meatspace n.
the physical world, in contrast to cyberspace or a virtual environment; cf. slightly earlier meat world n.
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1993 Austin Cyberspace Journal Newsletter 21 Feb. in austin.public-net (Usenet newsgroup) 1 Mar.
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Meatspace update (quick rundown on where/how to interact with net.folks in meatspace, i.e., regular events, social gatherings, restaurant hangouts, etc.).
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1996 Digerati 9
The email may chronicle Barlow in meatspace—today he’s in France at the Hotel Martinez in Cannes, but soon he’ll be passing through Amsterdam, Winston-Salem, San Francisco, San Jose, and Pinedale, Wyoming.
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1999 Cryptonomicon (2002) 535
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Neal Stephenson
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Current meatspace coordinates, hot from the GPS receiver card in my laptop: [etc.].
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2002 Lobsters in Year’s Best Science Fiction 19 218
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Charles Stross
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Do it. Do it or don’t even think about uploading out of meatspace when your body packs in, because your life won’t be worth living.
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2007 When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth in Overclocked 26
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Cory Doctorow
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I wanted my kid to grow up in a world where cyberspace was free—and where that freedom infected the real world, so meatspace got freer, too.
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2013 Stars Change 113
Mary Anne Mohanraj
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The net-world might be thin, attenuated, compared to meat-space. But here, finally, connections sprang into being as fast as she could imagine them; her code spiraled up in delicate minarets and cascading towers.
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2021 The Year IRL Went Online in L.A. Times 14 Mar. 8
The cyber society’s operating system runs on meatspace labor, the ‘essential workers.’
Research requirements
antedating 1993
Earliest cite
Usenet
Last modified 2021-11-12 17:34:09
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