W10 Reading

A new consciousness is emerging with profound implications for architecture. The parallel world of cyberspace, created and sustained by the world's computers and communication lines is just one manifestation of deep cultural and technical changes which are reshaping our understanding of our world. The term cyberspace is used loosely to describe the invisible spatial interconnection of computers on the internet and it is also applied to almost any virtual spatial experience created in a computer. But tangible space and physical structure have already taken on a new significance as a result of the growth of cyberspace. Virtual worlds should not be as an alternative to the real world or a substitute, but as an extra dimension which allows us a new freedom of movement in the natural world. Contemporary science fiction concentrates on the coexistence of the real world and the metaworld of cyberspace. Every theatregoer or opera lover has already experienced the simultaneous existence of two worlds in a more physical sense. We are aware in the theatre of the sounds and smells around us and yet transported todistant realms in time and space by the magic of bright lights, exaggerated sets, fantastic costumes, excess makeup and larger-than-life voices. The concept of comperhensive ephemeralisation and the need to take a global view were pioneered by Buckminster Fuller earlier this century and the concepts are coming of age with the technical realisation of a cyberspace which simultaneously achieves both dematerialisation and global communication. But the greater impact will be on the reflected effect on our physical environment and its relationship to the virtual worlds.