n>In the early 1990s, some forgotten soul on the internet coined the term “meatspace” to refer to the offline area that most of us think of as “the real world.” The term has always been only half a joke: It’s funny to think about the real world as secondary to cyberspace, but many people really do operate this way, spending the greater part of their life efforts in digital realms. As computers and smartphones have become better and more readily available, and as virtual meetings have become more common in both professional and social settings, the idea that meatspace and cyberspace are rough equivalents has become increasingly plausible; over time, many of the activities that chiefly took place in the former, like shopping and working and talking to other people, have slowly but inexorably become virtualized.Read Full Article »
