virtual class

Noun

1. A nested inner class whose functions and member variables can be overridden and redefined by subclasses of an outer class.

   Coordinate Terms: virtual method

2. An online class.
3. A hypothesized new social and economic class exploiting and advocating digital technology; a digital elite.
   • The virtual class has driven to global power along the digital superhighway. Representing perfectly the expansionary interests of the recombinant commodity-form, the virtual class has seized the imagination of...
   • Lacking the free time of the hippies, work itself has become the main route to self-fulfilment for much of the ‘virtual class’. - 1995 September, Richard Barbrook, Andy Cameron, “The Californian Ideology”, in Mute,...
   • But I also notice that many members of the virtual class have deep feelings of anxiety and ambivalence about projects they're involved in. Unlike Marx's bourgeoisie, the virtual class experiences huge contradictions....

   Coordinate Terms: digerati technorati techno-utopians