Saturday, October 16, 2010

Zero History

While much has been attributed to Tim Berners-Lee as the father of the Internet, Vancouver-based fiction writer William Gibson is actually behind many of the ideas behind "cyberspace." Often called the "noir prophet" of the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction. While the term "cyberspace" was first coined in his short story Burning Chrome, the concept was only later popularized in the 1984 novel, Neuromancer.

Gibson's works have influenced cyberpunk and postcyberpunk writers such as Cory Doctorow. Gibson is renowned for his visionary influence on and predictive attunement to technology, design, urban sociology and cyberculture. While Johnny Mnemonic is the only direct attribute to Gibson's works, many of the ideas he presents in his novels have shown up in movies and popular culture. Yet most ironically is that he had completed his first novel, Neuromancer in 1983 on a manual typewriter. In a recent interview with the Georgia Straight, two points jumped out a me which I think is important food for thought:

(1) Immersive Media - Nearly all of the characters in Zero History and in the previous books in the series are totally at home in this message-soaked environment—not just with all the branding and marketing but with the multiple streams of information from wireless devices and RFID tags and GPS systems.

(2) Twitter Streets vs. Facebook "Malls" - As Gibson asserts, social can be overly structured. However, as he sees it, there is a difference between Twitter and Facebook.
Facebook and MySpace seemed like malls to me, as opposed to the street—whereas Twitter actually seems like the street. There’s no architecture within the template other than a limit on the length of a given post. And anyone can turn up and address you directly. It’s exactly like walking down the street. You might meet someone who’s really charming and intelligent, or you might meet a total malevolent idiot.

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