Headline March 26th, 2012 / "Cyberspace - or - Catch 22 !?"

"Cyberspace - or - Catch 22 !?"

Respectful dedication Ayub Khan Ommaya / Professor George Washington University

Dr. Shaukat A. Bangash / CEO Quaid-e-Azam International Hospital

Long time ago Time magazine brought forth a gushingly Utopian 'special issue' called "Welcome to Cyberspace". Getting on the cover of Time meant that, as a cultural phenomenon, you'd begun to develop the attributes and form of a "black hole".

Come 2012 and we seem to have proved Time right by spending more money on Computers than say, TV.  But what is surprising and in many ways very alarming is that, no one has really bothered to just what or where exactly is this space called 'Cyberspace?'.

It is now apparent that Time likes the definition of Cyberspect in William Gibson's 1984 novel, Neuromancer: "lines of light ranged in non-space of the mind, clusters, and constellations of data like city light, receding...."

That clears everything up , doesn't it? Most students and even people don't realize that these quoted-ad-nauseum words don't belong to the author, or even to his hero, Case. Gibson is just too smart writer for that. He assigns the "city light" spiel to the nameless narrator of an official video history of "The Matrix," the network of Computers from which Cyberspace emanates.

The actual Cyberspace in which cowboy Case goes a-gunning is a  much weirder and more provocative environment, where blood ad screen somehow merge, where system and aircraft crash with equal force.

Its a place specific to one novel -- the artists imaginative landscape. In this sense there is nothing new about Gibson's Cyberspace. But this is getting a bit artsy for cyberspace. In truth were merely talking data here, the fact-o-sphere, the continuum of tedium .

That "city lights, receding" line is fiercely  prosaic! And computer theorist J P Barlow got the future inkling on Cyberspace right: "Cyberspace is that place you are in when you are talking on the telephone." That sounds a lot closer to matrix!! So dear readers don't miss the next startling part tomorrow! When total contraria enlightens you!

Good night and God bless!

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