I have really never thought about the concept of cybertime before reading “The Varieties of Cyberspace: Problems in Definitions and Delimitation” and “Cybertime.” To be honest I’ve never even heard the word mentioned before, but when I got to thinking about it there is a very real difference between actual time in your physical life and time spent in cyberspace. I’m sure every college student has experienced the phenomena of going to watch “just one video” or play “one game” or visit “one website,” and before you know it, the sun is coming up. And every time this happens you find yourself asking, ‘where did the time go?’ Now there’s an answer: it got distorted in cybertime. The hours fly by when you’re taking Buzzfeed quizzes or watching Netflix but thirty seconds drag on for an eternity when YouTube makes you sit through a commercial. It’s strange to think of cybertime as separate from real time, but there really is a fragmentation between the two that I have never noticed before. “Distinctions between past, present, and future fade” and we lose ourselves for a little while in another world: cyberspace (Strate 380).
I also found it interesting and kind of funny how in “The Varieties of Cyberspace” article Dr. Strate mentions that the word “cyberspace” and all of the words that stem from it may turn out to be “nothing more than ‘90s nostalgia,” because for the most part, this is how I think of them (Strate 282). Since I grew up in the ‘90s I’m familiar with a lot of the “cyber” terminology, but I don’t think it’s as prevalent as it was. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if children now would have even ever heard of many of them. The only word that children today really hear with the word “cyber” in it is “cyberbullying.” In the ‘90s it was “cybereverything” because it was new and innovative, but today it’s just part of every kids’ life. To them “cyberspace” is not a different world that they sign on and off of; it is part of their world.
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