Cyberspace is a concept describing a widespread interconnected digital technology. "The expression dates back from the first decade of the diffusion of the internet. It refers to the online world as a world 'apart', as distinct from everyday reality. In cyberspace people can hide behind fake identities, as in the famous The New Yorker cartoon." The term entered popular culture from science fiction and the arts but is now used by technology strategists, security professionals, government, military and industry leaders and entrepreneurs to describe the domain of the global technology environment, commonly defined as standing for the global network of interdependent information technology infrastructures, telecommunications networks and computer processing systems. Others consider cyberspace to be just a notional environment in which communication over computer networks occurs. The word became popular in the 1990s when the use of the Internet, networking, and digital communication were all growing dramatically; the term cyberspace was able to represent the many new ideas and phenomena that were emerging.
Reality is the sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent within a system, as opposed to that which is only imaginary. The term is also used to refer to the ontological status of things, indicating their existence. In physical terms, reality is the totality of a system, known and unknown. Philosophical questions about the nature of reality or existence or being are considered under the rubric of ontology, which is a major branch of metaphysics in the Western philosophical tradition. Ontological questions also feature in diverse branches of philosophy, including the philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophical logic. These include questions about whether only physical objects are real, whether reality is fundamentally immaterial, whether hypothetical unobservable entities posited by scientific theories exist, whether God exists, whether numbers and other abstract objects exist, and whether possible worlds exist.
A virtual community is a social network of individuals who connect through specific social media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals. Some of the most pervasive virtual communities are online communities operating under social networking services.
Internet culture, or cyberculture, is a culture based on the many manifestations of computer networks and their use for communication, entertainment, business and recreation. Some features of internet culture include online communities, gaming and social media. Owing to the massive adoption and widespread use of the internet, the impact of internet culture on society and non-digital cultures has been extensive. The encompassing nature of the internet and its culture has led to the study of different elements of internet culture, such as social media, gaming and specific communities, and has also raised questions about identity and privacy on the internet.
Second Life is an online multimedia platform that allows people to create an avatar for themselves and have a second life in an online virtual world. Developed and owned by the San Francisco-based firm Linden Lab and launched on June 23, 2003, it saw rapid growth for some years and in 2013 it had approximately one million regular users. Growth eventually stabilized, and by the end of 2017 the active user count had declined to "between 800,000 and 900,000". In many ways, Second Life is similar to massively multiplayer online role-playing games; nevertheless, Linden Lab is emphatic that their creation is not a game: "There is no manufactured conflict, no set objective".
Judith Stefania Donath is a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center, and the founder of the Sociable Media Group at the MIT Media Lab. She has written papers on various aspects of the Internet and its social impact, such as Internet society and community, interfaces, virtual identity issues, and other forms of collaboration that have become manifest with the advent of connected computing.
"A Rape in Cyberspace, or How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database into a Society" is an article written by freelance journalist Julian Dibbell and first published in The Village Voice in 1993. The article was later included in Dibbell's book My Tiny Life on his LambdaMOO experiences.
Virtual crime or in-game crime refers to a virtual criminal act that takes place in a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG), usually an MMORPG. The huge time and effort invested into such games can lead online "crime" to spill over into real world crime, and even blur the distinctions between the two. Some countries have introduced special police investigation units to cover such "virtual crimes". South Korea is one such country and looked into 22,000 cases in the first six months of 2003.
Peter Ludlow, who also writes under the pseudonym Urizenus Sklar, is an American philosopher of language. He is noted for interdisciplinary work on the interface of linguistics and philosophy—in particular on the philosophical foundations of Noam Chomsky's theory of generative linguistics and on the foundations of the theory of meaning in linguistic semantics. He has worked on the application of analytic philosophy of language to topics in epistemology, metaphysics, and logic, among other areas.
A MOO is a text-based online virtual reality system to which multiple users (players) are connected at the same time.
PernMUSH was an online role-playing game, established in 1991, which was based on Anne McCaffrey's world of Pern. PernMUSH was a text-based multiplayer virtual world, based on a MUSH engine, in which players role-played as characters in the quasi-medieval setting described in McCaffrey's novels.
Mark Perry McCahill is an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer. He has developed and popularized a number of Internet technologies since the late 1980s, including the Gopher protocol, Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), and POPmail. He is said to have coined or popularized the phrase "surfing the Internet.". However, prior to McCahill's first use of the phrase in February, 1992, the analogy was also used in a comic Book, The Adventures of Captain Internet and CERF Boy, published in October, 1991 by one of the early Internet Service Providers, CERFnet.
Chip Morningstar is an American software architect, mainly for online entertainment and communication.
Infosphere, analogous to a biosphere, is a metaphysical realm of information, data, knowledge, and communication, populated by informational entities called inforgs.
Alan Sondheim is a poet, critic, musician, artist, and theorist of cyberspace from the United States.
Cyberformance refers to live theatrical performances in which remote participants are enabled to work together in real time through the medium of the internet, employing technologies such as chat applications or purpose-built, multiuser, real-time collaborative software. Cyberformance is also known as online performance, networked performance, telematic performance, and digital theatre; there is as yet no consensus on which term should be preferred, but cyberformance has the advantage of compactness. For example, it is commonly employed by users of the UpStage platform to designate a special type of Performance art activity taking place in a cyber-artistic environment.
The Patriotic Nigras are a group of griefers in the online world of Second Life.
Kevin Alderman, founder of Eros LLC, is the creator of the avatar of Stroker Serpentine in the virtual world of Second Life.
Kennedy Scholarships provide full funding for up to ten British post-graduate students to study at either Harvard University or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Susan Hockfield, the sixteenth president of MIT, described the scholarship program as a way to "offer exceptional students unique opportunities to broaden their intellectual and personal horizons, in ways that are more important than ever in an era defined by global interaction.". In 2007, 163 applications were received, of which 10 were ultimately selected, for an acceptance rate of 6.1%.
Carmen Hermosillo, A.K.A. humdog, was a community manager/research analyst, essayist, and poet. A contributor to 2GQ, FringeWare Review, wired, and Leonardo, Peter Ludlow's High Noon on the Electronic Frontier, and How to Mutate and Take Over the World, she was a participant in many online communities including early chat rooms and internet forums such as The WELL, BBSs, and later activities such as Second Life.
