Entering the Infosphere with Michael Vlahos

Vlahos, Michael. "Entering the Infosphere." Journal of International Affairs 51.2 (1998).
Print.
Entering the Infosphere

Michael Vlahos’s chapter entitled Entering the Infosphere in the Journal of International Affairs describes the growing importance of integration of technology from the Internet into every person’s life. Vlahos best describes this integration through what he calls an Infosphere, which is “the fusion for all of the world’s communication networks, databases and sources of information into a vast, intertwined and heterogeneous tapestry of electronic interchange (4)”. Vlahos compares this Infosphere to a network ecology, in which people partake and affect it by doing things like any other ecology. Vlahos believes through the Infosphere the alien environment, which we refer to as the Internet will eventually become less foreign to us and we’ll be able to communicate in groups without being restricted to certain sites instead it being open and free to anyone.
Vlahos goes into descriptions about what a “place” is to people. He relates it to being an actual permanently physical place like Stonehenge or Versailles, but he argues that a place can also be something not physical like cyberspace. Though Vlahos says cyberspace is a place it is not a “new human place” yet (22). He says for cyberspace to be a human place it must contribute and enhance society in some way and support vital functions for its livelihood and must be permanent and perpetual instead of temporary and limited.
Another aspect Vlahos comments on are the threshold of being in these new places. According to Vlahos, now the virtual world has reached that point where it is very much like the reality. The innovative environment the cyberspace has created has intricate details to make it seem that you are actually there when in reality you really aren’t. Another aspect Vlahos comments on are the ease of congregating with others from different cultures on the web through online video games. Vlahos points out that it is not necessary the real self we should be showing while meeting new people but actually our virtual self or avatar. This way our virtual self can comfortably assimilate into the virtual environment. He concludes that online games are not really games at all but a very intertwined social network for people with the similar interests to interact comfortably in this virtual world. He notes the importance of virtual identities in online video games joining clans and groups. According to Vlahos, “Four things stand out here: the ease with which the players inhabit cyberspace; the rich rituals of group, identity and camaraderie; the high sense of shared focus; and the immediacy of action and involvement. They revel self-consciously as young primitives in their new world (39)”.
In conclusion, Vlahos states that the Infosphere will create a migration of the Great American Middle Class and help them have a higher standard of living. However, Vlahos denotes that some Americans fear the new virtual world taking over, as he says that people fear that their will lose their emotional comfort zone and be exposed something foreign and alien to them, which will take away all their memories of the good times growing up. He depicts many Americans being skeptical of progress in America especially on the technological front because they believe it will be a loss of identity something of the past. According to Vlahos, people must accept that progress will happen and it will eventually lead to cyberspace being permanent human place.