Cyberspace

If you read a lot of old books about the internet, like I do for some reason, you’ll hear people talk about Cyberspace a lot. It’s fallen out of fashion, or become synonymous with a particular type of sex that nobody has anymore, but I think it’s kind of a shame. The prefix “Cyber-” comes to us from the term “cybernetics,” which got it from the Ancient Greek word kybernētēs, which was the helmsman or the pilot of a ship, as in the Iliad: 

“Wits help a woodcutter far more than strength. Wits help a captain on the wine-dark sea to steer the ship through buffeting winds and storms.” (Homer, 2023, Book 23 l. 314-317)

It comes to us with the connotation of navigation, which is why I like it. Cyberspace is space which is defined by its navigation, like a sailor moving his ship straight across a featureless sea.

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