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Chesner, Chris.  "The Ontology of Digital Domains." In David Holmes, ed., Virtual Politics: Identity and Community in Cyberspace (Sage, 1997).

Chesner's argument situates itself in opposition to a series of discourses, which have constructed the ontological makeup of the online world as a spatial realm.  Taking as his starting point a critique of these spatial conceptions, Chesner identifies science fiction, cinema, computer interface models, and public policy as the primary disseminators of this idea.  The primary problem with such a conception is that it obscures and renders invisible the workings of digital domains, which he defines as "parallel universes where events occur outside usual physical spatial restraints." This concept also lends itself to problematic metaphors of expansion and colonization, which reinforce the desire of capital to turn digital domains into commodities and the desire of liberal states to regulate those zones.  Against this discourse, Chesner argues that space does not exist online and, further, is made irrelevant by digital environments, which he demonstrates by discussing the different components of computers and interface models which integrate the user into this spaceless terrain.  Although the strength of the essay in his description of the "stuff" of cyberspace, Chesner makes an interesting argument in his assertion that the digital operates by "storing up" the real as "symbolic standing reserve," which can then be "called up" by users, as demonstrated by customer credit and store inventories.  He calls this process "digital poesis," extending a theory offered earlier by Heidegger.  The process of "enframing" the real is overdetermined by the structure of the technology used, which results in structuring the real in a particular way, often through spatial metaphors, such as "Windows." Enframing data in such a way, Chesner argues, has the effect of transferring the spatial conception of the real onto the digital as though it were natural.  This sets a dangerous precedent for the abilities of corporate and governmental agencies to determine what is real and legitimate and must be problematized by political questions of representations and voice. [E. Martini.]