Image spaces and the geography of Internet screen-space

This article aims, first, at the exposition of image space and a scalar model differentiating among its four visual classes: virtual space (visual presentations of real space and material artifacts), cyberspace (digital communications and information media), the Internet (digital communications and informational spaces), and Internet screen-space (ISS) (users’ visual interface with the Internet), thus leading from the wider to the specific. This differentiation is followed by discussions of cyberspace and Internet screen-space geography. Cyberspace has been spatially defined as artificial reality, interactivity, and conceptual and metaphorical spaces. As a spatial experience, cyberspace involves co-presence, low cognitive mapping, and egalitarian and global communications. The article aims further at the development of interpretations for ISSs and their uses along dimensions originally developed for real-space geography. These include: real space parameters (ground; distance; places; scale/regions; boundaries; and flows); user spatial parameters (speed; directionality; circularity; distanciation); and user socio-spatial parameters (proximity; networking; time–space compression).