i love reading interviews with william gibson- particularly his take on the tea party movement in this one.
"The tea party is a bunch of racists" is not an especially original, insightful, or accurate take.
It is effective though.
William Gibson on Why He Loves Twitter
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Re: William Gibson on Why He Loves Twitter
#12I loved Gibson's remarks about the Tea Party. I think he nailed at least a part of why it exists and got so many folks into it.
ps. Please fix the "Unknown or expired link" quirk when submitting comments on HN. So counter-intuitive.
Re: William Gibson on Why He Loves Twitter
#13The title does the contents a disservice - his views on global culture are far more interesting and make up a much larger bulk of the article than why he loves twitter.
I agree - but his view on Twitter is pretty interesting as well, namely the fact that Twitter is countless parallel groups and cultures that have little or nothing to do with each other. I am using Twitter to follow friends - though, sadly, most of them don't use it anymore - and as a news aggregator. For the latter, it's brilliant. Following William Gibson now.
I actively disliked Twitter, but I've started using it recently solely for an online collaborative competiton I'm involved with (not programming/HN related). It's fairly useable for that since signing up is very easy, but there are plenty of times when a basic chat room would be better.
Re: William Gibson on Why He Loves Twitter
#14i love reading interviews with william gibson- particularly his take on the tea party movement in this one.
"The tea party is a bunch of racists" is not an especially original, insightful, or accurate take.
he didn't say they all were. just implied that a significant subset were, at least in part. and I think based on the documented evidence any reasonable person would say that's accurate.
Re: William Gibson on Why He Loves Twitter
#15And that’s why somebody phones in after every bomb and says, “It was us, the Situationist Liberation Army. We blew up that mall.” That’s branding.
Re: William Gibson on Why He Loves Twitter
#16I had no idea William Gibson was so insightful and urbane. I suppose I might have read Necromancer without any appreciation of how early it came in the timeline of cyberpunk literature, but I was never able to get into it. After reading this interview, I feel pretty compelled to give Zero History a look.
Neuromancer?
Re: William Gibson on Why He Loves Twitter
#17And that’s why somebody phones in after every bomb and says, “It was us, the Situationist Liberation Army. We blew up that mall.” That’s branding.
But they don't. I did a whole comment there pointing to the statistics about how most bombs are unclaimed, hours ago.
Re: William Gibson on Why He Loves Twitter
#18I had no idea William Gibson was so insightful and urbane. I suppose I might have read Necromancer without any appreciation of how early it came in the timeline of cyberpunk literature, but I was never able to get into it. After reading this interview, I feel pretty compelled to give Zero History a look.
Neuromancer?
Oh my yes. Where's my head at. Neuromancer.
Re: William Gibson on Why He Loves Twitter
#19I had no idea William Gibson was so insightful and urbane. I suppose I might have read Necromancer without any appreciation of how early it came in the timeline of cyberpunk literature, but I was never able to get into it. After reading this interview, I feel pretty compelled to give Zero History a look.
Gibson does seem like a rewarding conversationalist. I wish I liked his last book more than I did. Everything Gibson said in this interview was interesting and worthwhile. But I found Spook Country mediocre and I am unlikely to read Zero History. I'm trying to come to grips with that. On the surface, I can say that I found it much easier to empathize with Chia or Cayce than with Holly.
My best distillation so far is that he used to write about people, technologies, and their relationships, with some peripheral stuff about brands. Now he writes about brands - and people and technologies have become a means to that end. Also the brands used to be fictional, which helped avoid the Spook Country feeling of reading some company's ad copy. Perhaps as a result of the emphasis on brands, his character are less sympathetic. They have always been out of control of their own lives, but they used to try to take control now and then. In Spook Country they seemed more abject, victims of forces far beyond their ken or control. I have no doubt that he has a valid point of view, and he is somewhat upfront about that shift, in this interview. But his interests no longer match mine.
Re: William Gibson on Why He Loves Twitter
#20And that’s why somebody phones in after every bomb and says, “It was us, the Situationist Liberation Army. We blew up that mall.” That’s branding.
But they don't. I did a whole comment there pointing to the statistics about how most bombs are unclaimed, hours ago.
Point is, you remember the ones who called in to claim them.