William Gibson says today’s internet is nothing like what he envisioned
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Re: William Gibson says today’s internet is nothing like what he envisioned
#2This article is odd. It gives a shallow treatment of the subject in the headline, and then takes a wild turn into talking about the 2016 election, his emotions around it and its hypothetical impact on a future climate change-induced apocalypse.
Re: William Gibson says today’s internet is nothing like what he envisioned
#3> "the internet when he first conceived it, he thought it was a place that we would all leave the world and go to. Whereas in fact, it came here."
Somehow this reminds me of the difference between various editions of Shadowrun, a cyberpunk-fantasy rolepalying game in a dystopian near future where magic and dragons returned (though the magic is irrelevant to my point here).
In the earlier editions, from 1989 through the 1990s and early 2000s, the Matrix (their 'internet') was all virtual reality, and the 'Decker' using it would disappear into that world and barely interact with the rest of the team.
In more recent editions, written after smartphones and wireless internet became common, everything was connected. Everything is connected to the Matrix. In combat, a Decker can hack the opponents' guns to disable them, for example. It's not a world to disappear into; that world has come to the physical world and merged with it.
Re: William Gibson says today’s internet is nothing like what he envisioned
#4> "And then I woke up the morning after the election, looked at my computer, and realized that the manuscript I'd been working on was actually set in 2017, but it had become a 2017 that no longer existed," he says. "And it was so organic, and so fractally complete a change that it just crushed me. I thought 'that's dead, that whole thing I'm working on.'"
Charlie Stross has also written about this kind of thing; it gets harder and harder to write near-future SF as the present is in flux. Especially to write post-apocalyptic SF.
SF in general tends to rely on the "whig view of history": technological development and social progress moving forwards. This remains true even in apocalyptic scenarios, which are always tied to the worries of the present at the time of writing.
But we're now faced with a rise in post-rationalism and nonlinear chaotic events. Things like the "5G causes coronavirus" nonsense remind me of what Carl Sagan called the "demon-haunted world".
Re: William Gibson says today’s internet is nothing like what he envisioned
#5This article is odd. It gives a shallow treatment of the subject in the headline, and then takes a wild turn into talking about the 2016 election, his emotions around it and its hypothetical impact on a future climate change-induced apocalypse.
It's a junket for his new book, probably summarized from a longer interview for the radio.
Re: William Gibson says today’s internet is nothing like what he envisioned
#6This article is odd. It gives a shallow treatment of the subject in the headline, and then takes a wild turn into talking about the 2016 election, his emotions around it and its hypothetical impact on a future climate change-induced apocalypse.
>[2136 book idea]....a world in which 80 percent of the population has been wiped out by climate change, but also a world where characters time-travel to create an alternate past in which Clinton won the election.
This is strange on so many levels...sort of pathetic that these are the plot ideas the grandfather of cyberpunk fiction is dreaming up...
Re: William Gibson says today’s internet is nothing like what he envisioned
#7> "the internet when he first conceived it, he thought it was a place that we would all leave the world and go to. Whereas in fact, it came here." Somehow this reminds me of the difference between various editions of Shadowrun , a cyberpunk-fantasy rolepalying game in a dystopian near future where magic and dragons returned (though the magic is irrelevant to my point here). In the earlier editions, from 1989 through…
That's an interesting example, because it's something of a case of convergent evolution.
The earlier Matrix rules had two big issues. First, the pace was wildly different — Matrix turns took like a tenth of the in-game time of meatspace turns. Second, deckers wouldn't share the same space as the rest of the team, so you had two separate, barely interconnected spaces.
The new rules both match how real world technology evolved, but also, and more importantly, solve the pacing and separateness issues.
Re: William Gibson says today’s internet is nothing like what he envisioned
#8This article is odd. It gives a shallow treatment of the subject in the headline, and then takes a wild turn into talking about the 2016 election, his emotions around it and its hypothetical impact on a future climate change-induced apocalypse.
>[2136 book idea]....a world in which 80 percent of the population has been wiped out by climate change, but also a world where characters time-travel to create an alternate past in which Clinton won the election. This is strange on so many levels...sort of pathetic that these are the plot ideas the grandfather of cyberpunk fiction is dreaming up...
> "After giving that only a few hours' thought, I realized that the world in which Hillary won wouldn't be a happy world either."
It took him hours to realize a Hillary presidency wouldn't have been a utopia?
Re: William Gibson says today’s internet is nothing like what he envisioned
#9We're definitely in more of a Bruce Sterling cyberpunk future than a William Gibson cyberpunk future. Distraction has been feeling eerily prescient recently.
Re: William Gibson says today’s internet is nothing like what he envisioned
#10This article is odd. It gives a shallow treatment of the subject in the headline, and then takes a wild turn into talking about the 2016 election, his emotions around it and its hypothetical impact on a future climate change-induced apocalypse.
The article is an abbreviated version of the radio clip. There's a bit more information and context if you listen to it, although I got the impression the editor might have cut him off mid-rant at the very end.
Since the results of the 2016 election prompted a total rewrite of Agency, discussion of that is hardly a wild turn.