Praenomen

The name for this blog was initially "The New Romancer,” being a homonym for “neuromancer,” and also a nod to the New Romantics movement of the 1970s. Unfortunately, it also sounds like it could be a dating site (and is, in the DC comic of the same name). The subjects examined here are intended to focus around the experience and potential of virtual spaces, and the veil that divides “reality” from the “virtual” is a key component of that, so this should also be reflected in the name.

There are many terms in architecture to describe boundaries, or liminal spaces, with porches, anterooms, and thresholds being examples. Among these is the loggia, a type of arcaded and covered space which provides protection from the elements while affording interaction with the outdoors, often serving as a point of contact between private and public life. It is commonly associated with buildings from Renaissance Italy in particular, and the word comes to Italian from the Old French loge (hut) which in turn was derived from the Frankish laubijā, or simply, “shelter.” For some VRChat users, this makes it even more appropriate! Unrelated etymologically, but an additional visual connotation could be “logos,” the Greek term for reasoned discourse, rationality, and analytical thinking.

That is all well, but how to use this word in a way that more fully embraces the objectives of the blog? Cyberloggia might have been a good pick back in 1998, but that use the prefix now assumes a clichéd quality. It also fixates too heavily on the hardware aspect, when here we look to the self. Photologgia was briefly considered, but is too plainly confused with photography (rather than simply “light”), and while Neurologgia seemed a good candidate, again hearkening back the the “neuro” in neuromancer, it also happens to have just one more “g” than the Spanish word for neurology. It may not be a striking difference, but after all that, Neuraloggia was deemed “good enough.” Neural encapsulates both the biological nervous system and brain, as well as computerised models of them. Combined with loggia, this gives us a definition of something like “The study of the interplay of neural and cognitive elements and their sense of transition, ambiguity, and transformation within the digital realm.”