Perhaps most notable within the debates about postmodernism and CMC has been the prominence of Jean Baudrillard’s exposition of ‘hyperreality’ (1988) as it relates to the development of cyberspace and especially the potential capabilities of virtual reality technologies. Although based primarily upon mass communications media, Baudrillard’s contention that such technologies are constructing an entirely new social environment, an electronic reality, has clear resonance for those proclaiming that cyberspace represents an alternative, virtual reality. In contrast to cyber-libertarians, Baudrillard is unlikely, however, to find solace in the electronic frontier: his is a dystopic view of future technological change.
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For Baudrillard and his followers, media communications technologies have been responsible in the past for hiding reality behind a veil of signs, images and symbols which constitute such processes of commodification, propaganda and advertising. The immense persuasiveness of such media have contributed to the condition of what he describes as the ‘ecstasy of communication’: an environment composed of simulations of images which have no base in reality: a ‘hyperreality’ (1983). The fantasy worlds of Disneyland and Disney World and the American cities of Las Vegas and Los Angeles are for Baudrillard examples of hyperreality where copy and fabrication become reality.
In the hyperreality of cyberspace it is contended that time, place and individual identity are separated from modernist physical locations. That virtual reality technology, at present in its infancy, will develop to enable computer-generated simulated environments where individuals will be able to interact through iconic identities which they may change at will. Feminists such as Donna Haraway have been eager to explore how such hyperreality may enable ‘imagining a world without gender’ (1985: 66). Such virtual empowerment further offers the opportunity for emancipation from the domination of otherphysical attributes such as disability and skin colour.
Such visions however have been treated with caution concerning technological capabilities (see, for example Schroeder, this volume) and even rejected as psychotic in their desire to construct and inhabit a fantasy world. Kevin Robins points out that ‘such empowerment entails a refusal to recognise the substantive and independent reality of others and to be involved in relations of mutual dependency and responsibility.’ He continues later that ‘it is the continuity of grounded identity that underpins and underwrites moral obligation and commitment’ (1995:144–5). As has already been suggested, such self- referential individuality seems unlikely to lead to the kind of mutual supporting virtual communities based on equality which some celebrants of virtual reality proclaim.
Instead, Baudrillard’s analysis may suggest that the governance of cyberspace at one level is essentially bound up with the creation, maintenance and contestability of the metaphors, icons, symbols and mores which influence the conduct of computer-mediated communication (CMC). I am reminded here of the ubiquitous Microsoft toolbars and icons which are instantly recognisable around the world and which with the launch of Windows 95 will doubtless attempt to colonise the Internet. Indeed, it is somewhat ironic that many of those who champion the libertarian credentials of the new ICTs now find themselves engaged in a kind of Habermasian contest to defend the earlier text-based interaction, which they believe promulgates democratic participation, against commercial interests which are portrayed as hell-bent upon commodifying political discourse in cyberspace (Habermas, 1989; Rheingold, 1994).
From : Loader, Brian D (ed.). The Governance of Cyberspace. Routledge. 1997. (page: 10-11)
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