Editing Cyberspace (section)

===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]].