253

Ryman says “In cyberspace, people become places”.
I checked in my Oxford Dictionary of English (2003), to see how ‘place’ is defined. It said,

Place: 1. a particular position, point, or an area in space; a location, 2. a portion of space designated or available for or being used by someone, 3. a position in a sequence or series, typically one ordered on the basis of merit.

So if it is true that "In cyberspace, people become places” as Ryman said, people must be defined as the above.
Actually, I agree with Ryman’s opinion. In the narrative, “253”, all the passengers have their own notion in mind, and was sitting, not being able to move. Of course they can stand up, talk, dance, and get off the train. However, because passengers cannot move from a certain place while the train is moving, it made it easier to imgaine the people as place. In 253’s case, I think it can be coined as the 2nd explanation in the Oxford Dictionary. Each passenger have their own individual appearance, inside infromation, notion, and nobody can interrupt their space. It is ‘being used by’ the characters.

I thought about the blog we are now using. The reader of the blog can have a sense of godlike feeling, maybe. Think like this:
The blog we have=seats in the train
The design of the blog=appearance of the passengers
The posts that we do every week=the notion of the passengers
Isn’t is a bit similar? And the readers can have a godlike feeling, because they can just see through the blog without getting in contact with the author. Readers can jump around blogs, start from which ever day the reader wants to start from, and never know the ending (because blogs don’t have a specific ending unless the writer is posting novels).
So, I think it’s safe to regard people as places in cyberspace. But at the same time, being ‘place’ seems to me as being digitalized, and only one aspect of the human is being showed to the out side. That is a bit sad ><