The conceptual borders between the virtual and the physical are getting overlapped in everyday lives, blurring the lines between the reality of imagination and the imaginations of reality. The paper suggests Spaces of Dissent and Autonomy (SoDA) as the main component.
1.1 Introduction1.1.1 Significant part of life in cyberspace
Interplay between the physical and the ‘virtual.'
dialectic divide between ‘the online’ and ‘the offline.'
1.1.2 All online activities are inherently urban and supplement traditional understandings of urban space
Capacity to imagine depends on our ability to develop a phenomenal consciousness based on extraordinary experiences.
Ever‐shifting realities of place are too varied to be consistent with any metanarrative
1.1.3 The Internet and other social media
All online activities are inherently urban and supplement traditional understandings of urban space cultural images and imaginaries that spark their activities, both on‐ and offline.
The inability of cyber‐scholars to imagine with real geographical space seems to contest the incapability of scholars to deal with cyberspace.
2.1 The Chinese Internet2.1.1 The new seven‐headed leadership was a big event in national and international media alike, and the new line‐up of leaders was publicly announced.2.1.2 China rides a wave of an extraordinary boom but minus the political renewal, thus drifting into the dictatorship of an increasingly technology‐savvy authoritarianism.
Loss of trust in leaders and the political system
A deeply fractioned Chinese society
Chinese‐language Internet a contested space for information and interaction
2.1.2 Understaffed and inexperienced authorities neglected the cyberspace for the first few years.
censored or self‐censored discourses on media with highly flexible multi‐pronged forms of control
It is apparent that virtuality is by no means ‘liberated space’ but is structured by norms.
2.1.3 Chinese internet has become poly‐vocal space over a period of only 15 years.
more than75 percent are equipped with computers, 70 percent with mobile devices
‘Weibo’ becomes one of the primary news sources for almost half
2.1.4 Chinese Internet has become a vast and highly complex public space
such free public spaces encourage people to talk to each other and ultimately develop a capacity for independent thought and concerted action
Thoughts and ideas that are continuously produced remixed and reproduced across space and time
The Internet creates a ‘lived space’ for Chinese people elsewhere.
2.1.5 The clandestine nature of inspiration and aspiration on the internet
Changing ideas is less noticeable than changing societal structures and thus creating groups and shared meanings online is less visible than organizing mass protests.
The political priority afforded by controlling physical bodies on streets are the only substantial power left.
The Internet is strictly controlled in China
3.1 Life in Cyber-Urban China3.1.1 Virtual and physical urban spaces have become interdependent dimensions of political insurgencies and control.
Insurgencies could perhaps be better understood n a broader context and by including peaceful grassroots practices
Chinese cyberspace emerges as the locus where Chinese ‘hang out’ these days before their bodies crave food or sleep.
Multiple identities transcending online and offline spheres
3.1.2 ‘Cyburbia’ provides public spaces lying outside traditional forms of state control and where social action is mostly free
Urbanites who dominate the Internet regarding usage statistics and ideas.
Many netizens and practitioners have moved to cities
Urban and global cultures process co omnipresence
3.1.3 With more than half a billion Chinese netizens, the numbers indicate a quest to escape state tyranny.3.1.4 Tools of state control and subversion are the language and communication, and almost the whole Internet is based on written language.
3.1.5 Communication has rightly been identified as the dominant ideology in the Internet Age.
The state’s goal is to prevent alternative and complex meanings from spreading
Human Flesh search punishes those involved in politically or morally illegal activities.
3.1.6 Beneath the apparent censorship vs. dissident resistance to censorship, many confusing are transpiring on a various spatial scales4.1 Spaces of Dissent and Autonomy (SoDA)
4.1.1 Shift of urban society from a ‘social existence’ to a ‘spatial existence.’
People who are discontented inhabit spaces of outrage.
People who believe in the possibility of change inhabit spaces of outrage.
A hybrid of cyberspace and urban spaces as a third space.
4.1.2 Intersection between cyberspace and urban space is observable and measurable is radically restricted.4.1.3 No clear conceptual boundaries between the virtual and the physical
Yet cyber‐urban everyday spaces include both the social practices of their proponents.
Ignoring one over the other dismisses both the reality of our imagination and the imaginations of reality.
The four realms of virtual, physical, public, and private can be appropriately mapped if we acknowledge the conflation of material and mental perceptions.
4.1.4 The shifting geographies of thoughts and ideas in urban China, lead to interconnected public‐private and virtual physical spaces as Spaces of Dissent and Autonomy’ or SoDA.
SoDA allow people to understand better and problematize issues.
These localized spaces are eclectic, based on individual intentionalities.
4.1.5 Henry Miller’s insight says that we are always in two worlds at once, and neither of them is the world of reality.
One is the world we think we are in; the other is the world we would like to live in.
Cyburban China’s SoDA allows insights into both of these worlds, in a new form of a cyber‐urban civil sphere.
4.1.6 SoDA are an attempt to re‐construct Habermas’s “public sphere an era of postmodern cyber politics.
Cyber‐urban SoDA is not confined to the limiting imaginings associated with a ‘public sphere.’
SoDA, arising “on the margins of the homogenized realm” lies at the center of the social struggle.
Autonomous and counter‐hegemonic narratives keep these struggles alive. SoDA spaces create a sense of wonder and possibility with their in‐built diversity.
4.1.7 Placing SoDA within the greater realm of China’s civil sphere, can be conceived as dialogical spaces that shape individual, cultural and political identities.
These spaces supplement and unbalance conventional public space by creating new shared meanings and processes.’
The spatial implications of online activities allow to interpret them as a catalyst for change, rather than as mere virtual entertainment.
It is conducive to individual and institutional operating in these spaces.
4.1.8 SoDA is often kept underground and ends to be anti-establishment and occasionally subversive, and, therefore, hard to study with conventional methods.
4.1.9 Experiencing immersion within a solidarity structure that is in continual flux allow the practitioner to expose the self to the digital narratives.
The emerging playful mode loosens up preordained thought patterns and allows for multiple points of interactions.
4.1.10 Netizens remain in the physical world, but concurrently the virtual world that offers a sense of belonging and radically new forms of organizing thoughts and actions.
4.1.11 In contemporary society, the most advanced stages of the Internet Age mirrors and rivals the fluidity of unmediated culture.
Cyberspace has long expanded to the point where it comes into conflict with and is changed by, mainstream culture.
Cyberspace has become simultaneously real and virtual.
Virtual places are real for a specific netizen to the extent that they become ‘populated’ with the people whose thoughts and opinions they value.
4.1.12 Public and social space are essential for the understanding and expression of life.
The traditional public space is dissolving due to pressures of privatization and globalization
Renewed public spaces as a meaningful place
4.1.13 The new media have become the social space where material and mental sensations and perceptions permeate private and public, virtual and physical space to create a new kind of city.
4.1.14 The core function of all these spaces is that they challenge the imposed normalized quiet of hegemonic power and present perspectives that differ from its main protagonists.
5.1 Conclusion
In contemporary urban China, the virtual has become a space of relative freedom and autonomy.
5.1.1 Cyberspace augments and expands these new virtual spaces, rather than replacing.
5.1.2 Cyberspace is a public space of unrestrained expression
5.1.3 SoDA is a field of peaceful coexistence despite violent clashes of opinion.
5.1.4 People develop their networks of social relations and shared imaginations.5.1.5 The actual realization of such a public sphere depends on intentional human actions into everyday urban realities.
5.1.6 Further research is needed on how specific urban spaces and environments can be re‐created through virtual worlds.
6.1 The benefit of the article
The article helps the students to understand the changing nature of cyberspace and how it helps the Chinese to express their views.
6.1.1 It helps to understand the changes undergoing in the cyberspace and its impact in the virtual world and the reality.6.1.2 The behavior of the Chinese netizens gives an idea as to where the virtual world is headed for, how it is being used and how it can impact the real world.
6.1.3 The article helps to understand the blurring boundaries or overlapping between the real and the virtual world.
Works Cited
Marolt, Peter."Re-thinking Virtual/Physical Boundaries." Asia Research Institute (National University of Singapore). 3.1 (2013): 63-101. Print.
