A Brand New Dimension
ReservedNineteen hundred eighty four was an interesting literary date for two reasons:
1. 1984 is the title of George Orwell's 1949 futuristic novel about what the world might look like in 35 years. How prescient Mr. Orwell was has been the subject of school assignments and intellectual debates ever since.
2. 1984 was the year William Gibson's futuristic novel, Neuromancer, was first published.
I know, you're all a-twitter with anticipation to know the connection. Well, besides the futuristic angle of both books, and my play-on-dates, both of these novels gave us terms that have become part of our popular lexicon:
In 1984, Orwell gave us the term "Big Brother," which referred to government, and it's tendency to try to control our lives.
In 1984, Gibson's novel gave us the term "cyberspace," referring to a futuristic computer network which people could "jack" into, to connect their minds directly to this network.
According to The Internet Glossary And Quick Reference Guide, a book co-authored by one of our Brain Trust members, Alan Freedman, Gibson's forecasting of what cyberspace would be like was more than just accurate. It was especially insightful since, like most of the rest of the world in 1984, Gibson himself had never "fired up a modem."
In the mid and late 80s, you could "jack" into Compuserve, Prodigy, and a few other bureaus (I bought my first modem around 1989, a Hayes 1200), but it was much later before even the concept of cyberspace, let alone the reality, was very well developed in the minds of most of us. For example, in 1988 you could find Orwell's "Big Brother" in the dictionary, but not "cyberspace" (I checked an '88 edition). But by 1995, Webster was defining cyberspace as "the online world."
A Brand New Dimension
I am a moderately afflicted sci-fi addict. I don't have to take any medication for this condition, but I do love to contemplate the possibilities. One of my favorite sci-fi subjects is the concept of dimensions. We live in a dimension called "life." In the spirit of cyberspace, I offer "earthspace" as an alternative reference to our dimension. Some of us contemplate a spiritual dimensions that we call "heaven." And of course, you can't have heaven without "hell."
The cyberspace we know now is a brand new dimension. If not already, sooner rather than later, we will be able to do virtually everything in cyberspace that can be done in earthspace, except one: physically inhabit it. But even though humans can't go to cyberspace, we have created infrastructure there, and surrogates - "packets" of digital data - to represent us.
The Mother Of All Paradigm Shifts
It's important to think about cyberspace because it is so much more than the most interesting phenomenon in our lifetime. The velocity of the emergence and evolution of cyberspace makes it the mother of all paradigm shifts.
The things that are happening in cyberspace are shifting virtually every paradigm you and I have come to know and love. And they're shifting in ways that were the stuff of fantasy less than a score of years ago. Never mind the marketplace, name any sector of your life that hasn't been directly or indirectly affected, if not turned upside-down, by what's going on in cyberspace.
We should realize that the cyberspace shift has already happened. And while we are still in the cyberspace Model T years, for a long time to come, new innovations are just going to be variations of what we now have. With my tongue only somewhat in my cheek, I predict the next shift that will compare with the advent of cyberspace will either be when we can ask Scotty to "beam us up", or when we start doing business with Vulcans from Xerxes 9.
What About Electricity?
Some have compared the impact of cyberspace to electrification. But I think cyberspace transcends even the impact of electricity. To be sure, electrification changed the way we live, work, build, and create things. But electricity is nothing more than a tool that resides, and manifests itself, in earthspace.
Cyberspace is more than a tool that is changing our world. As Webster put it, cyberspace IS a world.
A Truly New Market
Cyberspace is also more than a new part of the marketplace. Marketplaces actually are being created, and are residing, in cyberspace.
In the marketplace, the shift to which I compare cyberspace goes back thousands of years to what Adam Smith identified in his 1776 watershed book, The Wealth Of Nations, as the "division of labor." Markets were born when people started specializing in one craft or trade, and bartering with other craftsmen and traders, rather than making, or hunting and gathering, all the things their families needed. Cyberspace is the dimension where lives the first really new marketplace since humans adopted the division of labor.
Al Gore Did Not Invent The Internet
Contrary to the campaign caca, the "little i" internet was developed by the government for national security and military purposes sometime around 1969. It didn't become the "big I" Internet, with commercial applications, until around 1990.
The Internet and associated applications are truly awesome - almost magical - but like electricity, they are just tools. The World Wide Web, for example, is just one of, but a very important, feature of the Internet. New tools are being developed all the time, and even alternatives to the Internet are being studied. But all will be functioning in the dimension we call cyberspace.
What About Us?
If you really want to develop a healthy focus on where your personal and professional opportunities lie in the future, you'll acquire a practical and technical understanding of how the tools of cyberspace work, and how to leverage them to help you gain a competitive advantage. But I encourage you to take the time to let your mind contemplate where these tools function. Don't think of cyberspace as a thing. A modem is a thing. Cyberspace is a dimension.
Life-on-earth is the dimension we live in physically. But whether you like it or not, more and more, cyberspace is the dimension in which you will conduct a lot of the aspects of your life. Think of all the cyberthings you can do today: Buy, sell, communicate, see, listen, learn, create, have relationships, be entertained, even bind a contract with your own digital signature.
And yes, we still have to keep our eye on "Big Brother" as he operates in cyberspace with us.
Judgment Day
The story is told of a man who was standing in front of one of the great masterpieces in the Louvre in Paris. As the man shook his head, as if in disapproval, a curator approached and asked if there was something wrong. The man answered with a wave to the great work, "I just don't see it. Nope. It just doesn't do anything for me."
To which the curator replied, "Sir, it is important for you to understand that this masterpiece is not being judged today, you are."
The division of labor transformed our existence and changed the world. And since it took thousands of years to really understand what was happening, earthlings had plenty of time to absorb the changes, adapt, and find ways to be successful with it.
Electrification transformed our existence and changed the world, but it took a few decades to fully appreciate the impact, which gave modern earthlings plenty of time, relatively speaking, to absorb the changes, adapt, and find ways to be successful with it.
Some of us still have clothes older than cyberspace as we know it, but already it has changed virtually everything in our world as we have known it. Time to absorb the changes? Can you say nanosecond?
Adapt? Yes, you still can. But it won't happen if you're shaking your head disapprovingly.
Find ways to be successful? It's being done right now by many others. What's your cyberplan?
Write this on a rock... It is important for you to understand that cyberspace is not being judged today. You are! What will be the verdict?
Alan Freedman's book, The Internet Glossary And Quick Reference Guide, is available wherever books are sold. Incredibly, Adam Smith's 224 year old book, The Wealth Of Nations, can also still be found wherever books are sold, as can Mr. Orwell's 50 year old book, 1984, and Mr. Gibson's 15 year old book, Neuromancer.
