Online culture

Cyberculture or computer culture is the culture that has emerged, or is emerging, from the use of computer networks for communication, entertainment, and business. Internet culture is also the study of various social phenomena associated with the Internet and other new forms of the network communication, such as online communities, online multi-player gaming, wearable computing, social gaming, social media, mobile apps, augmented reality, and texting, and includes issues related to identity, privacy, and network formation.

Since the boundaries of cyberculture are difficult to define, the term is used flexibly, and its application to specific circumstances can be controversial. It generally refers at least to the cultures of virtual communities, but extends to a wide range of cultural issues relating to "cyber-topics", e.g. cybernetics, and the perceived or predicted cyborgization of the human body and human society itself. It can also embrace associated intellectual and cultural movements, such as cyborg theory and cyberpunk. The term often incorporates an implicit anticipation of the future.

The Oxford English Dictionary lists the earliest usage of the term "cyberculture" in 1963, when A.M. Hilton wrote the following, "In the era of cyberculture, all the plows pull themselves and the fried chickens fly right onto our plates." This example, and all others, up through 1995 are used to support the definition of cyberculture as "the social conditions brought about by automation and computerization." The American Heritage Dictionary broadens the sense in which "cyberculture" is used by defining it as, "The culture arising from the use of computer networks, as for communication, entertainment, work, and business". However, what both the OED and the American Heritage Dictionary miss is that cyberculture is the culture within and among users of computer networks. This cyberculture may be purely an online culture or it may span both virtual and physical worlds. This is to say, that cyberculture is a culture endemic to online communities; it is not just the culture that results from computer use, but culture that is directly mediated by the computer. Another way to envision cyberculture is as the electronically enabled linkage of like-minded, but potentially geographically disparate (or physically disabled and hence less mobile) persons.

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