01.26.06


The End Of Cyberspace

By Ross Mayfield

Alex Soojung-Kim and David Pescovitz's article in Wired on Cyberspace is Dead now has a blog:

Cyberspace is a "metaphor we live by," born two decades ago at the intersection of computers, networks, ideas, and experience. It has reflected our experiences with information technology, and also shaped the way we think about new technologies and the challenges they present. It had been a vivid and useful metaphor for decades; but in a rapidly-emerging world of mobile, always-on information devices (and eventually cybernetic implants, prosthetics, and swarm intelligence), the rules that define the relationship between information, places, and daily life are going to be rewritten. As the Internet becomes more pervasive-- as it moves off desktops and screen and becomes embedded in things, spaces, and minds-- cyberspace will disappear.

I like Steve Jurvetson's suggested neologism from the article: Augmented reality. In competition with virtual worlds and AIs, we will coevolve and internalize­ technologies to augment reality and our intelligence.

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The blog shares some that didn't make the cut, like mine, related to the web of verbs: On. When kids use the Net, they are either On, using it as a conduit for social interaction, or Off, a way of not being present. We need to retain Off as a right.