MeatSpace

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MeatSpace is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek term used in opposition to the term CyberSpace. MeatSpace refers the physical world, the world in which meat lives and works and moves. Although maybe people may enjoy this distinction, it's probably [quixotic].

See BigBlueRoom for a similar term.

Wow, "meat-space" is an awfully *bad* term to apply to a HumanBeing?. We are *not* meat. We Are ``wonderfully and fearfully made'' in God's Image. Let's show some respect for each other, even if there are some who don't accept that GodExists? -- IdKnow?

: Respect indeed; please UseRealNames. Beyond that, I think you missed the sharp irony in the use of "meat". It's like BigBlueRoom; it underscores some of the absurdity of devaluing reality. -- anon.

: I thought meatspace was very clever. Ever if we are "human", we are still animals composed of meat and bones. I like that meat sounds like meet so meatspace would be where meat could actually meet each other. Personally, I do not believe I was fearfully made and I'm sure I will be respected for my beliefs. -- Steve

: "Meat" is a term quite like "flesh", and can have similar sexual overtones. N.B. there is some similarity between "meat space" and "meat market".

: I, too, like "MeatSpace." I've used it a few times since reading this page in 2006, and was surprised when somebody didn't know what it meant -- I'd grokked it so deep that I forgot I got it from you guys. -- MichaelAndersen

: Meatspace is a great term. I've always said that cannibalism is funny.--CliffSmith

I seem to recall that this term, or at least terms analogous to it, first came to prominence in WilliamGibson's Neuromancer. At least, that's the first time I heard it.

"Meatspace" doesn't appear, but the term "meat" does in several places.

: Strapped to a bed in a Memphis hotel, his talent burning out micron by micron, he hallucinated for thirty hours. The damage was minute, subtle, and utterly effective. For Case, who'd lived for the bodiless exultation of cyberspace, it was the Fall. In the bars he'd frequented as a cowboy hotshot, the elite stance involved a certain relaxed contempt for the flesh. The body was meat. Case fell into the prison of his own flesh.

Consider the term in the context of Terry Bisson's short work [They're Made Out of Meat]

Frederick Pohl makes uses much the same expression in his "Gateway" series, "meat intelligences", "when I was meat" (used by those who have passed over to cyber intelligence), and so on.

MeatSpace

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