Birth of "cyberspace"...

Not more than 2 decades ago, the Internet had just started to reach the general public, through universities. The "big" things were getting onto BBS (bulletin board systems). The terms "World-wide Web", "e-commerce", or "chatrooms" had not taken shape yet.

... and the word "Cyberspace" had yet to be born.

In 1984, William Gibson published Neuromancer. For the first time, cyberspace received a definition:

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, clustered and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding...

This definition still influences much of culture and science fiction. Even recent movies, such as Matrix, uses the idea of grids connecting people together. (Incidentally, Gibson also uses the word "matrix" to help describe cyberspace in the book.)

My first encounter with Neuromancer was through a college assignment, to digest the social messages behind the story. The main character, Case, is a "cyberspace cowboy". He goes about breaking into various computer systems to steal information for people. Unfortunately, he had double-crossed the wrong client and ended up losing the ability to enter cyberspace, "jack-in".

A man, by the name of Armitage, provides him with the opportunity to get back into cyberspace. Like an addict, we find Case needing and desiring cyberspace, sometimes more than human bodily functions. In exchange, Armitage uses Case to break different systems. And all the while, the question of "what is Wintermute?" lingers in the air.

Case is teamed up with Molly, with all her special body enhancements to make her a human killing machine. While he disables security systems, she must be the one to actually enter and remove items.

In addition to introducing the world to the term, "cyberspace", Gibson has the honor of being heralded as one of the forefathers of the cyberpunk world. Prior to, most science fiction stories involved the ideas of space travel and aliens. Cyberpunk refers to settings, normally in the future, where humans and machines merge to become one entity. Physical enhancements, such as what we see in Molly, are commonplace. And cyberspace is a very real existence for the people in this world.

Gibson paints a dark picture of the future in the veins similar to other stories, such as Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep). The world is filled with low-lifes, drugs, and the strong desire by everyone to escape.

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