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 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,
Reading what Gaz said in the previous post, reminded me of several books, specifically Snow Crash. Its a pretty tongue in cheek cyberpunk classic, not the usual style of say Gibson, but it has some interesting ideas nonetheless. One being what is pretty much identical to what second Life has become. The Strip. A virtual sphere with real estate on it, shops, the lot, that people buy, trade in, and generally live out virtual lives in parallel to their own in RL (real life).
The same idea was expanded a few years later with Tad Willams' Otherland Quadrilogy. Still one of the most amazing epics I've had the pleasure of reading. The idea's presented in this series of books are like nothing I'd ever read before on the VR/Tech scale. Whole worlds, clubs and lives in VR, coupled with the Otherland Network itself, something that really does make the reader think. Where anything is possible, life never ends and the price people are willing to pay for such privileges. the sheer scale of Otherland is mind boggling, politics, social commentary, future-tech, its well worth looking into.
Which draws us back to where it all began, with William Gibsons concept of Cyberpsace, something were all now familiar with, something we experience every day, a household phrase. What was once future-tech conjecture is now science fact, who knows whats just beyond the horizon, to quote what was once Motoko Kusanagi;
"And where do I go now? The 'Net is vast and limitless"
Other resources worth looking at include;
Silver Screen - Justina Robertson
Serial Experiments: Lain
Ghost in the Shell
Neuromancer - William Gibson
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