You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
I shall consider myself as having no hands, no eyes, no blood, nor any senses. (Descartes 48)
The “real world”—an idea no longer of any use, not even a duty any longer—an idea grown useless, superfluous, consequently a refuted idea; let us abolish it! …. We have abolished the real world: what world is left? the apparent world perhaps? …. But no! With the real world we have also abolished the apparent world! (Nietzsche 40-41)
There is a human body when, between the seeing and the seen, between touching and the touched, between one eye and the other, between hand and hand, a blending of some sort takes place. (Merleau-Ponty 284-285)
There is, undoubtedly, a political economy of virtuality and cyberspace to do with the globalization of capitalism and its efficient running. However, this paper is concerned with the psychodynamics of what is best called computer-mediated communication (CMC), which includes e-mails, textmessaging, and the internet; in particular, it looks at some of the implications of the lack of physical presence in CMC for how we feel about CMC and for morality and ethics.
It is customary to give some account of how this issue became significant for the author. In my case, the stimuli were several: a puzzlement about the use of mobile phones, for example, on leaving a train station someone uses their mobile phone to tell a friend they are just leaving the station; a fear that I, myself, am addicted to System Shock 2 (a computer game which is fiendishly difficult) and cannot cope with not being able to finish it; astonishment at the numbers of people walking around with a mobile phone permanently at their ears! This led me to think of CMC (a generic term for all computer-mediated communication in cyberspace) from a psycho-social perspective, in particular the role that the lack of physical presence plays in CMCs.
What part does physical presence play in our being social? Can object relations flourish in conditions where social relationships do not involve so