The matter of Cyberspace: June 09, 1997 issue of New Thinking

June 09, 1997 New Thinking:
The conservative radical

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June 09, 1997

The matter of cyberspace

By Gerry McGovern

Cyberspace is a new space. Earth and the universe is an older space. Space without matter is a vacuum; nothing much exists within it. Everything in the space we live in is made up of matter. The air that we breathe is made up of small particles of matter.

The seat you’re sitting on reading this is also made up of small pieces of matter, but they have been molded together to make a solid form. Look at your hand. Feel your eyes as they read these words. All matter.

Matter is everything to us. It is what we are. It is how we live, how we work. It is our business opportunity and threat. There can be no life, no commerce or culture without matter.

Think of cyberspace. Cyberspace is nothing without its matter. What is its matter? Its matter is digital? Its atoms are digital bits. Digital matter.

We are the first to arrive in cyberspace. We bring to this new space our old baggage, our old matter. In these early years, many see cyberspace as primarily a space within which we can trade our old matter. Cars are sold. Computers are sold. Travel tickets are sold. Old wine is sold in the new casket of the Internet.

That’s okay. That’s fine. But cyberspace is a new space and a new space will evolve best if it exploits its very own matter. This matter is digital, this matter is information, this matter is software, this matter is sound and images.

But that is only the beginning, only the very beginning. The sound, images, text and programming that we know is merely but a taste of the forms of matter that will evolve in cyberspace.

Right now we hear of information explosion, information overload. It’s the Digital Big Bang, one of the biggest parties, one of the biggest events time has known; and time has a long memory.

We used to go out, now we will go in to discover. And each door we open will lead us, for a moment, to an empty room. But then the room will begin to fill and more doors will begin to appear. It is indeed a dizzying experience, as before our eyes emerge seas and mountains and valleys of possibilities.

Out in cyberspace, digital matter is awakening. We think we understand information. We think we have seen it in all its forms. We think we know music. We think we are familiar with software.

No. It has hardly begun. This beginning has hardly begun. Like matter has a million and a million more forms in the space we know, so digital bits will mix and swirl and form into a million and a million more forms.

If we want to run with this new beginning, we need to think of the inside of cyberspace in the same way we think of the outside of the universe. Vast it is. Vastly unexplored.

Information overload is the opportunity. Refine, mould. Create new information forms, new software, new sounds. New reasons to use sound. In cyberspace, everything is new. The old looks old to old eyes.

We need to invent the new like we never did before, because cyberspace needs the new to grow.

Gerry McGovern

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Right now we hear of information explosion, information overload. It’s the Digital Big Bang.