Diplomová práce Geography of Cyberspace: from the beginning to the future of the discipline. Natália Lukášová Praha 2010 Abstract This thesis focuses on the topic of Cyberspace and its role within social geography. Cyberspace, the Internet and their influences on everyday life, on many social, economical, political, as well as geographical aspects are obvious. The aim of the work is to uncover and explain the discipline "Geography of Cyberspace", to form a solid basis and spring board for further studies of this discipline and its sub-disciplines. The work is mainly focused on evaluation of basic literature within the discipline and on introduction of the most important researchers and institutions which are concerned with the research of these issues. The retrieval method was used for purposes of the evaluation. For a complete overview and better understanding of the discipline the thesis depicts the technological history of Cyberspace. It is trying to answer the questions whether and how much Cyberspace influences the "real world", or whether Cyberspace means the end of classical geographical understanding of the world. A qualitative research was realised for the purpose of the thesis for better comprehension of human perception of Cyberspace. The research was done with the sample of university students...

The Internet is often touted as a panacea for perceived deficiencies in economic development. Its space-transcending abilities, which can instantly connect producers with consumers, have the potential to cut out intermediaries and to redistribute economic surplus in a more equitable manner. This dissertation asks whether the promises of the Internet are being realized in the Thai silk industry. The project explores the following questions: (a) At which nodes in the commodity chain is the Internet being used?; (b) How has the introduction of the Internet altered production chains and the flows of capital in the Thai silk industry?; (c) How are these changes altering the socio-economic conditions of actors who are involved in reconfigured production chains?; (d) What are the relationships between contemporary discourses about the economic benefits of disintermediated commodity chains and the actual effects of disintermediated commodity chains?; and (e) Are older local silk making traditions being replaced as producers interact with distant consumers through the Internet? This project uses a textual analysis of websites selling Thai silk to examine discourses being put forth about the effects of the Internet. Surveys and interviews with producers and merchants provide data on changes that the Internet is having on the production chains of Thai silk. Results suggest that in very few cases is the Internet allowing a disintermediation of commodity chains to occur. Internet users are actually more likely to position themselves as cybermediaries: buying from, and selling to other intermediaries. Although disintermediation is rarely occurring in the commodity chains of silk, the Internet is allowing firms to sell to a geographically diverse range of customers. These findings indicate that instead of placing buyers and sellers into copresence in a virtual marketplace, the Internet is rather being used as a tool to open up virtual conduits between those already occupying privileged economic positions in the commodity chains of Thai silk.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. / National sovereignty is a fundamental principle of national security and the modern international system. The United States asserts its national sovereignty in many ways including inspecting goods and people crossing the border. However, most nations including the United States have not implemented any form of border inspection and control in cyberspace. This thesis builds a case that national sovereignty inherently and logically gives a sovereign state, such as the United States, the right to establish appropriate Internet border inspection stations. Such stations would be used to inspect only legally vetted inbound traffic, and block contraband, in a fashion analogous to the current system for inspection of people and goods that cross US borders in the physical world. Normal traffic crossing the border would have no content inspected and no record would be kept of its passing. This thesis answers key questions about feasibility, proposes a high level structure for implementation, and describes how such a system might be used to protect reasonable and legitimate interests of the United States including both security and individual rights. One chapter will build the logical case for Internet border Internet inspection. And other chapters will discuss technical, legal, and political feasibility. / Captain, United States Air Force

Com o objetivo de identificar a diferença entre o uso da Internet por terroristas e o uso do ciberespaço com fins políticos para o terror, a pesquisa proposta se desenvolve em cinco capítulos, além da introdução e conclusão. O capítulo 2 busca elucidar como os mundos físico e virtual se entrelaçam, explicando a vulnerabilidade das Infraestruturas Críticas aos ataques cibernéticos que geram o medo sobre o ciberterrorismo. Seguindo, no capítulo 3 explica-se o debate sobre a percepção acadêmica acerca do uso do ciberespaço por terroristas e, no capítulo 4, uma amostra de países relevantes para o combate ao terrorismo é posta em comparação, a fim de se entender as percepções políticas acerca do uso terrorista do ciberespaço. Nesse sentido, o estudo em voga, hipotético-dedutivo com caráter qualitativo em meio às análises e comparações, validou a hipótese de que, embora pertencentes a paletas do mesmo escopo, o uso da Internet por terroristas e o ciberterrorismo possuem diferenças significativas, sendo elas elencadas dentro de quatro categorias analíticas: Utilidade do ciberespaço, Foco Operacional, Uso de violência e Objetivo Último. Por fim, essas diferenças foram postas na conclusão como propostas de tipologias para a definição do fenômeno do ciberterrorismo e do uso terrorista da Internet, partindo da conceituação de terrorismo proposta por Eugênio Diniz (2002). / In order to identify the difference between the use of the Internet by terrorists and the use of cyberspace for political purposes for terror, this research developes itself in five chapters, in which, in addition to the introduction and conclusion, in chapter 2, it seeks to elucidate how the physical and virtual worlds intertwine, explaining the vulnerability of Critical Infrastructures to cyberattacks that generate fear about cyberterrorism. Chapter 3 explains the debate about the academic perception of the use of cyberspace by terrorists and, chapter 4, a sample of countries that are relevant to the fight against terrorism is compared in order to understand the perceptions about the terrorist use of cyberspace. In this sense, the present hypothetical-deductive study with a qualitative character, in the midst of the analyzes and acquisitions validated the hypothesis that although belonging to palettes of the same scope, the use of the Internet by terrorists and cyberterrorism have significant differences, and they are listed within four analytical categories: Usefulness of cyberspace, Operational Focus, Use of violence and Last Objective. Finally, these differences were put in the conclusion as typology proposals for the definition of the phenomenon of cyberterrorism and the terrorist use of the Internet, rooted in the conceptualization of terrorism proposed by Eugênio Diniz (2002).

Tam Wing-sai Jessica. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 226-234). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstracts --- p.i / Acknowledgements --- p.iii / Prelude --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter1 --- Literature Review / Chapter 1.1 --- Literature Review on Cyber Researches --- p.5 / Chapter 1.11 --- Cyberspace and Self --- p.7 / Chapter 1.111 --- Goffmanian Dramaturgy: Presentation of Self in Cyberspace --- p.9 / Chapter 1.112 --- The Postmodern View: Fragmented and Multiple Cyberselves --- p.13 / Chapter 1.12 --- Later Foucault on Ethics --- p.19 / Chapter 1.121 --- Self-Writing as Self-Technology --- p.24 / Chapter 1.13 --- Conceptual Framework: Practice of Ethics in Cyberspace --- p.25 / Chapter 1.2 --- Summary --- p.32 / Chapter Chapter2 --- Research Design / Chapter 2.1 --- Research Site --- p.34 / Chapter 2.2 --- Research Method --- p.38 / Chapter 2.21 --- Textual Analysis --- p.38 / Chapter 2.22 --- Online Participatory Observation --- p.36 / Chapter 2.23 --- Online Interview / Chatting --- p.43 / Chapter 2.3 --- Summary --- p.45 / Chapter Chapter3 --- Approaching the Cyber Context: On the Threshold of Cyberspace / Chapter 3.1 --- Intrinsic Nexuses of Cyberspace --- p.47 / Chapter 3.11 --- Nexus of Space and Place --- p.47 / Chapter 3.111 --- Invisibility /Anonymity --- p.50 / Chapter 3.112 --- Sociality --- p.52 / Chapter 3.12 --- Nexus of Nearness and Remoteness --- p.60 / Chapter 3.121 --- Strangeness --- p.61 / Chapter 3.2 --- People on the Net: a Classification of Cyber-individuals --- p.63 / Chapter 3.21 --- Instrumental net user --- p.68 / Chapter 3.22 --- Cybernaut --- p.70 / Chapter 3.23 --- Netizen --- p.71 / Chapter 3.24 --- Net-addict --- p.75 / Chapter 3.3 --- Summary: Crossing the Threshold of Cyberspace --- p.79 / Chapter Chapter4 --- Caring the Cyberself: Self-awareness and Mind-caring / Chapter 4.1 --- Problematization of Virtuality and Virtual self --- p.82 / Chapter 4.11 --- Relationship with Virtual Reality: Materiality Vs Virtuality --- p.83 / Chapter 4.12 --- Relationship with Selves: Authentic self? Unauthentic self? --- p.91 / Chapter 4.13 --- Self-caring: Forgetting the body? Caring the mind --- p.97 / Chapter 4.131 --- Ethical Substance: Free and Reflective Subject --- p.109 / Chapter 4.2 --- Summary: Cyberself as an Ethical Subject --- p.114 / Chapter Chapter5 --- Creating the Cyber Flesh: Self-fashioning as a Virtual Self-technology / Chapter 5.1 --- Nickname --- p.117 / Chapter 5.2 --- Personal Details --- p.124 / Chapter 5.21 --- Net-hupomnemata --- p.126 / Chapter 5.22 --- Net Self-narration --- p.134 / Chapter 5.3 --- Summary: Self-fashioning as Virtual Self-technology --- p.137 / Chapter Chapter6 --- Playing the Cyberself: Self-experiment as a Virtual Self-technology / Chapter 6.1 --- Forms of Cyberself --- p.140 / Chapter 6.11 --- Disembodied --- p.140 / Chapter 6.12 --- Plastic --- p.141 / Chapter 6.13 --- Multiple and interchangeable --- p.142 / Chapter 6.2 --- Virtual Self-experiment --- p.143 / Chapter 6.21 --- Multiplicity: Self as a Masquer --- p.143 / Chapter 6.22 --- Plasticity : Self as a Creator --- p.151 / Chapter 6.221 --- Gender Swapping --- p.153 / Chapter 6.3 --- Summary: Self-Experiment as Virtual Self-Technology --- p.158 / Chapter Chapter7 --- Narrating the Cyberself: Self-Narration as a Virtual Self-Technology / Chapter 7.1 --- Net-Narration --- p.161 / Chapter 7.11 --- Net-diary --- p.162 / Chapter 7.12 --- Net-Correspondence --- p.166 / Chapter 7.2 --- Summary: Self-Narration as Virtual Self-technology --- p.176 / Epilogue-Game of Power in Cyberspace / Part I: Cyber-nature and Cyber-individuals --- p.179 / Part II： Self-awareness --- p.182 / Part III: Self-technologies --- p.185 / Reflection --- p.191 / Notes --- p.195 / Appendices --- p.207 / Bibliography --- p.226

This research was made for trying to understand how English Christian websites using the features of web-based communication effectiveness, and gave some advice for building Christian websites in the future.The contraction process of web-based communication effectiveness indexes used literature review and content analysis. Those indexes were revised by reexamining the modern situation of websites. Five aspects of indexes were ¡§usability design¡¨, ¡§useful information¡¨, ¡§two-way communication¡¨, ¡§recreation¡¨, and ¡§information collection¡¨. 31 indexes were developed by 5 aspects. The samples separated into two groups: Online-religion websites and Religion-online websites. It examined if any different performance of accepting web-based communication effectiveness between these two types of websites. The result was not distinctly different. According to this consequence, this research suggests that revise the definition of two types of religious website is necessary. The advice for how to use web-based communication effectiveness were: (1) take use of web-PR effectiveness, ¡§Push & Pull¡¨, (2) establish online religious community, (3) emerge Online-religion websites and e-platform, (4) consideration of charging fee or service for free, (5) design the website for its user. The website decision makers could use those suggestions to rethink how to make the best use of web-based communication effectiveness.

Thesis (M.A.)--York University, 2001. Graduate Programme in Sociology. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 155-164). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pMQ66397.

The thesis explores the materiality of communication environment in Cyberspace illustrating both the problem of disembodied rationalism and the benefits of emphasizing the phenomenological sense of presence in virtual spaces. Interactive realism is offered as an approach to explain how our sense of embodied existence is supported and threatened in a technologically mediated situation. Language and other artifacts are tools with which we build social reality. In particular, metaphors are the rink between language and other, non-linguistic skills that shape our sense of self and reality. / The metaphors of the computer as an electronic brain and of the networked computer as an electronic frontier serve as unconscious, cognitive models that guide our interactions with the world. Objects also work as models to embody ways of thinking about the world. It will be argued that social construction involves a sedimentation of language and a naturalization of the constructed environment. I argue that perception, as the bodily foundation of experience, involves a somatagnosis or body-knowledge, and that this knowledge is influenced by the particular devices we use to represent images of the world. The affective communities of Cyberspace are rule-governed communicative assemblies. Cyber-communities provide examples of the ways the body threatens and supports group formation and maintenance on the Internet . / Cyberspace highlights the process of construction and sedimentation through which we construct the social world. In the construction of symbolic embodiments Cyberspace presents the paradox of places that encourage emplacement and disembodiment. Disembodied spaces are utopian in nature. Such Digkopian places abstract us from the world. Heterotopian spaces illustrate playful experiments. Such materializations of metaphors and ideas dramatize the ways we model the world and build it. My interest is with the creative element my aim is to make clear the significance of constructed, digital reality and its tensions with bodily experience.

This project offers a multifaceted, interdisciplinary approach to understanding the contemporary post-Soviet Internet bride phenomenon and the rationales, motives, and aspirations of the industry's participants. As international marriage services have incorporated information and communications technologies (ICTs) to assist in the marketing of women of post-communist nations for correspondence courtship with Western men, the industry has furthered the globalization of marriage markets and the opportunities for communicative exchange among disparate nations and cultures. By way of case study, the project takes a special focus on the Belarusian/American segment of the industry, turning to personal interviews with participants and employing qualitative techniques to dissect marketing methods. The study gives primary consideration to processes and elements of globalization, postmodern consumer culture, and aspects of human sexuality (particularly sexual exchange theory), recognizing their interactive and mutually-constitutive nature that calls for their analysis through a Baudrillardian lens.

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