Epilogue

All the lives we could live, all the people we will never know, will never be, they are everywhere. That is what the world is. (Hemon, 2007) Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend. (Holmes)

The impact of cyberspace upon the domain of psychological experience has been thought by many to have been profound, not least because it immerses participants in a paradoxical experience of connection and disconnection in relation to self and other, a phenomenon that may be utilized both defensively and as a vehicle for creative expression. However, it is also true that cyberspace compels us to reconsider how that experience—of ongoing connection and disconnection, as well as the kaleidoscopic structure of self-in-relation to other—has always been an integral feature of psychic life.

It is important to remember that the use of cybertechnology has not been our first venture into the electronic age: the proliferation of telephony, radio and television in the first half of the twentieth century had already made a profound impact upon how we learn, relate, and think, well before the advent of the Internet. And, of course, psychologists and other social scientists, as well as psychoanalysts, have been examining the impact of these earlier technologies since the first “party-line” telephones were installed, a literature that then vastly proliferated after World War II when families began to peer at the first tiny video screens in their parlors. A very brief review of some of these studies will enable us to locate the current articles in the larger scientific endeavor.

Singer and Singer (2005) were among the first psychologists to make an empirical study of the impact of television upon child development, and they paid particular attention to the impact of repeated viewing of violent scenes on later expressions of aggression. Well-replicated studies by Huesmann and Eron (1986) and Huesmann (1986) confirmed that repeated viewing of violent tele