of a social vision,
transition to new ways of the interaction and development of progressive achievements of all mankind.
For the intellectual life of mankind it has not smaller value than opening a publishing introduction
hundreds years ago. Most likely the mankind didn't realize the information power and opportunities of the
Internet yet.
The term cyberspace is non-uniform and has some levels. D. Clark offered a model in which there are four
levels of a cyberspace (Clark 2010). The physical level contains all hardware devices that include routers,
switches, carriers and satellites, sensors and other technical connectors, both wire, and wireless. The
logical level in general belongs to a code, which includes both the software, and protocols, which are
included in it. The level of content describes information all created, taken, stored and processed in a
cyberspace. The social level consists of all people who are using and building up the phenomenon of a
cyberspace. It is the actual Internet of people and the potential relations, but not the implied Internet of
hardware and the software. In fact, the social group includes the governments, the private sector, civil
society and subjects of technical community.
The opinions expressed on the Internet become available and achievable for perception by other persons.
The Internet creates local communities of people as alternative to “grey rubble” or a standard layer (Sak
2013).
The term cyberspace had no differences with the term “virtual reality”. J. Lanier who coined the term
“virtual reality” considered it like a “new reality” but without confines. J. Lanier considers being the
father of virtual reality believed technology promised infinite possibilities. He explained that each of
humans has an astonishing liquid infinity of imagination on the inside; that butts up against the stark
reality of the physical world. That the baby’s imagination cannot be realized is a fundamental indignity
that we only learn to live with when we decide to call ourselves adults. With virtual reality, you have a
world with many of the qualities of the physical world, but it does not resist us. It releases us from the
taboo against infinite possibilities. That is the reason virtual reality electrifies people so much (Novak
2011). Then architect M. Benedict considers that the cyberspace is the realization of our ancient dreams of
overcoming the ‘impediments of the matter’. He assured that “the design of cyberspace is after all a design
of another life-world, a parallel universe, offering the intoxicating prospects of actually fulfilling – with a
technology very nearly achieved – a dream thousands of years old: the dream of transcending the physical
world” (Benedict 1991, p.131). Then M. Novak (1991) shares his idea about cybernetic understanding of
information as a pure pattern: “A liquid architecture in cyberspace is completely dematerialized
architecture” (Novak 1991, p.251). These studies were the beginning of serious study of cyberspace.
Cyberspace challenges the cultural memory
The emergence of a wide variety of machines, trains and media like a radio, phones, afterwards the
Internet marked the start of the fundamentally new time – electrification era of the city. This phenomenon
marked the beginning of the obvious parallel shift in the social relationships of space and time, on which
the Newton’s world was based. It is a long time since inhabitants perceived the city and urban space as
motionless and static substance. Nowadays individuals are immersed in the electric light; they cannot
imagine themselves in the center of this system even from a subjective point of view. The modern city is a
media-architectural complex, so the spatial order has lost its undeniable power.
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Innovation Management and Education Excellence Vision 2020: Regional Development to Global Economic Growth
Nowadays there is a phenomenon called cyberspace, which is able to keep and save cultural memory as
architecture. Cyberpunk science fiction writer W. Gibson first introduced the term in the 1980s. In
academic circles the term "Cyberspace" started to become a synonym for the Internet and during the 1990s
the World Wide Web. W. Gibson (1996) marked later: “All I knew about the word cyberspace when I
coined it was that it seemed to be an effective buzzword. It seemed evocative and essentially meaningless.
It was suggestive of something, but had no real semantic meaning, even for me, as I saw it emerge on the
page” (Gibson W., quoted in R. Vamosi, 2015).
G. M. Ageeva considers the influence of social networks on the cultural memory in the thesis
"Mediatization of memory: memoirs certificates in blogs and social networks". She investigates the
representation features of memory images in the media sphere, as well as virtualization of the social
mechanism of storing/oblivion, analyzes forms of accumulation and broadcast of the past during a digital
era. Investigating the most popular network memorial projects, G. M. Ageeva pays the main attention to
the content of entries in blogs and social networks (Ageeva 2012). It is worth to consider that information
published in blogs and social networks is formed by the ordinary people and is controlled by nobody. It is
only possible to assume, what consequences wait for us in the future when the contents of modern blogs
are investigated by scientists of the future generations as we investigate rock paintings nowadays. It is a
real challenge for the cultural memory. Our generation should try to be wise and fair to leave the
qualitative information.
The interrelation of memory and media can be tracked in the book "Silence, the screen and a performance:
Reconsideration of cultural memory during an era of information and new media" which represents the
collection of articles of different modern scientists on this subject (Freeman 2014). His originators – L.
Freeman, B. Nyenas and R. Daniel – note that "new technologies of mass communications and social
media changed the character of our involvement into the present and the past, there were new calls for
ethics of memory". According to A. Vasil’ev, authors of the collection managed to give a number of fine
examples of research "ways by which the past is told, presented, taken out on the screen, it is placed on
Facebook and it is presented in the Twitter, and also it is reflective and it is considered in new contexts"
(Vasil’ev 2014).
S. Mcquire (Mcquire 2005) titled one chapter of his book “The Media City: Media, Architecture and
Urban Space” as “Immaterial architecture”. He considers the cyberspace from the position of the urban
space and architecture. Thus, nowadays architecture has not ceased to be an enormous system of the city
and the custodian of individual memory and cultural memory as well. However, at the same time the
phenomenon called cyberspace builds up another kind of architecture, immaterial one. This phenomenon
marked the beginning of the obvious parallel shift in the social relationships of urban space and time. Both
the interpretation of the term and the place of this phenomenon in real life make many contradictions
about the meaning of the cyberspace.
S. Sak completely enough and with deep arguments explores cyberspace in her dissertation “Cyberspace
as a locus for urban cultural and collective memory” (2013). Her investigation shed the light on links
between cyberspace and memory. The apparent advantage of this research is the analysis of cultural
memory within the context of cyberspace. S. Sak notes that “cyberspace is more than a storage space of
those figures of memory and individual memories. In addition, the data that this memory holds is
broadcasted and is accordingly accessible. Cyberspace enables collection, copying and consumption of
this data independently of the physical and chronic limitations, and opens the way for global sharing” (Sak
2013, p. 69). The author substantiates the idea that the urban environment of the modern city can become
a place of recreating a sort of "locuses" of cultural memories. Memory space is constructed by predesigned aesthetic canons. Primarily the design of this construction must correspond positive memories of
a man. Building cyberspace of the cultural memory and placing it on the Internet, make it more accessible
to the majority of users. Further, S. Sak notes that cyberspace as cultural and collective memory should be
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Innovation Management and Education Excellence Vision 2020: Regional Development to Global Economic Growth
regarded from two positions: internal and external. In her investigation clearly defined that “cultural
memory is internal to groups of people which the memory is of. That is to say, cultural memory is the
image of past in the totality of collective thought and behavior. Cyberspace is external to the same groups
of people, as a notepad that helps remembering is external to human mind” (Sak 2013, p. 70).
W. Gibson (Gibson W. quoted in Vamosi, R. 2015) connected the term “cyberspace” with the existence of
the individual in completely new conditions of computerization. New conditions are all IT-industry
products, which build up state unlike anything we had known before. Thus, this aggregate of phenomena
gave a rise to conditions of the interpersonal interaction. Every era has its own revolution: the industrial
revolution, the scientific-technical revolution and etc. Then, our generation has experienced a digital
revolution. As a result, we are in the New Media Age consequently faced “cyberspace”. A consensual
hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being
taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer
in the human system. Lines of light ranged in the non-space of the mind, clusters and constellations of
data.” (Gibson W. quoted in Vamosi, R. 2015). Cyberspace, due to its emergence, marked a new era of
computerization and created new space for human existence. Nowadays, even the streets as a common
space for communication have lost their function. The cyberspace and IT technologies, in which a person
is completely immersed and located, replaced public places. Perhaps, cyberspace is a phenomenon that
will allow us to get rid of our "mortal body" and immerse into the surreal world, which exists, but in the
abstract, like a hallucination. But is it the vocation of cyberspace? This phenomenon was not invented
artificial and it is not an integral datum of the human being at all times. Thus, we should figure out how to
understand and use intelligently this phenomenon, so that it has brought benefits in our lives, not chaos
and demoralization of mankind. W. Gibson’s book “The Neuromancer” (1984) made a splash in
understanding cyberspace. He convicts this phenomenon in the form of a night city. Cyberspace owes
much its existence to experience of the visual perception of the night city. The electric light helped to turn
modern city in the bait, which attracts hundreds of thousands of people. The massive electric illumination
became the means by which the whole map of the city at night can be reduced to a few large centers,
flooded with spotlights, and other objects are simply erased. This is a simplified scheme.
The analysis of the Russian-speaking sites (it was investigated more than 50 sites) directed on preservation
of cultural memory showed the following. Today the whole departments deal with a problem of cultural
memory, so the Ministry of Defense contains references to four own virtual products devoted to military
achievements of the Russian army and works with the grants actively. The key project of 2014-2015 is,
certainly, the Great Patriotic War. Practically all similar sites have a forum where it is possible to lay out
the information. The museums and libraries create the archival sites. The Ministry of Culture, also as well
as the Ministry of Education and Science give out different grants under these purposes.
However, this variety of the presented material has a reverse side. It is impossible to forget that today any
person can make the contribution to preservation of the cultural memory by means of the Internet. One has
the right to create his/her own site or to work through the popular social networks. The result of similar
activity is a huge number unchecked (perhaps, doubtful) information, on the one hand, and a network
contamination small household information through social networks and often the illiterate speech of the
author, on the other hand.
Thus, it is necessary to look for the balance between the official and personal information. The aim for the
government of any country is to build an effective program of the preserving the cultural memory in the
cyberspace.
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Innovation Management and Education Excellence Vision 2020: Regional Development to Global Economic Growth
Conclusion
In summing up the place and the role of the cultural memory in contemporary cyberspace we conclude:
the importance of the cyberspace in the transmission of values and meanings of the world of the cultural
memory increases. The content of the cultural memory is moved to the Internet and, so it provokes arising
problems of "filling" the Internet with accurate and reliable information about the realities of social life
and society. With the emergence of the phenomenon of cyberspace, we can say that a man more and more
rarely communicates with other individuals in the real life, now all social interactions have moved into the
area of the IT-technologies. Cyberspace, not public places, which is the area of social interaction
nowadays. Today, the researchers of cultural memory raise the question how to present the content of the
cultural memory in conditions of cyberspace.
An analysis of studies on the problems of cyberspace allows putting forward the hypothesis: the study of
this phenomenon should specify and clarify its use for the humanities in the nearest future.
Acknowledgements
This article was supported by research grants of Russian Humanitarian Foundation “Social memory space
on the Internet as a resource for the formation of collective identity” 15-13-70001. The authors are also
grateful to Petr S. Chubik (rector of Tomsk Polytechnic University) for support and assistance.
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