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The word "internet" doesn't appear in Neuromancer because in most respects it hadn't been invented yet. While DoD declared TCP/IP the future standard for milit
by cstross 5y ago
The word "internet" doesn't appear in Neuromancer because in most respects it hadn't been invented yet.
While DoD declared TCP/IP the future standard for military networking in 1982, IBM, DEC, and AT&T only adopted TCP/IP in 1984, a couple of months before Neuromancer went on sale. Gibson notoriously wrote it on a manual typewriter circa 1982-83. (It took a year from acceptance to put a novel manuscript into production back then: very often, it still does.)
ARPAnet existed in 1982, Public BBSs had been a thing for a while. But the publicly accessible global information network with visual representations of corporate presence? That was all in his imagination.
- cubano 5y agoThe Source? Compuserve? AOL? Those three come quickly to mind that were certainly trying very hard to be the " publicly accessible global information network with visual representations of corporate presence" you are speaking of.
- pmoriarty 5y agoAOL didn't exist when Neuromancer was written. While the others did, Gibson seemed not to have been aware of them, and he didn't even own a computer at the time. You can tell his vision of cyberspace came entirely from his imagination because it doesn't even remotely resemble any actual computer systems of the day.