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cyberspace
DCHP-2 (Mar 2014)
n.
the online world.
Type: 1. Origin — This term was coined by William Gibson, an American-born author with dual American-Canadian citizenship. Gibson is a Vancouver-based science fiction writer (see Canadian Encyclopedia reference). He used the term cyberspace first in his short story "Burning Chrome" (see the 1982 quotation). The term was popularized by his later novels Neuromancer and Count Zero (see the 1989 quotation), which were published shortly after. Originally, the term referred to the translation of "Ono-Sendai VII," or "Cyberspace Seven" (see the 1982 quotation); it thus referred to a fictional parallel universe (see the 1989 and 1991 quotations). The meaning has been subsequently been expanded to mean the online 'parallel world'.
The term is currently most frequently used in the US.
The term is currently most frequently used in the US.
See: cyberbullying
Quotations
1982
It was hot, the night we burned chrome. Out in the malls and plazas, moths were batting themselves to death against the neon, but in Bobby's loft the only light came from a monitor screen and the green and red LEDs on the face of the matrix simulator. I knew every chip in Bobby's simulator by heart; it looked like your workaday Ono-Sendai VII, the 'Cyberspace Seven,' but I'd rebuilt it so many times that you'd have a hard time finding a square millimeter of factory circuitry in all that silicon.
1984
"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 the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the non space of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding...."
1989
American-born Vancouverite Gibson has been hailed, internationally, as the brightest flame of '80s alternative fiction, fiction that doesn't "retreat into small rooms of present-tense neuroses," to quote the dust-jacket promos. His style, dubbed "cyberpunk," brought to readers a computer-generated parallel universe called "cyberspace"; first in the award-winning Neuromancer, and then in the best-selling Count Zero.
1996
LOOKING back on a year in cyberspace is like reflecting on a decade anywhere else - it's hard to believe how far technology and imagination have advanced in such a short time.
2004
Data the smileys transmit can include the web sites you've visited, personal information that you've filled out in online forms, possibly credit card or SIN numbers, passwords and other private key codes, and your e-mail address. The information goes somewhere into cyberspace and there's no telling who will end up with your personal information.
References
- The Canadian Encyclopedia • "William Ford Gibson (Profile)"
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