virtual class

plural virtual classes

1. object-oriented programmingA nested inner class whose functions and member variables can be overridden and redefined by subclasses of an outer class.
2. educationAn online class.
3. uncommonhuman sciencesA hypothesized new social and economic class exploiting and advocating digital technology; a digital elite.

   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, volume 1, number 3, →ISSN, archived from the original on 19 Oct 2021

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   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 contemporary culture by conceiving a techno-utopian high-speed cybernetic grid for travelling across the electronic frontier.

   1994, Arthur Kroker, Michael A. Weinstein, Data Trash, St. Martin's Press, →ISBN, pages 6–7

   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. Just between the coders and the businessmen, there are conflicts.

   1996 February, Jean-Hugues Roy, quoting Arthur Kroker, “Way New Leftists”, in Wired, →ISSN