The Internet virtual space is no longer an SF fantasy. Its most important subset, the world wide web with billions of online documents, permanently updated, restlessly explored by hundreds millions of humans, is the most complex system ever created by mankind: its number of active connexions will soon approach those of the human brain.

Nowadays this information repository takes the form of a planet-sized web where all references are (nearly) immediately at hand and knowledge acquisition process is a kind of (and explicitly called) navigation. If we apply now this metaphor not only to searching static information but also to the inter-human relationships themselves, we can figure out the impact of this new communication structure on our reality representation and on our social behaviours. The Cyberworld is not completed yet (will it be one day?). Nevertheless it is regularly used by many people for commercial purposes; game playing; social encounters; personal development; diary, literature and scientific publishing; file sharing, etc. For these people it is already the normal place to communicate with others.

In this paper we would like to examine several aspects of the impact of Cyberworld onto our conceptions, and especially their social implications with a focus on ethical issues.

First we analyse the Communication as a principal component of Life: the information exchange cannot be dissociated from Life. This latter is self-organised since an exchange between two living entities has a purpose: the emitter intends (consciously or, more often, without conscious representation) to mean something to somebody, and may even waits for a feedback.

Within the Matter also exists a permanent exchange. But here it consists of energy, theoretically information-less. Energy and Information are obviously related as the latter requires, to be elaborated, maybe stored, transmitted, received, and finally interpreted, a certain amount of energy. And the job of researchers and engineers in many communication-related fields, for decades, has been consisting of minimizing this amount. Human symbolic capacity - and Life itself, supposed mankind is its highest manifestation as thought Teilhard de Chardin (Teilhard, 1955) - is finally aimed at the same objective: how to represent and exchange more and more information without spending more energy (actually, by designing and utilizing sophisticated systems able to take the process in charge). In this context thrives our almighty communication need, constantly pushing us to create more and more communication means and to (over)load them with symbolic content. This latter aspect is especially present in virtual reality which gives it a special interest on the sequel.

Second, we consider the progress in electronics which has enabled to transform any perceptible signal into a list of numbers to further store and transmit it. Trustable replication and transmission and almost-eternal conservation have given information contents and interactions a reliability and a consistency that belonged, beforehand, only to the tangible matter. This digital revolution laid the foundations of a new world: the world of information.

We may materialize an immaterial content, and simultaneously dematerialize potentially any tangible object into a digital content. Digitized content (images, sounds, texts) is a new kind of knowledge, dynamical and volatile, subject to endless annotating and modifying. This breathtaking Library of Babel, of which Borges saw the immensity but not the dynamicity (Borges, 1946) is a living organism.

A message may turn into a text or a speech and conversely. Opposing static to dynamic information becomes obsolete. And other oppositions more fundamental to our Reality perception understanding are not longer applicable. The new world is made of a new thing.

In a third step we examine several aspects of this new thing and the impact of the Cyberworld onto our Reality conceptions. Classically, we consider the three categories: Space, Time and Matter.

Figure 1: Real world versus Cyberworld

Abolishing the distance addresses a very important and ancient issue as mentions Michel Serres (Serres, 2001) who sees in this "delocalization of the neighbourhoods and of the cognitive values" a major step in the human evolutionary process, comparing it to the discovery of the fire. The Cyberworld matter, composed with information, could be called Cybermatter.

Ubiquity and Dematerialization are two faces of a fundamental characteristic of this Cybermatter. Contrary to Real Matter objects, a Cyberobject is not necessarily unique neither - which is a consequence - uniquely located. And several authors (Negroponte 1995) already forecast that soon "bit streams" will pass "atom streams".

The peculiarity of the Cyberworld is a consequence of its special Space and Matter. But to give it substance, it still needs a third and necessary term: the observer’s consciousness, i.e., the subject. And his/her thought, because it is a Time-related story, gives coherence, permanence, to his/her Reality.

But here again the referential is distorted. An example already applicable is the hypertext navigation that may be different for two persons. Same events may compose narrations with chronological threads possibly different according to the observer. This is not only an imagination issue, rather, a new sort of Relativity.

What is the use of the Cyberworld? In a fourth and final step and following several authors who have considered these issues (Suler, 1996, 1998), (Greenfield, 2006) we consider impacts on social, moral and ethical aspects. When ubiquity and no-location are normal, and when identity and property are replaced or mixed with multiplicity, to what extent avatars will act as our agents? How to limit deviant behaviours? What will be the responsibility of the avatar’s owners? Is there a risk to enlarge the "digital divide": on the one hand a mankind connected or connectable with/through a Cybeworld more and more attractive and populated; on the other hand another mankind out of the game.

After having addressed these issues, we will conclude with remarking that Cyberspace is a progress but beware of viewing it as only beneficial. All progress has a good and also an evil side. Even if the drawback is not cataclysmic many people may be left behind. As for this, we disagree with a certain utopianism who sees in the Cyberspace the definite promised land for the persecuted.

Indeed, the Human species, stuck on a planet now entirely explored, have begun to build ex nihilo a Terra Incognita artificial and modifiable. Everyone will be able to project onto this New World his/her fantasies, hopes, phobias, passions. Already land of opportunities it is bound to become a stake of power and then of rivalries.

References

Borges, J.-L. (1956) Ficciones. Sur, Buenos Aires. Greenfield, A. (2006) Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing. New Riders Publishing. Milgram P. et al. (1994) Augmented Reality: A Class of Displays on the Reality-Virtuality Continuum, SPIE Vol. 2351, Telemanipulator and Telepresence Technologies. Negroponte N. (1995) Being Digital. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1995. Serres M. (2001) Hominescence. Editions Le Pommier. Suler, J.R. and Phillips, W. (1998) The Bad Boys of Cyberspace: Deviant Behavior in Multimedia Chat Communities. CyberPsychology and Behavior. Suler J., Cyberspace as Psychological Space, http://www.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/psycyber.html Teilhard de Chardin P. (1955) Le Phénomène Humain. Editions du Seuil.

Biography

Daniel Stern obtained his doctorate in applied mathematics in 1984 from Paris University. After working at the French Center for Scientific Research as a statistician in the social sciences, he joined the CNET (now France Telecom R&D) in 1987, working first in the area of statistics applied to usages, then in the area of network models and simulation. Since 2001 he has been working at FTR&D in the area of pervasive computing and services, and published several contributions to research projects, including a book on the Cyberspace.