View source for Cyberspace

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==Author William Gibson coins the term Cyberspace in 1982==
The word "cyberspace" (from cybernetics and space) was coined by science fiction author [[William Gibson]] in his 1982 story "Burning Chrome," and popularized by his 1984 novel Neuromancer. Gibson also coined the phrase [[Meatspace]] to denote the physical world, contrasted with Cyberspace. The paragraph from Neuromancer usually cited is the following:

:Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.

Gibson's original Cyberspace was a domain characterized by the use of electronics to store, modify, and exchange data via networked systems. In science fiction, cyberspace also includes various kinds of virtual reality experienced by deeply immersed computer users or by entities who actually exist inside computer systems.

==Cyberspace becomes a synonym for the web in the 1990s==
During the 1990s the term Cyberspace became a synonym for the Internet and the World Wide Web. Author [[Bruce Sterling]], who popularized this meaning in books such as The Hacker Crackdown, credits [[John Perry Barlow]] as the first to use "cyberspace" to refer to "the present-day nexus of computer and telecommunications networks." Barlow described it as follows in his essay "Crime and Puzzlement," announcing the formation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation in June, 1990:

:In this silent world, all conversation is typed. To enter it, one forsakes both body and place and becomes a thing of words alone. You can see what your neighbors are saying (or recently said), but not what either they or their physical surroundings look like. Town meetings are continuous and discussions rage on everything from sexual kinks to depreciation schedules.
:Whether by one telephonic tendril or millions, they are all connected to one another. Collectively, they form what their inhabitants call the Net. It extends across that immense region of electron states, microwaves, magnetic fields, light pulses and thought which sci-fi writer William Gibson named Cyberspace.

The term began to be used during the Internet boom of the late 1990s to refer to the way in which objects and identities exist within the communication network itself. According to this interpretation, events taking place on the Internet are happening "in cyberspace" rather than in the countries where the participants or the servers are physically located. 

==The "Space" in "Cyberspace"==
The "space" in cyberspace has more in common with the abstract, mathematical meanings of the term "space" than with the physical meaning of space. Spatial meaning can be attributed to the relationship between different web pages considered to be somewhere "out there," offering the possibility of surfing among different sites and pages, with feedback loops forever creating the potential to encounter something unknown or unexpected.

In videogames and virtual online worlds, however, the abstract space of written text is replaced by on-screen animated images of a definitely physical space which the represented figures are supposed to occupy. Online videogames adopt the cyberspace metaphor by engaging players in the networked game "space," and figuratively representing them on the screen as avatars. Certain game implementations currently aim for still more immersive playing space (such as Laser tag), but these are considered to be "augmented reality" rather than the fully immersive type of "[[Virtual Reality]]" imagined for cyberspace in science fiction.

==The philosophy of illusion==
The concept of Cyberspace is related to philosophical concepts of illusion. Plato's allegory of the cave (in The Republic) suggested that we are already in a form of virtual reality which we are deceived into thinking is true. (Plato thought that perception of true reality requires mental training and is only accessible to a privileged few.) Descartes suggested that people might be deceived by an [[Evil Demon]] which feeds them a false reality.

In contemporary theory the illusion of Cyberspace is explored in the [[Brain in a Vat]] concept. David Deutsch in The Fabric of Reality employs virtual reality in various thought experiments. Philip Zhai in Get Real: A Philosophical Adventure in Virtual Reality connects cyberspace to the platonic tradition, imagining a nation in which everyone is hooked up from birth to a virtual reality infrastructure, and observing: "Immersed in cyberspace and maintaining their life by teleoperation, they have never imagined that life could be any different from that." This [[Brain in a Vat]] argument conflates cyberspace with reality, while the more common descriptions of cyberspace contrast it with the "real world".

==Related Terms==
*[[Cybernetics]]
*[[Cybernaut]]
*[[Cyborg]]

==Links==
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberspace
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-in-a-vat

[[Category:Cyberspace]]
[[Category:Web]]