CYBERSPACE HAS A LIQUID FORM

Lora's Tour

Cyberspace: Its corridors form wherever electricity runs with intelli- gence. Its chambers bloom wherever data gathers and is stored. Its depths increase with every image or word or number, with every addition, every contribution, of fact or thought. Its horizons recede in every direction; it breathes larger, it complexifies, it embraces and involves. Billowing, glittering, humming, coursing, a Borgesian library, a city; intimate, immense, firm, liquid, recognizable and unrecogniz- able at once.

Michael Benedikt,"Introduction" to Cyberspace: First Steps. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991.

This description attempts to convey the transience of cyberspace - that every instant it continually changes, not just because its information evolves, but also because connections are always being made, and new landscapes are always forming. It seems to follow the utopian view of cyberspace as a beautiful, successful entity.

Gibson identified the growing, moving aspect of cyberspace in the form of artificial intellegences. These seem to be lifeforms that take on the characteristics described above.


Cyberspace Web Hypertext