A great deal gets written nowadays about "cyberspace," its revolutionary character and so forth, much of it centering on alleged new forms of communication latent in the online environment. Forums, newsgroups, discussion boards and so on, make roundtable discourse available in new ways. One might expect, then, that cyberspace's "revolutionary" contribution is to increase the heterogeneity and scope of people's thinking--a contribution to our pursuit of knowledge--and in fact, this is the commonly advanced view. However, the view is troubled by the (easily made) observation that personal exchanges in cyberspace are far more contentious and juvenile than those in living-room space. Such world-class juvenility conflicts with the notion that cyberspace has something to do with the pursuit of knowledge. Additionally, this standard view of cyberspace is inadequate as a general theory, since it fails (and fails to try) to explain cyberspace's phenomenology in a way that simplifies.
I've developed a more general theory of cyberspace. It explains the phenomenology in general principles, as the predictable result of human nature operating in any "virtual" environment. The explanation begins with an explanation of why we tend not to use cyberspace to advance our pursuit of knowledge, but rather as a forum for petty and juvenile banter.
In online discourse, it is reasonable not to believe anyone on matters of fact. Facts are easy to distort, tweak, take out of context, misinterpret, and to make up. It is common to read a factual statement, draw a conclusion about what logically follows, and then cite as fact the alleged implication instead of the actual fact. Additionally, most people are not experts on the majority of what they talk about, so their factual assertions are often just citations of someone else's factual assertions (taken from books or other online debates). And, of course, even experts can disagree, and divergent expert opinions get filtered by personal preference. Often people get their facts from books written to justify a factually-dependent position; the author screens the inconvenient expert findings, reports the rest, and a belief about what the experts have found gets lodged in the reader's brain. A large number of the "facts" which plop out into on-line discourse seem to travel this route. So it is common, even reasonable, when somebody presents a fact you dislike, to ignore it, or at least make no concessions.
We can clarify positions and sharpen arguments, and thus benefit intellectually from debate, without facts, however. Positions can be confirmed or refuted on logical and intuitive grounds. So these debates could be helpful after all. The trouble here is that to criticize an argument philosophically is to show that it contains some kind of logical failure, and "logical failure" is essentially the definition of stupidity. To demonstrate that someone's view has a logical gap or contradiction (no matter how subtle) is essentially to show that he has (no matter how subtly) been stupid about something. People just don't like you to do that. They respond in ALL CAPS, and make fun of your personhood. You retort in ALL CAPS and insult them back (it's fun). It goes nowhere.
Discussion can advance understanding even without the critique of arguments. The conclusions can be interesting in themselves. One might allow another's logic, but point out a surpsing or anti-intuitive implication. Some of parts of any worldview (justifiable or not) usually conflict with other parts, and this is interesting. It is worth pointing out. But people usually resent that too: it suggests that you know more about their world-view(s) than they do. It suggests they don't make sense.
So how does the discourse of cyberspace differ from that of any living-room, or public debate? After all, those arguments go nowhere equally fast. The key difference is that shared physical presence imposes constraints of civility. Classical online discourse has a developmental stage characterized by someone calling someone a complete idiot, pustulent butthead, etc. In face-to-face discourse, one might get punched in the nose if this stage is not circumvented. That possibility is a strong disincentive, and its intrinsic absence from cyberspace (or any "virtual" medium lacking personal physical presences, e.g. talk radio) explains the superior civility of in-person discussion. On-line, nothing inhibits the natural inclination to SMASH that MORON when it arises, and so people do, with relish.
The underlying anthropological explanation of the difference between cyberspace and living-room space now begins to emerge. A principle of human socialization can somewhat loosely be described as follows:
In other words, stab your lover before she stabs you. Let's call this principle "social entropy." It is ubiquitous in human affairs, explaining everything from military history to dating. It explains and predicts the degenerate nature of cyberspace. Usually, social entropy has a natural counter-balance in the instinct to avoid physical harm. For example, the physically unhealthy nature of nuclear engagement tempers the race to first-strike capability, and normal interaction between individuals skirts levels of physical provocation. Underlying all social interaction is a dance, between the laws of social entropy on the one hand, and self-preservation on the other. Cyberspace, by eliminating physicality, tips the balance toward social entropy. In cyberspace, people nuke each other all the time.
So the unique nature of cyberspace is this. It is a social environment in which physical well-being is untouchable. It's a kind of social free-fall. Concerning this new-found "weightlessness" and how we should respond and adapt to it, two significant points present themselves.
First, sticking your thumbs in your ears, waggling your fingers, and calling someone names, knowing all the while he can't touch you, is fun. It is a freedom we don't normally have in life, which cyberspace is uniquely constituted to provide. It is a fundamental mistake to go into an on-line exchange with the idea that you will inform, be informed, or in any way communicate with anyone. The more likely result is that people will enjoy making fun of you in ways they think are clever, and you will enjoy making fun of them in ways you think are cleverer. Some will get hot and bothered and YELL A LOT; some will leave. But in all cases, the medium reflects an aspect of our nature--of people acting in a form natural to their (non-physical) environment.
Second, exploring new freedoms is not only engaging, but self-enlightening; we learn from doing new things, and subsequent reflection on the experience. It is by acting as such a mirror that cyberspace advances us culturally, rather than by the presentation of digital information. The chief aspects of ourselves reflected by cyberspace seem to be picayune egomania and its daughters, hatred, loathing, and domination. A significant self-revelation afforded us by cyberspace, then, is that the pursuit of knowledge is generally subordinate in our nature to the pursuit of "being right." But whatever our cyberspace-induced conclusions may be, they are primarily experiential, derived from increased awareness of experience rather than from information diseminination. This is merely an instance of a more general rule: self-discovery is experiential and historical, the result of childlike immersion in an environment and subsequent retrospection. Indirect rather than direct observation of ourselves is the most scientifically rewarding.
So the most beneficial general use of cyberspace is as an arena. In the arena, we vent instincts developed during our physical evolution and repressed during our social one. Its strictly functional value, e.g., as a tool for separated researchers collaborating on a project, is not its value in popular culture. We use it to reinforce our conclusions, not to challenge them. As such, cyberspace shares a class with gladiator sports such as football more than with discursive media, differing from football in that it releases the repressions of computer nerds rather than frustrated warriors, and the trigger is mental rather than athletic. Role-playing is another analog (it is startling to see the things people pretend to do to one another when they can pretend anything they want). What constitutes "cultural revolution," and whether cyberspace qualifies, is a separate topic. The important point here is that for cyberspace to contribute broadly to human culture, we must treat it as a medium rather than a tool, a stage not a prop. It shows us the stuff from which we are made if, and only if, we surrender to it and "play" it, as we would a sports spectacle or any role-playing game.