The most visible impact of the metaphor of cyberspace has been in the field of virtual reality, computer generated simulated environments. The sensorial immersion that VR engineers seek to emulate would constitute an aural, visual, tactile embodiment in a fabricated non-space, a locus for social interaction completely mediated through binary codes of digital data. Neuromancer gave form and integrity to the emerging technology and its engineers, the "technologically literate and socially disaffected," in effect providing a tangible cultural location, a consolidated image of social interaction.

...[T]he existence of Gibson's novel and the technological and social imaginary that it articulated enabled the researchers in virtual reality--or, under the new dispensation, cyberspace--to recognize and organize themselves differently. (Allucquere Rosanne Stone, "Will The Real Body Please Stand Up?:Boundary Stories About Virtual Cultures." In Cyberspace: The First Steps, 99.)

In response to the popularity of his texts and the critical acclaim emanating from the engineers and technicians of cyberspace technology, Gibson describes the technology with which he is adept, that of language. In "Academy Leader," he reveals the arbitrary origins of this word with a detached ambivalence, as if to divest himself of responsibility for its existence:

...Just a chance operator... Assembled word cyberspace from small and readily available components of language.... Slick and hollow--awaiting meaning. All I did: folded words as taught. "Gentlemen, that is not now nor will it ever be my concern..." I work the angle of transit.

The trips others have taken, trailing the angle in the luminescent glow of Gibson's "pop poetics," determine the cutting edge of burgeoning technologies and redefine old ones. Cyberspace is, in a sense, no longer Gibson's word at all. "Awaiting meaning," as he claims, it has been given meaning from diverse social locations. Although virtual reality more closely approximates the neuromantic conception of cyberspace, the domesticated, public access version of cyberspace is already a daily component of practical living for those who use computers. An understanding of the disembodied conceptual spaces mediated by communications technology begins there, in international and local networks, like Usenet, Internet, Bitnet, Compuserve and the Well. These networks host countless conferences and e-mail deliveries, facilitating communication on a scale previously unimaginable.

1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	end