Editing Cyberspace (section)

==Etymology==

The term ''cyberspace'' first appeared in the visual arts in the late 1960s, when Danish artist [[Susanne Ussing]] (1940–1998) and her partner architect Carsten Hoff (b. 1934) constituted themselves as Atelier Cyberspace. Under this name the two made a series of installations and images entitled "sensory spaces" that were based on the principle of open systems adaptable to various influences, such as human movement and the behaviour of new materials.<ref name="kunstkritikk.com">{{cite web | url=http://www.kunstkritikk.com/kommentar/the-reinvention-of-cyberspace/ | title=The (Re)invention of Cyberspace | access-date=2015-08-24 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150826204717/http://www.kunstkritikk.com/kommentar/the-reinvention-of-cyberspace/ | archive-date=2015-08-26 | url-status=dead }}</ref>

Atelier Cyberspace worked at a time when the Internet did not exist and computers were more or less off-limit to artists and creative engagement. In a 2015 interview with Scandinavian art magazine ''Kunstkritikk'', Carsten Hoff recollects that although Atelier Cyberspace did try to implement computers, they had no interest in the virtual space as such:<ref name="kunstkritikk.com"/>

{{Blockquote|To us, "cyberspace" was simply about managing spaces. There was nothing esoteric about it. Nothing digital, either. It was just a tool. The space was concrete, physical.}}

In the same interview, Hoff continues:

{{blockquote|Our shared point of departure was that we were working with physical settings, and we were both frustrated and displeased with the architecture from the period, particularly when it came to spaces for living. We felt that there was a need to loosen up the rigid confines of urban planning, giving back the gift of creativity to individual human beings and allowing them to shape and design their houses or dwellings themselves – instead of having some clever architect pop up, telling you how you should live. We were thinking in terms of open-ended systems where things could grow and evolve as required.

For instance, we imagined a kind of mobile production unit, but unfortunately the drawings have been lost. It was a kind of truck with a nozzle at the back. Like a bee building its hive. The nozzle would emit and apply material that grew to form amorphous mushrooms or whatever you might imagine. It was supposed to be computer-controlled, allowing you to create interesting shapes and sequences of spaces. It was a merging of organic and technological systems, a new way of structuring the world. And a response that counteracted industrial uniformity. We had this idea that sophisticated software might enable us to mimic the way in which nature creates products – where things that belong to the same family can take different forms. All oak trees are oak trees, but no two oak trees are exactly alike. And then a whole new material – polystyrene foam – arrived on the scene. It behaved like nature in the sense that it grew when its two component parts were mixed. Almost like a fungal growth. This made it an obvious choice for our work in Atelier Cyberspace.}}

The works of Atelier Cyberspace were originally shown at a number of Copenhagen venues and have later been exhibited at The National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen as part of the exhibition "What's Happening?"<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.smk.dk/en/visit-the-museum/exhibitions/whats-happening/introduction-to-the-exhibition/ |title=Introduction to the exhibition - Statens Museum for Kunst |access-date=2015-08-24 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160717203022/http://www.smk.dk/en/visit-the-museum/exhibitions/whats-happening/introduction-to-the-exhibition/ |archive-date=2016-07-17 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

The term ''cyberspace'' first appeared in fiction in the 1980s in the work of [[cyberpunk]] science fiction author [[William Gibson]], first in his 1982 short story "[[Burning Chrome]]" and later in his 1984 novel ''[[Neuromancer]]''.<ref name=wired>{{cite magazine |magazine=WIRED |title=March 17, 1948: William Gibson, Father of Cyberspace | author=Scott Thil | date=March 17, 2009 | url=https://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2009/03/dayintech_0317}}</ref> In the next few years, the word became prominently identified with online computer networks. The portion of ''Neuromancer'' cited in this respect is usually the following:<ref>{{cite book | last = Gibson | first = William | title = Neuromancer | url = https://archive.org/details/neuromancer00gibs | url-access = registration | publisher = Ace Books | location = New York | year = 1984 | isbn = 978-0-441-56956-4 | page = [https://archive.org/details/neuromancer00gibs/page/69 69] }}</ref>

{{blockquote|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 the 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.}}

Now widely used, the term has since been criticized by Gibson, who commented on the origin of the term in the 2000 documentary ''[[No Maps for These Territories]]'':

{{blockquote|All I knew about the word "cyberspace" when I coined it, was that it seemed like an effective buzzword. It seemed evocative and essentially meaningless. It was suggestive of something, but had no real semantic meaning, even for me, as I saw it emerge on the page.}}

===Metaphorical===
Don Slater uses a [[metaphor]] to define cyberspace, describing the "sense of a social setting that exists purely within a space of representation and communication ... it exists entirely within a computer space, distributed across increasingly complex and fluid networks." The term ''cyberspace'' started to become a de facto synonym for the Internet, and later the [[World Wide Web]], during the 1990s, especially in academic circles<ref>Vanderbilt University, [http://www.vanderbilt.edu/ans/english/clayton/sch295.htm "Postmodernism and the Culture of Cyberspace"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070107094002/http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/english/Clayton/sch295.htm |date=2007-01-07 }}, Fall 1996 course syllabus</ref> and activist communities. Author [[Bruce Sterling]], who popularized this meaning,<ref>'' Principia Cybernetica'' [http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/CYBSPACE.html "Cyberspace"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060821070628/http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/CYBSPACE.html |date=2006-08-21 }}</ref> credits [[John Perry Barlow]] as the first to use it to refer to "the present-day nexus of computer and telecommunications networks". Barlow describes it thus in his essay to announce the formation of the [[Electronic Frontier Foundation]] (note the spatial metaphor) in June 1990:<ref>John Perry Barlow, [http://w2.eff.org/Misc/Publications/John_Perry_Barlow/HTML/crime_and_puzzlement_1.html "Crime and Puzzlement,"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120101093314/http://w2.eff.org/Misc/Publications/John_Perry_Barlow/HTML/crime_and_puzzlement_1.html |date=2012-01-01 }} June 8, 1990</ref>

{{blockquote|In this silent world, all conversation is typed. To enter it, one forsakes both body and place and becomes a thing of words alone. You can see what your neighbors are saying (or recently said), but not what either they or their physical surroundings look like. Town meetings are continuous and discussions rage on everything from sexual kinks to depreciation schedules.

Whether by one telephonic tendril or millions, they are all connected to one another. Collectively, they form what their inhabitants call the Net. It extends across that immense region of electron states, microwaves, magnetic fields, light pulses and thought which sci-fi writer William Gibson named Cyberspace.|John Perry Barlow|"Crime and Puzzlement", 1990-06-08}}

As Barlow and the EFF continued public education efforts to promote the idea of "[[digital rights]]", the term was increasingly used during the [[Internet boom|Internet boom of the late 1990s]].

===Virtual environments===
Although in the present-day, loose use of the term ''cyberspace'' no longer implies or suggests immersion in a [[virtual reality]], current technology allows the integration of a number of capabilities (sensors, signals, connections, transmissions, processors, and controllers) sufficient to generate a [[Virtuality|virtual]] interactive experience that is accessible regardless of a geographic location. It is for these reasons cyberspace has been described as the ultimate [[tax haven]].<ref name="tsin">{{cite book |author1=William Rees-Mogg |author2=James Dale Davidson |author1-link=William Rees-Mogg |author2-link=James Dale Davidson |title=The Sovereign Individual |date=1997 |publisher=[[Simon & Schuster]] |isbn=978-0684832722 |page=[https://archive.org/details/sovereignindivid00jame/page/8 8] |url=https://archive.org/details/sovereignindivid00jame/mode/2up |language=en}}</ref>

In 1989, [[Autodesk]], an American multinational corporation that focuses on 2D and 3D design software, developed a virtual design system called Cyberspace.<ref>Andrew Pollack, New York Times, [https://www.nytimes.com/1989/04/10/business/for-artificial-reality-wear-a-computer.html "For Artificial Reality, Wear A Computer,"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170313205951/http://www.nytimes.com/1989/04/10/business/for-artificial-reality-wear-a-computer.html |date=2017-03-13 }} April 10, 1989</ref>

===Recent definitions of Cyberspace===

Although several definitions of cyberspace can be found both in scientific literature and in official governmental sources, there is no fully agreed official definition yet. According to F. D. Kramer ,there are 28 different definitions of the term ''cyberspace''.<ref name=CNS_1>{{cite web| title=Cyberpower and National Security| author1=Kramer, F.D.| author2=Starr, S.H.| author3=Wentz, L.K.| url=https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Publications/Article/1216674/cyberpower-and-national-security| publisher=[[National Defense University Press]]| date=1 April 2009| access-date=19 January 2024}}</ref><ref name=IP_1>{{cite web| title=International Politics in the Digital Age: Power Diffusion or Power Concentration| author1=Mayer, M.| author2=De Scalzi, N.| author3=Martino, L.| author4=Chiarugi, I.| url=https://www.academia.edu/14336129| publisher=[[Academia]]| access-date=19 January 2024}}</ref>

The most recent draft definition is the following:

{{blockquote|Cyberspace is a global and dynamic domain (subject to constant change) characterized by the combined use of electrons and the electromagnetic spectrum, whose purpose is to create, store, modify, exchange, share, and extract, use, eliminate information and disrupt physical resources.  Cyberspace includes: a) physical infrastructures and telecommunications devices that allow for the connection of technological and communication system networks, understood in the broadest sense (SCADA devices, smartphones/tablets, computers, servers, etc.); b) computer systems (see point a) and the related (sometimes embedded) software that guarantee the domain's basic operational functioning and connectivity; c) networks between computer systems; d) networks of networks that connect computer systems (the distinction between networks and networks of networks is mainly organizational); e) the access nodes of users and intermediaries routing nodes; f) constituent data (or resident data).  Often, in common parlance (and sometimes in commercial language), networks of networks are called the Internet (with a lowercase i), while networks between computers are called intranet.  Internet (with a capital I, in journalistic language sometimes called the Net) can be considered a part of the system a).  A distinctive and constitutive feature of cyberspace is that no central entity exercises control over all the networks that make up this new domain.<ref>Definition by Marco Mayer, Luigi Martino, Pablo Mazurier and Gergana Tzvetkova, Draft Pisa, 19 May 2014 https://www.academia.edu/7096442/How_would_you_define_Cyberspace {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170620173827/http://www.academia.edu/7096442/How_would_you_define_Cyberspace |date=2017-06-20 }}</ref>
 
Just as in the real world there is no world government, cyberspace lacks an institutionally predefined hierarchical center.  To cyberspace, a domain without a hierarchical ordering principle, we can, therefore, extend the definition of international politics coined by Kenneth Waltz: as being "with no system of law enforceable."  This does not mean that the dimension of power in cyberspace is absent, nor that power is dispersed and scattered into a thousand invisible streams, nor that it is evenly spread across myriad people and organizations, as some scholars had predicted.  On the contrary, cyberspace is characterized by a precise structuring of hierarchies of power.<ref>The most recent analysis of the interaction of Cyberspace and International politics has been investigated in the MIT, Harvard and CFR ECIR project (Explorations in Cyber International Relations http://ecir.mit.edu/ {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140904123841/http://ecir.mit.edu/ |date=2014-09-04 }}).  ECIR Principal Investigator is Nazli Choucri [https://web.archive.org/web/20120928082740/http://web.mit.edu/polisci/people/faculty/nazli-choucri.html]</ref>}}

The [[Joint Chiefs of Staff]] of the [[United States Department of Defense]] define cyberspace as one of five interdependent domains, the remaining four being land, air, maritime, and space.<ref name=JP3-12>{{cite web |url=http://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Doctrine/pubs/jp3_12R.pdf |title=DoD Joint Publication 3-12(R) Cyberspace Operations (5 February 2013) |access-date=2018-12-01 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180127164919/http://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Doctrine/pubs/jp3_12R.pdf |archive-date=2018-01-27 |url-status=dead }}</ref> ''See [[United States Cyber Command]]''