“To be in” implies a context.  For Heidegger, Dasein (“as”) is ontologically spatial within a socio-cultural context.  He describes space in terms of physical and existential dimensions (Dreyfus, 1991, pp. 128-140).  Space in the physical is occurent (geometrical), not centered but homogeneous, a multiplicity of three dimensional points, and measured by distance.  The existential dimension is spatial.  Heideggger describes it in terms of availability (lived experience), centered in the individual, orientation (up/down, left/right), remoteness and nearness, public (region and place), and degree of availability.

        The physical dimensions of space are more accessible.  It is this aspect of space that is measureable by science.  Existentially, space is more difficult to understand because it is ontologically a primordial aspect of Dasein.  It is within the existential dimension that Heidegger describes place.  Place is public and does not exist outside of the equipment used in the place.  Place is found through region, an area of equipment.  Place, therefore, can only be known through the use of equipment.  It is embedded in a socio-cultural context of Dasein.

The Region and Meaning of Place—the Greeks

        According to Walter (1988), the Greeks have two words for place: chora and topos. Chora is the earlier term for place and meant the quality or subjective meaning of a place.  Topos is the physical location or objective features of the place.  Plato understood place as one of the three types of being. Chora is the receptacle of sensory experience and the seat of phenomena, a feminine and nurturing concept. As I read Walter's etymological tracing of chora, I was surprised how familiar chora and Dasein seemed in the description.  Heidegger views space as more primordial than place.  Place is defined by the use of equipment.  While he places it within the existential dimension of space, it does not seem to have the same ontological level.

        Place is the primitive space that unifies the physical and moral, a location of shapes, powers and feelings.  It can only be known through "bastard reasoning."  Bastard reasoning for Plato was reasoning that was not intellectual, but rather reasoning based on the evidence of the senses (Walter, 1988).  Myth is a natural expression of what is grasped by bastard reasoning, and one of the primary forms of knowing a place is through myth.  It is through sacred narrative that place is known.  It is the shape the earth takes to tell its stories (Sunchaser, 1997, movie).

        For the Greeks, place is known through myth.  The myth captures the sensuous feel and energy of place.  While the place had a topos or location, the chora was the essence of the place (Walter, 1988).  The essence was tied to the lived experience of the community.  Community exists not by merely shared physical places, but the socio-cultural context of Dasein.  It is the chora, the sensuousness of the place that nurtured the community.  The sensuousness of the place was articulated through community stories or myths.  Myths are the collective stories of place.  It is the history of place not as object but as feeling and energy.  The place is invested with value.

Moving Through Space—Merleau-Ponty

        Merleau-Ponty (1965/1962) locates the origins of space in the movement of the body which he regards as producing space.  Two of the essential features of embodied space are expressive movement and bodily orientation which result in interaction.

We must therefore avoid saying that our body is in space, or in time.  It inhabits space and time.  I am not in space and time; nor do I conceive space and time; I belong to them, my body combines with them and includes them. (Merleau-Ponty, 1965/1962, p. 139)

What counts for the orientation of the spectacle [around me] is not my body as it in fact is, as a thing in objective space, but as a system of possible actions, a virtual body with its phenomenal “place” defined by its task and situation.  My body is wherever there is something to be done. (pp. 249-50)

        Body and space are entwined not separate for Merleau-Ponty.  He expands place to the imaginary sense of place.  If I can imagine myself into a place, I can be there.  Is it possible for students to imagine themselves into a WCC?  How would that change their experience?  Would the ability to imagine myself into a WCC be connected to Heidegger’s notion of available use?

Between —Mchoul

        Mchoul (1997) suggests that cyber-space is “between ‘as’ and ‘as-if’.”  Dasein is “as” because Dasein is embedded in the actual, the lived experience grounded in the use of equipment.  Dasein is described through assertion and deliberation that is occurrent.   “As-if” is virtual.  It is the art of play.  It is the world of imaginary tools that produce art, poetry, literature, etc.  I describe the reality of virtual through intuition and feeling.  Cyber-space is not only actual or virtual.  It lies between “as” and “as-if.”  The actual components of cyber-space lie in its physical equipment (e.g., the computer hardware and software, the programming languages, etc).  The actions produced by the interactions (availability) between Dasein and equipment changes, according to Mchoul, become indistinct.  Cyber-space not only facilitates the distribution of the capacity to supplement Dasein, but it also carries it out.

        Cyber-space is a notion of space that is between.  If I think of where I am in a WCC, I have two senses of place.  First, I am seated in front of my computer, pressing the keys, clicking my mouse, gazing into the computer screen.  I am situated in my office.  Yet, I also am in the WCC, interacting with fellow students, moving through hyper-linked  information.  I have an imagined body sense of task and situation as described by Merleau-Ponty.  Where am I?  It seems that I am between “as” and “as if.”  Or, is it both?  Can I be both in my office and in a WCC?  In my office, my body resides; but as I interact within the WCC, I have the sense of movement of producing space within the environment.  Does this sense of both require a seamless use of the computer and WCC software?   Do students experience this sense of being in both places?

Dis-embedded Place--Brey

Over the past two centuries, the role of geographical features in the constitution of the identity of places has deceased; this devaluation has resulted from the employment of various space-shaping technologies, used by human beings to transcend the limitations of their local environments. (Brey, 1998, p. 239)

        Place is often defined in terms of geographical locale.  But the question emerges with the onslaught of communication technologies and the Internet, can there be a place located in cyberspace on the fringes of physical locale?  Brey defines place as “an area or space that is a habitual site of human activity and/or is conceived of in this way by communities or individuals” (1998, p. 240).  He expands “place” by focusing on a location that connects others to act.  Activities take on a significance of place in two ways for Brey: 1) the kinds of objects and structures available in the place and  2)  the nearness to other places that contain opportunities for human activity.   The identity of a place is determined by “the significance of the place for human activity as defined by the goods [e.g., any structure, object, person, or event that affords activity and experiences] it contains and the nearness to other places. If place revolves around actions and goods, what draws students in a WCC into action, to identify with the place created within the software locale of a WCC?

Space Shaping

        Over time we have tried to transcend the limitations imposed on geographical place through local development (i.e., the modification and enhancement of local geographical elements) and connectivity (i.e., the construction of more and better linkages between places).  For Brey, connectivity development is an “attempt by human beings to overcome the limitations of geographically situated places through efforts to ‘shrink’ or even create novel, ‘virtual’ places that link them” (Brey, 1998, p. 242).  Brey refers to this attempt to shrink and create space and place--space shaping.

Space shaping technologies have made the geographical distance between places increasingly inadequate as a measure of the relative distance between them….  Places and the individuals in them are increasingly less determined by their geographical location and more determined by their location in a global web created by space-shaping technologies.  (Brey, 1998, pp. 242-43)

Space Blending

Brey suggests that there are a large subset of space shaping technologies that are electronic that do not just shrink the distance between places, but work to blend space and place together.  For Brey, electronic media abolish geographical distance between places as a factor in determining their perceptual availability.

Electronic media make it possible to be physically located in one place while simultaneously perceiving aspects of other places.  In this way, they enable a partial permeation of places by each other, in that features in one place are made available as objects of perception (and sometimes use) in another place.  (Brey, 1998, p. 248)

After three thousand years of explosion by means of fragmentary and mechanical technologies, the Western world is imploding.  During the mechanical ages we have extended our bodies in space.  Today, after more than a century of electronic technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned.  Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man--the technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended into the whole of society.  (McLuhan, 1961, p. 3)

        McLuhan (1961) goes on to describe this sense of global access as a global village.  With the flick of a switch or the click of a mouse, I can witness global events immediately.  On the Internet, I can send a message to my friend in China that he can read within minutes of my sending it.  I could coordinate a family reunion in Minnesota from Washington DC through email, phone and fax.  I no longer have to be in Minnesota to organize an event to be held there.  Each example reflects how the world can be closer than the next door neighbor who simply nods and waves when I pass.   How does this immediacy of world access shape my perceptions of others?  What do I miss?

Cyberspace

For Featherstone and Burrows (1995), cyberspace in a general sense is “a cluster of different technologies that have the ability to simulate environments within which humans can interact” (p. 5).  They group the main variants of cyberspace into: Barlovian cyberpace, virtual reality, and Gibsonian cyberspace.

        Barlovian cyberspace, named after John Barlow, refers to the existing international networks of computers.  It is a two dimensional representation of information that includes multimedia and interaction.

For Barlow, cyberspace is where you are when you are talking on the phone.  Clearly, both telephones and computer network systems rely upon a limited range of human senses and they are perhaps no substitute for face to face interactions where all participants are co-present.  This is so because contemporary social life still tends to operate with an implicit physiognomic notion that the face and the body are the only ‘true’ sources which can reveal the character of a person.  (Featherstone & Burrows, 1995, p. 5)

        Virtual reality (VR) was coined by Jaron Lanier.  Steuer defines it as “ a real or simulated environment in which the perceiver experiences telepresence” (in Featherstone & Burrows, 1995, p. 5).  “VR aims to surround the human body with an artificial sensorium of sight, sound and touch”  (p. 6).  It is a medium which simulates a sense of presence through the use of technology.  I had the opportunity of donning a virtual reality helmet and glove and move within this simulation of a three-dimensional space.  It was disorienting because the visual cues were not smoothly integrated with my head and eye movements. There was some lag in the images that caused a sort of motion sickness.  I felt like the objects appeared in front of me as real while I still knew they were graphic simulations.  I could directly manipulate them by reaching forward or moving my head.  When I watched others use the equipment and interact in the space, it was clear that the space while imaginary to an outsider had three-dimensional depth to the one who stood inside of it.  Very few educational environments use VR.  It is expensive and difficult to program long distance interaction.  How would a VR learning environment be different than a Barlovian learning environment?  Would the students be more engaged?  What is body in VR? What is interaction with others like in VR?  Even though other is represented in three dimensions, is it possible to know you?  How would pedagogy change in a three-dimensional virtual learning environment?

        Gibsonian cyberspace is defined in the novel Neuromancer.

A concensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts…. A graphic representation of data abstracted from the bank of every computer in the human system.  Unthinkable complexity.  Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data.  Like city lights receding.  (Gibson, 1984, p. 51)

Space and Place in Contemporary Cyberspace

        Brey claims that computer media “have unique capacities of representation and simulation that allow them to generate new spaces rather than just blend spaces together.  The new spaces they generate have no identifiable location in physical space, and may therefore be called virtual spaces”  (Brey, 1998, p. 252).  Within these virtual spaces we manipulate objects that are not real in a physical sense, but that are virtual or symbolic structures.   In this virtual world of representation, what is real?  Are we in the process of redefining what is real?  What do students perceive as real and how does it shape their interactions with one another on-line?

        Space in contemporary cyberspace is topographical space, in which there exists a system of topographical relations between virtual objects.  “Topological space is an abstract space in which objects are subjected to abstract ordering principles that define connections and trajectories between objects even though these objects have no location in geometric space” (Brey, 1998, p. 254).  Each WCC software package establishes a topographical space through its appearance and navigational conventions that reside on the screen.  The icon, when clicked, leads to a specific discussion space.  It does not exist in geometric space.

        A place in contemporary Barlovian cyberspace for Brey

is a virtual object that is able to contain other virtual objects and so may function as an environment in which other virtual objects may be encountered and activities may take place.  Windows, desktops and folders constitute places in this sense as do structures on the Internet like web-pages, web-sites, virtual rooms, multi-user domains (MUDs) and newsgroups. (Brey, 1998, p. 254)

        Brey suggests there are four types of human activities replicated within information-processing: experiential [activities with the aim to certain perceptual activities or absorb certain types of information], creative activities [new products and forms are produced in digital coded form], verbal communication [both in asynchronous and synchronous forms], and institutional activities [constituted by socially sanctioned interpretations of the activities].  It is not surprising that all of these human activities can be found in a WCC.   When all of these activities are present in a WCC course, does that mean the course comes closer to traditional human activity?  Does the course become more engaging for the students?  For Brey, “the reproducibility of such a large part of human activity in cyberspace makes it possible for cyberspace to function as a place that we do not just occasionally visit, but that we also come to inhabit” (1998, p. 256).

        Inhabit comes from the Latin inhabitare, to dwell in (Websters, 1979, p. 942).  Dwell comes from “Middle English dwellan, to linger; Anglo-Saxon dwellen, to deceive, hinder, delay; dwelean, to err.  To dwell is to reside, to make one’s home or to linger or tarry in thought or action” (Websters, 1979, p. 567).  When I in-habit I make it part of myself--it is personal.  Bachelard suggests the hermit hut’s “truth must derive from the intensity of its essence, which is the essence of the verb ‘to inhabit.’  The hut immediately becomes centralized solitude, for in the land of legend, there exists no adjoining hut” (1964, p. 32).  How can faculty create a space where students linger and tarry in thought and action.  Is inhabiting a space on-line, to be deceived in?  How do students inhabit a WCC?  Is it possible to experience the essence of the word “to inhabit” in Bachelard’s sense?

        The dis-embedding of place has transformed the identity of place by changing the relative location of place through space-shaping technologies.  Even our personal identification with place is changing.  It is becoming more difficult to maintain a sense of place.  However, “electronic media have worked to make goods from distant places part of one’s home environment, thus allowing them to become included in one’s sense of place” (Brey, 1998, p. 259).  Finally, Brey posits geographical dis-embedding of places has changed our very conception of place.

Places are no longer understood as inhabitable physical locations, but as any relatively stable environment that hold certain immediately available goods.  Next to physical places, such places include places that emerge out of a blending of different physical places by electronic media, and nowadays even software constructions in cyberspace? (Brey, 1998, p. 260)

Virtualization of Space--Levy

        One of the principal characteristics of virtualization is its detachment from the here and now (Levy, 1998).  For example, online learning environments are nomadic, dispersed.  The exact physical location is less significant.  Files can change their location, change their shape, and be separated between several web sites.  Individuals, communities, and information becomes deterritorialized.

Temporal unity is incorporated without spatial unity (by means of real-time interactions over electronic networks, live rebroadcasts, telepresence systems), continuity of action coupled with discontinuous time (answering machines and electronic mail, for example).  Synchronization replaces spatial unity, interconnection is substituted for temporal unity.  Yet the virtual is not imaginary.  It produces effects.  (Levy, 1998, pp. 29-30)

        Serres (1994) suggests this virtual sense of "not there" has existed before the appearance of computers and digital networks in imagination, memory, knowledge, and religion.  Am I there or do I exist in an unassigned space (e.g., telephone conversation)? Is existence in events that occur between things that are situated, or not being "there" (e.g., relationships of beings)?   "The etymology of exist is derived form the Latin sistere, to cause to stand or place and ex outside of" (Levy, 1998, p. 29).  To exist seems to suggest a movement from a static space not standing still nor embedded in a place.  Virtual communities gather not in geographical locations of place, but "are guided by passions and projects, conflicts and friendships.  It exists without a stable point of reference: wherever its mobile members happen to be… or nowhere at all" (p. 29).

        Space and time become multiple types of space and duration.  While every life form invents its world with its own sense of space and time, human culture further extends the variability (Levy, 1998).

Each new mechanism, each technosocial "machine" adds a space-time, a special cartography, a singular music, to a kind of elastic and complicated system in which expanses are covered over, deformed, and interconnected, in which temporalities interact, respond, or are contrasted with one another.  The contemporary multiplication of spaces has made us nomads once again.  But rather than following tracks and migrations within a fixed domain, we leap from network to network, from one system of proximity to the next.  The spaces metamorphose and bifurcate beneath our feet, forcing us to undergo a process of heterogenesis… Virtualization does not simply accelerate already known processes or suspend, or even annihilate, time and space, as Paul Virilio has claimed. Based on expenditure and risk, it creates qualitatively new velocities, mutant space-time systems.  (Levy, 1998, pp. 31-33)

Virtualization, the transition to a problematic, the shift from being to question, necessarily calls into question the classical notion of identity, conceived in terms of definition, determination, exclusion, inclusion, and excluded middles.  For this reason virtualization is always heterogenesis, a becoming other, an embrace of alterity. (Levy, 1998, p. 34)

        WCC is a tool that enables students to take courses in cyber-space.  While it has both synchronous (real-time) and asynchronous (any time and any place) text and capabilities, it is predominately used asynchronously.  Students enter a space designated as a classroom discussion space on the web.  They read the discussion questions and fellow student comments to the questions.  They enter their own comment either as an answer to the question posed for the discussion or in response to a fellow student or both.  The student then leaves the course space.  While this depicts a very simple interaction, it demonstrates the mechanics of use.  Do students perceive themselves in a place other than sitting in front of their computers?  Do they feel they know any of the students in their class?  They read their responses to discussion questions, but do they feel they are known and that they know the other students?  Is it important?

        In the course I attended in a computer conference, I did not feel like I entered into the classroom.  I never felt like I entered into a class.  I never felt like I met another person.  It was like having a class where you are sitting outside the doorway with walls between you and other students and you can not see one another.  You never become part of the larger whole.  If the learning process is based on a technical model, this may never appear to be an issue to the system.  The information is fed to you and if you pass the exams it can be shown that the class was successful.  Is this education?  What role does community play in learning?

        We make meaning as a community (Kincheloe & Pinar, 1991).  In the interpretive model, it is not the consumption of information, but taking the information and making it my own.  I make meaning in conjunction with?it is not a solitary process.  It is through the sharing of stories that we learn not only about one another, but also about how to be.  It is the reflective process of the story that brings about transformation at the deepest levels.  Story is rooted in a shared place.

        The challenge for both faculty and students is to build a place, chora, filled with energy and senses, in the computer conference course.  It is each story that begins in a place—a classroom, a kitchen, a meadow full of flowers.  The community hears the story and responds.  It is the response that feels the story as it is told.  It is the sensuous engagement with the details in the story.  It echoes within me as my own story bubbles to the surface.  It is my story and it is your story.  I, then, can take your story and re-create and reshape it to tell it as a new story as if it were an “our” story.  Finally, it offers me the opportunity to reflect on your story/ my story and re-conceptualize it into the present.  This process is used by Peter Reason (1989) in his classes where narrative is the language of the curriculum.  Narrative builds a chora where the community sensuously understands itself.  The community feels and knows itself in a public and existential way.

        A sense of place is often missing in a WCC.  While the navigational constructs are in place—the pictures pointing where to go and how to enter text, they are at the level of occurrent.  These constructs do not address the existential public dimension of place.  It is the language of the narrative that offers a medium to build a sense of communal place, a place to come and be.  Without a place, a place to sensuously reflect, the students will not enter into the class.  They may type in an answer from the comfort of their home, but they are only represented by an answer to a question.  No classmate physically shares a home with them; they are out there somewhere unimaginable—not real.  How can students establish a sense of place?  I believe that narrative can be an incredible curriculum language to build a place for shared community in cyberspace.