The focus of this volume is, as the title states, Latin American cyberculture, with an emphasis, in the latter half of the book, on a particularly important subgenre of this: Latin American cyberliterature. The definition of these terms, and of the overarching term ‘cyberspace’ to which they both make reference, is still fluid, but one of the most useful is perhaps that given by Pierre Lévy, who has suggested broad outlines which take into account the potential of the new medium. ‘Cyberspace’, as Pierre Levy has defined it, refers as much to ‘the material infrastructure of digital communications’ as to the information held within, and to ‘the human beings who navigate and nourish that infrastructure’ (Lévy 2001: xvi). Operating within this new space, ‘cyberculture’ can be defined as the ‘set of technologies […], practices, attitudes, modes of thought, and values’ that are thereby enabled and developed (Lévy 2001: xvi). Thus, cyberculture can be taken to mean the cultural products created for the new medium and those that address it in other more traditional media, as well as the new discourses, practices and communities that such cultural products generate.

The contributions to this volume therefore, whilst taking a predominantly arts-based approach, consider cyberculture in broad terms, examining not only cultural artefacts themselves but also new ways of engaging in (socio)-cultural practice online. At the same time, the cultural products studied by the various contributors are, in many cases, ones that maintain links with previous practices – literature, film, art, performance art, and so on. Judging by the range of cybercultural products being developed in Latin America, the most interesting and innovative work taking place is precisely at the interface between the old and the new technologies, and Latin American practitioners have much to offer in the way of reflections about emergent forms of expression on the Net.

Nevertheless, to date, Latin America constitutes something of a blind spot in terms of the analysis of cyberculture available in English. There are now a significant number of studies covering the development of cyberculture, cybercommunities, and cyber-identities in Asia and the Asian diaspora (Ho 2003; Lee and Wong 2003; Mitra 1997 and 2004) or the lack of access and/or ‘cyberimperialism’ prevalent in Internet provision and usage in Africa (Loader 1998; Ebo 2001).