A Culture Research Of Online-Reality And Virtuality

The rapid development of the technology of computer network brings a brand new means of communication and operational efficiency that the world has never seen. Scholars domestic and abroad have been having predictions and outlook since the creation of the technology of network. With the increasing advancement of it, theoretical studies about network emerges in swarm. Anthropology is defined by some scholars as studies about all the human biological complexity past and present as well as cultural complexity. And computer network, being taken as a new platform of information and communication, naturally stands as a field filled with cultural breath and inevitably becomes the studying object of cultural anthropology.Computer network makes a virtual world. Biological beings are the subjects that control the virtual world. And biological beings are transformed into virtual beings who construct behaviors, faith, customs and social organizations that are different from those in realistic life through objects in network and influence of different media. Thus, a new type of cultural power is taken shape-network-based culture. The author of this thesis will explore the virtual and realistic elements in network-based culture as well as how the beings, existing both in virtual and realistic world, face conflicts and integration from "the two worlds" and double identities through practical examples in network.This thesis contains six chapters including introduction. The author of this thesis generally analyzes network-based culture in four parts. The first part describes the germinal place of network-based culture-network and its technological basis. No matter what it is, network or computer, their circular orders are nothing but 0 and 1. This feature of "regularization" of computer exerts immense and covert influence on all the application that concerns computer. Network is one of the applications. The second part introduces the non-technical research status of computer network in academia. The author presents researching results of different subjects through three perspectives. The third and forth chapter, based on the second chapter, stressfully introduces the study of anthropology in the field of network-based culture. Anthropology took the central position in the interdisciplinary field in the late twentieth century. It does not make any sense if it were not deeply concerned with the proposition of network and culture, which is concerned about natural science, humanities and social science.Chapter three analyzes virtual and realistic features of network-based culture, starting from the application of network in order to obtain more information on network-based culture itself. Part one takes network community as an example to explain the indivisible and mutually separated relation between virtuality and reality. "Anyan Xingkong", which includes 36 members, is taken as a case of a network community. And it will be studied through the analyzing method of social network. The second part discusses the patterns of communication of the online subjects. The use of online symbols is an important component of network-based culture. Its appearance conforms to the requirements of information and the development of language. It is a breakthrough of the form of language. Besides, the fragment, indirectness and anonymity of symbolic communication entrap communication into facing new problems.Chapter four makes a further discussion on the relationship between virtuality and reality. Part one explores the dialectical relationship between the subject and the object. On the internet, the traditional understanding of "subject-object" in bipolar position is broken through. Through the establishment of the system of the exchange and feedback between the subject and the object, the past single cognitive relationship of "subject-object" turns to be multi-level and multi-dimension cognitive relationship, which causes the maze between virtuality and reality. Part two elaborates separately on interests holder concerned with information elite and the dialectical relationship between interests'holder and rights of network. The inequality of rights in network influences virtual identity which in turn influences individual decision-making in realistic world. Thus, right of network is made as the communicative bridge between virtual and realistic world.Chapter five briefly introduces other elements that influence network-based culture. The focus is by and large on digital technology and the situation of the use of internet in China. Digital technology is selective. It is not subjectively selective, but objectively it can not cover all the areas of human lives. Those which are improbable to be digitalized, hard to be digitalized and considered to be bum to be digitalized are excluded from network-based culture. From the perspective of network, being digital is the direct reason of separating virtuality and reality.Chapter six is the last chapter of this paper. It summarizes all five chapters above, shows the writer's views and expound that what role this research can be in modern world.