Is This the First Mention of the Word “Cybersex”?

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 2888

At first it appeared that this was indeed the first appearance of “cybersex” (in 1970), and that it pre-dated the established conception of its first appearance by twenty years. But, well: no. After much ado, and after some very subdued and annoyed half-bored/boring interest, it turns out that this is a reprint of an article that appeared in 1967, three years previously.

“Science Fiction—Sex for Ever—a New Cybernetic Project Called Interfuck” is the in-your-face uncertain “title” of the article under consideration here, and it seems to be bouncing its little four-page self around without attribution. Its weirdness caught my eye, and I quickly zeroed-in on the unexpected word, “cybersex”. Now, there's a LOT of speculation going on in this short article about how all of that person-to-person-to-machine loop happens, and I have no interest in going through it—you can certainly read it for yourself, though, as I've scanned the thing and attached it below.

The article appears in a badly-titled booklet by O.D. Wells, How Could You be So Naive!, published by Artorga and distributed by Modern Books Limited, Berkshire. There are six other papers/articles in this issue in addition to the Wells, including mostly serious stuff: H. Maturan, “Neurophysiology of Cognition”; David Redman “Processing Information with Light”; Roland Fischer, “The Perception-Hallucination Continuum”; J.L. Synge (?!) “A Plea for Chronometry”' A. Battersby, How to Bury and Idea”; and the our problem, “Science Fiction—Sex for Ever—a New Cybernetic Project Called Interfuck [sic]”...plus a foreword by F.H. George.

The course of the article wasn't so obvious because it seemed that this was a bit of a sci-fi story wrapped around a parody and tied up with short anxieties, and the references in the article weren't accurate, and perhaps not real. Also the publisher, Artorga, is enigmatic, and sometimes to me seems to not take itself seriously even though there are some very serious contributors. There weren't that many places to turn to check this piece out after the first obvious choices proved to go nowhere.

It is difficult to find out anything about Artorga (“Artificial Organism”), though the “Paragram” of this work cites heavy hitters Gordon Pask, Ehinz von Foerster, W. Ross Ashby, and Stafford Beer as being “the Committee of Artorga” establishing it in 1958.

Anyway, “cybersex” as a word hunt was enough for me, and the earliest uses of the word were given as 1991 (Oxford English Dictionary), 1990 (Merriam-Webster), and then a myriad of other minor notes (almost all unreferenced) for the period 1985-1990. This example of course has them all beat, and by a wide margin.

It also predates just about all of the other “cyber-” created words prefixed to a wide variety of nouns, including a number of words that are slightly more removed than “cybersex”. There's “cyber-porn” from 1989; -romance, 1992; -smut, 1993; -friend, 1986; and -affair, 1994, for example. The only references I can find for earlier “cyber” prefixes are “cyberkid” which I've never encountered (1966); “cyberman”, which evidently has something to do with Dr. Who and also from 1966; and “cybertron”, as a sort of computer hardware reference, from 1961. All of this flows from the first introduction of “cyber” in its creation by Norbert Wiener (a very smart guy who also happened to control greatly to the US war effort in WWII with fire-control in AA weapons derived from his famous “Yellow Peril” book) in his work Cybernetics (1948). Oh yes--”cyberneticist” and “cybernetician” appear in 1948 and 1950.

And so what exactly is this article? It turns out that it is at most a reprint of a piece by Robert Russel in his “The New Medium” series that appeared in Take One magazine (Montreal) in September, 1967 (and this found via James Monaco's Media Culture: Television, Radio, Records, Books, Magazines, Newspapers, Movies...).

The bottom line, though, after this undifferentiated and slightly annoying slog, is that the word “cybersex” is much older than acknowledged, which at the end of the day is perhaps as exciting as canned beans.

Here's a list of cyber- words from the OED:

• cyber age

• cyberart

• cyber-attack

• cyberbabe

• cyber-bully

• cyber-bullying

• cybercash

• cyberchondriac

• cybercommunity

• cybercop

• cybercrime

• cybercriminal

• cybercrook

• cybercubicle

• cyberfeminism

• cyberfeminist

• cyberfriend

• cybergeek

• cyberjournalist

• cyber kid

• cyberland

• cyberlaw

• cyberlibertarian

• cyberlife

• cyberlover

• cybermall

• cyberman

• cyberporn

• cyber-romance

• cyber school

• cybersecurity

• cyber-sheepishly

• cybersmut

• cybersnob

• cyberspeak

• cybersphere

• cyberstalker

• cyberstalking

• cyberstore

• cybersurf

• cybersurfer

• cybersurfing

• cyberterrorism

• cyberterrorist

• cyber-thriller

• cyberwarfare

• cyberwarrior

• cyberworld