Sunday 19 August 2007

Cyberspace



August 19th 1960 saw Sputnik 5 carry two dogs (Belka and Strelka) and assorted rodents into space. They became the first animals to return to Earth alive from orbit. Belka means Squirrel and Strelka means Little Arrow. Whilst NASA lists the 2 dogs as crew members it doesn’t include the names of the 40 mice or two rats...

At the moment I am more concerned about things that disappear into cyberspace – and do not return to earth.... A few times during the creation of an e-mail (for which my browser uses Word) everything disappears (presumably through pressing a combination of Control and Shift while hitting a particular letter?). I tend to call this disappearing into Cyberspace as if it were a void, a sort of black hole in or between computers. I know others who use Cyberspace in the same way and yet when one checks the definitions of Cyberspace, of which there are dozens, none look upon it as a void but rather as a totality. The whole World Wide Web and inter-connectivity of computers. “Coined by author William Gibson in his 1984 novel "Neuromancer," cyberspace is now used to describe all of the information available through computer networks.” In which case – does anyone know what the black holes in cyberspace are called?

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