A model is an intellectual structure which exists in a genotypal
relationship to a referent. It abstracts the essential features
of a referent. Thus a blueprint is a model, and the house built
from it is its referent.
Baudrillard's simulacrum is of course a model without a
referent: "a perfect copy of a nonexistent original."
It is not really important whether a physical referent exists
or not. It is not even important that it can exist. What's
important is the existence of nonphysical structure.
The world of Plato's Ideal Forms
is a such model. So is the world of Robinson Crusoe, which
is an Enlightenment economy in miniature. So are the arks of
Noah and Utnapishtim,
and Gerlenter's Hospital.
Models are absolutely central to cyberspatial thought. Cyberspace
itself is a model. Not necessarily or even importantly of particular
real spaces, but of space itself: its boundedness, its volume,
its up-down-left-right orientation, its passageways, and so on.
I would argue that a certain class of literary texts, including
the ones just named above, are recognizably "cyberspatial"
in that some of their fascination comes from their modelmaking.
By this definition, the legend of Noah's Ark is "cyberspatial."
I do not claim, of course, that the Bible anticipates cyberspace
by 4700 years. Rather, I make the converse claim: cyberspace
is the latest manifestation of a fascination with models which
goes back 4700 years.
