Social SciencesComputer ScienceCultural StudiesDigital Culture StudiesMedia StudiesMedia TheoryComputer-mediated DiscourseDigital MediaInternet CultureNew MediaVideo Game CultureVideo Game StudiesComputer-mediated Narrative
The way cultural discourses today, as well as our theories addressing those discourses (and stemming from them), imagine technologized bodies and subjectivities is clearly influenced by William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer and, in particular, the term “cyberspace” that it introduced to our cultural vocabulary.1 This has been particularly evident in writing about the Internet. Gibson’s alluring fantasy of “meatless” subjects incorporated into a computer seems to resonate simultaneously, and powerfully, with both hopes and anxieties stemming from the Internet as a new medium shaping the public sphere. Interestingly though, and not surprisingly, considering how cumbersome a technology it was at the time, Gibson didn’t have the Internet in mind when he coined the term cyberspace. Instead, he found an inspiration for it in video games:.