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I did a cursory search, and there's certainly "What I tried to do was give people a future that is the world of the Reagan ’80s carried five steps forward and t
by kemayo 5y ago
I did a cursory search, and there's certainly "What I tried to do was give people a future that is the world of the Reagan ’80s carried five steps forward and the volume turned up 20 clicks" in an article[1] from 1994.
[1]: https://ew.com/article/1994/08/26/william-gibson-first-man-cyberspace/ https://ew.com/article/1994/08/26/william-gibson-first-man-c...
- pmoriarty 5y agoThis sounds very hand-wavy, and I wish Gibson was more explicit in drawing the connections. Slums and the dominance of megacorps and the ultra-rich I understand, but what do cyberspace and AI's (two of Neuromancer's more original and iconic themes) have to do with Reagan? Nothing, from what I can tell.
- jrochkind1 5y agoBased on other stuff I've read him say, I feel like he might actually indeed be implying that things like slums and the dominance of megacorps and the ultra-rich are to him more central/significant themes/aspects of Neuromancer than AI's or cyberspace! Or at least that they are more central/significant than people focused only on the cyberspace thing recognize. Gibson had of course famously never used the internet when he wrote Neuromancer (on a typewriter).
- jdkee 5y agoIn the year of Neuromancer's publication, 1984, very few people on earth had used the internet. See https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1988/demo/p23-155.html https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1988/demo/p23-15...