Cyber Ikigai 4

There are experts, from the scientific fields, who know the inside out of the technical aspect of the cyberspace. And then there are people who are good, from the social sciences, at what is happening to human interactions in cyberspace. We need experts who know both sides of the story. This is a humble attempt to promote such a genre.

In fact, it is the administrators and political leaders who have a big role in shaping the future of cyberspace and its consequences. And unless there are experts who can effectively communicate with the policymakers including legislatures, judiciary, executive and press, change will not happen. It is the role of the experts to prepare summaries for them. The book is a humble effort in that direction too.

But the most important reader this author has in mind is the educated common man.

A small note on methodology. This essentially part a review of literature, and part an observational study. As we are dealing with a significant shift in the very way human beings exist, we cannot analyse this within the confines of any single discipline.

The conceptual birth of the idea of cybernetics is worth a mention in this context. It was a bold attempt by mathematician Norbert Weiner, of borrowing lavishly from engineering, biology, and psychology, that created the idea of the cyberspace. As one dug deep, it was a surprise to this author that the contributions of experts from domains other than technology have been significant in the very birth of the cyberspace, the foundational contributions of psychologist Joseph Licklidier of Massachusetts Institute of Technology being an example. If a discipline such as psychology could play such a foundational role in originating the cyberspace, why shy away from utilising the same interdisciplinary approach while attempting find solutions for the maladies created by the cyberspace.
Hence one has tried to broad base his sources to include thinkers from Sociology, especially the Spanish academic Manuel Castells who worked on Sociology of cyberspace, Hannah Arendt (her insights on the Banality of Evil, articulated in her Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, 1963 throws light on the travails of the twenty-first century life like no other), the resourceful journalist Edward Lucas ( his Cyberphobia, 2017 remains a pioneering work in assessing the problems caused by cyberspace), to mention a few.

As for reasoning, one has made use of deductive thinking to take things to their essential First Principles (by trying to bring cyberspace to its irreducible, commonsensical basics,) as well as inductive theory building, making meat from existing social theories, be it eudaimonia of Aristotle or Communicative Rationality of Jürgen Habermas.
One of the consequences of these efforts is the oft repeated visualisation of cyberspace as a space that intervenes. Another is emphasising the rather subconscious propensity of the users of the cyberspace to auto- amputate their senses as well as themselves from the larger organism of society.

Part review of literature, part observational study.