Place Relativity: Cyberspace and Physical Space Relations in Terms of Public Space and Private Space Consideration Within Virtual Meeting

Place Relativity: Cyberspace and Physical Space Relations in Terms of Public Space and Private Space Consideration Within Virtual Meeting This thesis seeks to demonstrate, both theoretically and through empirical data, how spatial relativity occurs in physical space via cyberspace. It deconstructs and reconstructs David Harvey’s general definition of space in Social Justice and the City (1973), and proposes “the space we inhabit is a meshwork of relationships.” Within this framework, it develops the theory of new spatial types— semi-cyberspace, semi-cyber public space, and cyber camera obscura —making them visible and measurable through empirical studies, and thus contributing them to the literature, alongside the other two constructed ideas. The one is that the camera functions as the new lintel, and screens as the new architectural windows. The other is highlighting whether Henri Lefebvre’s (1970) mixed-use term can also get place relativity. The theoretical grounding of semi-cyberspace and semi-cyber public space draws on Descartes’ Discourse on the Method (1637) and Andy Clark and David Chalmers’ The Extended Mind (1998), while at the structural scale it superimposes Schramm’s “field of experience” (1954). These spaces extended Beatriz Colomina’s (1994) analysis in Privacy and Publicity, where she explains the media-architecture relationship through photography, to the level of virtual meetings. As in Colomina’s argument, private space is transformed into public, but here this transformation is further supported with reference to camera focal length and empirical data, enabling the measurable construction of semi-cyberspace and semi-cyber public space. Through surveys and workshop studies, these two spaces are shown and argued as phenomena. By combining Uğur Tanyeli’s Yıkarak Yapmak (2017), which reflects on spatial perception in sixteenth century Istanbul, with David Harvey’s (1973) concept of individuation developed for spatial analysis, the location and size of semi-cyberspace and semi-cyber public space were discussed. Within this framework, the interview with the Iranian woman revealed that Henri Lefebvre’s (1970) concept of the mixed-level enters into relativity through the axis of dress-code regulations. Building on the “Layer and Components of Cyberspace, Cyberspace Operations Concept Capability Plan 2016-2018” announced by the US Army in 2010, additional sections on Window, Cyber Camera Obscura, and Identity were incorporated and supported with both theoretical and empirical studies. The Cyber Camera Obscura is similarly presented as a newly discovered geography/space that serves as a resource for semi-cyberspace and semi-cyber public space, classified as a club good. The volume of this new geometry is proposed as the product of the trench volume dug for fiber-optic cables (physical space), multiplied by the data speed transmitted through those cables (cyberspace) -considering latency- with its unit expressed in cubic meters. From a methodological perspective, the thesis adopts mixed-methods, including online surveys (with qualitative questions paired with quantitative equivalents), semi-structured interviews, a workshop, and statistical tools such as Spearman correlation. The interpretation of results and construction of ideas are mainly framed by critical realism and relational constructionism. Finally, this entire work serves one of the four pillars of the concept of sustainability published by UNESCO in 2001, namely "Cultural Diversity".