Game-Based Pedagogy

Interpretations of the cultural meanings made by each of the boys in the study, based on their individual unique experiences engaging with video games, can provide readers with insights into how to approach adolescent aged boys' literacy development through game-based pedagogy. In this chapter the author describes how these four boys developed their multimodal ways of learning by engaging with visual perspectives of video games. The methodological approach documented what boys are saying, as much as possible, which is currently understudied in the literature surrounding boys and their video gaming practices. This chapter addresses some boys' out-of-school video gaming practices for meaning-making and gaining cultural knowledge. Studying the ways in which boys make meanings through multimodal ways of learning can offer insights into strategies for cyber culture that can potentially reinvent traditional literacy pedagogical boundaries and establish new ways and practices for building knowledge.

(Re)-fashioning the Techno-erotic Woman

This study examines the techno-journals and futuristic zines such as Boing Boing inscribe a kind of textual prologue for cyber-culture. They are valuable in themselves because they forge a much-needed connection between late print culture and the new cyberspatial network, formatting the matrix of this social space in ways that begin to define it. Wired magazine, for instance, participates in a cultural dialogue concerning issues of network privacy, governmental regulation, and censorship. Wired also sponsors HotWired, its online counterpart, where participants can exchange information, chat with live guests, and buy, sell, or trade computers and software products. Boing Boing, while differing from Wired in their hyperbolic presentation, share the techno-journal's fascination with "New Edge" culture, which includes, in addition to a hacker-like obsession with computers, technological phenomena such as raves, body alteration, smart drugs, and techno-spiritual movements. Because the communications revolution has brought about a phenomenological change in our perceptions of lived experience. These publications could be said to provide a type of public service by offering interfacing media that connect the user-friendly world of print with the phenomenon of cyberspatial networking. Yet, for all of their cutting-edge potential as links to the democratizing venues of cyberspace or as media for constructing alternative cybertextual practices, many of these techno-journals remain disturbingly vested in the politics of late capitalist culture. This includes heralding the new technologies in what amounts to an almost nostalgic longing for the ultimate "metanarrative"—pronouncing technological libertarianism and combining social consciousness with rampant consumerism.

DISEMBODIMENT ON THE INTERNET AS A NEW FORM OF TECHNOLOGICAL SELF-ALIENATION (BASED ON THE STUDY OF STUDENTS OF HUMANITARIAN INSTITUTES OF HIGHER EDUCATION)

Phenomenon of disembodiment of users of information technologies in virtual reality, in particular as a special form of self-alienation, was already noted by the first representatives of cyber culture. However, psychologists have not properly analyzed it yet, perhaps, due to the usual peripheral position of the problem of disembodiment of a physical body in psychology. In the present study we continue to develop our theoretical and empirical construct of the Disembodiment on the Internet (N.V. Kopteva, A.Yu. Kalugin, L.Ya. Dorfman) as a psychological impact of the use of contemporary information technologies in areas related to self-alienation and alienation. The construct is based on the conception of unembodiment of the mental self from the body by a British psychiatrist R. Laing, which is considered to be one of the fundamental psychiatric conceptions of disembodiment of the physical self. R. Laing’s description of the ‘detachment’ of schizoids from their own body helps understand the specifics of existential positions of embodiment - disembodiment determined by sociocultural, technological factors and choices made by individuals themselves. Our study was performed on a sample of active Internet users - students of humanitarian institutes of higher education (aged from 17 to 25 years) - with the use of the Disembodiment on the Internet diagnostic procedure. We revealed groups that differentiated in the severity of disembodiment and created their psychological portraits according to patterns of disembodiment, which include experience of unbodiliness of the virtual self, incompleteness and secondariness of the technological way of being limited by the Internet environment and Internet addiction. We also empirically detected the effects of disembodiment on the alienation of students in different aspects of their life (from who they are, from their families, in interpersonal communication, from their studies and the society) ranging from ‘vegetativeness’ to adventurism.

Designing Eco Cities With the Understanding of Digital Nomads

A computer and a fast internet connection allow us the opportunity to work from just about anywhere, creating cyber-culture. What we need for that is just be good at what we do and be able to sell our services or products online so we can go and live wherever we want. A person who chooses to embrace remote work as a lifestyle choice, using technology to make a living that enables themselves to be as mobile as they want to be called “digital nomad.” Digital nomads have the business and education opportunity much more independent and collaborative. This study is about the designing eco-cities with the concept of digital nomads and their understanding of life. For nomadic lifestyle “change is home.” In modern period, it is vital to understand the philosophy behind the nomadic lifestyle which focuses on experiences instead of accumulating. A digital nomad has ecological approach that means not to be consumer more than necessary. This study claims that understanding of digital nomads give clues to digital age and its cities.

Social Impacts of Cyber Culture and Predictions About the Future of Open and Distance Education

Developments in information and communication technologies play a major role in shaping economic, political, and cultural fields. Together with its inherent features, the internet, in addition to offering opportunities such as a new cultural space, freedom, and reality, has led the change of learning habits, cultural forms, and identities. Open and distance learning starting from correspondence education to computer networks-based education is one of the most affected areas by internet technologies. Various applications have developed in the field of open and distance education over time with the reflections of cyber culture. The aim of this study is to define cyber culture with its components and examine which areas it affects in our daily lives then to investigate the future open and distance education applications shaped by cyber culture.

Cyber-Culture, Cyber-Art, and Mnemonic Energy

The word cybernetics has a very rich etymology. On the other hand, Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics and Society (1950) has very fluid style with its literary intertextual texture. Cyber prefix defines many aspects of life. Today, cyber-culture has gained new meanings due to virtual art activities during COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown. Cybernetics has shown its impact on artistic creativity with two exhibitions, Cybernetic Serendipity (1968, London) and Software (1970, New York), which featured early examples of digital-art, cyber-art, and new media performances. Cyber-art is a very broad category. There are countless cyber-artists. In the institutional context, Can't Help Myself of Sun Yuan and Peng Yu (2016), Memory of Topography of teamLab (2018), and The City As A House of Rebecca Merlic (2020) are three valuable works. This subject was developed under the light of the ideas of Benjamin, Wiener, Deleuze, and Guattari, and the specified examples were analyzed with the descriptive method.

The Dialectics of Cyber-Aesthetics and Graphic Design in the 21st Century

We live in a digital culture and cyber era. Cyberculture is an extensive concept including information and communication technologies, media and new media, theories, ideas, literature, art, design, and cultural studies. On the other hand, Lev Manovich updates new media and it reflects the characteristics of new avant-garde because of new digital hardware and software technology. New media has a new aesthetic potential, so does cyberculture. The rise of cyber culture has made it necessary to underline the relationship between graphic design and cyber culture and made it necessary to show key design elements of cyber-aesthetics. In this context, by using descriptive method, the chapter focuses on some components of aesthetics and cyber-aesthetics in the frame of relationship between graphic design and cyber-culture. Now, there is a global pandemic (COVID-19). Some graphic design examples came out during this global pandemic. These examples will be evaluated in terms of cyber-graphic design, cyber-aesthetics, and cyber-culture.