What is the End of CYBERSPACE?

About the End of Cyberspace

Cyberspace is a “metaphor we live by,” born two decades ago at the intersection of computers, networks, ideas, and experience. It has reflected our experiences with information technology, and also shaped the way we think about new technologies and the challenges they present. It had been a vivid and useful metaphor for decades; but in a rapidly-emerging world of mobile, always-on information devices (and eventually cybernetic implants, prosthetics, and swarm intelligence), the rules that define the relationship between information, places, and daily life are going to be rewritten. As the Internet becomes more pervasive– as it moves off desktops and screen and becomes embedded in things, spaces, and minds– cyberspace will disappear.

About this blog

This blog is about what happens next. It’s about the end of cyberspace, but more important, about what new possibilities will emerge as new technologies, interfaces, use practices, games, legal theory, regulation, and culture adjust– and eventually dissolve– the boundaries between the virtual and physical worlds.

About the author

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang is an  historian of science  and  futurist

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang is a Silicon Valley-based consultant and writer. His latest book Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less (Basic Books, 2016) and The Distraction Addiction (Little Brown, 2013) blend history, psychology, and neuroscience to explore the hidden role of leisure and mind-wandering in creative lives. His previous book The Distraction Addiction argued that we can use information technologies to help us be more focused and mindful, rather than perpetually distracted.

Alex has worked as a technology forecaster and futurist at Strategic Business Insights, and has consulted on projects for startups, Fortune 100 companies, and government agencies; his most recent venture, The Restful Company, helps organizations use mindfulness and deliberate rest to be more creative and productive.

Alex has a Ph.D. in the history and sociology of science from the University of Pennsylvania, and is a visiting scholar at Stanford University.