[Reader-list] Space, Cyberspace, and Cspace

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear Folks on the Reader List

This is an attempt to think about the relations between space and 
cyberspace. And a request for help in attempting to find an adequate word, 
term or expression that can articulate what I am trying to talk 
about.Please intervene.

In a book called Memory Trade: The Prehistory of Cyberspace by Darren 
Tofts, (a book I have not read, but only read about) the author coins a 
term called "cspace",  pronounced space , (just as psyche is pronounced 
syche) as a median term between space and cyberspace. Now this was 
criticised at the time that this book came out as a vague and indeterminate 
excercise in term coinage that meant nothing quite specific.You were either 
in space or in cyberspace. What on earth did it mean to be somewhere in 
between?

But, my recent days of mooching around in New York, Chicago and 
London  have convinced me that we need again to look at the relation 
between space and cyberspace in a  more concrete way. methinks that there 
is something that straddles the fjord between space and cyberspace. 
Sometimes this connecting medium, which for want of another term I will 
call 'cspace'  is thick and sometimes it is thin. It could perhaps be 
measured like humidity is measured. As the relative density of grounded or 
suspended online possibilities in a given unit of physical space.

Let me try and explain what I mean. I would spend long hours each day 
looking for cybercafes that were reliable and affordable in New York, 
Chicago and London. With little success. While In New York and Chicago, the 
Public Libraries, (bastions of the public domain, shelters against the cold 
wind and the elements, as well as hospitable refuges for reading) did offer 
some repsite - (notwithstanding the long queues to use the computer 
terminals by the indigent and the public spiritied) they were not the rough 
and ready portals into cyberspace that I am more used to. One waited, and 
one waited and one waited. ((In London, the spanking new British Library 
building has decided not to offer its public any form of internet access 
for fear that the readership would wisely disregard the stipulations of the 
intellectual property rights regime. A true sign of our times - A Public 
Library, built out of taxpayers money,  running scared of the unmediated 
public access to knowledge)

Outside the public library system in New York, there were a few shady dives 
in Greenwich village and around the spots where backpackers backpack. Here, 
typically the connection would be erratic, and the lights dim. Or else, 
there was the cash guzzling monster of the Kinko's outlets (with padlocked 
photocopiers and computer terminals that had a CD drive, a floppy drive and 
a credit card drive). Kinkos terminals regularly digested my meagre dollars 
and cents at amazing speed. They had a big appetite for my money. Here I 
could surf for 3 US Dollars (120 Rupees) for seven minutes or so. They 
called this cheap.

In London, there was the gigantic collection of rabbit warrens called 
"Easyeverything" which too guzzled my cash. At 2 Pounds (140 rupees) for 
twenty minutes, this experience, and the abruptness with which the computer 
said to me "Your Time is Up. Pay to Continue !" was scary.

Coming back to Delhi, I was reassured to find that as usual,  the 
Cybercafes were five minutes walk away in either direction at most places 
in the city. And that I could surf at the comfortable rate of 10 Rupees for 
every half an hour.(I coud surf twice, sometimes thrice as much by paying 
twelvetimes less than I could in New York or London, and it wouldn't take 
me long to find my fix).

The air in Delhi is thick with smog and with connectivity.There are power 
cuts, but then there are improvised solutions like computers hooked on to 
car batteries. I know there is a digital divide. I know the figures of per 
capita computer usage and access in India and how dismal they are. I know 
how bad the lines and what a waste of time VSNL is. But still, Delhi as an 
online cspace, is friendlier than cities that have more computers to the 
square mile. (How I wish that Offline Delhi were even half as friendly, or 
considerate as Online Delhi is).

The public nature of computing culture in Delhi (which is predicated on 
ease, affordability, sociability and conviviality) suggests that the 
quality and possibility of being online can be very different in different 
places. In some ways I felt the pinch of the  'digital divide' much more 
sharply in the cspace of New York and London, than I do in Delhi.

On the other hand, it is now possible to get messages on your mobile phone, 
if you are, say in the middle of Times Square in New York, telling you what 
you could buy in the radius of a fifty metres. Of course you could also go 
online. This suggests that in New York, if you have your own private 
handheld device, you can be thickly enmeshed in cspace. If you dont, cspace 
is a thin membrane that tears around you. Welcome to the First World 
Digital Divide. if you need a quick leak or need to look at your e mail, 
you'd better not be in a public space. Stay at home, or in your office, or 
carry your WAP and your WC with you

Now, isn't that strange.What is one to do when the urge hits. When you have 
got to go, you have got to go. Online or Offline. And what do you do when 
you have no 'cspace' to step into'. Where do you get off? I know what to do 
in Delhi. I have found my cspace. But I am still lost in New York, Chicago 
and London.

Now, how about some other accounts of Cspace Travel?


Shuddhabrata Sengupta
SARAI: The New Media Initiative
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
29, Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 052, India
www.sarai.net