

Ask HN: Why is the word “Cyber” objected to and what are the alternatives? - nsnick


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dalke
Are you referring to this exchange, from about an hour ago?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9171357](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9171357)
.

My guess is that the term comes from the Wiener's cybernetics, dating from
around 1950. It was used in pop culture in "Cybermen" from Dr. Who, and
"Cyberspace" in SF through Vinge's "True Names" and Gibson's "Burning Chrome"
and "Neuromancer", which lead to the cyberpunk movement.

As such, it's more been associated with social commentary and business and
political philosophy and not with technical language. It become popular in
general culture and political discourse in the 1990s as part of the
popularization of the Internet.

I can therefore make a couple of conjectures. 1) it's dated, 2) it's viewed as
an outsider (eg, non-Internet software developers) intrusion, and 3)
politicians, bureaucrats, and other people in authority tend to use it to
drive analogies between meat-space and cyberspace, like 'cyberattack' and
'cyber Pearl Harbor' when such analogies often seem stretched, and used to
justify increased government influence and oversight of the internet.

------
bramgg
Because it's associated with people who have no idea what they're talking
about, or are marketing to those who have no idea what they're talking
about[0].

Alternatives: Computer? Depends on the circumstance.

[0] [http://threatpost.com/csi-cyber-we-watched-so-you-didnt-
have...](http://threatpost.com/csi-cyber-we-watched-so-you-didnt-have-
to/111440)

