From biohackers to ghostbots, William Gibson’s Neuromancer saw the future 40 years ago – why has Silicon Valley defied its warnings?
Article: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/neuromancer-william-gibson-sci-fi-novels/
Because those ghouls want to build Tessier-Ashpool. They want their palace in the sky where the rules don’t apply to them.
why has Silicon Valley defied its warnings?
For the same reason any industrial sector defies warnings - PROFIT. Plus, money has the uncanny side effect of protecting you from the worst consequences of the problems you’ve caused.
Why? Because they want to be the filthy rich bad guys from cyberpunk stories.
Article: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/neuromancer-william-gibson-sci-fi-novels/
Clickbaiting and trolling. Makes it hard to see that the article writer has a couple decent points mixed in there. The suprising thing is, the article’s written by a “real” author and not just a publicist or LLM. I suspect the Telegraph editors made him write it that way.
Bit harsh re: clickbaiting etc.
OK maybe that was harsh… the article’s better than the title suggests though.
Maybe… but the article title refers to “the greatest sci-fi novel of all time” which is obviously meant as bait for arguments, and subtitles it with “why has Silicon Valley defied its warnings?” which is pretty sensationalist. In contrast, the article is very thoughtful and could almost be submitted to an academic journal.
You know what’s wild is Gibson said he had only ever seen a computer once ‘through a window’ when he wrote Neuromancer!
Because it’s just a generic sci-fi, an enjoyable yarn but far from prophetic. It’s like saying hg wells saw the future of travel to the moon so why are we going back? Turns out science fiction is fiction.
All these subjects get talked about seriously in the academic setting they belong in, often entrainment and popular culture is discussed in relation to academic study so it’s not being overlooked but there’s an awful lot of stuff to consider and having read a poplar book that makes fantastic leaps of imagination to convey a contemporary political statement doesn’t mean you know more than the actual experts, and if you do present it seriously not as ‘I read this book and it’s like totally true so like you’re all dumb for not living by it!’
