Cyberworld

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A digital or virtual environment where online interactions and activities take place
2. An online space created by computer networks where users interact and exchange information
3. A connected virtual realm generated by computers in which people communicate and perform various tasks

Etymology: "Cyberworld" is a plain compound: "cyber-" joined to "world." The first part comes from ancient Greek "kybernetikos," meaning skilled at steering or governing, from "kybernan," to steer a ship or pilot it. The Greek root reached modern English through the scientific coinage "cybernetic," which the mathematician Norbert Wiener popularized in the 1940s for the study of control and communication in machines and living things. "Cyber-" was later clipped from that word and attached as a prefix to new terms about computers and networks. The second part, "world," is one of the oldest words in English, descending from Old English "weorold," which meant human life or the age of men as opposed to the eternal. Its meaning has shifted over the centuries from that sense of a human lifetime to the physical earth and now to any sphere of experience. Combining the two gives a term for the networked digital realm where people meet and share information, a sphere that exists only through the connected machines that make it possible.