"Cyberspace. 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, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding…."
- William Gibson, Neuromancer, 1984 (1)
"Cyberspace" originates from William Gibson's work Neuromancer, where it serves as a "way of manipulating traditional narrative elements to produce new effects" in Gibson's own words, as quoted by media studies writer Daniel Punday (2). Today, it refers to the virtual world created by the internet in which users assume identities and define themselves through boxes created in lines of code. Much like in Neuromancer, cyberspace allows for "moves" and "apparent realities" where cowboys, i.e. the average, often male, Western user, get to utilize the backdrop of a degraded Japan to tap into a cyberspace where it feels like anything is truly possible (2). These apparent realities seem new and inventive, but are often built upon the conventions of the reality the digital sought to evade. Gibson heavily relies on stereotypes throughout Neuromancer to give his work's world color and life , and repeatedly leans into the metaphor of the failure of the "meat," i.e. the human body (2). Gibson's idea of cyberspace implies a prescribed spatiality to the digital sphere that has persisted into much of the terminology of schools of thought such as Cyberfeminism, Xenofeminism, and our own daily lives.