4 ms·

If you'll read to the last paragraph, you'll find Gibson's very profound conclusion: that the 1996 Web was the early "test pattern" for what he predicts will be

If you'll read to the last paragraph, you'll find Gibson's very profound conclusion: that the 1996 Web was the early "test pattern" for what he predicts will be a world-changing, but "less fun" medium. How right he was.

GHFigs 14y ago
Interesting in light of some of his more recent thoughts, too: We have yet to take Google’s measure. We’ve seen nothing like it before, and we already perceive much of our world through it. We would all very much like to be sagely and reliably advised by our own private genie; we would like the genie to make the world more transparent, more easily navigable. Google does that for us: it makes everything in the world accessible to everyone, and everyone accessible to the world. But we see everyone looking in, and blame Google. -- http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/opinion/01gibson.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/opinion/01gibson.html
- nacker 14y ago
  This is what McLuhan called the "agenbite of outwit", riffing on Joyce: "With the telegraph Western man began a process of putting his nerves outside his body. Previous technologies had been extensions of physical organs: the wheel is a putting-outside-ourselves of the feet; the city wall is a collective outering of the skin. But electronic media are, instead, extensions of the central nervous system, an inclusive and simultaneous field. Since the telegraph we have extended the brains and nerves of man around the globe. As a result, the electronic age endures a total uneasiness, as of a man wearing his skull inside and his brain outside. We have become peculiarly vulnerable. The year of the establishment of the commercial telegraph in America, 1844, was also the year Kierkegaard published The Concept of Dread. A special property of all social extensions of the body is that they return to plague the inventors in a kind of agenbite of outwit. As Narcissus fell in love with an outering (projection, extension) of himself, man seems invariably to fall in love with the newest gadget or gimmick that is merely an extension of his own body. Driving a car or watching television, we tend to forget that what we have to do with is simply a part of ourselves stuck out there. Thus disposed, we become servo-mechanisms of our contrivances, responding to them in the immediate, mechanical way that they demand of us. The point of the Narcissus myth is not that people are prone to fall in love with their own images but that people fall in love with extensions of themselves which they are convinced are not extensions of themselves." http://projects.chass.utoronto.ca/mcluhan-studies/v1_iss2/1_2art6.htm http://projects.chass.utoronto.ca/mcluhan-studies/v1_iss2/1_...
  - jrochkind1 14y ago
    awesome quote, thanks so much.
mortenjorck 14y ago
That closing paragraph really is a fantastic one. It contains a Gibsonism that really resonated with me: "gloriously unsorted Global Ham Television Postcard Universes." Even with all the order that we've consented to have imposed by various hubs over the past 17 years, it inspires a certain swell of optimism for me to consider that we've never really abandoned that spirit. The frontier may be long settled and built up, but YouTube, Tumblr, Imgur, and other gated communities still play host to the kind of spectacularly diverse, ham-radio aesthetic of 1996. And there are still frontier sites. Cult webcomics, improbable enthusiast projects, random artifacts of odd genius. I hope we never lose this spirit, and given the past two decades of the web, I don't think we need to worry.
SilasX 14y ago
Less fun? Are you high? I get more intellectual stimulation of a single site's content on one day than I've ever gotten from every dumbed-down newspaper editorial I ever read before the Web took off.
- danseagrave 14y ago
  I think Gibson meant the future www would be "less fun" relative to the procrasination friendly "unsorted Global Ham Television" 1996 version
  - codeulike 14y ago
    I think the internet is more fun now - there is the boring mainstream but there is also an absolutely huge lunatic fringe. The web now is more chaotic than in 1994 because its so much more accessible to chaotic minds now. In 1994 it was all just monty python scripts and references to barney the dinosaur.
- j_s 14y ago
  Perhaps a reference to the commercialization of the web? As various SEO masters monetize every nook and cranny of the long tail, even Google will have a hard time finding the crazy.
alxndr 14y ago
It's also in his fifth paragraph.

GHFigs 14y ago

Interesting in light of some of his more recent thoughts, too: We have yet to take Google’s measure. We’ve seen nothing like it before, and we already perceive much of our world through it. We would all very much like to be sagely and reliably advised by our own private genie; we would like the genie to make the world more transparent, more easily navigable. Google does that for us: it makes everything in the world accessible to everyone, and everyone accessible to the world. But we see everyone looking in, and blame Google. -- http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/opinion/01gibson.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/opinion/01gibson.html

nacker 14y ago
This is what McLuhan called the "agenbite of outwit", riffing on Joyce: "With the telegraph Western man began a process of putting his nerves outside his body. Previous technologies had been extensions of physical organs: the wheel is a putting-outside-ourselves of the feet; the city wall is a collective outering of the skin. But electronic media are, instead, extensions of the central nervous system, an inclusive and simultaneous field. Since the telegraph we have extended the brains and nerves of man around the globe. As a result, the electronic age endures a total uneasiness, as of a man wearing his skull inside and his brain outside. We have become peculiarly vulnerable. The year of the establishment of the commercial telegraph in America, 1844, was also the year Kierkegaard published The Concept of Dread. A special property of all social extensions of the body is that they return to plague the inventors in a kind of agenbite of outwit. As Narcissus fell in love with an outering (projection, extension) of himself, man seems invariably to fall in love with the newest gadget or gimmick that is merely an extension of his own body. Driving a car or watching television, we tend to forget that what we have to do with is simply a part of ourselves stuck out there. Thus disposed, we become servo-mechanisms of our contrivances, responding to them in the immediate, mechanical way that they demand of us. The point of the Narcissus myth is not that people are prone to fall in love with their own images but that people fall in love with extensions of themselves which they are convinced are not extensions of themselves." http://projects.chass.utoronto.ca/mcluhan-studies/v1_iss2/1_2art6.htm http://projects.chass.utoronto.ca/mcluhan-studies/v1_iss2/1_...
- jrochkind1 14y ago
  awesome quote, thanks so much.

mortenjorck 14y ago

That closing paragraph really is a fantastic one. It contains a Gibsonism that really resonated with me: "gloriously unsorted Global Ham Television Postcard Universes." Even with all the order that we've consented to have imposed by various hubs over the past 17 years, it inspires a certain swell of optimism for me to consider that we've never really abandoned that spirit. The frontier may be long settled and built up, but YouTube, Tumblr, Imgur, and other gated communities still play host to the kind of spectacularly diverse, ham-radio aesthetic of 1996. And there are still frontier sites. Cult webcomics, improbable enthusiast projects, random artifacts of odd genius. I hope we never lose this spirit, and given the past two decades of the web, I don't think we need to worry.

SilasX 14y ago

Less fun? Are you high? I get more intellectual stimulation of a single site's content on one day than I've ever gotten from every dumbed-down newspaper editorial I ever read before the Web took off.

danseagrave 14y ago
I think Gibson meant the future www would be "less fun" relative to the procrasination friendly "unsorted Global Ham Television" 1996 version
- codeulike 14y ago
  I think the internet is more fun now - there is the boring mainstream but there is also an absolutely huge lunatic fringe. The web now is more chaotic than in 1994 because its so much more accessible to chaotic minds now. In 1994 it was all just monty python scripts and references to barney the dinosaur.
j_s 14y ago
Perhaps a reference to the commercialization of the web? As various SEO masters monetize every nook and cranny of the long tail, even Google will have a hard time finding the crazy.

alxndr 14y ago

It's also in his fifth paragraph.