Cyber Words

"Cyber" has become a catch-all prefix in the last decade. It started with cybernetics in the 1960s (Wiener, 1962), and William Gibson invented cyberspace in the 1980s (Gibson, 1984). We live influenced by cyberculture. You can go cybershopping and pay all your bills through cyberbanking. Your car can be located by cybersurveillance. You can log on and have cybersex. You can become a cyborg, get involved in Cyber-Rights, cyber-democracy, cyberpunk, cyberdrama. An entire cyberworld. And women are portrayed as cyber-Barbies, cyber-femme fatales (Millar, 1998:106) and cyber-sex objects. Women can call themselves cybergrrls or cyberfeminists.

Cyber comes from the same Greek word as "governor" or "gubernatorial". Its original meaning is to steer, as a shipšs helmsman steers a boat. Its connections to information technology are in the area of navigation, mapping, (Arnold) steering onešs way through the world wide web. But perhaps, more sinisterly, the govern aspect should not be overlooked. And here the important issue is who is governing? The US military invented the Internet, allowed it into the open, no doubt initially encouraged its spread. A myth about the Internet is that it is a self-governing entity. But there are many questions to be raised about this.