Cyberspace FTW

Cyberspace is a dated term. Its patterns of use in discussions on topics Internet and computing have fallen the way of 'information superhighway' - and Neal Stephenson destroyed the term more effectively than I could have in that behemoth of nerd-fiction Cryptonomicon. But the term 'cyberspace' was coined by William Gibson [fuck citations, you can look this shit up yourself - footnotes FTL], when he was wearing his futurist [sci-fi] hat. When I say these terms died, I'm talking about various things, across multiple levels. The surface meaning is that it's unfashionable to say 'cyberspace' and/or 'information superhighway', or any of those speculative and whimsical terms heralding an age of technology unfettered by mundane things like REALITY, economy, etc.

While AOL was enjoying it's hay-day, I was re-reading Neuromancer, and fantasizing about a reality in which I could escape the meat and blast off into adventures with AI's and body-hackers and ninjas, all the while getting completely fucking ripped on some serious neuro-inhibitors and psychotics and banging mysterious cyber-and-or-extremely-human women. Such a romantic naivete did nothing for my social-life, but brought about an unrealistic reverence towards hackers (and ninjas) that would be blasted to hell once I actually started taking action and put the proverbial money where my desires were - when I started programming. I quickly learned that AI isn't simple. I learned that any given piece of functional software was actually an extremely complicated endeavor to undertake, and shit. I underwent a change in those first years. The fantasy buckled to reality. But neither died. I kept hacking, learning, doing... and I kept reading, fantasizing, staying cerebral and whimsical consuming and re-consuming++ Gibson and his buddies. Point is, I progressed.

Meanwhile, Gibson and Stephenson were right there. wet-dreams of cyberspace gave way to EveryWare, and ubiquitous computing, and neo-marketing. Fantasy was meeting reality in the middle, like Benjamin Button and that red-head of his. And I was doing the same. I spent two years working on a degree from ITP [such a vulgar way to put it!], applying skills I didn't have in order to learn not only the skills but the application, and the resultants... We didn't quite work on flying cars [if you'll allow that term], but we were just ahead of the widely-accepted while keeping it almost possible. We had one foot in cyberspace, while keeping the rest of our bodies in Cable prime-time.

I keep seeing this intersection.