LIVING AT (CYBERSPATIAL/REAL) HOME

The diasporics and nomadics of the world share a new sense of global space, but, also, a concomitant placelessness. In fact, I believe nearly everyone in the world does today to some degree. From the "global souls" written about by Pico Iyer to the stay-at-"homes" (with "home" now a contested term) who experience telepresence while viewing their TVs which show event-spaces around the world--we all now have some expansive sense of global space while feeling the alienation of placelessness.

Yet, as the world globalizes--and because of it--people feel the need for a renewed sense of place: The need for attachment and rootedness to a place to counter the deracinated global sense of space. Using the term "glocalization," which indicates the interweaving of localities into larger economic spaces, I call the cognition of the continuum from local to global spaces, "glocal spatial cognition."

We live in spaces from local to global. In the case of bloggers--those who maintain a presence in their own blog sites, including ones such as MySpace--we create cybernetic space, to afford us some identity and sense of "home." Further, our cyberspatial presence also is partly defined by our presence in "real" space wherever we live (and vice versa). Indeed, we who have our own blogs are creating some sense of home--albeit, partly cybernetic and partly "real."

The computer and "real" space are now interwoven--we live at "home" with the machine. Thus, "home" itself is now cyborgian. So is our spatial cognition.

SPACE-TIME COMPRESSION

Growing up in the 1950s, to say something was “on the other side of the world” was synonymous with placing it on the moon: a (cognitive) distance not within normal human experience. It would have taken days to fly commercially on propeller-engine passenger flights to, say, China.

A few summers ago I flew to China from the Mississippi Gulf Coast--in time-zone and international date-line and sun up-sun down-sun up disorientation--in approximately 16 hours, including time watching people in three airports. I cannot estimate, within a thousand miles, how far is China. I can, however, measure it in the time--today--it takes to travel there.

Is China still “on the other side of the world?” In absolute distance it might be 8,000 (?) miles. In temporal distance it is about 16 hours away. In cognitive distance?--the world now has no “other side.” After all, it is now a small world, both in space-time distance and in our spatial cognition.