INTRODUCTION
- The spatialisation of Cyberspace - is an attempt to translate information and communication spaces into domains familiar and comfortable to users.
- It is a process of mapping the spatial form/attributes of Cyberspace data that have no geographic referent.
'Maps are powerful graphic tools that classify, represent and communicate spatial relations; a concentrated database of information on the location, shape and size of key features of the landscape and the connections between them (Hodgkiss 1980)'
- The spatialisation of Cyberspace - is an attempt to translate information and communication spaces into domains familiar and comfortable to users.
- It is a process of mapping the spatial form/attributes of Cyberspace data that have no geographic referent.
- These spatialisations are particularly powerful when modes of thought and actions that work in the familiar domain are also appropriate to the metaphorical domain:
eg: NOUNS such as rooms, lobbies, highway, frontier, café’s and VERBS such as surf, inhabit, build, enter are all examples of these metaphors.
- Cyberspace then, is to a great extent built out of the ideas and language of place, and the employment of these metaphors to create sites of interaction, creates an online spatiality.
- As a consequence, Taylor (1997:190) states that 'to be in a virtual world is to have an intrinsically geographic experience, as virtual worlds are experienced fundamentally as places.’
- This interest in the spatialisation of cyberspace has led to the growth of a distinct research field: information visualisation, that has particular focus on developing and improving the interface between the user and the information spaces on the Internet.
eg: NOUNS such as rooms, lobbies, highway, frontier, café’s and VERBS such as surf, inhabit, build, enter are all examples of these metaphors.
- Cyberspace then, is to a great extent built out of the ideas and language of place, and the employment of these metaphors to create sites of interaction, creates an online spatiality.
- As a consequence, Taylor (1997:190) states that 'to be in a virtual world is to have an intrinsically geographic experience, as virtual worlds are experienced fundamentally as places.’
- This interest in the spatialisation of cyberspace has led to the growth of a distinct research field: information visualisation, that has particular focus on developing and improving the interface between the user and the information spaces on the Internet.
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