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Places in the 'Net

Experiencing Cyberspace

University of New Mexico

This paper relies upon the analysis of metaphor and upon phenomenology in an attempt to understand how non-situated experience can become place-like, focusing on the Internet and its metaphorical extension, cyberspace. The paper explores deep, language-based connections between the experience of both material and immaterial places. After demonstrating that the concepts 'place' and 'site' are not synonymous, the paper highlights key events in the history of computing as points of departure for considering how a computer network became cyberspace. Concepts from phenomenology are used to show how the contingent structure of cyberspace made it possible for places to become found within it. The paper also shows how the notion of place thus elaborated may be applied to material places.

Key Words: cyberspace • ethnography of place • Internet • metaphor • phenomenology

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