Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Newborns in Evolution
- 1 Cyberpsychology Architecture
- 2 Presence: Be Here Now
- 3 The Dynamic Digital Psyche
- 4 The Disinhibited Self
- 5 Electrified Relationships
- 6 Other Than You Think: Interpersonal Perceptions
- 7 Text Talk
- 8 Image Talk
- 9 I, Avatar
- 10 One of Us: Groups and Communities
- 11 Change and Excess
- 12 Addicted or Devoted
- 13 The Digital Deviant
- 14 Synthesized Realities and Synthesized Beings
- 15 Electric Th erapeutics
- Conclusion: Research and the Researcher
- References
- Index
Introduction: Newborns in Evolution
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2015
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Newborns in Evolution
- 1 Cyberpsychology Architecture
- 2 Presence: Be Here Now
- 3 The Dynamic Digital Psyche
- 4 The Disinhibited Self
- 5 Electrified Relationships
- 6 Other Than You Think: Interpersonal Perceptions
- 7 Text Talk
- 8 Image Talk
- 9 I, Avatar
- 10 One of Us: Groups and Communities
- 11 Change and Excess
- 12 Addicted or Devoted
- 13 The Digital Deviant
- 14 Synthesized Realities and Synthesized Beings
- 15 Electric Th erapeutics
- Conclusion: Research and the Researcher
- References
- Index
Summary
We're still in the first minutes of the first day of the Internet revolution.
– Scott CookIt's 10:30 p.m. and the day seems almost over. The kids finally fell asleep. My wife is reading in the living room. At last, the house is quiet. Doing a bit of reading myself is a possibility, or perhaps a round of channel surfing on TV. But I decide against it. Something more intriguing waits for me beyond the walls of my home, something that uniquely mixes work with play. Having just published my book on contemporary psychoanalysis and Eastern philosophy, which I considered a swan song for that stage of my career, I found something new and exciting to study, another realm to explore as a psychologist who loves to apply his discipline to something seemingly far afield of the mainstream. I settle into the swivel chair at my desk, fire up my brand new and very own computer – for I am the first in my neighborhood to have one – and I head into that wonderfully mysterious new world that I had discovered only a few months before, a world only geeks like me appreciated or even knew existed. Even though we are an oddball collection of people, we all suspect that this new space is leading us onto a path that could empower all people, as long as we avoid the pitfalls along the way.
THE BIRTH OF CYBERSPACE
Just yesterday, comparatively speaking in the many millennia of our evolution, we humans did something quite remarkable. We created an entirely new environment for ourselves, one that intersects but also transcends the physical world as we have known it for all these hundreds of thousands of years. People called this new digital realm “cyberspace.”
The coining of that term is attributed to William Gibson, who popularized it in his 1984 debut novel Neuromancer, which tells the story of a down-and-out computer hacker hired by a mysterious employer to carry out the ultimate hack. We now associate the term “cyberspace” with any activity or experience that occurs online and via the many devices that connect us to that ubiquitous space.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Psychology of the Digital AgeHumans Become Electric, pp. 1 - 20Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015