Redefining the self in postmodern cyberspace

Cyberspace is a metaphor for an alternative reality situated in the linear, physical world but yet capable of transcending it. The otherness of cyberspace manifests itself through virtual transient worlds, reconstituting the stable human subject in a radically interactive electronic medium. The study identifies three simple stages to demonstrate how cyberspace accomplishes the dispersion of the human subject: (i) role-playing which occurs in interactive games such as Multi-User Simulated Environments; (ii) the deconstruction of the boundaries between the autonomous author and the reader in hypertextual platforms and (iii) the deconstruction of the boundaries between the virtual and the real in Virtual Reality machines. By seeking anchoring not merely in the bourgeois reality of linear time and linear space but also in virtual worlds, the dispersed human subject is creatively enriched and is momentarily free to redefine oneself in unimaginable ways that poets and visionaries could only dream about