Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts… A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding…
Neuromancer, by William Gibson

Hands up: who wants to go swimming in a sea of data, a neon-and-chrome promise of limitless potential? Exactly. Who doesn’t? Besides the Amish, I mean.

Until then, we’ll have to content ourselves to dream of math and networks. Movies and anime have beautiful interface mockups, and I thought of them when I saw the icon set CISTM:

They may not be obvious but dang are they pretty. Similar to Chakram there’s a highlight that unifies all the icons and, (insert squeal of delight) it’s cut out around the different shapes to keep from disrupting their forms.

Across the top are Desktop (bland), My Computer (delightfully echoing the Mac SE faceplate), two hard drive icons, and an empty and full trash can. The trash cans could’ve been better: on the empty, move the line down so it’s sort of the opposite of the hard drive; on the full, expand the line up into a rounded rectangle to fill the icon.

On the second row are floppy, disc, printer, and camera. To keep the overall shape interesting, the first four aren’t just a mirror image of the desktop and computer icons. The corner cut out of the lower-right is at the inverse angle, a variation keeping the harmony of the icons.

The network icon is inspired, it literally connects many nodes into a larger whole. It works for me in a way that makes me want to run out and get it tattood somewhere conspicuous. The other networking icons are Internet, shortcut, and mail.

The folders and files are straightforward variations on the established themes, though with the text file they start down a dangerously slippery slope from abstraction into representation. If this keeps up, they could even become practical!

The creator of CISTM cites TAKMEK 3 as an influence, and it’s obvious to see in the colors and some of the linework. But where TAKMEK 3 is repetitive (ugly bevels!) and almost completely abstract, CISTM is suggestive. There are distinctive shapes that invite you to imagine uses. Perhaps the control panel for a death ray.

Download the ZIP now to live the dream. If you visit the set’s homepage, ignore all the talk about open source: they’re not, commercial use is prohibited.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go watch Johnny Mnemonic, read Snow Crash, and wear wraparound sunglasses. In cyberspace.