Cyber-culture?
What do we mean by “cyberculture”? When I decided to study Internet from an anthropological view, in the 90ties, the term “cyberculture” was on the arena. On one
hand, people were using, and still use, the prefix “cyber” to refer to activities and social
movements carried out through Internet, such as “cyberactivism”, “cybercafe”,
“cyberart”, etc. It seems that the word “cyberculture” pretends to be a new concept to
put together all these activities. On the other hand, “cyberculture” was used by some
scholars as a concept for understanding Internet impact on society, such as the proposal
of Pierre Lévy. Finally, “cyberculture” referred to a new interdisciplinary field of
research, defined by the cultural analysis of communication and information
technologies. My question then, was how to understand the multiplicity of studies that
What do we mean by “cyberculture”? When I decided to study Internet from an anthropological view, in the 90ties, the term “cyberculture” was on the arena. On one
hand, people were using, and still use, the prefix “cyber” to refer to activities and social
movements carried out through Internet, such as “cyberactivism”, “cybercafe”,
“cyberart”, etc. It seems that the word “cyberculture” pretends to be a new concept to
put together all these activities. On the other hand, “cyberculture” was used by some
scholars as a concept for understanding Internet impact on society, such as the proposal
of Pierre Lévy. Finally, “cyberculture” referred to a new interdisciplinary field of
research, defined by the cultural analysis of communication and information
technologies. My question then, was how to understand the multiplicity of studies that
take a cultural perspective in their approach.
