A Review of Cyberpower: The Culture and Politics of Cyberspace and the Internet by Tim Jordan Routledge, 2000 ISBN: 0-415-17078-8. 254 pp., $25.99 Review by Alan Bilansky The Pennsylvania State University   Whether Cyberspace is a place or not, many explorers need orientation to the digital world--a map. And sociologist Tim Jordan is ready to provide just that, claiming that "the patterns of virtual life are clear enough to be mapped.  . . . This book is such a globe. It is a cartography of powers" (3). This is an ambitious goal, and Jordan's material moves, after some theoretical gestures, from the smallest scale of individual users and laptops, to the "superpanopticon" (197-200) of Bill Gates and other nebulous elites. Jordan's introduction is remarkable in that he lays out a theory for the book, but first apologizes for it and brackets it from the rest of the work. Jordan summarizes the theories of power of Max Weber, Barry Barnes, and Michel Foucault. The reader is told that these theories are, in so many words, optional: A reader may find this analysis somewhat abstract and dry compared with the . . . analysis of cyberspace, and there is no reason why the theories of power cannot be put to one side while the definition and analyses are explored. . . . The theories of power inform the analysis of cyberpower and are contained in the second half of this introductory chapter, to be read when necessary. (4) Next comes what would appear to be another theoretical orientation--and this one integral to the work--coming from cyberpunk fiction. With respectful thoroughness, Jordan provides a summary of this school of science fiction. These writers, such as Gibson and Stephenson (as Jordan describes them), present cynical, vague visions of concentrated offline power, and hopeful visions of online existence, where people enter cyberspace--a world that is for all purposes real--and fly along gridlines of information, to break into palaces and fortresses built out of information, and engage in combat with real stakes. It is from these writers, I would suggest, that Jordan draws the theory that truly animates this book. He says, "cyberspace is another version of the space two people enter when talking on the telephone" (55). Through the rest of the book he sees cyberspace as a real place that individuals enter when they go online, and where individuals should be free to reinvent their identities and express them. The discussion of fiction is followed by a discussion of the historical facts of the development of global networks, beginning with the Pentagon project the ARPANET, and other projects that would eventually resolve into the Internet, and he then narrates some false starts and other red herrings before Mosaic and the World Wide Web. Jordan moves on to a discussion of online identities. Jordan argues that online information is reality. New selves are created by the information people choose to share. He identifies various attributes of avatars, or online personas, each a form of information that produces identity. Some attributes are freely chosen, and others are not, and it is interesting to note that he places “style” (for him, both what we say and how we say it) in the latter category. That is, we can change our name, and describe ourselves as furry dragons and have e-sex with other dragons, but most of the content of our communication is not a matter of choice. E-sex serves as his paradigmatic example of online life. Spoofed sex (one user having cybersex with another while assuming a different gender or orientation) is the “ultimate mark of success” in assuming an online identity (71). Next, these virtual individuals are placed in virtual communities, and the central question becomes how much coercive power can be wielded over individuals to protect them from each other, without sacrificing their freedom--a liberal question stretching back to Hobbes. At the midpoint of the book, Jordan returns to Foucault, and the rest of the book works out the mutation of Foucauldian power into “technopower.” "Technopower" leads to the need for ever more complex technologies to help us manage it: "that which sets [users] free enslaves them" (128). Finally, he surveys utopian and dystopian visions of the future. Jordan thoroughly surveys writers in various disciplines who are mapping the Internet. There is no established literature on digital environments, but many of the people he cites will be familiar to readers who have surveyed the literature that is emerging. He hits on many of the events that have attracted scholars’ attention (Blair Newman's cybersuicide, Mr_Bungle's cyberrape of Legba), and also some less well-known but interesting cases such as the invasion of one discussion group (rec.pets.cats) by another (alt.tasteless), the small and grand narratives, and the recurrent questions that thread through discussions of cultures around the Internet. Thus it makes an excellent primer for those who want to orient themselves to studying digital environments. However, just as he is a fine representative of how the Internet is discussed in certain circles, this study also suffers from some of the same faults as other writers on the Web. I will touch briefly on one shortcoming, a problem of scale that seems a result of writing about the Web without a background in information technology. Digital environments seem to be magic to Jordan. For example, in one MUD, he describes a user learning the "@dig” command, which magically builds a house for an avatar.  And he speculates about this magic: "one small element of the fundamental fabric of this virtual society resulted from the simple thing-like command but someone coded this command, it did not simply happen. Someone decided . . . that homes were a good idea in this MUD and they wrote the software code that allowed avatars to build virtual homes. . . . Who wrote the software code that creates online, real-time virtual environments capable of being extended and modified?" (111-112, emphasis mine). This is left a rhetorical question. He would rather simply view these "wizards" (this what the avatars of programmers and system administrators are called) as wizards. This omission of detail is not for the sake of a non-technical audience, as he devotes three pages to the origin of the @-symbol in e-mail addresses. Digital environments are viewed only on the scale of either individuals signing on to networks, or the evil empires of Bill Gates, the Pentagon, and other not-too-specific elites. This view misses many ways that human agency is exercised on the scale in between. Everything in these electronic worlds is a made thing, and Jordan dismisses the efforts to create--and constantly recreate--them, calling programmers mere “mechanics”: [A false conclusion is] that anybody with expertise becomes powerful in cyberspace, but all the programmers working in the great programming factories appear far more like cogs in corporate or government wheels than as powerful individuals. It is as if the importance of the car is taken to mean that every mechanic is a powerful person in industrial society. (130) This is an interesting choice of metaphor, mechanics rather than authors, typesetters, or designers. Digital environments are composed of uncountable texts, not only authored by people, but constantly revised and maintained by people, exercising their agency. Just as Jordan sees style as not being a matter of choice, he ignores the play of choice and agency, in addition to power, in the life of cyberculture. Despite its shortcomings, I would definitely assign this book in a seminar in digital environments. It serves as an excellent introduction, and would serve well as a representative of efforts to map cyberspace, pointing to some popular attractions.