Cyberspace

A psychological space experienced by a human that was created by a computer. A term apparently first defined in William Gibson's Neuromancer as "consensual hallucination", cyberspace is the hyperdimensional environment of the Internet, virtual reality, and the online experience. This digital turf is generated by integrated information networks and computer technology, but has the feel of a real but radical universe with its own laws, for example allowing dissociation from the body and identity. Cyberspace enables interpersonal exchanges without the limitations of time, place, or race, through e-mail, videophone links, virtual conferences, translation software, voice recognition, multimedia, digital viruses, artificial environments, and even interactive touch and smell with recent virtual reality technology. It is a place characterized by freedom, vibrancy, individuality, intrusiveness, incongruent conjunctions of people and ideas and complex flows of information. Cyberspace is an artificial space divorced from biology and the surrounding environment but unlimited in its internal complexity.