The Origins of Cyberspace

‘Cyberspace’ is a romantic term, introduced in the elegant science-fiction writing of William Gibson, but the concepts that make up the environment called ‘cyberspace’ are the stuff of real science, with origins that can be traced to ancient Greece. Much has been written about the origins of cyberspace, including a comprehensive sourcebook by Hook and Norman. This chapter tries to take a rather conceptual view of what constitutes cyberspace, tracing the origins of the ideas from fourth-century BCE Greece to the modern Internet-supported interaction space—throughout the discussion, the chapter will seek to elucidate the concept of ‘space’ and how it helps us to think about the cyber-world. On the way, the chapter considers the literary origin of the word, and the mathematical and logical theory that is required to build models of cyberspace.

Follow for Now, Volume 2: More Interviews with Friends and Heroes

Follow for Now, Vol. 2 picks up and pushes beyond the first volume with a more diverse set of interviewees and interviews. The intent of the first collection was to bring together voices from across disciplines, to cross-pollinate ideas. At the time, social media wasn’t crisscrossing all of the lines and categories held a bit more sway. Volume 2 aims not only to pick up where Follow for Now left off but also to tighten its approach with deeper subjects and more timely interviews. Featuring conversations with thinkers like Carla Nappi, Rita Raley, Dominic Pettman, Ian Bogost, Mark Dery, Douglas Rushkoff, and Dave Allen, and musicians like Tyler, The Creator, Matthew Shipp, Sean Price, Rammellzee, and Sadat X, as well as writers like Ytasha L. Womack, Chris Kraus, Pat Cadigan, Bob Stephenson, Simon Critchley, Simon Reynolds, Malcolm Gladwell, and William Gibson, Follow for Now, Vol. 2 is another critical cross-section of the now.

Extreme Users

Qualitative segmentation is a blend of art and science. There are a variety of sampling methods researchers use to guarantee a pool of participants that is representative of their target market. But for innovation research, we suggest ignoring those squarely in the middle of your target market. Instead, look to extreme users who are indicative of the future. As William Gibson famously put it: “The future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed.” We believe that extreme users live where the future has already arrived. In addition, these users are more articulate about their problems or needs, and more likely to employ innovative workarounds and hacks. Extreme behaviors are powerful examples of human agency and the ability to challenge and transform dominant social structures. We will explore this framework with three case-study examples: Looking to transmen and transwomen for feminine care innovation, Hikikomori for future social spaces, and the Amish for clothing sustainability.

CHARACTER AND MORAL VALUE IN “MIRACLE WORKER” BY WILLIAM

<p>This research aims to analyze the characters and moral values contained in the film "Miracle Worker" by William Gibson. Based on the theories of character and moral values collected, four main points are analyzed, they are: 1) How is the character appear in "Miracle Worker" by William Gibson based on the theory put forward by Russel How is moral values that appear in "Miracle Worker" by William Gibson based on the theory put forward by Milhorn. 3) There are three kinds of characters that appear in the characters in "Miracle Worker" by William Gibson based on Russel’s theory, those are the Protagonist, the protagonist played by Kate Keller, Annie Sullivan, Captain Arthur Keller, Mr. Anagnos, and Viney, the Foil, played by Hellen Keller, James Keller, and Aunt Ev, 4) There are six types of moral values that appear in “Miracle Worker" by William Gibson based on Milhorn’s theory, they are: belief, fairness, kind-hearted honesty, responsibility, and tolerance, belief is the most dominant moral values of all moral values that arise.</p><p>Keywords: character; moral value; moral value; film.</p>

Messenger Skateboards and Messenger Bikes in Postcyberpunk

This chapter focuses on several important postcyberpunk works from the 1990s by Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, and Bruce Sterling. All these works celebrate transportation technologies such as skateboards and bicycles, technologies that challenge the car and its dominance over the road. Furthermore, an interest in transport machines helps these texts demonstrate some of the key features that scholars have identified as setting postcyberpunk apart from the classic cyberpunk of the 1980s, as well as some of the features they see as building continuity between the two.

Contesting the Virtual: William Gibson

This chapter turns to discuss the contest for the virtual in the twenty-first century as represented in the fiction of William Gibson. In Gibson's earlier speculative fictions of the near-to-distant future, power largely means corporate power, following the posited decline of the nation-state; more recent work, set in the approximate present, place the intelligence agencies in play alongside international corporate interests. In opposition to such power, we find various marginal communities and oppositional groups who occupy outlaw spaces, both real and virtual, with Gibson's protagonists usually occupying an ambivalent position between the powerful and their opponents. The discussion examines Gibson’s contrasting of the Borgesian Aleph (a virtual universe of infinite potential), and Bentham's Panopticon (a virtual prison of total surveillance). It uses the dialectic between these two to ask questions of the contest for the virtual that currently occupies us as we balance the emergence of a potential information utopia against the simultaneous rise of the surveillance state.