Distinguishing between the Internet, a communication system, and cyberspace, an environment for human exchange, the author provides a framework for exploring the metaphors and images used in cyberspace to represent and model social reality. He clarifies how these symbolic interactions are linked to the technologies used to create, store, and transmit them and to their social context.

Daniel Downes is Associate Professor of Information and Communication Studies at the University of New Brunswick at Saint John and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. An academic, musician, and broadcaster, Downes has published articles on copyright, the structure of the new media economy, and the role of media in the construction of community and personal identity. His research interests include media literacy (particularly new and social media) and the role of intellectual property in the regulation of cultural industries and popular culture. He is the author of Interactive Realism: the Poetics of Cyberspace (McGill University Press, 2005) and co-editor of Post-Colonial Distances: The Study of Popular Music in Canada and Australia with Bev Diamond and Denis Crowdy (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008).

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