Do you have proof of the etymology of Meat Space? I mean other than some AI generated slop?
My understanding is that’s a new term, unrelated to the context you’re describing.
My understanding is that’s a new term, unrelated to the context you’re describing.
I think it comes from a Perry Barlow-esque feeling that Cyberspace is an improvement on the "merely" meat real world (perhaps even a proxy heaven on earth, cf. Platonism). Sometimes it is tongue-in-cheek, other times earnest (I assume for people who have found the real world (and their real bodies) a disappointment.)
[0]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/what-is-meatspace.
Bisson himself credited the idea to the poet Allan Ginsberg[2]:
> “I was thinking about an interview I had read or heard that Allen Ginsberg was doing with some journalist,” he stated, “and he was talking about poetry and the guy was saying that it was like they were two poets talking or something like that and Ginsberg says, ‘No, we’re just meat talking to meat.’ And somehow that got stuck in my head.”
The earliest known online usage of "meatspace" seems to be two years later, in 1993. Then in 1995, it was apparently used in the Seattle Times[3].
[1] Full text: https://web.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...
[2] https://thewritingpost.com/2025/01/13/a-look-at-theyre-made-...
[3] Some citations: http://www.wordspy.com/words/meatspace.asp
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/...
Your parent comments needless disdain aside, it was just a silly term used to refer to offline.
(Although I'm starting to have my doubts. Furthest I can get back is 1993 (usenet post). I'm curious to know if anyone can get further back).
It's been a term used on the internet for as long as I've been online.
/s
Here are some concrete examples courtesy of an etymology site: https://wordspy.com/words/meatspace/
The use of "meat" to characterize the physical, analog, arbitrary, biological (as opposed to the logical, digital, formal) pre-dates the 80s/90s deliberate apposition with "cyberspace" afaik, but I don't have time to fish up concrete examples from my library atm.
"Meat proxy" OTOH is a newer term for people who when you communicate with them online just run everything through LLMs and respond with voluminous and mostly unedited slop. Hadn't heard that one until about a year ago.