Californian IFTF pal Alex Pang started a new blog about a very pertinent concept: The End of Cyberspace. His take is that cyberspace, as a metaphor of a virtual and digital world emerged from sci-fi culture, is now coming to an end because of recent developments:

Why is cyberspace coming to an end? Our experience of interacting with digital information is changing. We're moving to a world in which we (or objects acting on our behalf) are online all the time, everywhere. Designers and computer scientists are also trying hard to create a new generation of devices and interfaces that don't monopolize our attention, but ride on the edges of our awareness. We'll no longer have to choose between cyberspace and the world; we'll constantly access the first while being fully part of the second. Because of this, the idea of cyberspace as separate from the real world will collapse.

So if "cyberspace" is no longer relevant, what will we call this new world? That's the big question, isn't it?

This reminds me some thought by dutch designer Rem Koolhas I blogged about two years ago. For instance, he claims that “words that die in the real world are reborn in the virtual”: webSITE, fireWALL, chatROOM. Would we see a reverse trend? Alex is right to raise the issue of the semantic layer of what is happening lately: what would be the name of this new world? The "augmented world" is a bit too narrow.