2.2. Cyberspace: From Science Fiction to Social Reality
Watch out for worlds behind you - William Gibson
This space which is created through the extensions of the human
consciousness most often becomes referred to as cyberspace. The
word cyberspace was first coined by William Gibson in his science
fiction novel Neuromancer published in 1984 in which the hero
connects a computer directly to his brain. As seen by Timothy
Leary, Gibson has produced with Neuromancer "nothing less than
the underlying myth, the core legend, of the next stage of human
evolution. He is performing the philosophic function that Dante
did for feudalism and that writers like Mann, Tolstoy [and] Melville
... did for the industrial age." (Leary quoted by Featherstone;
Burrows 1995: 7)
As information technologies have advanced towards the scenario
presented by Gibson, the word cyberspace has come into increasingly
common usage, generating more varied definitions and meanings.
"Cyberspace is best considered as a generic term which refers
to a cluster of different technologies, some familiar, some only
recently available, some being developed and some still fictional,
all of which have in common the ability to simulate environments
within which humans can interact." (Featherstone; Burrows 1995:
5) The prefix 'cyber' coming from cybernetics gives the illusion
of control, movement and access.
The term cyberspace nowadays is often a synonym for worldwide computernetworks, but also a description of any kind of computer generated environment, sometimes even a description for the place where a normal phonecall takes place. So cyberspace is something fuzzy in between a dream, which is fed by science-fiction and computer culture, and the really existing telephone-net plus computers, which one can visit already. Cyberspace becomes understood as a space created by the mind through mediation, a space visitable, habitable and controllable or at least its illusion. And it is more than a breakthrough in electronic media: "With its virtual environments and simulated worlds, cyberspace is a metaphysical laboratory, a tool for examining our very sense of reality." (Heim 1993: 83)
