Editorial

How to reference this article in APA:

Suárez Quiceno, C. (2025). Surviving in cyberspace: Almost fifty without realizing it [Editorial]. Poiésis, (49), 12-13.

https://doi.org/10.21501/16920945.5359

Surviving in cyberspace: Almost fifty without realizing it

Carlos Suárez Quiceno

From the year 2000 to the present, Poiésis and its editor have continued to accumulate issues. With 48 semiannual editions, Poiésis was the first Latin American psychology journal to colonize cyberspace, and it has remained faithful to its readers.

An archaeology of this medium would take us back to a setting in which digital reading was so new that tablets and e-ink devices did not yet exist. Nor did mobile phones offer the possibility of reading on them, and personal digital assistants (PDAs) failed to secure a niche in consumer electronics. Monitors still resembled rudimentary televisions, but at Poiésis the importance of the new space of writing was already clear: screens.

Poiésis was on the path of Colombia’s digital reading pioneers. Reading is part of psychology’s story. Psychologists depend on reading and writing, and at times they practice them with excellence—like Mr. Freud, who, in the view of literary critic Harold Bloom, is among the 26 great writers of the Western canon.

Within the history of digital reading in Colombia, this journal can be associated with initiatives such as El libro Total, which since 2006 has offered an exclusive platform for reading literary works. It also evokes the little-known yet remarkable history of Digital Book, which in the early years of the 1990s became the world’s first system for the editing, distribution, reading, and management of digital books—created by Zahur Klemath Zapata from Pereira.

As in Sufi tales, one does not have to go far to find treasures. It is simply that we seldom see them, or no one shows us their evident richness.

Counting a new issue of the journal is a reason to celebrate, even if today there are countless pages devoted to every topic imaginable within the book of sand that is the internet. Others will undertake analyses that assess the content, relevance, reception, and more; but I can only say that I had the privilege of watching fleeting time pass on the web and seeing almost everything I encountered disappear—except for a few great trees like this one, which Professor Bernal planted and has tended with patience in the uncertain virtual space, and which he will soon leave behind, trusting in the strength of its branches.

Author note

Carlos Suárez Quiceno

Doctor in Design and Creation from the University of Caldas. Professor in the Social Communication Program at Universidad Católica Luis Amigó, Medellín, Colombia. Contact: carlos.suarezqu@amigo.edu.co, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3578-9174