4 ms·

"the descriptions of the metaverse are the parts of Neuromancer that hold up least well" I'd be interested in reading descriptions of cyberspace that are bette

"the descriptions of the metaverse are the parts of Neuromancer that hold up least well" I'd be interested in reading descriptions of cyberspace that are better than Neuromancer's. So far I haven't found any.

jvanderbot 5y ago
The commentary I've read (and agree with), is that the metaverse itself just didn't hold up. The internet did not become a new reality. Instead, our own reality is melding with the internet through always-on devices and miniaturized sensors and wide wireless networks. Instead of some kind of digital lovecraftian portals hidden away in parts of realspace that connect to this magical deadly realm, the modern vision of cyperbpunk should probably have included something more like an ethereal plane -- a perfect mirror of the real world that happens to ignore its physical constraints and provide ways to manipulate and bypass the realspace.
- ant_li0n 5y ago
  I love Gibson but prefer the Bridge Trilogy over the Sprawl Trilogy. It's a lot closer to what you're describing, and the characters are way more interesting. Characters in the Sprawl seem so two-dimensional to me.
  - bpiche 5y ago
    The Bridge trilogy is fantastic but as a fun counterpoint I respectfully refer to you the two deuteragonists of the _first book_, Berry Rydell is a huge meathead and Chevette Washington has less depth than Snow Crash's Y.T., to me, which is saying something. The data analyst guy who ends up obsessing over the VR idol and ends up in a cardboard box in the Tokyo subway is super super interesting. Probably my favorite part of the whole trilogy. If I am not mistaken, Gibson actually took a lot of inspiration for that character from his own experiences with photography. The ability to intuitively line up the right F-stop, shutter speed, and film speed with a scene and natural light in a second is the inspiration for the way the analyst intuitively senses 'nodes' in a social network. And I personally think that it is this notion that led the author to write about causality in the Peripheral-Agency series.
- bpiche 5y ago
  Wasn't it Gibson himself who wrote this, right in the beginning of Zero History if I'm not mistaken, when Cayce is meeting with some French artist in a warehouse in the outskirts of Oakland? The artist is making an augmented reality installation of a cyber whale that you can see in real life with mirrorshades. And then the artist says 'the internet is e-ver-ting'.
  - gnabgib 5y ago
    Hollis met a Canadian artist (Chombo) in Hollywood that made a giant squid (Architeuthis) that could be seen with a visor rig... in Spook Country. They love and discuss the internet plenty.. since none of this matches what you remember, perhaps it's a reoccurring theme.
    - bpiche 5y ago
      Memory bit rot, I'll have to re read the trilogy now.. Chombo says "Somebody told me that cyberspace was 'everting'. That was how she put it." (Spook Country, pp. 64). Feel like the girl he is referring to may be the one I'm thinking of. Must be Pattern Recognition. Thanks :)
  - jvanderbot 5y ago
    Nice! I had a break in the connection and couldn't place the commentary. I'll go back and revisit that.
relaxing 5y ago
Depends on your criteria, I guess. As a poetic fantasy, they are superb. But it's maddening how little sense they make as a way to navigate computer networks. (Why would you visualize servers and executing code in a 3D space that you have to physically navigate, when you could just... execute a command. Gibson's genius was recognizing that real computer hacking wasn't cinematic, and making up his own system.) I still love his vision.
- narism 5y ago
  I think that’s mostly because he didn’t know anything about computers when he wrote it :) “I was actually able to write Neuromancer because I didn’t know anything about computers,” he says. “I knew literally nothing. What I did was deconstruct the poetics of the language of people who were already working in the field. I’d stand in the hotel bar at the Seattle science fiction convention listening to these guys who were the first computer programmers I ever saw talk about their work. I had no idea what they were talking about, but that was the first time that I ever heard the word ‘interface’ used as a verb. And I swooned. Wow, that’s a verb. Seriously, poetically that was wonderful. “So I was listening to it as an English honours student. I would take it back out, deconstruct it poetically, and build a world from those bricks. Consequently there are other things in Neuromancer that make no sense. When the going gets really tough in cyberspace, what does Case do? He sends out for a modem. He does! He says: ‘Get me a modem! I’m in deep shit!’ I didn’t know what one was, but I had just heard the word. And I thought: man, it’s sexy.” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/11/william-gibson-i-was-losing-a-sense-of-how-weird-the-real-world-was https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/11/william-gibson... His other inspiration for cyberspace is presciently metaverse-like: The idea came to him from watching kids playing arcade games – "it seemed to me that what they wanted was to be inside the games, within the notional space of the machine" – and an advertisement at a bus stop for Apple computers. "Everyone is going to have one of these, I thought, and everyone is going to want to live inside them. And somehow I knew that the notional space behind all of the computer screens would be one single universe." https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/sep/22/william-gibson-beyond-cyberspace https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/sep/22/william-gibson...
- vidarh 5y ago
  It makes no sense now, but there were endless experiments with physical metaphors for interacting with computers. At the time it was just not settled that this was not right around the corner and workable.
LegionMammal978 5y ago
One depiction of cyberspace that's stuck with me is that of the datumplane in Dan Simmons' Hyperion (Chapter 5). It's only a few pages' worth of content, but it's by far the closest description conceptually to Gibson's cyberspace. Notably, the datumplane is envisioned as a highly organic realm at all scales, not restricted to cyberspace's cubes and hard edges. Both contain structures corresponding to the large-scale organization of their societies' data and programs.

jvanderbot 5y ago

The commentary I've read (and agree with), is that the metaverse itself just didn't hold up. The internet did not become a new reality. Instead, our own reality is melding with the internet through always-on devices and miniaturized sensors and wide wireless networks. Instead of some kind of digital lovecraftian portals hidden away in parts of realspace that connect to this magical deadly realm, the modern vision of cyperbpunk should probably have included something more like an ethereal plane -- a perfect mirror of the real world that happens to ignore its physical constraints and provide ways to manipulate and bypass the realspace.

ant_li0n 5y ago
I love Gibson but prefer the Bridge Trilogy over the Sprawl Trilogy. It's a lot closer to what you're describing, and the characters are way more interesting. Characters in the Sprawl seem so two-dimensional to me.
- bpiche 5y ago
  The Bridge trilogy is fantastic but as a fun counterpoint I respectfully refer to you the two deuteragonists of the _first book_, Berry Rydell is a huge meathead and Chevette Washington has less depth than Snow Crash's Y.T., to me, which is saying something. The data analyst guy who ends up obsessing over the VR idol and ends up in a cardboard box in the Tokyo subway is super super interesting. Probably my favorite part of the whole trilogy. If I am not mistaken, Gibson actually took a lot of inspiration for that character from his own experiences with photography. The ability to intuitively line up the right F-stop, shutter speed, and film speed with a scene and natural light in a second is the inspiration for the way the analyst intuitively senses 'nodes' in a social network. And I personally think that it is this notion that led the author to write about causality in the Peripheral-Agency series.
bpiche 5y ago
Wasn't it Gibson himself who wrote this, right in the beginning of Zero History if I'm not mistaken, when Cayce is meeting with some French artist in a warehouse in the outskirts of Oakland? The artist is making an augmented reality installation of a cyber whale that you can see in real life with mirrorshades. And then the artist says 'the internet is e-ver-ting'.
- gnabgib 5y ago
  Hollis met a Canadian artist (Chombo) in Hollywood that made a giant squid (Architeuthis) that could be seen with a visor rig... in Spook Country. They love and discuss the internet plenty.. since none of this matches what you remember, perhaps it's a reoccurring theme.
  - bpiche 5y ago
    Memory bit rot, I'll have to re read the trilogy now.. Chombo says "Somebody told me that cyberspace was 'everting'. That was how she put it." (Spook Country, pp. 64). Feel like the girl he is referring to may be the one I'm thinking of. Must be Pattern Recognition. Thanks :)
- jvanderbot 5y ago
  Nice! I had a break in the connection and couldn't place the commentary. I'll go back and revisit that.

relaxing 5y ago

Depends on your criteria, I guess. As a poetic fantasy, they are superb. But it's maddening how little sense they make as a way to navigate computer networks. (Why would you visualize servers and executing code in a 3D space that you have to physically navigate, when you could just... execute a command. Gibson's genius was recognizing that real computer hacking wasn't cinematic, and making up his own system.) I still love his vision.

narism 5y ago
I think that’s mostly because he didn’t know anything about computers when he wrote it :) “I was actually able to write Neuromancer because I didn’t know anything about computers,” he says. “I knew literally nothing. What I did was deconstruct the poetics of the language of people who were already working in the field. I’d stand in the hotel bar at the Seattle science fiction convention listening to these guys who were the first computer programmers I ever saw talk about their work. I had no idea what they were talking about, but that was the first time that I ever heard the word ‘interface’ used as a verb. And I swooned. Wow, that’s a verb. Seriously, poetically that was wonderful. “So I was listening to it as an English honours student. I would take it back out, deconstruct it poetically, and build a world from those bricks. Consequently there are other things in Neuromancer that make no sense. When the going gets really tough in cyberspace, what does Case do? He sends out for a modem. He does! He says: ‘Get me a modem! I’m in deep shit!’ I didn’t know what one was, but I had just heard the word. And I thought: man, it’s sexy.” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/11/william-gibson-i-was-losing-a-sense-of-how-weird-the-real-world-was https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/11/william-gibson... His other inspiration for cyberspace is presciently metaverse-like: The idea came to him from watching kids playing arcade games – "it seemed to me that what they wanted was to be inside the games, within the notional space of the machine" – and an advertisement at a bus stop for Apple computers. "Everyone is going to have one of these, I thought, and everyone is going to want to live inside them. And somehow I knew that the notional space behind all of the computer screens would be one single universe." https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/sep/22/william-gibson-beyond-cyberspace https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/sep/22/william-gibson...
vidarh 5y ago
It makes no sense now, but there were endless experiments with physical metaphors for interacting with computers. At the time it was just not settled that this was not right around the corner and workable.

LegionMammal978 5y ago

One depiction of cyberspace that's stuck with me is that of the datumplane in Dan Simmons' Hyperion (Chapter 5). It's only a few pages' worth of content, but it's by far the closest description conceptually to Gibson's cyberspace. Notably, the datumplane is envisioned as a highly organic realm at all scales, not restricted to cyberspace's cubes and hard edges. Both contain structures corresponding to the large-scale organization of their societies' data and programs.