The Dictionary of Human Geography

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Second, cybernetic space has been used in

distinction to the abridged cyberspace to

emphasize the way in which electronic commu-

nication and information processing capacities

interact with the real world (Mitra and Schwarz,

2001). Far from creating a separate virtual

realm, information processing capacities are

regularly embedded in everyday devices so that

they are able to respond and either be pro-

grammed or learn about patterns of use – offer-

ing the prospect of a world of ‘ubiquitous

computing’ (sometimes abbreviated to ‘ubi-

comp’). Increasingly, life in the urbanizedwest

depends on these embedded processors, which

regulate temperatures, elevators, traffic and an

array of taken-for-granted processes. With the

variety of wireless technologies, devices can

communicate with each other without the user

necessarily being aware that an automated elec-

tronic conversation is occurring. They use ‘soft’

adaptive computational processing that creates

‘a technical substrate of unconscious meaning

and activity’ embedded in the environment

(Thrift and French, 2002, pp. 312, 322). These

devices would create ‘smart’ environments or

‘ambient intelligence’ that can keep track

of users and will tailor interactions to suit

the users. Thus they will communicate and

remember past purchases, preferences, previ-

ous visits and past actions. This, the designers

believe, will be used to provide customized

menus or facilities. Cybernetics points out that

this builds adaptive, reflexive capacity into the

very environment, rather than vesting it solely

in human agents. mc

Suggested reading

Andrejevic (2003, 2005); Cuff (2003);

McCullough (2004); Thrift (2004).

cyberspace A term that has followed a rapid

arc from subcultural obscurity to media ubi-

quity, and is now often seen as academically

misleading. It was famously coined in the

novelNeuromancerby William Gibson, first

published in 1984 (see Gibson, 1986). In his

novel, he offered a futuristic vision:

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 into the distance ...

Gibson was writing (on a Remington typewriter,

before the first widely available Graphical

User Interfaces even appeared on desktop com-

puters) about the emergence of a networked

and immersive environment. Gibson’s vision is

replete with spatialmetaphorsand imaginaries

for interactive fora created out of data and

information. In other novels, he models online

worlds on the walled city of Kowloon (Idoru)

or a variety of urban dystopias.

The use of cyberspace in this phase was

connected to dystopian cyberpunk science

fiction that broke from conventions of seeing

technology as promising an ever-brighter

and cleaner modernity (Burrows, 1997;

Featherstone and Burrows, 1997; Kitchin

and Kneale, 2002), to one that saw it as con-

nected to or enabling social and personal frag-

mentation, woven amidstlandscapesstriated

by effects ofpowerandinnovation, but also

decay and dispossession.

This gave impetus to seeing flows and

exchanges of data and information not merely

throughspacebut as creating online worlds

where data were manipulated as virtual arte-

facts (see alsovirtual reality). The represen-

tations andmapsof cyberspace created by

programmers and writers did indeed precede

theterritoryin Baudrillard’s sense (see also

simulacra) – they were vital in its creation, in

giving information specific forms and idioms

for use. The mapping of cyberspace spawned

new technologies to locate and understand

data, and set up an intriguing dialogue with

cartographic concepts now applied to

imagined objects (see Crampton, 2003;

Dodge and Kitchin, 2001a).

From this beginning, cyberspace entered

wider academic and popular parlance, along

witha stringofother spatial metaphors for infor-

mationnetworks. Thus the 1990s saw the rise

of discourses imagining what Kitchin (1998)

called the ‘world in the wires’ through spatial

metaphors such as ‘chat rooms’, informational

highways, ‘electronic frontiers’ and ‘cybersa-

lons’ (seevirtual geographies). Indeed, new

virtual worlds were designed where ‘avatars’ or

online representations of users could interact in

virtual realms (see, e.g., Anders, 1998). The

possibilities for new realms of interaction

attracted a great deal of attention in the mid-

1990s. The possibilities of playing withiden-

titiessuch asgenderascriptions were pursued

alongside questions of the formation of online

communitieswithout spatial proximity in the

realworld.Farfromthecyberpunkchaosofearly

accounts, many online worlds developed in the

new millennia became mainstream, and quite

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_C Final Proof page 139 31.3.2009 9:45pm

CYBERSPACE