Comment by anupj

Comment by anupj a day ago

The most fascinating detail here is that every piece of tech in Neuromancer is Japanese or German. Hitachi computers, Sanyo suits, Braun drones. Gibson was extrapolating from 1984 when Japan dominated consumer electronics and Germany led manufacturing. Fast forward 40 years and we're having the exact same conversations about Chinese tech dominance. TikTok, DJI drones, BYD cars. Today's "future tech" assumptions mirror Gibson's perfectly. Makes you wonder what we're getting wrong about the next 40 years.

Also wild that he nailed AI and VR but completely missed that everyone would carry a supercomputer in their pocket. The big paradigm shifts are always the ones nobody sees coming.

Klonoar a day ago

The more time moves along, the more impressed I am by his call in “Pattern Recognition” than “Neuromancer”.

The latter is still one of my favorite books of all time, though.

Reply View 1 reply

rubslopes 20 hours ago

Pattern Recognition is the most accessible book of his that I have read, and it has such a great story. Neuromancer is incredible, but it's often hard to understand his prose.

Reply View | 0 replies

artofpongfu a day ago

Many things are obvious in retrospect. In this case, it seems few truly understood that all information will be made digital, and that print, audio, video etc are all just different kinds of information.

Just imagine what should be obvious to us now about e.g. AI, but isn't.

Reply View 0 replies