The other side of cyberspace - interview with professor Manuel Castells - Cover Story

Communication World, March, 1999 by John Gerstner

? - JG: You and others argue that the integration of text, images and sounds in the same system in an interactive global network, with open and affordable access, fundamentally changes the character of communication - and, therefore, our culture. How?

MC: If I can find anything I want and need on the Internet, and have links between all forms of TV, radio, videotapes, video games, films, music, theater, literature, news, science, history, and art, and I can play back and forth with all these sources, and recombine them, I can dwell in the hypertext.

We will certainly still go for a walk in the woods, but much of our system of representation and communication is being rooted in this flexible, personalized hypertext. This is not for everybody on the planet, however, so we will have different levels of exposure to this hypertext, and thus different cultural expressions. Yet the dominant cultural expression, for the highly educated groups in society, generating values and beliefs, is likely to be enclosed in this hypertex. But we need to research more, and talk less, until we really know what is going on.

? - JG: You say a new culture is forming at the end of the milennium...a culture of "real virtuality." By this do you mean the more we live and work in cyberspace, the more we rely on fleeting bits of electrons to form opinions and make decisions that determine our material world? Is our future, then, to become a world of make-believe? Can you explain the concept of "real virtuality" more fully?

MC: The culture of real virtuality is a culture in which many of our cultural representations/ideas/beliefs depend on images/sounds processed in/by the electronic hypertext. It is virtual (electronically produced/transmitted images). It is real because it forms a substantial part of our reality. Our minds are populated by these images, and our opinions interact constantly with the messages received from the electronic hypertext.

? - JG: How relevant is it to a dissection of the impact of media on culture that the new computer-mediated media enter the human senses as an endless parade of fleeting, ephemeral electronic pulses? Does it make everything else humans touch also seem more transitory and expendable?

MC: Electronic impulses link machines and human brains. Our brains - therefore we - are made of chemical reactions and electronic impulses. So the relentless interaction with electronic communication devices certainly has a neuro-physiological influence. But we do not know what, because we know so little about the brain. I would say that the most important frontier for research, and human transformation, in the Information Age is the study of the brain, and of its interaction with increasing brainpower in the electronic networks. This is not science fiction, but what scientists are doing. We are in for some major surprises.

? - JG: When you say, "the message is lagging the medium," are you speaking only about what many call the vacuum of good content on television, or are you extending this criticism to communication conveyed through all other channels, including the Internet?