ABSTRACT
Cyberspace is often thought of as a realm of freedom, even of fun. At least until recently, few would have associated surveillance with cyberspace. The “cyber” prefix has been attached to fiction (“cyberpunk”), and to fashion, as well as to entertainment, education, finance, architecture, and city planning. Cyberjaya, within the Malaysian Multimedia SuperCorridor, is one of the world’s first cities to include “cyber” in its name. This in itself is paradoxical, because at first cyberspace was popularly associated with the immaterial, the virtual, the displaced, and the disembodied. In William Gibson’s novel, Neuromancer, cyberspace seems to be apart from the corporeal, institutional world. But in Cyberjaya, the integration of the built environment and the global economy with “cyberspace” is taken for granted. The fiber-optic broadband links that provide the infrastructure for cyberspace are tied tightly to government plans and a changing economy, but not necessarily to surveillance.
