The Rise of Dismal Science Fiction

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. After William Gibson coined the term cyberspace in his 1984 novel Neuromancer, it almost immediately entered our everyday vocabulary. A play on information theorist Norbert Wiener's idea of cybernetics, cyberspace became shorthand for the world inside our networked computers, that digital landscape where we met to chat, play games, and exchange intimate secrets. Today, cyber is part of our political language, too, used to describe everything from digital warfare to online intelligence gathering. What often gets forgotten about the origin story of this term is that Gibson wasn't just talking the future of computers, but of a world where tech corporations rule every aspect of our lives.