# 'cyberspace'



## Takeaway (Jul 11, 2005)

Hey guys,

I'm posting here on behalf of Takeaway Media, a television production company based in London (U.K.). We're currently preparing a series on the English language for the BBC and we're looking for your help in solving some of the Oxford English Dictionary's biggest word mysteries.

So far the OED has been able to find no reference for the word 'cyberspace' earlier than a 1982 reference to William Gibson, but we think it's been in use longer. As sci-fi enthusiasts, do you believe author Gibson invented the word, or did he simply usher it out of obscurity? If so can you prove it?

Anyone have any thoughts that could help solve this ongoing mystery?


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## Stalker (Jul 11, 2005)

I believe that William Gibson, one of the founders of "cyberpunk" might be the guy who invented it. It's a neologism and it dates back as far away as the history of personal computers.


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## Winters_Sorrow (Jul 11, 2005)

Didn't Philip Dick or Asimov have some similar concepts in their works? Don't think they were called Cyberspace though (Interweb seems to ring a bell somehow) so Gibson may have come up with that particular word. I don't recall the word "cyber" being around before the 80s actually.


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## stencyl (Jul 15, 2005)

I think that he talks about coining the term in an interview somewhere. If I remember right, he said that he was walking by a video arcade and stopped to watch the kids playing. They appeared to be sorta jacked in to some alternate space, a world created by the interaction between them and the machines. He called it cyberspace.


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## Rane Longfox (Jul 15, 2005)

I would agree. I suspect the idea was around before, but Gibson was the first to actually call it "cyberspace"Make sure you keep us informed about the program. when it'll be braodcast etc. Sounds interesting


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## littlemissattitude (Jul 17, 2005)

For what it's worth, here's what I could find out about the word "cyberpunk", starting with the prefix "cyber-", which has been in use since at least the late 1940s.

The prefix "cyber-" has been around at least since 1948 when US mathematician Norbert Wiener coined the term "cybernetics" in 1948. (Thanks to the Encyclopaedia Britannica for that factoid, by the way.) Merriam-Webster online defines "cybernetics" as "the science of communication and control theory that is concerned especially with the comparative study of automatic control systems (as the nervous systeme and brain and mechanical-electrical communication systems)." That sounds to me like that whole idea could have had an influence on cyberpunk

On an FAQ page at http://www.faqs.org/faq/cyberpunk-faq/, the view is put forth that magazine and anthology editor Gardner Dozios popularized the term "cyberpunk" in the early 1980s, but that he claims he did not coin the word, but merely picked it up "on the street somewhere". That somewhere, this site goes on to say, may well have been a short story titled "Cyberpunk", written by Bruce Bethke, which was submitted to _Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction _magazine in 1980, where Dozios was an editor. The story was ultimately published in _Amazing Science Fiction Stories_ (Volume 57, Number 4) in November of 1983. That story is available at http://project.cyberpunk.ru/lib/cyberpunk/, where it is claimed that the story is the first use of that word. The FAQ page I referenced also mentions Bruce Sterling, Rudy Rucker, and John Shirley as being close to the beginning of the cyberpunk movement, so it might be worth looking into the work of those writers around that time for more information.

Hope that helps.

EDIT to add that the FAQ link will not work, but if you want to find it, go to Yahoo! and search the word cyberpunk; the site should be #4 on the results list.


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## littlemissattitude (Jul 19, 2005)

Good lord...what kind of brainfart was that I had yesterday?   I saw the name William Gibson, and immediately read "cyberspace" as "cyberpunk".  Duh.  Can I blame it on the heat?  It was 108 F here, after all.

On the other hand, looking into the whole cyberpunk thing might give up the answer to the asked question, at least.  And I did learn that Gibson didn't actually invent cyberpunk, which had always been my understanding.


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## Jayaprakash Satyamurthy (Jul 19, 2005)

Wikipedia seems quite certain that Gibson did it: 




> The word "cyberspace" (a portmanteau of cybernetics and space) was coined by William Gibson, the Canadian science fiction writer, in 1982 in his novelette "Burning Chrome" in _Omni_ magazine and was subsequently popularized in his novel _Neuromancer_. "Meatspace" is a term coined later as an opposite of "cyberspace".


 
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberspace

The official William Gibson board may be a good place to ask for more info on thi: http://williamgibsonboard.com/6/ubb.x?cdra=Y&s=5006046771

Here's another article supporting the Gibson origin: http://www.tecsoc.org/pubs/history/2003/mar17.htm


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## Takeaway (Jul 20, 2005)

Hey guys,

Thanks for all the responses so far - I've posted on the William Gibson board too as suggested so we'll see if we get anything new, but it's certainly all leading back to Gibson so far. If anybody remembers the interview Stencyl mentioned that would certainly be interesting to see.

As far as the series goes, it should start being broadcast in January 2006 on BBC2, but I'm afraid I don't have further details to give at this stage. Will keep you posted as and when dates get set.


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## stencyl (Jul 22, 2005)

After a little searching, I found it. It is in Larry McAffery's interview with Gibson from _Storming the Reality Studio_. It is the bit where he asks him what inspired him to come up with the idea of cyberspace:

LM: What was the inspiration for your cyberspace idea? 

WG: I was walking down Granville Street, Vancouver's version of "The Strip," and I was looking into one of the video arcades. I could see in the physical intensity of their postures how rapt the kids inside were. It was like one of those closed systems out of a Pynchon novel: a feedback loop with photons coming off the screens into the kids' eyes, neurons moving through their bodies, and electrons moving through the video game. These kids clearly believed in the space games projected. Everyone I know who works with computers seems to develop a belief that there's some kind of actual space behind the screen, someplace you can't see but you know is there. 

Here is the link to the web version:

http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/gibson_interview.html

I hope it helps.


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