Abstract

Cyberspace is the environment of interaction mediated by digital media. It represents a new dimension of conflict, new in respect of modern perception of physical space and mediascape. First of all the innovation concerns its liquidity, its being a contingent space consisting of artificial signs: a space always ready to change its boundaries in relation to the actors that run across it. But it makes no more sense to understand cyberspace as a world of dreams, a virtual world split from our material world: we now live in a mixed reality in which technologies have invaded the spaces where we used to live. Liquidity and everyday life of cyberspace are constitutive features to be taken into account mapping the conflicts between powers and counter-powers that take place in this space. On one side, powers tending to be more and more private, concentrated and opaque and aiming to solidify cyberspace; on other side, counter-powers playing firstly to recognize themselves as such and preserving the irreducibility of this reserve of meaning. Counter-powers manifest themselves in new subjectivities, such as that paradigmatic of hackers. Neither reassurance on self-administration attitude nor the invisible hand that would manage economic actors seems sufficient in order for cyberspace to continue to be always a space for agonistic match. The time has come to design institutional forms that acknowledge cyberspace as a public space.