My Cyber world

Cyberculture is a very common word in our contemporary social condition. What is cyberculture? According to wikipedia, “Cyberculture is the culture that has emerged, or is emerging, from the use of computers for communication, entertainment and business.” This is really tough to define the boundaries of the cyber culture. Basically there are no boundaries or constrains in the cyber life. People get the true independent life, in the cyberspace, as they want to. The cyberspace is emerged as a virtual place where men and computers interact. Cyberculture is a result of the advanced scientific invention, but many third world countries are deprived of it because they do not have well infrastructures and financial ability to bring the service into their normal lives. Before I came to Sweden, I was a student of software engineering. Consequently, I was familiar with the Internet. But I was not a good user of it as I am right now. And the term “Cyberculture” was an unknown word to me. I heard sometime from some of my friends about chatting. Basically, my country was not connected with the information super high way at that time. As a consequence, we were not progressive enough in information technology. After coming to Sweden, I have been habituated with the Internet. Now, I can not believe my existence without the net. Why do I rely drastically on the Internet? In order to get information, mental recreation, making friendship, I use the Internet. What will happen if I move somewhere where the Internet is unavailable? Obviously, I will die then. Now I believe that the net has brought an alternative way of living into my everyday life.

Identity is very crucial factor in our real life. On the contrary, identity is very immaterial in the virtual life. When I login into the virtual world, I choose a nick according to my mental mode. Sometime I select male name, and sometime I take a female name for fun. After logging in into the chat room, I am frequently asked whether I am a male or female. As I mention before, some times I mimic as a female. And within a short time, the male characters start showing their interest to talk to me. How funny situation it is! Sometime, the male characters propose me to be my lovers. But some people are really clever. They can easily find out that I am not a female at all. In some situations, to hide identity is a really tough work. Jay Bolter, the writer of Cyberculture, writes that people, in the cyberspace, can not hide identity.

My favourite chatting room is Bangla 2000, where only Bangladeshi people chat. I started going there just to avoid loneliness. I am in Sweden, and my friends and relatives are not around me. So I am really alone in Sweden. Within a short time, I have made lots of net friends. I like to define them as net friends because physically I have not met them, and there is no way to do that because different friends live in different countries. But we have close friendship. If I am sad, they will try to inspire me to do something constructive. Sometime some of my net friends call me over phone. My community some times try to come out from the virtual world for being the society of the real world. But in most of the cases this is not possible because I do not want to meet them in the real world.

Some times I go to yahoo or msn chat room. The interesting thing is nobody waits for me there. And I do not wait for anyone as well. I am free from the social norms. Wherever I want to go, I can go. In the real world, Bangladeshi community is very introverted; especially girls do not talk to unknown people. But in cyber space, they behave differently. They are really aggressive in making friendship. Basically their confidential aspiration is emerged through the net world, and I get the authenticity of Virginia wolf’s dialogue, “Freedom, just for a night.”

To sum up, the cyber space is a different world where the rules and regulations of our everyday life are outdated. Some times I think that is it an emotionless world? But someone, in my mind, answers that no, this is a new way of life.