An example of environments which could be said to approximate this are Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs), such as World of Warcraft (www.worldofwarcraft.com) and Project Entropia (www.project-entropia.com). These games provide virtual environments where millions of players interact as if it were real-world space. Social issues, such as gay rights (“Gay rights win in Warcraft world”, BBC News website) are discussed and debated, laws passed and rules created. Money is even interchangeable with real-world US dollars, with players buying virtual property from tropical islands to space resorts, and even using real-world cash cards which spend virtual-world money (“Cash card taps virtual game funds”, BBC News website). In all of these cases, however, the virtual does not replace the real. Players still need to eat real-food, sleep real-sleep and have real-money to spend in the real-world. Graham phrases the idea of virtual space taking over from real space “technological Utopianism” and finds the concept of the non-virtual, offline world being replaced unlikely, not least due to the limitations and real-world requirements of humans. His following two perspectives confirm that this idea is generally discredited as it seems that human interaction is unlikely to be totally immersed and replaced.

The second idea which Graham studies is that of “co-evolution”. It is immediately more likely than the “substitution and transcendence” approach, he notes, as “in allocating technologies almost magical transformative powers [as the first approach does], in implying the easy emergence of universal social and spatial access to computer networks, and in radically overestimating the degree to which such networks can simply substitute for, and transcend, plane-based, face-to-face interaction” proponents of the first perspective discussed deny much of the logic and likelihood of the way the capitalist world works.

The “co-evolution” idea, however, suggests that technology and space co-evolve together, producing more material spaces rather than the massive all-engulfing cyberspace suggested above. Co-evolution suggests that new spaces incorporate technology and use it “to ground and contextualize applications and uses” (Graham, 1998). New technologies reflexively shape real-world space, with both influencing each other in their design and incorporation. This interaction, Graham notes, is at the crux of it all a “social struggle to … control space and social processes over distance.” It integrates new uses of technology with socioeconomics and the power struggles found in capitalist economies to create a technological landscape which reflects real-world issues. He cites the key example of the UK power market to illustrate the way in which technology is integrated into society in this way:

“On the one hand, affluent customers will have ‘smart meters’ which use telematics to allow them to access supplies for many, distant, competitors in a ‘virtual market’ for energy, from the comfort of their own homes. On the other, over 4 million poorer UK electricity customers have already had their electro-mechanical utility meters turned into electronic ‘prepayment’ meters. These lock consumers into one supplier and need to be ‘topped up’ electronically before use, necessitating a physical journey to the post office – a major problem for many with already poor mobility, health problems, and poor physical services.”

The final perspective Graham finds in the literature is “recombination”. Based on actor-network theory, this idea requires a “highly contingent, relational perspective of the linkage between technology and social worlds.” In this perspective, the idea put forward is that the boundaries between humans and technology become less defined, with actors and networks, both human and non-human, influencing the development, sue and interaction of the other. Unlike substitution and transcendence, however, recombination does not suggest that technology absorbs the real world, but rather that all players (technology and humans) interact in complex ways, rather than in an absolute time-space arena. Objects (actors and networks) become less fixed and instead become changing entities in a developing world.

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