Can Programmers Debug Every Difference in Cyberspace?

In her article, “Where Do You Want to Go Today? Cybernetic Tourism, the Internet, and Transnationality”, Nakamura discussed how race and otherness are represented in the cybertechnology advertisements to stabilize the anxiety that cyberspace may break down ethnic and racial difference. It is not a question of whether racial and ethnic difference exist or not (obviously race as a visual marker cannot be eradicated in visually presented advertisements), but a question of how to manage and present difference, how to kick a balance between the anxiety of racially advantaged group and the “hope” of racially disadvantaged group. This reminds me of Nakamura’s use of the metaphor of race as “the bug in the machine, causing it to behave unexpectedly” in another chapter of her book. Managing the representation of race in cybertechnology advertisements is just like the routine of debugging anything that inhibits the program functions by programmers.

Admittedly, Nakamura’s work is imaginative and witty. Indeed, race can be concealed in cyberspace where everyone can have his/her own online avatar, thus excludes the possibility of discrimination. But there are two questions remain to be asked.

First, in parsing the narrative of the cybertechnology advertisements, she tends to simplify the utopian of democracy in cyberspace to the elimination of difference, and simplifies the problem of difference to racial difference. Nakamura might argue that she is aware of the complexity of the constituents of difference; however, I did not see her elaborations in this article. Can visual markers also be gender, physical condition, appearance, age, class, etc.? I am sure that these markers were also debugged in those advertisements if observe carefully. Luckily, we have another reading to resort to: “Return to Cyberia: Technology and the Social Worlds of Transnational Migrants” by Panagakos & Horst. In recalling scholars to research on how and why transnational populations use rapidly evolving new communication technologies, they put up some thoughtful points concerning the differences, or even hegemonies in the use of cybertechnologies/ICTs. Differences exist in such aspects as generation, gender, class, access…For example, when using ICTs, people from developed countries have priorities over those in home country. As a matter of fact, communications from a developed country to a developing country is ridiculously cheaper than the other way around. People in developed countries have their privileges in choosing the time and way of contacting people in homeland, which might totally change the lifestyle of people in homeland due to time difference. Isn’t it a confirmation of the unequal distribution of power and resource? What about other aspects of difference, such as gender, generation, class, access? What if those aspects combine together (say, a man live in a developed country using ICTs to contact a women live in a developing country)? Will this show a new form of hegemony in cyberspace?

Second, Nakamura totally neglected the discourses of the audiences, both the western internet users, who are put in the position of tourists and the other, whose images are idealized and stabilized. Will the visitor truly feel palliated just by viewing these visual images? Will “the other” genuinely feel liberated in cyberspace where all bodies are “reduced to minds” as is claimed by the programmers?

The very last question is: Can programmers debug every difference in cyberspace?