World Of Cyberspace Research Articles

Meet Me in the Middle: Evaluating Middle Power Cyber Doctrine and Strategic Culture Through the Cases of Canada and Australia

The global expansion in reliance on information and communication technologies has thrust the digital world of cyberspace into the forefront of strategic security discourse. Meanwhile, the responsibilities, capabilities, and strategic interests of middle powers have been fraught with ambiguity and debate in international relations literature. While existing studies examine how the cyberspace domain has become an increasingly competitive arena for geopolitics and strategic competition between and among great powers, there remains a dearth of literature evaluating cyberspace objectives and behaviour for middle powers. This paper aims to fill this gap, drawing on prior frameworks of analysis used for great power cyber studies, alongside extant middle power literature, to employ the theoretical lens of strategic culture toward evaluating the unique behaviour of middle powers in cyberspace. This paper thus suggests that cyberspace presents scholars with an outlet to further examine and define middle powers in the international realm, as well as middle powers with opportunities to assert and potentially expand their position in the global order, while protecting and promoting their distinct interests. This paper also incorporates a synthesis of quantitative and qualitative cyber data, and the deployment of a Most Similar Systems Design to assess two middle power case studies: Canada and Australia. The findings help to challenge and refine our understanding of what roles, capabilities and objectives define middle power behaviour in cyberspace, as well as provide insight into the implications that the rise of cyber operations and security considerations might have for Canadian and Australian grand strategy, and middle power strategic culture more generally. Ultimately, this study serves to refine past theoretical assumptions in the context of a novel and expanding domain for statecraft and competition, and identify a foundation from which the principles of a more coherent and effective cyber doctrine for middle powers might be pursued.

Sharenting and Children’s Privacy Protection in International, EU, and Czech Law

The digitalization of social relations has brought some new and hitherto unknown phenomena. Real life has been extended, into the world of cyberspace. This world is often referred to as the virtual world, but in reality, by its consequences for our lives and the legal sphere, it is no less real than the physical world. A significant part of family life has been affected by this phenomenon. Photos, videos and other information that used to be available only to immediate family members are now shared publicly on the internet through social networks. Young children are particularly affected, with parents publicly sharing information from their private lives. This practice is referred to as sharenting. As a result of sharenting, children in the Internet environment often effectively lose their status as subjects and become mere objects. This object is then handled by the child’s closest relatives – parents, i.e. the people who should naturally look after and defend the child’s best interests. The problem is that parents are not aware of both the legal framework and the possible factual negative consequences that sharenting can have for a child’s life and childhood. The key question that I seek to answer in this article is to what extent the current legal framework can respond to sharenting. The aim is also to assess to what extent is such sharing information about children legal and where the boundaries of permissible or justifiable disclosure of information about a child on the Internet lie. Finally, the question is also how the child affected by sharing can defend him/herself against its negative consequences. Sharenting is addressed by the EU, international and national law. As far as national law is concerned, in my article I focus primarily on Czech civil and family law. Sharenting concerns the protection of privacy as a fundamental human right, but also freedom of expression, which is why the European Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (international dimension), the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (EU dimension) and the Czech Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms (national constitutional dimension) are explored as well.

ATTITUDES OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHERS TOWARDS ONLINE LEARNING DELIVERY IN THE TIME OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Educational institutions were compelled to use the world of cyberspace, specifically through the Internet as its main infrastructure, to “effectively” transmit knowledge to the learners in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is in this light that this study investigated the attitudes of elementary school teachers towards online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study determined the significant difference between respondents' assessment of teachers' attitudes towards online learning when grouped according to gender, age, and teaching experience of the 138 elementary school teachers from Districts 2, 3, and 4 of Manila City. The results indicate that elementary teachers felt that online learning devices could help improve the quality of their work. Contrary to this, the face-to-face learning delivery remains favorable for them. Furthermore, the results show that it is essential to continuously develop the quality of online education with the support of school administration and government to make online education more effective and accessible to all.

Childfree Dalam Pernikahan Perspektif Maqoshid Syariah

The presence of children in a marriage is one of the means of achieving happiness that is longed for by descendants, sometimes life in the family feels bland. The presence of married couples in general. For married couples who don't have children, it actually gives their own color to a family. It's just that recently the world of cyberspace has been stirred up by the term Childfree, even on several social media in Indonesia, on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and other online media platforms, it has become a trending topic of discussion in digital society. Childfree is an agreement made by a husband and wife not to have children for various reasons. This research aims to examine and consider the factors that motivate someone to choose childfree using the maqoshid al-syari'ah approach so that it can be a guide for placing a level of urgency on the choice of childfree in a family.

If I cannot move heaven, I will raise hell

Freud puts the verse of Virgil as an epigraph to his book on the interpretation of dreams. It is the exclamation of Juno who, after having tried in every way to defeat Aeneas, witnesses his landing on the coast of Lazio and the birth of Rome. She cannot give a reason for her defeat and then:she sought the earth: and summoned Allecto, the grief-bringer, from the house of the Fatal Furies, from the infernal shadows: in whose mind are sad wars, angers and deceits, and guilty crimes (VII, 323–325)(The Italian version of the Aeneid by Vittorio Sermonti, Rizzoli, 2007). In the transforming world of cyber space, we ask whether we can bring into interplay our conscious and unconscious parts to dream and interpret the world of digital sociality and of seemingly total knowledge. We further ask whether we can build upon our deeply rooted mechanisms of resistance and rebellion to cultivate the growth of social and individual awareness of the danger of social fragmentation arising from the utopian fantasies of individualism and mobility, and thus confront the dilemmas of surveillance capitalism and autocratic automaton.

THE PHENOMENON OF CYBERCRIME: FROM THE TRANSNATIONAL CONNOTATION TO THE NEED FOR GLOBALIZATION OF JUSTICE

Information technology has brought about epochal changes in every area of society, offering opportunities for development on a social, cultural, and economic level, but also a fertile ground for activities with criminal purposes that take place in cyberspace. The threat present in the intangible world of cyberspace is extremely concrete and is one of the major sources of concern and investment by States, given that the Internet is considered the critical infrastructure for excellence. Cybercrime, characterized by a transnational connotation of borderless or aspatial crime, provides a position of advantage to the cybercriminal compared to the traditional criminal. The development of information technologies has led to the digitization of organized crime which thus succeeds in maximizing profits by exploiting the opportunities offered by new communication technologies and minimizing the risk of being identified, arrested, convicted and of suffering the seizure of the proceeds of criminal activities. Considering the contradictory and inhomogeneous international legal framework due to the transnational scope of cybercrime, the identification of the locus commissi delicti is difficult and the legal prosecution of cybercrimes is complex; therefore, cybercriminals could operate without an adequate response from some states in terms of prevention, sanction, containment and contrast. The sovereignty of States, in the context of cybercrime repression, is identified as an insurmountable obstacle in the creation of a supranational union of law. Therefore, to put legal operators in the real conditions to suppress transnational cybercrime, globalization of justice is needed.
 
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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND CYBERCULTURE

Artificial intelligence and cyberculture adopt our values. The world of cyberspace has developed new standards of cooperation and communication. A huge number of Internet users use many services on the Internet. This has led to a revision of many deadlines, such as cooperation, organization of leisure time, the resolution of official matters. Millions of people around the world belong to various supranational social organizations and platforms. Artificial intelligence collects all the information about us and our actions on the Internet. Cyberculture arose spontaneously, ignoring nationality or religion, ignoring the geography of the world, and ignoring a person's physical boundaries or financial status, linguistic differences, or cultural affiliation in the modern sense. All components of culture have been ignored by her, and the conditions in the era of virtual reality are very favorable for its development. It is even becoming a mind on a global scale: Internet users often physically stay in a certain place, but their mind is already fixed in cyberspace. Often virtual reality seems to promise us more than it can give. Direct communication in cyberspace gives us a sense of "here and there", a sense of intimacy, but that intimacy is not filled with the physical and emotional presence of a real person. The changes that are taking place in cyberspace with the help of artificial intelligence, which works on the basis of data that each user enters into the network, are actively discussed. Cyberculture is also the subject of much research and is a much deeper concept than just a combination of culture and technology. Although there is still no institutional framework and codified appropriate terminology to confirm this new phenomenon. The birth of a new culture is extremely interesting. The main purpose of the publication is to draw attention to a very interesting process of development of a new culture - cyberculture, which arose from a combination of artificial intelligence and analytical computer science. The paper analyses interaction and interconnection of cyberculture and modern information technologies and science.

PROBLEM QUESTIONS OF CYBER-ADDICTIONS CLASSIFICATION

The paper contains an analysis of scientific-theoretical and scientific-empirical research on the problem of classification of computer addiction, Internet addiction and cyber-addiction. The author reveals the basic definitions, provides an analysis of various views of scientists on the symptoms and existing classifications of cyber-addictions. Reveals three groups of factors that determine addictive behavior: biological, social and psychological. According to the results of the analysis, own definitions and classification of cyber-addictions are given. The research methods were: theoretical analysis and generalization of socio-psychological, medical-psychological, psychological-pedagogical literature and interdisciplinary analysis. Theoretical analysis of available domestic and foreign research was devoted to the consideration and formation of such definitions as Internet addiction, computer addiction and cyber Generalization and interdisciplinary analysis of socio-psychological, medical-psychological, psychological-pedagogical literature is aimed at reflecting the current state of the problem of classification of cyber-addiction from the standpoint of an interdisciplinary approach.The author emphasizes that computer addiction, Internet addiction and cyber addiction are not yet officially recognized, ie not included in the classification of ICD-10 diseases and DSM IV disorders (however, are planned in future editions of these classifiers). The analysis of existing scientific achievements makes it possible to state that at present the nosology, anamnesis and determinants of these addictions are not sufficiently described, the criteria for distinguishing cyber-addiction, Internet addictions, computer addictions, game addiction, and some new types of cyber are not clearly defined. -addictions in general are still insufficiently studied and not taken into account by international classifiers of diseases. At the same time, the process of global digitalization, gadgetization and implementation of interactive technologies in human life brings new types of cyber-addictions and gradually expands the range of risk groups, lowering the age criteria. Thus, the current issue remains the definition of the boundary when the bright, colorful and fascinating world of cyberspace with many different characters, images, places so masters the psyche that it grows into cyber-addiction.The author concludes that it is necessary to distinguish between the concepts of cyber-addiction, Internet addictions, computer addictions, provides his own conceptual model for distinguishing between types of cyber-addictions.

Indonesian Cyber Law Formulation in The Development Of National Laws In 4.0 Era

The digital age has made the loss of boundaries for interaction and communication which then creates a new world of cyberspace. The cyberspace entity on the one hand provides advantages and on the other hand also causes losses if there is no protection in the cyberspace. Protection of cyberspace in Indonesia is still far from good and tends to be bad. Even President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has been a victim of the weak protection of the cyberspace. These weaknesses are the implications of the existence of norms that are legal norms which are the basis of the implementation of cyberspace protection in Indonesia. In this paper ,we will discuss about the problems of cyberspace in Indonesia and how legal norms should be present as a means of social control and engineering. Especially the cyberspace in order to realize order and security in the cyberspace. The method used in this study is the normative juridical method with the legislation approach and case approach.

Role of Social Media in Revolutionizing Communication in India

This research analyzes how social media revolutionized communication in India. Communication opened up gates for social change which includes behavioral change, change in communication, and change in world vision. Communication has a major impact on how people think and behave. This can be translated into ways in which social change occurs. The high-end exposure to the new media technologies has impacted urban and rural life in India. This study tries to understand the different layers of the communication revolution that happened in India as part of social media. India has over 460 million internet users. India has the second largest online market. It is ranked only behind China in the word. It is predicted that by 20121, around 635.8 million people will use the Internet in India. India has one of the highest growth potentials when Internet usage is concerned. India rose to this position from a stage in 2015 where India had only 26% of the population had access to the Internet. The communicaton revolution affects all communities in India. Social media ignores caste, creed, religion and fundamental differences among people. Social media has high visibility across the human population in India. The social media evangelized communication patterns of the Indian population. People started communicating beyond caste, creed, and religion. When they interact using the internet, the socialization takes place through social media. The social exchange in social media helps people to understand each other. This is beyond different barriers like physical and region. People started interacting on a platform as friends and family. The social media paved the way of chances for everyone to find oneself. This type of constructed identity of individuals when getting into the area of cyberspace represent each individual to socialize in cyberspace. In the world of cyberspace, people interact as people beyond their physical environment. The communication revolution occurs during this process. This study analysis how social media plays a key role in revolutionizing communication in India. This pilot study was conducted in three South Indian states of the country, namely Kerala, Karnataka, and Kerala. We have selected samples from urban and rural populations. The stratified random sampling method was used to collect samples from six different regions.

Role of Social Media in Revolutionizing Communication in India

This research analyzes how social media revolutionized communication in India. Communication opened up gates for social change which includes behavioral change, change in communication, and change in world vision. Communication has a major impact on how people think and behave. This can be translated into ways in which social change occurs. The high-end exposure to the new media technologies has impacted urban and rural life in India. This study tries to understand the different layers of the communication revolution that happened in India as part of social media. India has over 460 million internet users. India has the second largest online market. It is ranked only behind China in the word. It is predicted that by 20121, around 635.8 million people will use the Internet in India. India has one of the highest growth potentials when Internet usage is concerned. India rose to this position from a stage in 2015 where India had only 26% of the population had access to the Internet. The communicaton revolution affects all communities in India. Social media ignores caste, creed, religion and fundamental differences among people. Social media has high visibility across the human population in India. The social media evangelized communication patterns of the Indian population. People started communicating beyond caste, creed, and religion. When they interact using the internet, the socialization takes place through social media. The social exchange in social media helps people to understand each other. This is beyond different barriers like physical and region. People started interacting on a platform as friends and family. The social media paved the way of chances for everyone to find oneself. This type of constructed identity of individuals when getting into the area of cyberspace represent each individual to socialize in cyberspace. In the world of cyberspace, people interact as people beyond their physical environment. The communication revolution occurs during this process. This study analysis how social media plays a key role in revolutionizing communication in India. This pilot study was conducted in three South Indian states of the country, namely Kerala, Karnataka, and Kerala. We have selected samples from urban and rural populations. The stratified random sampling method was used to collect samples from six different regions.

‘I did it for the LULZ’: How the dark personality predicts online disinhibition and aggressive online behavior in adolescence

A large proportion of youth believe that the world of cyberspace provides them with a relatively safe and anonymous digital bubble ripe for uninhibited self-expression. At the same time, observers have noted an increase of individuals behaving in an unrestrained manner on the Internet, while researchers have reported elevated rates of cyber aggressive behavior. What remains unclear, however, is whether, and how, disinhibition might be related to cyber aggression. In an aim to explore the possible associations, a large sample (total N = 709) of high school (Mage = 15.56 years) respondents from New Zealand were recruited, and completed a survey featuring scales assessing personality and technology behaviors, attitudes, habits, and trends. The present study was designed to investigate whether the three dark personality traits of narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism would predict false self perceptions, and in sequence, online disinhibition and aggressive online behavior. All three dark personality traits, as well as false self, were positively associated with online disinhibition. Perceptions of false self were found to be a significant predictor of cyber aggression when mediated by online disinhibition. In the case of cyber aggression, however, psychopathy, sadistic traits, and online disinhibition were found to be significant predictors of this outcome. The results collectively provide a more nuanced understanding of how antisocial personality traits are associated with maladaptive identity formation (i.e., endorsement of false self beliefs) as well as maladaptive online behavior.

Losing Our Senses Online: Investigating How Aesthetics Might Be Used to Ground People in Cyberspace

The term cyberspace was coined by William Gibson, who used it in his book, Neuromancer in 1989. Gibson defines cyberspace as consensual hallucination. Cyberspace also describes the virtual environment of the Internet, alongside its more whimsical portrayal as a global village. The Internet has become ubiquitous, available to anyone with a device and connection, easier to find than clean drinking water in some countries. Beyond being easily and constantly accessible, it is increasingly remolding our social realities, the way we communicate, and the way we behave Certainly, cyberspace is an area of information that does not correspond with the physics of the environment in which our bodies spend time, and when interacting in this environment we become almost desensitized to our physical surroundings. By entering into the world of cyberspace, we change the way we find one another, communicate with one another, participate, interact, and work with one another. Though it has been observed that humans and other animals are remarkable in their ability to navigate through complex, dynamic environments,this statement refers principally to our sensed physical world.

KEKANG SUBALTERN DALAM NEGASI MEDIA TENTANG SYIAH:

This paper analyzes some anti-Shia articles which are abundantly available in online media. As a minority group, Shia is in a subaltern position where they were published negatively. This publication created negative paradigm of Shia in the society. In the borderless world of cyberspace, the production of Shia articles appears in the form of unequal semiotic relationships. Quite often, the meaning of Shia was published from the subjective perspective of a particular group. For this reason, this research examines the phenomenon of Shia trending articles from the cyber semiotic perspective. The research revealed that the subaltern bridle against the Shia in the media remains so strong. It requires self-awareness to provide equal opportunity for Shia speak up in the media in a balanced way. By such opportunity, the balanced view on the Shia can be obtained. It is hoped that this objective view could establish inclusivity in religious life.

HIPPERREALITAS, SIMULAKRA PADA RUANG SOSIAL ONLINE

The new social space among others, see from a formation of identities of the players according to the identity of a particular character or their role in the game, the formation. Gamer community is a new virtual community, and there is new informatif network among gamers. Online games have a significant influence on the lives of these players, where the reality is often found in the online space more real to them than the actual reality in everyday life. It was predicted to influence the behaviour of gamers in the real world, so in this research it will also be viewed online gaming influence on behaviour in the real world gamers. This study uses qualitative methods, case studies, in-depth interview technique, observation and secondary data. The data were collected inside and outside of "cyberspace" with involved observatio, where researchers followed individually in the online and offline to get a complate picture of their activities. The results of the research discovers and explains the reasons hiperreality in play, as the impact Hiperreality Addicted and Identity Conflicts in the real world and the world of cyberspace, all based on perceptions and experiences of the players. Thus it can be further identified the negative impact of these technologies in social life.

Psychoanalysis in times of technoculture: Some reflections on the fate of the body in virtual space

This article discusses psychoanalysis in times of technoculture. We cannot escape that this generation is growing up in a network culture where communication is mediated and digital connectivity along with different strands of virtuality are now an integral part of our quotidian practices. Global networks impact on identity formation: groups of individuals now organize and validate their experience as a community virtually. Cyberspace is not a homogenous space. We need to consider the contingent relations that exist between this space and what it affords in terms of representation and interaction. And as we do so we need to keep firmly in mind that what transcends the online and offline spaces is the individual. In thinking about the world of cyberspace as a potential space for experimentation that may facilitate psychic elaboration we need to consider not whether this is right or wrong, good or bad, but whether psychically the individual can cope with what is being presented or enacted within a given virtual space. This is why generalities are of limited value. This is why we need a psychoanalytic lens to focus on how technology can interact for better or for worse with particular psychic economies.

The mesh of civilizations in the global network of digital communication.

Conflicts fueled by popular religious mobilization have rekindled the controversy surrounding Samuel Huntington’s theory of changing international alignments in the Post-Cold War era. In The Clash of Civilizations, Huntington challenged Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis that liberal democracy had emerged victorious out of Post-war ideological and economic rivalries. Based on a top-down analysis of the alignments of nation states, Huntington famously concluded that the axes of international geo-political conflicts had reverted to the ancient cultural divisions that had characterized most of human history. Until recently, however, the debate has had to rely more on polemics than empirical evidence. Moreover, Huntington made this prediction in 1993, before social media connected the world’s population. Do digital communications attenuate or echo the cultural, religious, and ethnic “fault lines” posited by Huntington prior to the global diffusion of social media? We revisit Huntington's thesis using hundreds of millions of anonymized email and Twitter communications among tens of millions of worldwide users to map the global alignment of interpersonal relations. Contrary to the supposedly borderless world of cyberspace, a bottom-up analysis confirms the persistence of the eight culturally differentiated civilizations posited by Huntington, with the divisions corresponding to differences in language, religion, economic development, and spatial distance.

The Social Internet: Frustrating, Enriching, but Not Lonely

The “lonely world of cyberspace” is a curious example of the vast gap that every so often opens between an idea’s popularity among pundits (considerable) and its basis in empirical research (very little). In the past few years the New York Times has run multiple opeds suggesting social media or our phones are eroding human connections (for example, Cohen 2012; Egan 2013; Foer 2013; Franzen 2011; Fredrickson 2013); the Atlantic ran a cover story asking, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” (Marche 2012); Massachusetts Institute of Technology psychologist Sherry Turkle wrote a book titled Alone Together (2011) that is partly about social media damaging “real world” human connections; and Pope Benedict warned youngsters not to replace their real friends with virtual ones (Benedict XVI 2011, 2009). In the meantime, a growing pile of empirical research shows that, if anything, the relationship runs the other way — Internet users are more social and less isolated. This curious “Freddy Krueger effect” — the inability of data to kill the enduring attractiveness of a theme — deserves unpacking that goes beyond an indication of its lack of empirical basis and appeal to moral panic. The Internet’s integration into sociality happened with such impressive speed that it is at once mundane, all around us, and yet also barely examined. In addition, the Internet’s qualitative and subjective impacts are harder to measure than simple indicators like use or penetration. Further, a technology as multifaceted and complex as the Internet not only will not produce a “main effect” — a single, homogeneous impact that applies to everyone and every type of use — but it may well have different consequences at systemic, individual, and historical scales. It’s possible that these are not yet fully apparent in existing empirical research. The Internet may not make us lonelier, but it does help reconfigure our net-

Virtual freedom: The obfuscation and elucidation of the subject in cyberspace

In his late work, Michel Foucault finds in Greek antiquity a form of subjectivity that makes no reference to a universal law. The virtual world of cyberspace appears to offer individuals a similar possibility, in which the fundamental limitations that form the subject in the external society no longer apply. However, this article argues that the universal law actually is more powerful in cyberspace, insofar as it remains outside of our capacity for recognizing it. Nevertheless, the redeeming possibility of cyberspace lies not in what cyberspace promises, but rather in its capacity to makes palpable our inevitable failure to achieve the promise of complete, digital satisfaction.

The transformation of the human dimension in the cyberspace

In the very interdisciplinary tradition of AI & Society, this issue covers a diversity of topics ranging from mindloading, ‘moral subject’ and human dignity and autonomy, organisation as a cognitive machine, the dilemma of boundaries between femininity and masculinity in the cyberspace, knowledge sharing for sustainable development, the emerging robotisation of the organisation, to cultural acceptance of robots in richly complex regions of the world. Other issues covered in this issue include dialogical framework of skill training, wealth adjustment in an artificial society and speech recognition. On mind-uploading, the argument is that ‘mind-uploading is a futuristic process that involves scanning brains and recording relevant information which is then transferred into a computer’, in the sense of ‘transfers of both human minds and identities from biological brains into computers’. The world of ubiquitous technology brings about a new challenge of what is to be human, for example, what we understand by ‘moral subject’, in other words the subject’s unique metaphysical qualities of dignity and autonomy. The argument posited in this issue is that concept of ‘human dignity underlies the foundation of many democratic systems, particularly in Europe as well as of international treaties, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Digital agents, artificial organisms as well as new capabilities of the human agents related to their embeddedness in digital and biotechnological environments bring about an important transformation of the human self appraisal’, especially from an ethical perspective. It is interesting to note how technological culture is beginning to subscribe to the transformation of the human organisation into a cognitive machine. In the human-centred tradition of AI & Society, it can be seen as a transformation of the human dimension from wisdom to calculation and then to being a cognitive machine. The argument put forward in this issue is that ‘cognitive machines contribute to improving cognitive abilities in the organisation by extending people’s rationally and decisionmaking capacity, and by reducing intra-individual and group dysfunctional conflict’. The increasing acceptance of the organisation in terms of a cognitive machine leads to robotisation of the organisation, raising issues of the cultural acceptance of the cognitive machine in diverse cultural regions of the world. As we live in a culture of ubiquitous technology where ‘everything can be commodified, measured and calculated and can be put in the competitive market for sale, detached from its roots and purpose’, we face a dilemma and challenge of what is meant to be human. The world of cyberspace poses a further dilemma as to where the boundaries may lie ‘between femininity and masculinity both in terms of lifestyle and thought style’. The issue could be posed as how to ‘redefine our humanness in terms of the changing nature of science, technology and their deeper impact on human life’. This means also to take note how ‘on the one hand our being in the cyberspace opens up new and exciting horizons before us, on the other hand how we ourselves are changed and transformed in the process’. This reorientation of the human dimension also raises issues of how societies use symbols and signs to communicate information in the technological world we live in, and in what ways the communication media conveys a broad range of different kinds of messages within diverse cultural contexts. In the globalising world, knowledge sharing is increasingly seen as a crucial factor in cultivating sustainable K. S. Gill (&) Professor Emeritus, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK e-mail: kgillbton@yahoo.co.uk