cyberspace

English

Etymology

Blend of cybernetics +‎ space, coined by American-Canadian speculative fiction writer William Gibson in his 1982 short story collection Burning Chrome and popularized in his 1984 novel Neuromancer.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈsaɪ.bəˌspeɪs/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈsaɪ.bəɹˌspeɪs/
• enPR: sīʹbər-spās'

Noun

cyberspace (countable and uncountable, plural cyberspaces)

1. A world of information accessed through the Internet.
2. (by extension, somewhat dated) The Internet as a whole.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:Internet

   • 1993 March, Mitch Kapor, “Where Is the Digital Highway Really Heading?”, in Wired Magazine‎:

     Meanwhile, the pioneers of the computer-mediated communication networks collectively referred to as cyberspace are not willing to wait. Employing whatever tools they can find, they are constantly pushing the techno-cultural envelope. Life in cyberspace is often conducted in primitive, frontier conditions, but it is a life which, at its best, is more egalitarian than elitist, and more decentralized than hierarchical.

   • 2012 April 19, Josh Halliday, “Free speech haven or lawless cesspool – can the internet be civilised?”, in The Guardian‎:

     However, some have accused cyberspace of provoking a dangerous collapse in the old order of civilised society. The shift in the balance of power online has given rise to a more powerful concern: the rise of the uncivil web.

   • 2020 June 23, John Bolton, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 175:

     If, as we knew with increasing certainty, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and others were contesting us in cyberspace, it was time to fight back.

   • 2021 July 19, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, David E. Sanger, quoting NATO, “U.S. Formally Accuses China of Hacking Microsoft”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     “We call on all states, including China, to uphold their international commitments and obligations and to act responsibly in the international system, including in cyberspace,” according to a statement from NATO.

3. (science fiction) A three-dimensional representation of virtual space in a computer network.
   • 1982 July, William Gibson, “Burning Chrome”, in Omni, volume 4, number 10, page 72:

     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 had a hard time finding a square millimetre of factory circuitry in all that silicon.

   • 1984, William Gibson, Neuromancer (Sprawl; book 1), New York, N.Y.: Ace Books, →ISBN, page 51:

     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…

Usage notes

• Dated as a general metaphor for the Internet, but still current in military or security contexts: see cyberwarfare, cyberattack, cyberpower, cybersecurity, etc.

Related terms

Translations

See also

• cyberpunk
• metaverse

References

Further reading

• cyberspace on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Jeff Prucher, editor (2007), “cyberspace”, in Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, Oxford, Oxfordshire, New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 31.
• Jesse Sheidlower, editor (2001–2024), “cyberspace n.”, in Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction.

Anagrams

• cyberscape

Swedish

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English cyberspace.

Noun

cyberspace n

1. cyberspace

   Synonym: cyberrymd

Usage notes

Uninflected.

See also

• cyber-

References

• cyberspace in Svensk ordbok (SO)
• cyberspace in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)