ABSTRACT
Welcome to the final frontier: cyberspace. This is no voyage with Captain Kirk, but one nearer to home. We will be taking the ‘electronic information super-highway’ into cyberspace where the sub-cultures of ‘phreakers’, ‘breakers’, ‘hackers’, ‘cybersurfers’, ‘techno-anoraks’ and ‘cyberpunks’ roam and probe. This is the world of unlimited dreams, where reality is virtual. Cyberspace as a term has its origins in science fiction. It featured in the 1984 novel by William Gibson, Neuromancer, which featured a world called cyberspace, after cyber, the most powerful computer. The world is populated by computer cowboys who roam the space’s electronic systems. Today it is seen as the latest in a number of phases in which mass information systems have had a scientific base. The power of writing ruled from the middle ages, electronic entertainment media from around 1900, information technology from the early 1960s and since the mid-1980s, cyberspace has moved to a dominant position. More and more activities in society are taking place within computer systems. Many sectors of industry such as financial services take place virtually completely in cyberspace. This has implications for legal regulation. As Heather (1994) says, “Cyberspace is a rival to natural language which has dominated the subject matter of law from earliest times”.
