Cybermind is an Internet mailing list devoted to "the philosophy and psychology of cyberspace".
History
It was co-founded by Alan Sondheim and Michael Current in mid-1994 to explore, exemplify and discuss multiple aspects of cyberspace, both from theoretical and experiential perspectives. The list was born in the split of the spoon collective lists from the Thinknet group, over issues of free speech and appropriate philosophical expression. Early membership involved much overlap with the Futureculture List. In more recent years discussions have become more general, but the list still has members from its founding period. Michael Current died shortly after the founding of the group.
List discussion has resulted in books, articles, conferences, more than one academic thesis, a group novel (now available through Lulu.com), and a strong ongoing community. Cybermind itself has been the subject of academic research, including an anthropological doctoral dissertation by Jonathan Marshall at the University of Sydney, which has now been published as the book Living on Cybermind. The book details the life of people on Cybermind over the period from 1994 to 2006 and uses many quotations from list members to analyse the ambiguities of net presence and absence (which is called asence), the paradoxes of the public/private divide, difficulties arising around authenticity and aggression, netsex, net-politics, and the construction of 'community'.
Publications
Refereed
Argyle, Katie. "Life After Death", in Rob Shields ed. Cultures of Internet: Virtual Spaces, Real Histories, Living Bodies. Sage, London 1996.
Cubbison, Laurie. "What does it Mean to Write from the Body", Women and Language vol. 20, no. 1, 1997, pp. 31–35.
Marshall, Jonathan Paul Living on Cybermind: Categories, Communication and Control, Peter Lang, New York, 2007
Marshall, Jonathan Paul "Cybermind: Paradoxes of Relationship in an Online Group", in Samantha Holland (ed). Remote Relationships in a Small World, Peter Lang 2008.
Marshall, Jonathan Paul. "Culture, Disorder, and Death in an Online World", in Honglei Li (ed) Virtual Community Participation and Motivation: Cross-Disciplinary Theories. IGI Global, 2012: pp. 330–346.
Hoberman, David. Body, Text and Presence on the Internet, honours thesis, Department of Anthropology, Tufts University, 1996.
Ruane, Deirdre. Citizens of Cyberia: Explorations of Self and Society on the Internet, study submitted in part fulfilment of the requirement for the award of Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication Studies at Dublin City University, August 1997
