Metaworlds:
Utopian Visions of the Internet and the Metaphysics of Virtual Life

E-mail, avatars, chat rooms, and online communities. With the advent of the Internet, people have been able to define and redefine themselves at will, access information, and communicate with others. By engaging in these activities, people can create for themselves alternate lives, within an equally alternate "space," that differ radically from their actual ones. From the Internet's inception in 1969, when the first host-to-host message was sent, the possibilities and merits of networked computers and the ensuing implications of life lived virtually have been the subjects of rampant speculation and heated debate.

Is the Internet a "place" where a utopian community can be created? As communication and activities occur increasingly online, and the real and the virtual continue to commingle, how are notions of utopias evolving? Are physical bodies necessary to the creation of a utopian society, or can one be populated solely by alternate online identities? Is an ideal "community" made up of virtual identities a utopia? Will discussion of the Internet as either a utopia or a dystopia cease when the novelty of the technology wears off? In addition to a discussion of the parallels between developments in utopian thought and the history of the Internet, Metaworlds contains a general overview of the debate on the Internet as a possible utopia and provocative and informative comments from scholars and experts on the question of how the Internet has changed notions of community, identity, and privacy.

In the ongoing search for the ideal society, the Internet has been proposed as a "place" in which an ideal society could exist. Take the poll to help you think about and give your opinion on the Internet as a utopia.
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