First page opening of "Burning Chrome" as it originally appeared in Omni Magazine, 1982.

First page opening of "Burning Chrome" as it originally appeared in Omni Magazine, 1982.

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A: Manhattan, New York, New York, United States

William Gibson Coins the Word Cyberspace

7/1982
Cover of an anthology of stories by William Gibson entitled Burning Chrome, published in 2003

Cover of an anthology of stories by William Gibson entitled Burning Chrome, published in 2003. The anthology includes the story, "Burning Chrome" in which Gibson coined the word Cyberspace.

In July 1982 American-Canadian writer William Gibson coined the word "cyberspace" in his story, Burning Chrome, published in Omni magazine.

"It tells the story of two hackers who hack systems for profit. The two main characters are Bobby Quine who specializes in software and Automatic Jack whose field is hardware. A third character in the story is Rikki, a girl with whom Bobby becomes infatuated and for whom he wants to hit it big. Automatic Jack acquires a piece of Russian hacking software that is very sophisticated and hard to trace. The rest of the story unfolds with Bobby deciding to break into the system of a notorious and vicious criminal called Chrome, who handles money transfers for organized crime, and Automatic Jack reluctantly agreeing to help. One line from this story — "...the street finds its own uses for things" — has become a widely-quoted aphorism for describing the sometimes unexpected uses to which users can put technologies (for example, hip-hop DJs' reinvention of the turntable, which transformed turntables from a medium of playback into one of production)" (Wikipedia article on Hackers (anthology), accessed 11-26-2010).

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