Cyberspace is like the white triangle in the above image, appearing virtually, existing nowhere, while joining computers across the globe

Cyberspace is a domain characterized by the use of electronics and the electromagnetic spectrum to store, modify, and exchange data via networked systems and associated physical infrastructures. A cyborg is a Cybernetic Organism ( ie, an organism that has both artificial and natural systems Bionics (also known as biomimetics, biognosis, Biomimicry, or bionical creativity engineering) is the application of biological Biomimicry (from Bios, meaning life and mimesis, meaning to imitate is a relatively new science that studies Nature, its models systems processes and Biomedical engineering ( BME) is the application of engineering principles and techniques to the medical field A brain-computer interface (BCI sometimes called a direct neural interface or a brain-machine interface, is a direct communication pathway between a human or animal Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the Structure of Complex systems especially Communication processes control mechanisms and Feedback Distributed cognition is a theory of Psychology developed in the mid 1980s by Edwin Hutchins. Genetic engineering, Recombinant DNA technology, genetic modification/manipulation (GM and gene splicing are terms that apply to the direct Human ecosystems are complex cybernetic systems that are increasingly being used by Ecological Anthropologists and other scholars to examine the ecological Human enhancement refers to any attempt to temporarily or permanently overcome the current limitations of the Human body through natural or artificial means Intelligence amplification ( IA) (also referred to as cognitive augmentation and machine augmented intelligence) refers to the effective use of Cyborg theory was created by Donna Haraway in order to criticize traditional notions of feminism -- particularly its strong emphasis on identity rather than affinity Transgenderism is a Social movement seeking Transgender rights and affirming transgender Pride. Cyberpunk is a Science fiction genre noted for its focus on " High tech and low life. Cognitive liberty is the freedom to be the absolute Sovereignty of the individual ’s own Consciousness. Cyberpunk is a Science fiction genre noted for its focus on " High tech and low life. Donna Haraway (born September 6, 1944 in Denver Colorado) is currently a professor and chair of the History of Consciousness Program at the Crypto-anarchism is an Ideology that expounds the use of strong Public-key cryptography to enforce Privacy and individual freedom. Extropianism, also referred to as extropism or Extropy, is an evolving framework of values and standards for continuously improving the human condition Morphological freedom designates a proposed Civil right of a Person to either maintain or modify his or her own body, on his or her own terms through Singularitarianism is a Moral philosophy based upon the belief that a Technological singularity — the technological creation of smarter-than-human Intelligence Transhumanism (sometimes symbolized by >H or H+) a term often used as a synonym for " Human enhancement " is an international intellectual The term originates in science fiction, where it also includes various kinds of virtual reality experienced by deeply immersed computer users or by entities who exist inside computer systems. Virtual reality ( VR) is a technology which allows a user to interact with a Computer-simulated environment be it a real or imagined one

Origins of the term

The word "cyberspace" (from cybernetics and space) was coined by science fiction novelist and seminal cyberpunk author William Gibson in his 1982 story "Burning Chrome" and popularized by his 1984 novel Neuromancer. Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the Structure of Complex systems especially Communication processes control mechanisms and Feedback Space is the extent within which Matter is physically extended and objects and Events have positions relative to one another A neologism (from Greek neo = "new" + logos = "word" is a word that although devised relatively recently in a specific time period has been Cyberpunk is a Science fiction genre noted for its focus on " High tech and low life. William Ford Gibson (born March 17 1948 is an American - Canadian writer who has been called the "noir prophet" of the Cyberpunk subgenre Hackers (ISBN 0-441-00375-3 is an Anthology of short stories edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois. Neuromancer is a 1984 novel by William Gibson, notable for being the most famous early Cyberpunk novel and winner of the science-fiction "triple ^[1] The portion of Neuromancer cited in this respect is usually 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, (69).

Gibson later commented on the origin of the term in the 2000 documentary No Maps for These Territories:

All I knew about the word "cyberspace" when I coined it, was that it seemed like an effective buzzword. No Maps for These Territories is a 2000 Documentary film made by Mark Neale focusing on the Science fiction author William Gibson. It seemed evocative and essentially meaningless. It was suggestive of something, but had no real semantic meaning, even for me, as I saw it emerge on the page.

Gibson also coined the phrase Meatspace for the physical world contrasted with Cyberspace. Meatspace is a word referring to Real life or the physical world, and conceived as the opposite of Cyberspace or Virtual reality.

Metaphorical

The term Cyberspace started to become a de facto synonym for the Internet, and later the World Wide Web, during the 1990s, especially in academic circles^[2] and activist communities. The Internet is a global system of interconnected Computer networks The World Wide Web (commonly shortened to the Web) is a system of interlinked Hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. Author Bruce Sterling, who popularized this meaning,^[3] credits John Perry Barlow as the first to use it to refer to "the present-day nexus of computer and telecommunications networks. Michael Bruce Sterling (born April 14, 1954) is an American Science fiction author, best known for his novels and his seminal work on the Mirrorshades John Perry Barlow (born October 3, 1947) is an American Poet, Essayist, retired Wyoming cattle rancher political " Barlow describes it thus in his essay to announce the formation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (note the spatial metaphor) in June, 1990:^[4]

In this silent world, all conversation is typed. The Electronic Frontier Foundation ( EFF) is an international non-profit advocacy and legal organization based in the United States with the stated purpose of being dedicated 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.

– John Perry Barlow, "Crime and Puzzlement," 1990-06-08

As Barlow, and the EFF, continued public education efforts to promote the idea of "digital rights," the term was increasingly used during the Internet boom of the late 1990s. Year 1990 ( MCMXC) was a Common year starting on Monday (link displays the 1990 Gregorian calendar) Events 68 - The Roman Senate accepts emperor Galba. 536 - St Silverius becomes Pope (probable The term Digital Rights is indicative of the freedom of individuals to perform actions involving the use of a computer any electronic device or a communications network

Cyberspace as an Internet metaphor

While cyberspace should not be confused with the real Internet, the term is often used to refer to objects and identities that exist largely within the communication network itself, so that a web site, for example, might be metaphorically said to "exist in cyberspace. The Internet is a global system of interconnected Computer networks A website (alternatively web site or Web site, a back-construction from the Proper noun World Wide Web) is a collection of Web pages " According to this interpretation, events taking place on the Internet are not therefore happening in the countries where the participants or the servers are physically located, but "in cyberspace".

Cyberspace is the "place" where a telephone conversation appears to occur. Not inside your actual phone, the plastic device on your desk. Not inside the other person's phone, in some other city. The place between the phones. . . . in the past twenty years, this electrical "space," which was once thin and dark and one-dimensional -- little more than a narrow speaking-tube, stretching from phone to phone -- has flung itself open like a gigantic jack-in the- box. Light has flooded upon it, the eerie light of the glowing computer screen. This dark electric netherworld has become a vast flowering electronic landscape. Since the 1960s, the world of the telephone has cross-bred itself with computers and television, and though there is still no substance to cyberspace, nothing you can handle, it has a strange kind of physicality now. It makes good sense today to talk of cyberspace as a place all its own.

– Bruce Sterling, Introduction to The Hacker Crackdown

The "space" in cyberspace has more in common with the abstract, mathematical meanings of the term (see Space) than physical space. The Hacker Crackdown Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier (ISBN 0-553-56370-X is a nonfiction book written by Bruce Sterling in 1992 Space is the extent within which Matter is physically extended and objects and Events have positions relative to one another It does not have the duality of positive and negative volume (while in physical space for example a room has the negative volume of usable space delineated by positive volume of walls, Internet users cannot enter the screen and explore the unknown part of the Net as an extension of the space they're in), but spatial meaning can be attributed to the relationship between different pages (of books as well as webservers), considering the unturned pages to be somewhere "out there. A web page or webpage is a resource of information that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a Web browser. The term web server can mean one of two things A Computer program that is responsible for accepting HTTP requests from web clients which are " The concept of cyberspace therefore refers not to the content being presented to the surfer, but rather to the possibility of surfing among different sites, with feedback loops between the user and the rest of the system creating the potential to always encounter something unknown or unexpected. Feedback is a circular causal Process whereby some proportion of a system's output is returned (fed back to the Input.

Videogames differ from text-based communication in that on-screen images are meant to be figures that actually occupy a space and the animation shows the movement of those figures. Images are supposed to form the positive volume that delineates the empty space. A game adopts the cyberspace metaphor by engaging more players in the game, and then figuratively representing them on the screen as avatars. An avatar is a computer user's representation of himself/herself or alter ego whether in the form of a three-dimensional model used in computer games a two-dimensional Icon Games do not have to stop at the avatar-player level, but current implementations aiming for more immersive playing space (i. Immersion is the state of Consciousness where an immersant's awareness of physical self is diminished or lost by being surrounded in an engrossing total environment often e. Laser tag) take the form of augmented reality rather than cyberspace, fully immersive virtual realities remaining impractical. Laser tag is a team or individual Sport where players attempt to score points by engaging targets typically with a hand-held Infrared -emitting targeting device Augmented reality ( AR) is a field of Computer research which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data

Although the more radical consequences of the global communication network predicted by some cyberspace proponents (i. e. the diminishing of state influence envisioned by John Perry Barlow^[5]) failed to materialize and the word lost some of its novelty appeal, it remains current as of 2006. John Perry Barlow (born October 3, 1947) is an American Poet, Essayist, retired Wyoming cattle rancher political ^[6][7]

Some virtual communities explicitly refer to the concept of cyberspace, e. A virtual community, e-community or online community is a group of people that primarily interact via communication media such as Newsletters g. Linden Lab calling their customers "Residents" of Second Life, while all such communities can be positioned "in cyberspace" for explanatory and comparative purposes (as Sterling did in The Hacker Crackdown and many journalists afterwards), integrating the metaphor into a wider cyber-culture. Linden Lab is a privately held American Internet company that is best known as the creator of Second Life and the Virtual world platform Second Life Grid In the context of Second Life, the term Resident is applied Second Life ( abbreviated as SL) and its sister site Teen Second Life are Internet-based 3D Virtual Cyberculture is the Culture that has emerged or is emerging from the use of Computer networks for communication, entertainment and business

The metaphor has been useful in helping a new generation of thought leaders to reason through new military strategies around the world, led largely by the US Department of Defense (DoD). ^[8] The use of cyberspace as a metaphor has had its limits, however, especially in areas where the metaphor becomes confused with physical infrastructure.

Alternate realities in philosophy and art

Predating computers

Before cyberspace became a technological possibility, many philosophers suggested the possibility of a virtual reality similar to cyberspace. In The Republic, Plato sets out his allegory of the cave, widely cited as one of the first conceptual realities. The Republic ( Greek: / Politeía, meaning "political system" Latin: Res Publica, meaning "public business" or Biography Early life Birth and family Plato was born in Athens Greece The Allegory of the Cave is an Allegory used by the Greek Philosopher Plato in his work The Republic. He suggests that we are already in a form of virtual reality which we are deceived into thinking is true. True reality for Plato is accessible only through mental training and is the reality of the forms. These ideas are central to Platonism and neoplatonism. Platonism is the Philosophy of Plato or the name of other philosophical systems considered closely derived from it Neoplatonism (also Neo-Platonism) is the modern term for a school of religious and mystical Philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century AD founded by

Another forerunner of the modern ideas of cyberspace is Descartes' thought that people might be deceived by an evil demon which feeds them a false reality. This argument is the direct predecessor of the modern ideas of brain in a vat and many popular conceptions of cyberspace take Descartes' ideas as their starting point. Evil daemonIn Philosophy, the brain in a vat is any of a variety of Thought experiments intended to draw out certain features of our ideas of knowledge reality truth

Visual arts have a tradition, stretching back to antiquity, of artefacts meant to fool the eye and be mistaken for reality. The visual arts are art forms that focus on the creation of works which are primarily Visual in nature such as Painting, Photography Zeuxis (Ζεύξις (of Heraclea) and Parrhasius (Παρράσιος (of Ephesus and later Athens) were Painters who Trompe-l'œil, which can also be spelled without the hyphen in English ( French: "trick the eye" tʁɔ̃p lœj is an Art technique involving extremely This questioning of reality occasionally led some philosophers and especially theologians to distrust art as deceiving people into entering a world which was not real (see Aniconism). Aniconism is the practice or belief in avoiding or shunning the graphic representation of divine beings or religious figures or in different manifestations any human beings or living The artistic challenge was resurrected with increasing ambition as art became more and more realistic with the invention of photography, film (see Arrival of a Train at a Station) and finally immersive computer simulations. L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat ( The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (US

Influenced by computers

Philosophy

American counterculture exponents like William S. Burroughs (whose literary influence on Gibson and cyberpunk in general is widely acknowledged^[9][10]) and Timothy Leary^[11] were among the first to extoll the potential of computers and computer networks for individual empowerment. Counterculture (also " counter-culture " is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a Cultural group, or William Seward Burroughs II ( – ˈbʌroʊz was an American Novelist, Essayist, Social critic, painter and Spoken word Timothy Francis Leary ( October 22, 1920 &ndash May 31, 1996) was an American Writer, Psychologist, Futurist ^[12]

Some contemporary philosophers and scientists (i. e. David Deutsch in The Fabric of Reality) employ virtual reality in various thought experiments. David Elieser Deutsch FRS (born 1953 in Haifa, Israel) is a Physicist at the University of Oxford. A thought experiment (from the German Gedankenexperiment) is a proposal for an Experiment that would test a Hypothesis or Theory For example Philip Zhai in Get Real: A Philosophical Adventure in Virtual Reality connects cyberspace to the platonic tradition:

Let us imagine a nation in which everyone is hooked up to a network of VR infrastructure. Philip Zhai also known as Zhai Zhenming ( b 1957) is a Philosopher who writes in both English and Chinese. They have been so hooked up since they left their mother's wombs. Immersed in cyberspace and maintaining their life by teleoperation, they have never imagined that life could be any different from that. The first person that thinks of the possibility of an alternative world like ours would be ridiculed by the majority of these citizens, just like the few enlightened ones in Plato's allegory of the cave.

Note that this brain-in-a-vat argument conflates cyberspace with reality, while the more common descriptions of cyberspace contrast it with the "real world". Evil daemonIn Philosophy, the brain in a vat is any of a variety of Thought experiments intended to draw out certain features of our ideas of knowledge reality truth Reality, in everyday usage means "the state of things as they actually exist"

Art

Main article: New media art

Having originated among writers, the concept of cyberspace remains most popular in literature and film. New media art is an Art genre that encompasses artworks created with New media technologies, including Digital art, Computer graphics Although artists working with other media have expressed some interest in the concept, "cyberspace" in modern art is mostly used as a synonym for "virtual reality" and remains more discussed than enacted. ^[13]

Popular culture examples

• In the math mystery cartoon Cyberchase, the action takes place in Cyberspace, managed by the benevolent ruler, Motherboard. This is a list of characters that have appeared on the PBS Kids GO! series Cyberchase. It is used as a conceit to allow storylines to take place in virtual worlds -- "Cybersites" -- on any theme and where specific math concepts can be best explored.
• The anime Digimon is set in a variant of the cyberspace concept called the "Digital World". is a popular Japanese series of media and merchandise including Anime, Manga, Toys Video games trading card games and other The Digital World is a parallel universe made up of data from the Internet. Parallel universe or alternative reality is a self-contained separate reality coexisting with one's own Similar to cyberspace, except that people could physically enter this world instead of merely using a computer.
• The CGI show, ReBoot, takes place entirely inside cyberspace, which is composed of two worlds: the Net and the Web. ReBoot is a Canadian CGI - animated action-adventure Television series that originally aired from 1994 to 2001
• In the computer game System Shock, the player can use a neural implant to "jack in" to cyberspace terminals, where they can collect data, fight security programs and trigger certain events in the real world, such as unlocking doors. System Shock is an Action role-playing game developed by Looking Glass Technologies and published by Origin Systems.
• In the movie Tron, a programmer was physically transferred to the program world, where programs were personalities, resembling the forms of their creators. Tron is a 1982 Disney Science fiction film starring Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn (and his counterpart inside the electronic world
• The idea of "the matrix" in the movie The Matrix resembles a complex form of cyberspace where people are "jacked in" from birth and do not know that the reality they experience is virtual. The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction - martial arts - Action film written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski and See Matrix (cyberpunk).
• In the EXE series of MegaMan, there is a place where A. I. programs called NetNavis can "jack in" to Cyberspace from about any electrical appliance.
• In the Japanese anime series Lain, the main character begins to learn of a new dimension of reality taking place in cyberspace. Serial Experiments Lain is an Anime series directed by Ryutaro Nakamura, original character design by Yoshitoshi ABe, screenplay written
• Irregular Webcomic!'s Space theme frequently involves the characters going into Cyberspace. Irregular Webcomic! is a Webcomic created by David Morgan-Mar, an Australian Physicist.
• In the Xenosaga video game series on the PlayStation 2, there is virtual reality called the U. --> TC --> is primarily a series of Science fiction M. N. ("Unus mundus network") that uses the human collective unconscious as an interstellar, cyberspace network. Unus mundus, lit "One world" is a term which refers to the concept of an underlying unified reality from which everything emerges and returns to Collective Unconscious or known to laymen as Collective Subconscious is a term of Analytical psychology, Coined by Carl Jung. It is similar to the matrix mentioned above, but also facilitates hyperspace travel for spacecraft and can create a virtual reality representation of human memories. In Psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store retain and subsequently retrieve information
• In the Ghost in the Shell fictional universe, there is an extrapolation of the Internet (called "The Net") which a large section of society seems to be able to access. is a Japanese Cyberpunk Manga created by Masamune Shirow, and first published in 1989 in Young The interface can range from simply visual (through conventional displays or implants) to full-sensory immersion via neural jacks, where (as in William Gibson's Cyberspace) data is shown as visual constructs such as objects that present servers or databases, with graphical depictions of security mechanisms and information stores. William Ford Gibson (born March 17 1948 is an American - Canadian writer who has been called the "noir prophet" of the Cyberpunk subgenre Entering and/or traveling The Net is referred to as "net diving", which is an activity with the potential to be physically dangerous.
• In the video game Shadow the Hedgehog, two cyberspace levels were made: Digital Circuit and Mad Matrix. Shadow the Hedgehog is a video game starring Shadow the Hedgehog of the Sonic the Hedgehog series
• In the Game Boy Advance game Sonic Advance 3, the sixth zone "Cyber Track" is set in cyberspace. is a Platform game in the Sonic the Hedgehog series, developed by Dimps and published by THQ for the Game Boy Advance and the final
• The Air Force Cyber Command (Provisional) (AFCYBER) is the newest United States Air Force major command whose development was announced by the Secretary of the Air Force on November 2, 2006

See also

• Cybernetics
• Cyber law
• Cyber-warfare
• Cybersex
• Cyberzine
• Cipherspace
• Crypto-anarchism
• Digital pet
• Electronic sports
• Information highway
• Infosphere
• Internet art
• Metaverse
• Noosphere
• Simulation
• Social software
• Telepresence
• Virtual world
• 24 Hours in Cyberspace

Notes

References

• Gibson, William. John Patrick Shirley (born February 10, 1953) is an American Science fiction and horror writer of Novels short stories Douglas Rushkoff (born 18 February 1961) is a New York -based writer columnist and lecturer on technology Neuromancer:20th Anniversary Edition. New York:Ace Books, 2004.
• Ippolito, Jon (December 1998 – January 1999). "Cross Talk: Is Cyberspace Really a Space?". Artbyte: 12 – 24.  
• Irvine, Martin. "Postmodern Science Fiction and Cyberpunk", retrieved 2006-07-19. Year 2006 ( MMVI) was a Common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. Events 711 - Muslim forces under Tariq ibn Ziyad defeat the Visigoths led by their king Roderic.
• Oliver Grau : Virtual Art. Oliver Grau ( 24 October 1965) is a German art historian and media theoretician with a focus on image science modernity and media art as well as culture of the 19th From Illusion to Immersion, MIT-Press, Cambridge 2003. (4 Auflagen).
• Sterling, Bruce. The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder On the Electronic Frontier. Spectra Books, 1992.
• Zhai, Philip. Get Real: A Philosophical Adventure in Virtual Reality. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1998.

External links

• A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace by John Perry Barlow
• Virtual Reality Photos, Austria by Johann Steininger
• Peculiarities of Cyberspace by Albert Benschop
• Sex, Religion and Cyberspace by Richard Thieme
• Get Real: A Philosophical Adventure in Virtual Reality by Philip Zhai
• Brains in a vat philosophical argument against the idea that we could be in cyberspace and not know it by Hilary Putnam
• Cyberspace as a Domain In which the Air Force Flies and Fights, Speech by Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne
• DOD - Cyberspace
• Virtual Humans Forum