you
so I was 13 years old when I first
downloaded a song off the internet I can
still remember that horrible screech of
the dial-up connection a sound that if I
hear it now still immediately takes me
back to my parents basement
I remember how you’d click download’ on
a song and you’d walk away for what
seemed like long enough to start and end
a middle-school relationship and go back
to your computer and fingers crossed no
one had picked up a phone and the file
would actually be there I remember
hanging out with my friends in middle
school and in the middle of the night
logging on to chat rooms because we
weren’t allowed to go on to chat rooms
and being bombarded with questions about
ASL a phrase that if you don’t know what
it is then congratulations you’re
probably young now the 1990s seems like
forever ago on internet terms there were
no smartphones no apps
no Facebook someone transported from the
1990s to now might not even recognize
what we use today as the Internet it’s
just that different however what I’m
here to argue is that many of the ways
we understood the Internet in the 1990s
still shape how we talk about it today
and that language limits the way we
understand the potential of digital
communication so I’m gonna end this talk
by looking at the present in the future
but before I do that I’m gonna go back
to the good old days of the 1990s and
since I know you all are dying to know
that first song I ever downloaded it was
probably Free Bird because of course it
was so the image behind me is a series
of zeros and ones that’s binary code and
at the base level that’s what all
digital information consists of zeros
and ones whether it’s the most romantic
email you’ve ever written or a photo you
just posted to Facebook its zeros and
ones and the 1990s the ability to
exchange these zeros and ones over
communication networks reached a kind of
mythic status with people talking about
the information superhighway and
focusing on the freedom of connection
and speed and identity we had
geographers in the 1990s predicting that
the internet was going to lead to the
death
of cities because if we could connect
with anyone anywhere why do we need to
live in cities any more famous
commercials ran that talked about how on
the internet there would be no more
racism no more sexism no more disability
because we’d be able to go online and
construct identity however we want no
longer tethered to our physical bodies
in fact if you go back and read some
writings from the 1990s you can even
find predictions that people wouldn’t
want to have sex in the physical world
anymore because these digital worlds
would be so enticing and I don’t know
about you but I hope that hasn’t
actually happened to any of you the way
people understood the Internet in the
1990s can be summed up in the dominant
metaphor of the time which was the
metaphor of cyberspace it comes from
William Gibson’s new novel Neuromancer
and people talked about the Internet as
a cyberspace and as a metaphor
cyberspace implies a clear division
between physical spaces on the one hand
and cyber spaces on the other as if the
two are completely separate and no where
did that reach kind of more of a
pinnacle than in the hype in the 1990s
about virtual reality worlds now we have
virtual reality now but with the
comeback of things like oculus rift
people talk about it in much more
limited terms like virtual reality
gaming or for construction projects and
things like that but in the 1990s people
were talking about virtual reality as a
kind of all-encompassing world where
people would flee from the physical
world through virtual reality goggles
and kind of live a separate life online
and then a small degree that was very
much influenced by popular science
fiction at the time and you had major
sociologists talking even about how
there was a coming war between the world
of bits which was the digital and the
war of atoms which was the physical with
many people talking about how the world
of bits was going to win and it wasn’t
just virtual reality a later example of
how people talked about the Internet is
somehow kind of separate was the online
world Second Life which was released in
2003 Second Life didn’t involve VR
goggles or anything but it let people
construct an avatar and then basically
live a second
life online it wasn’t a game you didn’t
compete you didn’t score points or
anything like that you went online
through an avatar to perform the mundane
tasks of everyday life so people would
go shopping they would date they would
go to bars they would go to clubs and go
dancing with avatars like in this image
behind me
Second Life was kind of the epitome of
that idea of a cyberspace as something
separate from the physical space where
people could no longer be tethered to
their bodies and live a separate life
online now looking back a lot of the
writings about VR from the 90s or Second
Life from the mid 2000s don’t age all
that well as an internet scholar who was
too young to read the stuff at the time
I had to go back and read it as a PhD
student and it often seemed to me like
more people were writing about these
things than were ever actually using
them neither really took off you don’t
see many people talking anymore about
the death of cities not many people use
the metaphor of cyberspace unless
they’re like in a presidential debate or
something and you certainly don’t see
hopefully many discussions about how
there be no more racism or sexism or
anything like that online those things
very much still exist however vestiges
of that thought still very much do
survive in the way we understand the
internet today and one of the main
examples and there are many I could go
to but I think this short phrase kind of
captures it the best is in the phrase
that probably many of us have used which
is in real life in real life or IRL for
maybe younger people in less stark terms
than the discussions of the VR just kind
of extends that idea of the cyberspace
is somehow separate when people use
phrases like in real life to talk about
what happens online
I guess the implication is that there’s
a real life which is things that happen
face-to-face things that happen in
physical space and then by default there
must be an unreal life which is anything
that happens online now as an internet
scholar there’s probably no phrase that
annoys me more than in real life for one
thing as someone who got in many
disagreements with my ex
girlfriend over facebook messenger I can
assure you that was very real
it wasn’t less real because it happened
online it had real consequences in the
physical world anyone who’s been cyber
bullied the fact that it happens on
Facebook doesn’t make it any better it’s
still real life it affects a physical
body and as another point the Internet
is very real the internet exists the
Internet consists of a massive amount of
infrastructure including wires and
routers and servers and cables that
literally run across the bottom of the
ocean so there’s no real verse virtual
life there’s only one life now despite
phrases like in real life we didn’t end
up with a world of bits versus a world
of atoms we didn’t end up with cities
dying or anything like that what
happened instead was much more
interesting rather than the digital as
something opposed and separate to the
physical we ended up with the digital
and physical combined in new ways in
what are called hybrid spaces and hybrid
spaces which are pretty much all spaces
at this point our spaces where people
use smartphones for example to look up
information about their surrounding
space and that information is determined
by where they are in their surrounding
space so when you use your phone to look
up directions on Google Maps the
information you receive is based on your
physical location the information you
receive then changes how you move
through the physical space you follow
that route maybe you find a restaurant
on Yelp smartphones are a big part of
this because smartphones represent a
very different type of Internet than
people talked about in the 1990s rather
than the idea of the online as contained
and separate with smartphones we bring
the online out into the physical world
every one of you who has a smartphone
right now is potentially online and you
can look up information about the
building next to you or anything like
that now rather than get into kind of
every example I can of hybrid spaces I
instead want to tell a really brief
story a couple weeks ago for Spring
Break I was traveling in Japan as a
tourist I have a new phone plan that
lets me access data when I’m traveling
international
so when I was in Japan how I experienced
this these cities that I had never been
in was very much mediated through my
smartphone screen so I used Google Maps
for example to map routes to where I
wanted to go which I then walked the
digital information very much influenced
what streets I took I used other
applications to find nearby points of
interest and I got those points of
interest location in relation to where I
was and I followed them use TripAdvisor
to find nearby restaurants and access
user generated reviews I went on
Facebook and used my check-in function
to literally use a physical location as
a marker my digital identity in no small
part my experience of Japan was emerging
of the actual cities I wandered and the
information I accessed about those
cities it would have been different if I
didn’t have that smartphone so the
question then does not become one of
whether I will either flee online or
wander through the physical world it
instead becomes a question of how the
online which is a phrase that really
barely makes sense anymore since we’re
all kind of perpetually online how the
online affects how I wander through the
physical world and while I’ve been
talking about kind of information we
access through phones about physical
space I want to kind of wrap up here by
looking a bit at the future at what’s
called the Internet of Things the
Internet of Things refers to the
embedding of the Internet in everyday
objects so if your toaster was connected
to the Internet which is a kind of
mundane example um there are already
examples on the market of this embedding
of the Internet and objects like smart
thermostats that will send you alerts on
your smartphone based on the temperature
your house or will sense your smartphone
is low presence and then change settings
or future examples that people have been
talking about for 10 years that I mean I
don’t know if they’ll ever come out but
it’s a big example people use our smart
fridges that will know what’s in the
fridge and send you an alert on your
smart phone when you run out of eggs or
when your milk is about to expire
something like that now experts predict
that the Internet of Things this is a
future of the Internet with people
talking about how tens of billions of
objects will be connected by 2020
now why am I talking about the Internet
of Things because the Internet of Things
is yet another reminder that the
Internet is all around us it’s not
separate from us it’s not a cyberspace
as objects connect to the Internet in
the billions and have conversations
behind our back they will use those
connections that will decide what we can
and can’t do in physical space so very
different from the idea of people
fleeing online the online is said is
going to come to us and shape how we
live in the physical world so here’s
what I want to leave you with I want to
leave you with a bit of a call to action
and it sounds pretty simple but I’m not
sure if it’s really as simple as it
sounds
I want us to start thinking about the
Internet as real life that’s it no more
talking about how it didn’t happen in
real life or this was in real life and
it’s more consequential somehow no
longer imagining wireless internet as if
it’s not connected to anything all of
these things are physical all of these
things very much matter take the
Internet of Things example as one thing
so if you have a fridge that’s connected
to the Internet that can send you an
alert when you’re out of eggs or when
your milks going to expire that fridge
knows what you eat it literally knows
what you put in your body and as it
connects to the internet and shares that
data that is very very real data it’s
real life and that data tells things
about your interactions with the
physical world or take smartphones as
example so some of you probably when you
leave this auditorium today are gonna
use your phone to maybe get directions
home or find somewhere nearby to eat
that information you access is very real
it’s about your place in the physical
world it’s not ethereal data about your
web browsing or metadata on your phone
it’s literally about where you’re
located it doesn’t get any more real
than that so that’s what I want to leave
you with we need to stop talking about
the offline and the online as if they’re
separate they’re not separate there’s no
virtual life versus real life we only
have one life
that’s it thank you
[Applause]
so I was 13 years old when I first
downloaded a song off the internet I can
still remember that horrible screech of
the dial-up connection a sound that if I
hear it now still immediately takes me
back to my parents basement
I remember how you’d click download’ on
a song and you’d walk away for what
seemed like long enough to start and end
a middle-school relationship and go back
to your computer and fingers crossed no
one had picked up a phone and the file
would actually be there I remember
hanging out with my friends in middle
school and in the middle of the night
logging on to chat rooms because we
weren’t allowed to go on to chat rooms
and being bombarded with questions about
ASL a phrase that if you don’t know what
it is then congratulations you’re
probably young now the 1990s seems like
forever ago on internet terms there were
no smartphones no apps
no Facebook someone transported from the
1990s to now might not even recognize
what we use today as the Internet it’s
just that different however what I’m
here to argue is that many of the ways
we understood the Internet in the 1990s
still shape how we talk about it today
and that language limits the way we
understand the potential of digital
communication so I’m gonna end this talk
by looking at the present in the future
but before I do that I’m gonna go back
to the good old days of the 1990s and
since I know you all are dying to know
that first song I ever downloaded it was
probably Free Bird because of course it
was so the image behind me is a series
of zeros and ones that’s binary code and
at the base level that’s what all
digital information consists of zeros
and ones whether it’s the most romantic
email you’ve ever written or a photo you
just posted to Facebook its zeros and
ones and the 1990s the ability to
exchange these zeros and ones over
communication networks reached a kind of
mythic status with people talking about
the information superhighway and
focusing on the freedom of connection
and speed and identity we had
geographers in the 1990s predicting that
the internet was going to lead to the
death
of cities because if we could connect
with anyone anywhere why do we need to
live in cities any more famous
commercials ran that talked about how on
the internet there would be no more
racism no more sexism no more disability
because we’d be able to go online and
construct identity however we want no
longer tethered to our physical bodies
in fact if you go back and read some
writings from the 1990s you can even
find predictions that people wouldn’t
want to have sex in the physical world
anymore because these digital worlds
would be so enticing and I don’t know
about you but I hope that hasn’t
actually happened to any of you the way
people understood the Internet in the
1990s can be summed up in the dominant
metaphor of the time which was the
metaphor of cyberspace it comes from
William Gibson’s new novel Neuromancer
and people talked about the Internet as
a cyberspace and as a metaphor
cyberspace implies a clear division
between physical spaces on the one hand
and cyber spaces on the other as if the
two are completely separate and no where
did that reach kind of more of a
pinnacle than in the hype in the 1990s
about virtual reality worlds now we have
virtual reality now but with the
comeback of things like oculus rift
people talk about it in much more
limited terms like virtual reality
gaming or for construction projects and
things like that but in the 1990s people
were talking about virtual reality as a
kind of all-encompassing world where
people would flee from the physical
world through virtual reality goggles
and kind of live a separate life online
and then a small degree that was very
much influenced by popular science
fiction at the time and you had major
sociologists talking even about how
there was a coming war between the world
of bits which was the digital and the
war of atoms which was the physical with
many people talking about how the world
of bits was going to win and it wasn’t
just virtual reality a later example of
how people talked about the Internet is
somehow kind of separate was the online
world Second Life which was released in
2003 Second Life didn’t involve VR
goggles or anything but it let people
construct an avatar and then basically
live a second
life online it wasn’t a game you didn’t
compete you didn’t score points or
anything like that you went online
through an avatar to perform the mundane
tasks of everyday life so people would
go shopping they would date they would
go to bars they would go to clubs and go
dancing with avatars like in this image
behind me
Second Life was kind of the epitome of
that idea of a cyberspace as something
separate from the physical space where
people could no longer be tethered to
their bodies and live a separate life
online now looking back a lot of the
writings about VR from the 90s or Second
Life from the mid 2000s don’t age all
that well as an internet scholar who was
too young to read the stuff at the time
I had to go back and read it as a PhD
student and it often seemed to me like
more people were writing about these
things than were ever actually using
them neither really took off you don’t
see many people talking anymore about
the death of cities not many people use
the metaphor of cyberspace unless
they’re like in a presidential debate or
something and you certainly don’t see
hopefully many discussions about how
there be no more racism or sexism or
anything like that online those things
very much still exist however vestiges
of that thought still very much do
survive in the way we understand the
internet today and one of the main
examples and there are many I could go
to but I think this short phrase kind of
captures it the best is in the phrase
that probably many of us have used which
is in real life in real life or IRL for
maybe younger people in less stark terms
than the discussions of the VR just kind
of extends that idea of the cyberspace
is somehow separate when people use
phrases like in real life to talk about
what happens online
I guess the implication is that there’s
a real life which is things that happen
face-to-face things that happen in
physical space and then by default there
must be an unreal life which is anything
that happens online now as an internet
scholar there’s probably no phrase that
annoys me more than in real life for one
thing as someone who got in many
disagreements with my ex
girlfriend over facebook messenger I can
assure you that was very real
it wasn’t less real because it happened
online it had real consequences in the
physical world anyone who’s been cyber
bullied the fact that it happens on
Facebook doesn’t make it any better it’s
still real life it affects a physical
body and as another point the Internet
is very real the internet exists the
Internet consists of a massive amount of
infrastructure including wires and
routers and servers and cables that
literally run across the bottom of the
ocean so there’s no real verse virtual
life there’s only one life now despite
phrases like in real life we didn’t end
up with a world of bits versus a world
of atoms we didn’t end up with cities
dying or anything like that what
happened instead was much more
interesting rather than the digital as
something opposed and separate to the
physical we ended up with the digital
and physical combined in new ways in
what are called hybrid spaces and hybrid
spaces which are pretty much all spaces
at this point our spaces where people
use smartphones for example to look up
information about their surrounding
space and that information is determined
by where they are in their surrounding
space so when you use your phone to look
up directions on Google Maps the
information you receive is based on your
physical location the information you
receive then changes how you move
through the physical space you follow
that route maybe you find a restaurant
on Yelp smartphones are a big part of
this because smartphones represent a
very different type of Internet than
people talked about in the 1990s rather
than the idea of the online as contained
and separate with smartphones we bring
the online out into the physical world
every one of you who has a smartphone
right now is potentially online and you
can look up information about the
building next to you or anything like
that now rather than get into kind of
every example I can of hybrid spaces I
instead want to tell a really brief
story a couple weeks ago for Spring
Break I was traveling in Japan as a
tourist I have a new phone plan that
lets me access data when I’m traveling
international
so when I was in Japan how I experienced
this these cities that I had never been
in was very much mediated through my
smartphone screen so I used Google Maps
for example to map routes to where I
wanted to go which I then walked the
digital information very much influenced
what streets I took I used other
applications to find nearby points of
interest and I got those points of
interest location in relation to where I
was and I followed them use TripAdvisor
to find nearby restaurants and access
user generated reviews I went on
Facebook and used my check-in function
to literally use a physical location as
a marker my digital identity in no small
part my experience of Japan was emerging
of the actual cities I wandered and the
information I accessed about those
cities it would have been different if I
didn’t have that smartphone so the
question then does not become one of
whether I will either flee online or
wander through the physical world it
instead becomes a question of how the
online which is a phrase that really
barely makes sense anymore since we’re
all kind of perpetually online how the
online affects how I wander through the
physical world and while I’ve been
talking about kind of information we
access through phones about physical
space I want to kind of wrap up here by
looking a bit at the future at what’s
called the Internet of Things the
Internet of Things refers to the
embedding of the Internet in everyday
objects so if your toaster was connected
to the Internet which is a kind of
mundane example um there are already
examples on the market of this embedding
of the Internet and objects like smart
thermostats that will send you alerts on
your smartphone based on the temperature
your house or will sense your smartphone
is low presence and then change settings
or future examples that people have been
talking about for 10 years that I mean I
don’t know if they’ll ever come out but
it’s a big example people use our smart
fridges that will know what’s in the
fridge and send you an alert on your
smart phone when you run out of eggs or
when your milk is about to expire
something like that now experts predict
that the Internet of Things this is a
future of the Internet with people
talking about how tens of billions of
objects will be connected by 2020
now why am I talking about the Internet
of Things because the Internet of Things
is yet another reminder that the
Internet is all around us it’s not
separate from us it’s not a cyberspace
as objects connect to the Internet in
the billions and have conversations
behind our back they will use those
connections that will decide what we can
and can’t do in physical space so very
different from the idea of people
fleeing online the online is said is
going to come to us and shape how we
live in the physical world so here’s
what I want to leave you with I want to
leave you with a bit of a call to action
and it sounds pretty simple but I’m not
sure if it’s really as simple as it
sounds
I want us to start thinking about the
Internet as real life that’s it no more
talking about how it didn’t happen in
real life or this was in real life and
it’s more consequential somehow no
longer imagining wireless internet as if
it’s not connected to anything all of
these things are physical all of these
things very much matter take the
Internet of Things example as one thing
so if you have a fridge that’s connected
to the Internet that can send you an
alert when you’re out of eggs or when
your milks going to expire that fridge
knows what you eat it literally knows
what you put in your body and as it
connects to the internet and shares that
data that is very very real data it’s
real life and that data tells things
about your interactions with the
physical world or take smartphones as
example so some of you probably when you
leave this auditorium today are gonna
use your phone to maybe get directions
home or find somewhere nearby to eat
that information you access is very real
it’s about your place in the physical
world it’s not ethereal data about your
web browsing or metadata on your phone
it’s literally about where you’re
located it doesn’t get any more real
than that so that’s what I want to leave
you with we need to stop talking about
the offline and the online as if they’re
separate they’re not separate there’s no
virtual life versus real life we only
have one life
that’s it thank you
[Applause]
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