Our internet-connected devices hold an unprecedented power to multiply us into a manifold of realities. The conventional way to conceptualize this is segregational – we “space-out” and we’re in cyberspace. However, as Heidegger noticed, one of the essential spatial practices of living beings is coming-into-nearness: “spacing-in”. Adding Lefebvre, the space that we space-out and space-in is a social product: not simply an element or sphere within which the social operates, but rather the expression of it. It’s a multitude of connections, flows of communication and capital, conditioned by politics and economic relationships, defined by class struggles, represented by those in power, and lived by those who are subject to that power. The complex composite of ontologies that are unified within the internet are territories where cables and devices are juxtaposed with class struggle, virtual internet protocols, geopolitics, and human cognition. The escapist “spacing-out” is only one part of the picture. Let’s space-in.
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