Who coined the word “cyberspace” in the 1980s?

William Gibson coined the word “cyberspace” in the 1980s. He used the term in his 1982 short story “Burning Chrome,” then made it famous through his 1984 novel Neuromancer.

Gibson’s cyberspace was a fictional, immersive computer-generated world rather than the everyday Internet as people now experience it. The word nevertheless became a widely used description for interconnected digital environments and online activity.

A common mix-up is to credit Gibson with inventing the World Wide Web or the Internet. Those developments came from different researchers and institutions: Tim Berners-Lee created the Web, while Internet networking evolved through many projects and contributors.