Cybercultures- Who Would You Choose?

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What if you could customize who you wanted to be? Would you select a character/avatar that resembled yourself or would you choose a polar opposite character. Cyberculture is an electronic environment where various technologies and media forms converge: video games, the internet and email, personal homepages, online chats, personal communications technologies and mobile entertainment. 

We live in a cyber world where we feel like we belong with a group of people whom we have never met face to face. However, it is because we have a certain common interest between the members of the group, and therefore we feel accepted by the cyber group without actually every meeting them face to face. Often associated with online groups are dating groups. It has become very popular meet new people online and to try to form a relationship with them. This may have seemed a little odd a few decades ago, but today online dating sites such as eHarmony have great success. A good friend of mine actually met her husband through eHarmony and they have been in love ever since. 

What is cyberspace? Cyberspace is a world and domains generated by digital information and communications technologies. As a mobile consultant, I often use iCloud a program created by Apple to pull mobile clients data from one cell phone to the next. The client is often amazed to discover lost photos and phone number they thought they had deleted years ago still floating in the cyberspace cloud. The point is, just because you hit the delete button on your text strings, or delete photos it does not mean they are not still stored elsewhere out in cyberspace waiting on someone else to revive them.

The "information society" of 2014 is increasing and constantly adding new inventions everyday. We are increasing our knowledge of products, as well as the number of people involved in information work. There is an increasing amount of information exchange in the form of a text, images, and sound. Over the last decades of the twentieth century there has been increasing reliance on electronic exchange/linkage of data,money, and markets.

Are you an Amazon fan? I love Amazon.com. I can give a personal testimony that using Amazon to order your products is an excellent idea! Amazon.com is the largest online retailer and it is no surprise by how fast their products are shipped. There have been numerous times where I have ordered books and they have all showed up weeks before their expected shipping date. Amazon created a way for people to get exactly what they want for the lowest price and the best quality without having to leave your bedroom. 

As a First World country, we are spoiled to the luxury of the internet. We have our Amazon, our Facebook groups, and our Linked-In site. We have unlimited tools in America that help use to get exactly what we are looking for in our life. However, there is a Digital Divide. Third world countries are not able to access the technology that we love. There is a divide in digital cultures including; production, dissemination, and use between the First World and the Third World nations.

Third World nations are missing out on the cybercultures which are a formation that brings together social,economic, and social contexts. The information-entertainment cultures of the new media- are characterized by four key features: convergence, remediation, consumption, interactivity. Convergence is the coming together of various applications. Until recently, we were not able to so easily share articles from site to site and post all over Facebook like we can today. It is very convenient now to upload photos or to share interesting articles to our friends and family on our social sites. 

We consume more and more new media everyday and because of remediation we are able to see more of what we want to watch and more and more media becomes available to us. The older generation has had a harder time consuming and adapting to these new changes. Where as my generation and anyone born in 2000 sees this new technology as second nature. It fascinates me how easily children around the age of 12 are able to operate as well as know all of the facts about cell phones, and their parents are barely able to answer a call on their new smart phones. In my job I see examples of how fast popular cybercultures are changing and also where we are going in future designs.