Future Now
The IFTF Blog
New Wired article: "'Cyberspace' is Dead"
My institute colleague David Pescovitz and I have a very short article in Wired arguing that "'Cyberspace' is Dead." Of course it's available online, but I encourage you to go buy a copy of the magazine-- the printed version looks cooler. And this month's cover is outstanding.
One of the articles we're publishing in this year's Ten Year Forecast is a much longer, more involved piece exploring the end of cyberspace and its implications. The Wired piece really goes in a different direction: it asks a bunch of smart people what word they think best describes the mobile, always-on, social- and wireless- network-saturated world we seem to be building. And of course, the fact that a lot of people responded with great suggestions made the whole thing possible.
Here, by the way, is the question we sent out:
Cyberspace is doomed. Well, the word anyway. Twenty years after William Gibson coined the term, cyberspace as a metaphor for a place we "visit" to interact with information is not only played out but on the verge of irrelevance.
The wireless Web, sensor networks, pervasive computing, RFID, context-aware environments, and the "Internet of things" promise to transform our experience of creating, accessing, and interacting with data. Digital information won't feel like it exists in an alternate world that we "go to" but rather as a layer atop our entire everyday reality. "The Network" will finally become intertwined with the fabric of our lives.
So when cyberspace loses its relevance, we'll need a new word to replace it.
What is that word or phrase?
The article features suggestions from William Gibson, Steve Jurvetson, Vint Cerf, and others. It also reflects the media savvy of my co-author, who is really the one who came up with the idea of asking what terms other people would use, then pitched the piece to Wired.
Over the next few days, I'll post other suggestions from people like Edinburgh University professor Andy Clark, Berkeley smart dust pioneer Kris Pister, former Xerox PARC head John Seely Brown, and cyberlaw professor James Boyle, that we couldn't fit in the article.
Also watch for an interview with MIT professor William Mitchell about the end of cyberspace, the future of architecture, and many other things.
Comment by Vishesh Narayen on 02/02/2006 02:12:49 PM: Interesting. The problem with the word 'cyberspace' (in my opinion) is one of connotation rather than denotation. Cyberspace is--and this is my own subjective view--an amateur's word. Like 'cyborg', its meaning is more bound up with its connotation rather than its technical definition. In other words, cyberspace connotes (again, this is subjective) something new, highly technical, unexplored, vast. As the internet matures and becomes more well-understood, and both ubiquitous and essential, we obviously need a new word to descibe it.
One thought to keep in mind is that some of the trends you mentioned--sensor networks, context-aware environments--are still a long time coming. Remember flying cars? And, all due respect here, but "Internet of things" is a pretty vacuous phrase. Anyway, interesting idea. I look forward to hearing more.
Comment by Alex Pang on 04/17/2006 11:23:56 AM: I certainly would agree with arguments that none of the terms we have for describing the future we think is in the works adequately describes it, or are especially felicitous.
Personally, I think Jamie Boyle's argument is the most persuasive: we won't have a term to describe whatever comes after cyberspace. As he puts it,
"We won't have a word for it precisely because it will be pervasive, and we won't have novel, technologically accurate words even for its component experiences, because language does not work that way (thank goodness).
"We will talk about getting online long after the lines have disappeared, and e-mailing long after most people have forgotten mail was ever sent another way."