Re:William Gibson: the prophet of cyberspace talks AI and cl...
by krapp on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @06:29AM
(#22355160)
To crib from the man himself, dystopia is here, it just isn't evenly distributed.
Neuromancer is about cool people doing cool things, cyber-samurai hackers and razorgirls and space rastafarians, criminals and outcasts, and it's not surprising that techies would fetishize the image of the anarchist cyber-cowboy. But how dystopian would the setting be for most people who aren't criminals getting mixed up with the mafia and paramilitary black-ops groups?
We supposedly live in an Orwellian techno-fascist nightmare of omnipresent surveillance and thought-control now, but most people don't feel the boot stamping on their heads. Is that because they're just sheep whose minds are dulled by fluoride and the adrenaline burn of social media, or because it isn't stamping on everyone?
Neuromancer is about cool people doing cool things, cyber-samurai hackers and razorgirls and space rastafarians, criminals and outcasts, and it's not surprising that techies would fetishize the image of the anarchist cyber-cowboy. But how dystopian would the setting be for most people who aren't criminals getting mixed up with the mafia and paramilitary black-ops groups?
We supposedly live in an Orwellian techno-fascist nightmare of omnipresent surveillance and thought-control now, but most people don't feel the boot stamping on their heads. Is that because they're just sheep whose minds are dulled by fluoride and the adrenaline burn of social media, or because it isn't stamping on everyone?