The term ‘Cyberdelic’ describes the latest in a long line of countercultures that stretch back into prehistory. Combining ‘cybernetic’ and ‘psychedelic,’ the term describes the fusion of 1960s psychedelic subculture into a new information era counterculture centered on new genres of literature, entertainment, technology and electronic music. The ‘zone’ that cyberdelic ravers and enthusiasts inhabit is referred to as cyberia. Douglass Ruskoff describes its meaning thusly:

In our science-fictional future of megalopian urban sprawl where underdevelopment and high-tech control intersect, electronic ‘sonic fictions’ like psytrance, techno, kwaito and a myriad other subgenres transmit an alienating affect; a desire to both escape and enact the dystopian nature of urbanity in all its dread and tension. Visceral vibrations take the impact of music into bodies, brains, buildings, city streets and local economies. These mechanical ‘bad vibes’ announce an impending human extinction. But this is nothing new. “Since the late 20th century,” explains Steve Goodman, “urban machine musics in their sonic sciences of affective contagion have preoccupied themselves with generating soundtracks to sonically enact the demise of Babylon, mutating the early 20th century concerns of audio-futurism (war, noise, speed and sensation) into the construction of ephemeral, mutant, sonic war machines”.