The Wired article, ""Cyberspace" Is Dead," is online!
However, I encourage you to go buy a copy of the magazine-- the printed version looks cooler. And this month's cover is outstanding. (Though the article isn't mentioned in the table of contents, and shares a page with Jargon Watch and a pie chart with the results of a survey asking "In the future, would you put money into an Internet startup?" It's on page 39. Find the DataPipe.com ad and turn right.)
Despite its low place on the magazine's totem-- I'm convinced the Lego guys on the front are looking so cocksure because they're thinking, "Ha! We are mere Danish toys, and we rate higher that you!"-- I must confess I've never waited longer for an issue of Wired in my entire life. And I've been subscribing since roughly issue 1.02.
I would be remiss if I didn't explain that while I've been thinking about this general issue for a while, it was really my co-author David Pescovitz who came up with the idea for this article: ask 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. 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. (And two people have already posted comments with their own suggestions. I'd love to hear more.)
And, just because I'm going to be obsessed about tracking the article and might as well admit it, a link to a Technorati search of blog posts linking to the article. Of course, there aren't any yet....
[To the tune of Bee Gees, "Love So Right," from the album "The Bee Gees - Their Greatest Hits: The Record".]
Technorati Tags: cyberspace, language, pervasive computing, ubicomp
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