The Technology of Neuromancer After 25 Years 203
William Gibson's Neuromancer was first published 25 years ago. Dr_Ken writes with an excerpt from an article at MacWorld that delves into the current state of some of the technology that drives the book: "'Neuromancer is important because of its astounding predictive power. Gibson's core idea in the novel is the direct integration of man and computer, with all the possibilities (and horrors) that such a union entails. The book eventually sold more than 160 million copies, but bringing the book to popular attention took a long time and a lot of word-of-mouth. The sci-fi community, however, was acutely aware of the novel's importance when it came out: Neuromancer ran the table on sci-fi's big three awards in 1984, winning the Hugo Award, the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award, and the Nebula Award.'"
Never forget the lesson of Neuromancer (Score:5, Insightful)
When stating the specifications of future computers, never, ever use real units such as "megabytes", because whatever number you use, it will be hopelessly wrong within a few years.
Re:Might read this again (Score:3, Insightful)
I didn't think it was that good (Score:2, Insightful)
I simply didn't find the book as compelling as the hype. I don't think it was predictive. It certainly pre-dated fiction like the Matrix, but the terminology, and the feel of how things work feel very much rooted in a sooped-up virtual reality extension of the technology that was around back then.
It's a while since I read it, and I'm not inclined to revisit it. Perhaps its just me *shrug*
Re:Might read this again (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Might read this again (Score:5, Insightful)
Gibson is no easy read because he doesn't explain things. He writes as if he wrote a story for someone who lives in that time and needs no explanation of terms and technology. It makes it hard to read, but it also adds a lot to the atmosphere once you got into the mindset.
I don't like stories that explain everything in detail to make it easier for you to read. They take away from the experience IMO.
Who are you calling "boy", kid? (Score:5, Insightful)
I read just about all of Gibson's novels the week they came out, and they were super cool... but they have had about zero predictive power.
The word "cyberspace" almost always means that the person using it has no idea what they're talking about. Oh, there are exceptions, but the people who are most taken by Gibson's vision are sorely lacking in insight.
The representation of information as landscapes has been a repeated dead end.
Not believing in the predictive power of Gibson's novels doesn't mean I don't consider them important, it just means I'm aware that they're fiction.
Lord of the Rings is a great cultural artifact without having people yammering on about Ringwraiths being real.
Well he sure predicted the color of the sky (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Who are you calling "boy", kid? (Score:4, Insightful)
Excellent points taken.
Regarding "the representation of information as landscapes" as "a repeated dead end," I agree it has been done to death and the idea may not have any meaning as such. However, considered as a metaphor, the idea that networked information and the traversal of these domains would/could serve as a replacement for physical/real/actual landscapes is, to my mind, prescient.
Vannevar Bush, Tim Berners-Lee, Marshall McLuhan, Jaron Lanier, Sherry Turkle, and many other theorists and creators of human-machine interfaces have helped produce what we recognize as contemporary information systems and, in my opinion, Gibson's fictional vision to some degree shaped what has been created (e.g. Second Life) and what we imagine possible (e.g. real-time augmented reality). I think you too quickly dismiss Gibson's influence when you claim Gibson's work has no predictive power.
Gibson may not have predicted anything, but his vision indisputably reflects and affects some of the very real technologies that have since come to pass.
Re:Pay Phones (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:160 million copies!? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you're incorrect about Heinlein. If you look at his books [wikipedia.org], the closest I think he comes is The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress in 1966. A big central computer on the moon becomes self-aware, and he can project a synthesized voice and image over a video phone network. He's also networked to a lot of stuff, and can, e.g., make toilets run backwards. However, it's really not depicted as anything at all resembling the internet. All he really did was take existing time-sharing systems (the Dartmouth time-sharing system started in 1964) and extrapolate to the case where the central computer was self-aware, and the network spread across the whole moon. The way humans use the network in the story is always as nothing more than a video phone network. There is only one computer, and nobody ever transfers any digital data other than video telephony. It's true that the network is described as global (meaning global on the moon), but it's really only depicted as a telephone network, and a global telephone network already existed in 1966. A global network of computers would have been an innovation, but Heinlein doesn't depict the existence of any other computers on the network.
Probably "A Logic Named Joe," by Murray Leinster, is the most relevant example that predates the actual internet.
You have missed the point (Score:3, Insightful)
bluetooth headsets (Score:5, Insightful)
It's true that he doesn't have any mobile phones and seems to prefer implants, but he had a lot of those that do similar functions to a phone. E.g., Molly has some sort of implant that gives the time, and radio functions and then Case monitors her position through his cyberspace rig (more than just her position, her whole sensory apparatus), of which a video conferencing phone might be considered a clumsy version. Also, throughout the book, one sees people who insert some sort of chip called a "microsoft" into a jack behind their ear that give them some extra knowledge, or some enhancement. When those Bluetooth headsets became popular and people just started wearing them around like they were an item of clothing, it reminded me precisely of those "microsofts" in Neuromancer, or whatever they were called.
Re:The Theme (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a quite contrary view on that. They were all human, and to some degree even the AIs (to an increasing degree over the series of books). They weren't monsters, merely products of their culture.
On the matter of distopia, let see what Gibson has to say on that himself [io9.com]:
I think, you can safely say this over the characters, too. Their behaviour and personality simply reflect the situation they live in. Being a drug dealer and -(ab)users, asocial and delusional is hardly desirable but far from seldom among human, as can be observed in the slums of the large cities around the world.
Re:Never forget the lesson of Neuromancer (Score:2, Insightful)
Depends on what's in those 4 megs. Nowadays, just a few bytes can cause a worldwide event. 09 F9 11 02...
Re:Pay Phones (Score:5, Insightful)
Everybody likes to focus on the technology when discussing William Gibson, but the real focus of his stories have always been about the psychology/sociology/culture of the people in his books.
Take the Bridge Trilogy. The virtual glasses which (in part) drive the stories are simply plot macguffins. The real focus of the stories is the San Francisco-Oakland bridge and the people on it, which is decidedly low-tech - an interstitial, lawless zone, where, due to the class divide, the city's poor and homeless have taken residency, living in makeshift cabins strapped to the suspension cables. A metalsmith on the bridge forges knife blades, hammered out of motorcycle chains, giving them a damascus-like blade, while a vendor sells soup from a pot that is never emptied, rather continuously adding new ingredients... the 'wild folk' living on the bridge are feared by those living on land, but on the bridge itself, there is a sense of cooperation and fellowship.
Compare to the real-life (and now demolished) city of Kowloon.
Anyway, if you focus too much on the tech, you're missing the point.
Re:Might read this again (Score:3, Insightful)
More importantly, the story of Neuromancer is entirely self-contained. You don't need to read the later books to appreciate it. Therefore it is a separate work.