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William Gibson: 'Cyber' is going away

The father of cyberspace says the term is becoming obsolete.

Robert Vamosi Former Editor
As CNET's former resident security expert, Robert Vamosi has been interviewed on the BBC, CNN, MSNBC, and other outlets to share his knowledge about the latest online threats and to offer advice on personal and corporate security.
Robert Vamosi

Speaking before a standing-room-only crowd at Stacey's Bookstore in San Francisco on Wednesday, William Gibson, the man generally credited with coining the term "cyberspace" in 1982, said the prefix cyber is going away. He said "it's going away like the word 'electro' or 'electra' was used to modify products." He also said the word "digital" is rapidly becoming obsolete as well.

Gibson is on tour for his new, present-day novel Spook Country. The book includes high-tech international terrorism among its many threaded plots. He also makes fun of the word cyberspace within the book, having a French character pronounce it "see-bare-espace."

Gibson is best known for writing Neuromancer (1984) and his most recent bestseller Pattern Recognition (2003).