Re: What to do in XXXXXXXXXX

[Ad absurdum per aspera <JTCHEW -at- LBL -dot- GOV>]

> please do not use the word "Cyberspace" when referring to the
> Internet?  That little William Gibsonism applies to a futuristic
> computer model that is orders of magnitude beyond the Internet.
> I have often noticed aging yuppies up on the New York Times and
> not so much on computers use this terminology.  It's glam
> direct from Madison Ave.

True Gibsonesque Cyberspace will be here so fast it will make
your virtual head spin.  But don't worry about getting old too
soon to keep up; your kids will teach you how to use it.

Seriously, this is a new word for a new conceptual world.  It's
getting to be a truism that electronic interaction is different
from both the face-to-face and the pen-to-paper kinds, and that
these differences stem from the nature of the medium.  We may
have just barely set out into cyberspace, but now that the concept
has been recognized, why should that keep us from giving it a name?
Might help us as we walk a dangerous one-way street out of
Gutenberg's world and into James Patrick Kelly's.

As for the term's palatibility, someone I know who has been
involved in these issues for many years -- someone as far
removed from Madison Avenue as a organic grocery is from
Ruth's Chris Steakhouse -- was grappling with these new
concepts in the mid-80s.  He, too, felt the need for a new
term, and tried out "datasphere."  But he embraced the term
"cyberspace" immediately upon seeing it.

Don't worry about Madison Avenue using the *term* "cyberspace";
worry about Madison Avenue using cyberspace!

Cheers,
Joe
"The pallid pimp of the dead-line/The enervate of the pen." -Robert Service