On Superhighway, in Cyperspace, the Buzz Is on Digital Hugeness

Does anyone talk about the “global village” anymore? How about high-definition television?

Those buzzwords of years past have been drowned out by newer descriptions of techno-paradise: virtual reality, the Internet, cyberspace, cyberpunk, the information highway and superhighway, the digital highway, the electronic highway.

Sometimes the names stick, and sometimes they fade out.

“We’ve got a new word here for it all: Digital Hugeness, “ said Martin Alper, president of Virgin Interactive Entertainment Inc., a video game publisher in Irvine. “It reminds us there is a lot of hype out there, and we have to translate that hype into reality.”

Alper’s company makes interactive games and other products for the digital future--whatever it might be called. Alper isn’t fond of the highway metaphors, which he says will disappear in a year or so. Virtual reality has real applications, so it deserves the heavy usage.

He likes “cyberpunk,” but only as it reminds him of a specific science-fiction theme that focuses on the computer hacker culture such as in William Gibson’s “Neuromancer.” And 500-channel interactive television reminds him of Bruce Springsteen’s song, “57 Channels and Nothin’ On.”

So Digital Hugeness may have to do.