From: ah185@yfn.ysu.edu (Christopher L. Tumber)
Subject: Cyberspace, Gravity and Natural Law
Organization: Youngstown State University/Youngstown Free-Net
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 05:05:44 GMT


Andy speaks!
 
>Yet, I think you might be better off substituting "More
>specialized" for "Less important".  
 
Yeah, "More specialised" is good (I actually paused, looking for a phrase.
obscure, eccentric etc. none seemed appropriate..). However, much of
what's out there is best discribed as "Less important".
 
 
And more wisdom falls from his lips:
 
>Also, given infinite time,
>cyberspace and the collective unconscious would pass through an
>infinite number of dimensions, along with every other aspect of
>subjective and objective reality.  
 
Gee, I dunno, sounds kinda like that "each time you drink, you're drinking 
some of Napolean's atoms's" gobledegook from high-school! (grin)
 
 
And still MORE!
 
>Uh-oh, bringing up the ole 'r' word....!  
 
So what's the politically correct term? The meat world? The matter world?
Sorry, but in a comparison between cyberspace and what is not cyberspace
you need some labels. The reason there is no real discussion about whether
(say) people involved in tv are involved in the 'real' world, and why
tv people don't have a complex about being told they are not real is a
matter of scale. Tv follows most (if not all)(or deliberately alters) 
the natural laws of what we call reality, while cyberspace can create its own 
rules or have rules that are irrelevant in the 'real' world. I've never had 
any problems with Newton's laws of motion in cyberspace, and try to find a 
'real world' equivalent to Shareware (busking? almost, not quite..). Tv is a 
subset of the real world, while cyberspace is a completely sifferent set 
which at times intersects the real world. Or, once we have the CPU power, and 
the hardware, perhaps 'reality' will become a subset of cyberspace.
 
(And why am I doing all my thinking in mathematical terms? BLEH!)
 
ALL my experiances in life are REAL, however, my experiances within the
net are very different from those on the outside. We all have a much greater
control of the fundamentals in here...Set up a BBS and create a world.
 
 
Once again Andy speaks his mind, and we listen respectfully:
 
>If we organized a group of people (AI viruses would obviously be
>better) to comb every ftp site and report, or better yet automatically
>delete duplicate copies of ftp-able files, then we would probably
>automatically thrust ourselves into a technology we might nod be ready
>for. 
 
Actually, it would probly be pretty easy to (say) program an Archie to,
as it's polling sites, delete any repetitions or repetitions after a certain
number, but that wasn't really my point. I'm no efficiency expert, rather,
I was trying to show evidence of "data osmosis".
 
 
You know, while I find what we are doing truly fascinating and exciting,
it may all be academic. We are attempting to define natural laws and paradigms
in a place which may have NONE. If anything, I think these are at best 
tendencies not laws. Cyberspace is, and has allways been very anarchistic, 
unstructured and open. Consider what the 'real world' equivalent to anonymous 
FTP would be! Even library's require waiver's etc, and you gotta pay for the 
photocopiers. Yet there are military instalations with anon FTP!
 
Cyberspace is like this only because the inhabitants have wished it this way. 
This could change at any time. Cyberspace could be autocratic, fascist and 
repressive (Indeed,some places are!).It is a grave mistake to assume cyberspace
is the way it MUST be!
 
Even if "data osmosis" IS a natural law, just like gravity there are ways to
counter it.... ice, filters, bureaucratic validation procedures all work
against the process.
 
The laws and rules of cyberspace are what we ourselves impose. This is similar
to the world as a whole where we devise our own laws and rules of government
and society. However in cyberspace that control is much more fundamental.
I cannot decide one day that I wish to be able to fly, but in cyberspace
there is NOTHING I cannot do. Indeed, in cyberspace if one does not like
the rules, one can easily create one's own place. In the real world, this
is a much more difficult process, and therin lies the difference.
 
From: Chris.Young@f78.n130.z1.fidonet.org (Chris Young)
Sender: FredGate@ocitor.fidonet