Bits need atoms as a physical substrate, and atoms need pennies as an economic one. Gibsonian cyberspace was a projection of socioeconomic order, different from our own only in its Reaganomics. It was a hyperspace, a space above and beyond our own yet mapped onto it.
Hyperspace as commonly encountered in science fiction is a plot device allowing starships to travel faster than light. It is an alternate dimension with smaller dimensions than our own. Several light years, or several years, of travel in our own dimension might be just a few light days, or days, in hyperspace. We can jump into hyperspace and save that time without having to break the light barrier or having to find something for the characters to do during the journey. It is an exploit, in the computer security sense, on physical and narrative spacetime. Like teleportation, hyperspace drives displace matter without it interacting with the intervening spacetime. They are a logistical technology. Logistics is the management of the flow of resources between points. In contemporary global capitalism, logistics companies collect, transport and deliver items as quickly as possible almost unseen using networked information technology systems and fleets of dedicated vehicles, stopping only in vast warehouses to allow gross physical reality to catch up with mathematics. Virilio is right about speed, this is about power. The paperless office isn't here, and the flow of bits and pennies is entangled with atoms. We cannot break these limits but we can circumvent them with logistics. Logistics is a non-Euclidian projection (in the mathematical, military, and psychological senses) of socioeconomic order. It is hyperspace. _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
