This is a collection of questions, links, and readings around the idea of cyberspace, the Wild West, and electronic frontiers. It relates most directly to readings in Chapter 4, "Imagined Borders: Frontier and Nation," and readings at the beginning of Chapter 5, "The World's New Borders: Beyond Nation, Beyond Place." What connects these two chapters is the theme of imagined and virtual communities. That is, to what extent are communities constructed in our minds?

The Web Research Activities below link the American frontier and cyberspace under this theme for two reasons. On the one hand, the frontier is the most powerful and influential of all imagined spaces in the history of the United States; and it may be that cyberspace is having a similar impact on the way we think, here in the 21st Century. The two are also linked because one of the key ways that people see cyberspace is through the metaphors, images, and ideals that once were associated with the frontier. It may help us be critical of both the frontier mythology of the past and the cyberspace mythology of the present to think about them together.

Questions and Activities

1. Explore some of the sites below and find at least one resource or page that you can connect to one of the themes in the readings in Chapters 4 and 5 on electronic frontiers. What connections can you make between sites and readings?
   
   
2. There are really two kinds of sites listed below: those that use the frontier metaphor when describing cyberspace, and those that look critically at other people's use of the metaphor. Look through the sites and figure out which is which.
   
   
3. Of the sites that uncritically use the frontier metaphor, identify what ideals, themes, or values are implied by using the metaphor. What meaning do the site designers or commercial public relations people get from the frontier metaphor?
   
   
4. In groups, after you have looked at several sites, discuss what values or ideals seem positive to you about the frontier/cyberspace analogy. Which ones might be negative or lead to certain kinds of misuse or exclusion?
   
   

Web-Text Connections

On the Web		In Beyond Borders
1.	The Electronic Frontier Foundation. The oldest and best-known site fighting to preserve freedom in cyberspace. One of the first to use the frontier metaphor.	1.	These Websites, and others like them, are designed to connect especially with readings at the beginning of Chapter 5 on debates about democracy and freedom in Cyberspace; for example, William Mitchell's "Soft Cities" and Howard Rheingold's "Disinformocracy."
		2.	You might also consider these sites in connection with some of the essays throughout Beyond Borders dealing with home, belonging, and identity that raise frontier and Western themes, such as Daniel Kemmis's "The Last Best Place: How Hardship and Limits Build Community"; Robert Berkhofer, Jr.'s, "The White Man's Indian"; and Benjamin Alire Sáenz's "In the Borderlands of Chicano Identity, There Are Only Fragments."
2.	The "Space" of Cyberspace: Body Politics, Frontiers, and Enclosures. This essay discusses and reviews an essay called, "Women and Children First: Gender and the Settling of the Electronic Frontier," by Laura Miller. The essay gives a good critical perspective on the imaginative construction of Cyberspace and the use of frontier rhetoric.	3.	The concept of borders, frontiers, and their character as cultural constructions can be seen in other pieces, such as Sherry Turkle's "Tinysex and Gender Trouble"; Allucquére Rosanne Stone's "Sex, Death, and Machinery"; Stephen Doheny-Farina's "Real Cold, Simulated Heat"; and Gloria Anzaldúa's "La conciencia de las mestiza/Toward a New Consciousness."
		4.	Can you think of images or commercials for technology, networks, and computers on TV that raise frontier rhetoric and images?
3.	The Cyberculture Page of the Voice of the Shuttle: This is a great starting place for more Cyberculture resources. Check it out and look for new resources.	5.	What about themes of freedom, "one world," individualism, and adventure? These are all legacies of frontier imagery in American culture. Can you find them in commercial and other images of new technologies and cyberspace?

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