Description
The abstract and complex nature of cyberspace lends itself to rich metaphor and neologisms. While scholars have explored several common metaphors employed in the context of cyberspace, more attention should be paid not only to how these metaphors propagate a particular vision of cyberspace but also how these serve to naturalise, reify, and remove cyberspace and its related technologies, from the dynamics of its political and historical development. In this paper, I examine some notable spatial metaphors employed in the discourses on cyberspace and locate their multiple shifting geographies. I further assess their implications for not only how cyberspace is imagined, represented and contained but also how specific subjectivities may be constructed. I suggest that a fuller examination of these metaphors can serve to unsettle the specific geographies that implicate larger structural forces such as capitalism, imperialism and colonialism. More broadly, this analysis can allow for a more conscious and critical reading of cyber related technologies and build towards a more inclusive and equitable vision of cyberspace for future generations.
Keywords: cyberspace, decoloniality, metaphor, space, geographies, capitalism, technology
