Cognitive Dissidents

After the discussion on the End of CyberSpace - in which I opined that CyberSpace was the easiest and best word to use - I began to think about how much I hate the phrase "Blogosphere"

I mean - I really hate it - it doesn't sum up the strange interconnected weirdness that makes up "BlogSpace" at all.

The concept of a "sphere" limits things - a sphere has a centre and a boundary- but the centre of "BlogSpace" is a continually moving object and the boundaries of BlogSpace are always expanding.

I don't think BlogSpace is a sphere at all. Just another unique Internet space that we can enjoy - while it lasts.

I've spent a lot of time in other virtual spaces - GopherSpace, MUDSpace, USENETSpace, WAISSpace, IRCSpace and FTPSpace.

A lot of these are obsolete - but some remain - others have changed.

Once they were new and now they are superseded by something else.

I now spend a lot of time in WikiSpace, ForumSpace, IMSpace, GoogleSpace, TorrentSpace, BlogSpace and also RSS Space - which I have now come to call "SyndicSpace".

They are all regions of that thing called "CyberSpace".

For this reason I would argue that - just as the "Cyber" prefix helps to denote that the non-physical-space is "CyberSpace" and not "MeatSpace" ("Reality"), then I also argue that the "Space" suffix is enough to denote the region of "CyberSpace".

So when talking about "CyberSpace" lets talk of CyberSpace and all the different "Spaces" within in it - otherwise we might be using words that place imaginary bounded spatial metaphors on a potentially infinite space.

I look forward to "The End of the Blogosphere".

The "Blogosphere" is dead - long live BlogSpace

Tags: blogspace blogosphere wikispace cyberspace language culture computing end of cyberspace end of blogosphere syndicspace