This week we investigate some key metaphors associated with computer-mediated-communication, such as "cyberspace," "virtual reality," and "hyperreality," and consider how these terms have become the focus for some of our culture's most poignant hopes and fears about the future. We then come back to earth by looking at the current demographics of computer networking--whose on, and whose off.

There are many web pages devoted to William Gibson, the science-fiction author who coined the term "cyberspace": one of the better ones is here. If you want to go further in considering the nature of cyberspace, you could explore John Perry Barlow's"Is There a There in Cyberspace" or the article by David Birch and Peter Buck, "What Is Cyberspace?" . If you want to go further on the topics discussed in this week's lecture, try Bruce Sterling's Short History of the Internet.For a more scholarly, academic approach, read Manuel Castell's chapter "The Culture of Real Virtuality" in his The Rise of the Network Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996) pp. 327-372--on reserve in the Weldon Library. For more philosophical takes, look at Michael Heim's Metaphysics of Virtual Reality page or at Francis Heylighen's "Cyberspace." For an entire book on the topic, see William Mitchell's extraordinary City of Bits . Here's a couple more pages, with some of the definitions of cyberspace discussed in lecture: one from theAnachron City glossary, the other entitled Cyberspace-the New Jerusalem. And how about an An Atlas of Cyberspaces ? For some discussion about the vexed issue of what the Internet is and whose on it, try John Quatermian's User Growth of the Internet and of the Matrix , and this valuable listing of CyberStats .And just so we don't neglect the dark side, here's a page on The hazards of staying on the Net for too long !