I wonder if the term might have been influenced by Terry Bisson's excellent short story "They're Made Out of Meat"[1], which was published in Omni Magazine in 1991.

Bisson himself credited the idea to the poet Allan Ginsberg[2]:

> “I was thinking about an interview I had read or heard that Allen Ginsberg was doing with some journalist,” he stated, “and he was talking about poetry and the guy was saying that it was like they were two poets talking or something like that and Ginsberg says, ‘No, we’re just meat talking to meat.’ And somehow that got stuck in my head.”

The earliest known online usage of "meatspace" seems to be two years later, in 1993. Then in 1995, it was apparently used in the Seattle Times[3].

[1] Full text: https://web.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...

[2] https://thewritingpost.com/2025/01/13/a-look-at-theyre-made-...

[3] Some citations: http://www.wordspy.com/words/meatspace.asp