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Cyberspace: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|''"Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphical representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the non-space of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding." ''
|'''[[William Gibson]]''', ''[[Neuromancer]]''}}
The idea of a [[Another Dimension|dimension]] having mystical effect on our own dimension is quite old. Sometimes the dimensional gateway would be a mirror or book. A computer screen is both of these.
[[Cyberspace]] just puts a modern spin on the idea.
Rather than go [[Down the Rabbit Hole]] into a [[Spirit World]], the character puts on some VR goggles, [[Unusual User Interface|plugs an Ethernet cable into his skull]], or gets "digitized" into data. What do they see when they go online? A pretty nifty 3D world, designed as a [[Viewer-Friendly Interface]] made up of [[Holographic Terminal]]s over a background full of [[Matrix Raining Code]] superimposed over [[Tron Lines]]. Not only is [[Everything Is Online|everything online,]] you can expect "surfing" from one site/database to another to be handled with all the aesthetic aplomb of a [[Design Student's Orgasm]] and to be completely lagless.
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{{examples}}
== Anime
* The Wired in ''[[Serial Experiments Lain]]''. It plays fast and loose with its concept of geography, and we never really find out what the characters are using to control their avatars, though there are [[Mind Screw|implications]].
* Completely merging organic brains with digital technology is the central theme of ''[[Ghost in the Shell]]''. Almost every every person who works in the government, law enforcement, management, and the technology sector can directly link his brain to a computer. At some points people voice their belief that a person can survive as a completely digital lifeform, leaving any organic body behind while still retaining their soul. And this was in 1989.
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* The ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]'' episode that centers around Porygon has the main trio loaded into a computer. Or it would [[Canon Discontinuity|if such an episode had been made]].
== Comic Books ==
* Being a sci-fi series that isn't
▲* Being a sci-fi series that isn't TOO bothered by realism, ''[[Paperinik New Adventures]]'' has to have this, of course. Apparently, super-genius extraordinaire Everett Ducklair built an entrance to cyberspace in his basement to analyze his own programs from within. Paperinik uses it for some hands-on hacking, when necessary.
* In ''Arcanum'', Cyberspace is a pocket dimension that exists due to the [[Clap Your Hands If You Believe|belief-fueled nature of magic]]. As one character explains: "people have talked about info highways, web sites, and data blocks so much, some've begun to believe they physically exist. That belief became this pocket dimension."
== Films ==
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* The plot of the third ''[[Spy Kids]]'' film featured the title characters traveling inside a video game.
* ''[[Inception]]'' turns this trope on its head by using nearly every single trope related to Cyberspace that it can ''without any computers'', because the characters are ''dream''-hackers. You still have a dimension that can affect people's minds. There are dangerous security "systems" that can hurt people in the real world. You need a team of experts to pull of a typical hackers' [[Impossible Mission]] plot, part of which is getting to the "target system" in the first place. The environment can be "programmed" and cheated, and the setting straddles the line between [[Cyberpunk]] and [[Post Cyber Punk]]. Oh, and there's a {{spoiler|[[Haunted Technology]]}} subplot too.
* The Day of Wonders in the ''[[Apocalypse]]'' film series takes place within a virtual reality program, mostly consisting of [[White Void Room|a white room]] with the Antichrist in it to offer whoever enters it the [[Mark of the Beast]], with the alternative being death, usually by decapitation.
== Literature ==
* The term "cyberspace" itself was coined by William Gibson in his 1982 short story "Burning Chrome",
** Interesting in that you don't "walk" through Gibson's cyberspace... you move across a grid more or less at will, assuming you know where you want to go. There is no slow walk or fly if you don't want to admire the view.
* David Wingrove's ''[[Chung Kuo]]'' has the Shell, an entertainment system in its early stages.
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* ''[[Fat Guy Stuck in Internet]]'' portrays cyberspace as the [[Another Dimension|other dimension]] form of this trope.
* Although we never see it from his perspective, [[Monster of the Week|Moloch]] in ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' deliberately mixes cyberspace with this trope's pre-digital roots. A demon imprisoned in the pages of a [[Tome of Eldritch Lore|cursed book]], Moloch is accidentally transferred into cyberspace when the book's pages are scanned. Though he's technically still not free, the demon finds being "trapped" in the Internet to be far more [[A God Am I|empowering]].
* ''[[Ghost Whisperer]]'' unexpectedly brought Melinda into cyberspace in the episode "Ghost in the Machine", in the context of the fictional social
* The ''[[Warehouse 13]]'' episode ''Don't Hate The Player'' involves a stereotypical rescue mission into an Artefact-enhanced VR computer game. Pete takes the opportunity to be a [[Walking Shirtless Scene|gladiator]], Leena gets enhanced with an impressive pair of... wings, and Claudia is horrified to discover that her image has been used for an insipid princess. Oh, and the VR sequences are [[Rotoscoping|rotoscoped]].
== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[Shadowrun]]'' has the Matrix, which plays this to its conclusion as nerds obviously would. Systems can use the default ''[[Tron]]''-inspired iconography, but can be programmed to be anything; libraries with books for files and librarians for security to overgrown jungle ruins with treasures for files and angry natives for security. Deckers in turn can be anything from underage wizards with wands and glasses to BFG-toting commandos. Which leads to the awesome possibilities of [[Rambo]] clones getting their asses kicked by librarians or teenage wizards disabling angry natives with butterscotch syrup.
* ''Server Crash'', a 4chan-made pen and paper game, is about all of humanity being trapped in cyberspace forever.
* ''[[Genius: The Transgression]]'' has The Grid, a strange realm ''made from'' people's perception of the Internet as this trope.
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* R. Talsorian Games' ''Cyberpunk 2020''.
* In ''[[Alternity]]'', the Internet, radio, TV, the telephone networks, etc., have all been replaced by a single network known as "The Grid". While most people just connect with PDAs, "Grid Pilots" link their brain to it and walk around inside websites set up as 3D worlds.
* ''Narth 2000'', a
== Video Games ==
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== Web Original ==
* In the ''[[Whateley Universe]]'', being able to dive into cyberspace is Merry's best power. It turns out she's not the only one who can do it, though, and one of the others is trying to kill everyone...
* Very prominent in the ''[[Chaos Timeline]]'' (of course, only towards the end, since it starts in 1200).
* [[DC Nation]] used this during the "J" plot. Jericho had been trapped in there for a decade with a crazy [[Technopath]]. When Jericho tried to get help. Oracle mistook him for a hacker. Queue Joey's powers misfiring and bringing Barbara into cyberspace. And ''then'' Babs realizes that there's no interface to bother with ''and'' that she's no longer in a wheelchair, making her twice as scary as she was as either Batgirl or Oracle...Babs describes it as a cross of [[Tron]] and [[The Matrix]].
== Western Animation ==
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