Blog 1: Woolley

Chapter Six of Woolley's Virtual Worlds A Journey in Hyper and Hyperreality is Woolley's explanation of cyberspace. He begins by telling us about the concept of a global village and that electricity is needed to transport information rather than time or space. Woolley repeatedly went back to the idea that cyberspace or rather technology as a whole is an extension of our bodies, just as the telescope is an extension of our eyes; the phone is an extension of our ears and mouths; cyberspace is an extension of our nervous system, being able to transport signals from one place to another. Woolley then went on to explain that just as our bodies and nervous systems can attract virus's, so can networks in cyberspace. He used the example of the AIDs virus attacking a persons body and how quickly it can spread from one person to another; it can also attack one person's computer and spread from one to another. Next he compared two similar incidents in the stock market involving computers, one which occurred in 1987 and another in 1989 to show that it is the effect of the computers and that one person alone cannot help or hurt the situation. 

What I felt that Woolley tried to express the most in this chapter was that, though cyberspace can be a wonderful thing and can help us considerably in everyday life, we cannot always rely on it. We have to be able to stand on our own to feet because any random day our computers can crash and we could temporarily be without access to our bank accounts, stocks, emails, etc...