Ninja by day, student by night

Cyberspace is such a weird word.  Cyberspace makes me think of gaming or even blogging where you create a character and becoming yourself, or a better version of yourself in a place where your physical presence is only needed for updates. Cyberspace could also be an idea from the movies, the terrifying place where anything can happen, and unusually bad things occur (Matrix, The Net, several B movies that I won’t admit to watching).

However, the truth is that cyberspace is my second home, the place where I go for entertainment, for keeping in touch with the world, learning and for gathering information.  For example, at our house, we watch movies from Netflix, but we stream them through our PS3.  If we miss our favorite program, we watch the stored episode off of our media server.  We have two computers, and three laptops that are used regularly in our household.  If we are hungry, we look for recipes online, or watch a youtube video on how to make Indian food.

So with that mind, I’ll go with the first one, it is a generalization of my current  life.

“Cyberspace.  A new universe, a parallel universe created and sustained by the world’s computers and communication lines.   A world in which the global traffic of knowledge, secrets, measurements, indicators, entertainments and alter-human agency takes on form: sights, sounds, presences never seen on the surface of the earth blossoming in a vast electronic night.”

I love the idea of cyberspace as a parallel universe because I wish there was a way for us to learn or explore alternative realities when we are sleeping.  When that happens, I will be all over that,  sign me up for that beta.  Yes I understand I will go mad from the lack of mental rest but imagine the possibilities! (Not the mental issue possibilities, but what you could do if you didn’t have to waste all that time sleeping) There just isn’t enough time to do everything, to learn and experience all that is available in the world.

The idea of a cyberspace parallel universe has happened for me on a small scale.  The web, e-mail, gaming, chatting, social networking, online communities, information sharing, ordering food, buying clothes, anything you can do with some money and perhaps transportation, you can do in cyberspace. But that fits other cyberspace definitions, such as accessibility, building corriders, and content stored in massive databases.
For me, my parallel universe was my blog.  A few years back I used to write in my blog every day, hardly ever missed, had a small group of online and real life friends that read about what I was up to.  Technically the blog was me, but it was a snapshot of a point in time, and so it became my online persona, and my recollections were an online saga of my life.  And while the physical persona did her homework, went to classes, had a great time with her friends, the online persona was always there for other people, waiting to entertain and share secrets.

It was amazing, and a little scary to have your life running in parallel.  You might be mad about something, write a rant, post it and then it’s there.  You might be okay a few hours later, but when people see it, they treat it as the instant truth.  I think that’s why there is always a push for more information, hurry-hurry, because that is how that parallel universe sustains itself.  Once the content goes stale, the online persona no longer works in parallel with real life.