E-, cyber-, and virtual are often used in names coined for “electronic” or computer-related counterparts of a pre-existing product or service. Of the three, virtual is generally considered to be misused in this context.
E-, standing for the word electronic, is used in the terms e-mail (electronic mail), e-commerce (electronic commerce), e-business (“electronic” business), e-banking (electronic banking), and e-book (electronic book). In this way its use (to describe what it follows as the electronic form of an otherwise pre-existing entity) is grammatically and contextually accurate.
Cyber-, derived from the Greek word Kubernetes meaning Steersman , is used in the terms cybersex, cybernetics, cyberspace, cyberpunk, cyberhomes and cyberhate, but has been largely surpassed by e-. Cyber- also largely maintains grammatical and contextual accuracy, in that cybernetic denotes control of speech and functional processes. To the extent that it is used in the computer or electronic context to denote control (typically electronic or remote) of the thing represented by the word it precedes, it is used accurately. See, e.g., cyborg under “History”, below. To the extent that cyber- is used to describe entities existing (or events occurring) in cyberspace, its use is arguably accurate as well. However, the term cyberspace (one of the earliest and most widespread uses of the prefix cyber-) was itself one of the least grammatically accurate uses, in that cyberspace is not actual space electronically or remotely controlled. Thus “virtual space” or “virtual universe” would have been a more grammatically accurate term although arguably lacking the existential connotation provided by cyberspace. This connotation gives the term a contextual accuracy and prevents its being lured astray by association with the popular term virtual world, which has a very different and grammatically accurate meaning.
Virtual is correctly used in virtual reality, in that virtual reality simulates reality and in many ways approaches reality. The word virtual means “nearly”, “almost”, or “simulated”. Thus the key to accurate use of virtual as an adjective is that the thing represented by the word virtual modifies must not be the actual or real version of itself. Virtual describes that which approaches or simulates. Virtual reality is not actual reality; hence the label is appropriate. But such erroneous uses as “virtual communication” (for electronic communication) are entirely inaccurate because electronic communication is actual communication; therefore, it is not virtual. It is e-communication. It can even be cyber-communication where typed information is converted to an audio format for the recipient, although arguably that would be e-communication with cyber-speech.
These prefixes are productive. In Straubhaar’s and LaRose’s words, they are “added to almost everything nowadays”. Quinion notes that most of these formations are nonce words that will never be seen again. He observes that coinages such as “e-health” are unneeded, given that it is simply a coinage used to express the application of telecommunications to medicine, for which the name telemedicine already exists. He similarly points out the redundancy of e-tail with e-commerce and e-business. Martin likewise characterizes many of these words as “fad words”, and opines that many of them may disappear once the technology that resulted in their coinage has become better accepted and understood. As an example, he opines that “when using computers becomes the standard way to do business, there will be no need to call it ‘e-business’ — it may be just ‘business’”.
There is some confusion over whether these prefixes should be hyphenated or in upper case. In the atypical case of e-mail, CompuServe used Email (capitalized and with no hyphen) from 1981 to 1984 as the trade name for its electronic mail service, but the form of the term has since tended toward that of many other e- terms. Quinion notes that e-mail was originally hyphenated and lowercase, and attributes the forms email, “E-mail”, and “Email” to uncertainty on the parts of newer Internet users who came across e-mail in the 1990s and were uncertain about whether the initial letter was an abbreviation or a prefix. Smith prescribes that the prefix e- should always be lowercase and hyphenated. Other grammarians, particularly descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive) grammarians, disagree. For decades, hyphens have been dropped from formerly-hyphenated words. As the combined meanings become more commonplace and readily understood, the need for hyphens subsides. In 2007 alone, the Oxford English Dictionary dropped approximately 1,600 hyphens, acknowledging that such words and phrases as bumblebee, ice cream, pigeonhole, test tube, and crybaby no longer required them. The hyphen’s short shelf life (formerly shelf-life) is particularly notable in compound nouns, of which e-mail is an abbreviation.
Trappl credits William Gibson and his novel Neuromancer with triggering a “cyber- prefix flood” in the 1980s, however, the use of cyber- started well before this.
In 1966, Kit Peddler and Gerry Davis created the Cyberman for the UK television sci-fi series Doctor Who. In 1968 another fictional character, Doctor Cyber, appeared in DC Comics’ Wonder Woman.
By the 1970s, the Control Data Corporation (CDC) sold the “Cyber” range of supercomputers, establishing the word cyber- as synonymous with computing.
Certainly cyber- began its expansion into common usage as a prefix through science fiction. Cyborg books and movies, such as 1984’s The Terminator, foretold of the combination of robotic (cybernetic) skeletons wrapped in live human (organic) tissue, with the organic controlled by the mechanical; hence the name cybernetic organism or cyb-org.
McFedries observes that a backlash against the use of e- and cyber- can be traced to the late 1990s, quoting Hale and Scanlon requesting writers in 1999 to “resist the urge to use this vowel-as-cliché” when it comes to e- and calling cyber- “terminally overused”.
i- is not a generic prefix used to describe a type of service or product; rather, it is used in the branding of individual products. Whereas e-mail refers to electronic mail in general, iMail, refers to the e-mail applications created by Ipswitch, inc. The i- prefix is especially connected to Apple Inc., who employed it for their iMac and iBook and now uses many product names starting with i-, including iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iLife and others. Apple initially said the i stood for “Internet”.
Despite its close association with Apple, the i- prefix has been used by other companies as well, such as Google and the BBC (iPlayer). It has also been used extensively by shareware and freeware developers in the branding of their products, and even by non-IT companies for their online sites.
Cybersex, computer sex, internet sex or net sex is a virtual sex encounter in which two or more persons connected remotely via a computer network send one another sexually explicit messages describing a sexual experience. It is a form of role-playing in which the participants pretend they are having actual sexual relations. In one iteration, this fantasy sex is accomplished by the participants describing their actions and responding to their chat partners in a mostly written form designed to stimulate their own sexual feelings and fantasies. Cybersex may also be accomplished through the use of avatars in a multiuser software environment.
Cybersex sometimes includes real life masturbation. The quality of a cybersex encounter typically depends upon the participants’ abilities to evoke a vivid, visceral mental picture in the minds of their partners. Imagination and suspension of disbelief are also critically important. Cybersex can occur either within the context of existing or intimate relationships, e.g. among lovers who are geographically separated, or among individuals who have no prior knowledge of one another and meet in virtual spaces or cyberspaces and may even remain anonymous to one another. In some contexts cybersex is enhanced by the use of webcams to transmit real-time video of the partners.
Cybersex is sometimes colloquially called “cybering”. Channels used to initiate cybersex are not necessarily exclusively devoted to that subject, and participants in any Internet chat may suddenly receive a message with any possible variation of the text “Wanna cyber?”, or a request for “C2C/C4C”.
Cybersex is commonly performed in Internet chat rooms (such as IRC, talkers or web chats) and on instant messaging systems. It can also be performed using webcams, voice chat systems like Skype, or online games and/or virtual worlds like World of Warcraft and Second Life. The exact definition of cybersex–specifically, whether real-life masturbation must be taking place for the online sex act to count as cybersex–is up for debate.
Though text-based cybersex has been in practice for decades,the increased popularity of webcams has raised the number of online partners using two-way video connections to “expose” themselves to each other online–giving the act of cybersex a more visual aspect. There are a number of popular, commercial webcam websites that allow people to openly masturbate on camera while others watch them. Using similar sites, couples can also perform on camera for the enjoyment of others.
Cybersex differs from phone sex in that it offers a greater degree of anonymity and allows participants to meet partners more easily. A good deal of cybersex takes place between partners who have just met online. Unlike phone sex, cybersex in chat rooms is rarely commercial. In online worlds like Second Life however, internet sex workers engage in cybersex in exchange for both virtual and real-life currency.
One approach to cybering is a simulation of “real” sex, when participants try to make the experience as close to real life as possible, with participants taking turns writing descriptive, sexually explicit passages. Alternatively, it can be considered a form of role playing that allows a couple to experience unusual sexual sensations and carry out sexual experiments they cannot try in reality. Amongst “serious” roleplayers, cybering may occur as part of a larger plot - the characters involved may be lovers or spouses. In situations like this, the people typing often consider themselves separate entities from the “people” engaging in the sexual acts, much as the author of a novel often does not completely identify with his or her characters. In “real cybering” personas often remain in character throughout the entire life of the contact, to include evolving into phone sex, and real meets while in character. Often these personas develope complex past histories for their characters to make the fantasy/roleplay even more life like, thus the evolution of the term “real cybering”.
Cybersex is often ridiculed because the partners frequently have little verifiable knowledge (including gender) about each other. However, since for many the primary point of cybersex is the realistic simulation of sexual activity, this knowledge is not always desired or necessary.
Advantages
Since cybersex can satisfy some sexual desires without the risk of sexually transmitted disease or pregnancy, it is a physically safe way for young people to experiment with sexual thoughts and emotions. Additionally, people with long-term ailments (including HIV) can engage in cybersex as a way to safely achieve sexual gratification without putting their partners at risk.
Cybersex allows “real-life” partners who are physically separated to continue to be sexually intimate. In geographically separated relationships, it can function to sustain the sexual dimension of a relationship in which the partners see each other only infrequently face to face.
It is also fairly frequent in on-line role-playing games, such as rpol, MUDs and MMORPGs, though approval of this activity varies greatly from game to game. Some online social games like Red Light Center are dedicated to cybersex and other adult behaviors. These online games are often called AMMORPGs. Cybersex is sometimes called “mudsex” in MUDs. In TinyMUD variants, particularly MUCKs, the term “TinySex”, abbreviated “TS”, is very common. Cybersex can be utilised to write co-written original fiction and fanfiction by role-playing in third person. It can also be used to gain experience for solo writers who want to write more realistic sex scenes, by exchanging ideas.
It can enable participants to act out fantasies which they would not act out (or perhaps would not even be realistically possible) in real life through roleplaying due to physical or social limitations and potential for misunderstanding, such as extreme BDSM, incest, zoophilia or rape.
Cybersex has also been used in therapy to help those who are too shy or are unsure of how to (re)enter the dating and sexual scene. For example, some therapists have clients practice flirting skills and rehearse how to ask for what they want sexually in chat rooms.