01. How does Wooley define cyberspace?

Woolley really doesn't define cyberspace. He instead uses examples of what cyberspace could be. For example, he uses Marshall McLuhan's 'global village' and uses several scientic comparisons to the human body to make the reader try to understand what cyberspace could be.

01b. What does he identify as its defining features?

Cyberspace acts like a global village and its ability to connect people even though they may live hundreds of miles away from each other. Like Mark Poster commented, "time and space no longer restrict the exchange of information."

01c. How does it function? What does it do? How is it different from the physical world?

The ability to connect hundreds of people is by way of the network. It's different from the physical world because unlike in 'reality', you can't see the person who you are communicating with. You can't view their facial structure and see their emotions with the comments you may make to them. The physical world constricts us from going into the virtual world.

02. What do Wooley's discussions of: the global village; genes and viruses; and the stock market have to do with cyberspace? What point does he make with each example? How do these three points work together to support his overall discussion of cyberspace?

With the global village, it connects everyone who is within a network to each other. As viruses affect the human body, it too can affect cyberspace. It's like the comparision with AIDS. If you aren't careful with what you share your hardware to, you can contract a disease. For cyberspace (and your computer), it's a virus. The stock market relies heavily on computers. When the prices fell, it "triggered systems programmed to sell shares that passed a praticular price threshold" (13). With this now in effect, it kept tumbling out of control to the point of having a helping hand in causing the stock market to crash in 1987.

03. After reading this essay: what do you know? How did you respond to what the article said? What do you not understand?

I now know that cyberspace is a really complicated environment to work through. I never before compared cyberspace to the human body, and with Woolley doing the comparisons, it made me realize that cyberspace and the human body have a lot in common - and that particular information shocked me.

04. What kind of writing will be suited to this place Wooley describes? How will it be different from writing in the material world?

I'm supposing the writing without the LOLs, and brbs and other acronyms. It's kinda like the writing of today's world without the shortcuts.

In the material world, we mostly don't use those particular acronyms when discussing our point of views. Unless we're writing to a friend, we have to keep a 'professional' mode of writing when presenting our works.


I think me brain may have exploded from Woolley.