ICT in society- Cyberspace and the definition of cyberculture

Overview

Our way of living, frequent using and relying on the internet shaped our society and culture into something new and created a new term- "Cyberculture". Cyberculture is the culture that has emerged from the use of the web for communication, entertainment, and business. Cyberculture is simply the effect and product of how people communicate with each other and how they exist in the internet. Cyberculture is culture using multimedia, and network connections. Basically everything in the internet is somehow made of cyberculture. The main features of cyberculture include:

• interactivity

• multimedia

• anonymity

• autonomy

• social metacommunication

• virtual reality

• slang

• transmitting information

The effects of cyberculture

We can say that cyberculture is a way of living which is chosen by more and more people. It has it's good and bad sides. The new methods of communication provided by the internet enormously changed almost whole humanity. Chatting, buying, playing, learning and transmitting data by the internet made a lot easier for us to interact and communicate with each other, it gave us the opportunity to find people from all around the world and share common interests, or to simply discuss with them on any given topic. People turn to the computer to find love or companionship because it is easy to understand, simple to operate, and quick, yet still the internet made us more alone.This trend has also many negative outcomes. Many people now prefer to chat with each other on facebook, myspace and twitter than meet face to face, younger in age are more more willing to play MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) games with their virtual friends and spend a whole day doing so than meet with their "real life" friends and play football. The cyberculture slowly consumes real life culture and human communication which may lead to the situation when people won't be able to communicate with real human beings because they simply won't remember how to do it anymore.