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Shit, confusing my memexes again. Just consider Bush's "memex" to be the "Steam Engine Time" (William Gibson) view of The Matrix, though. It's a direct antecedent to both the BBC and the Wachowski's deriviative version, and I could still swear Bush used the term "matrix" in some suchlike sense. It all hangs together, anyway.

*Gibson, btw, considers Bush to have almost single-handedly invented the military-industrial complex. "Majestic 12", as we may think. Others might say he was more of a patsy or dupe in that regard. But, I digress.

*cite here

Others have commented how this will lead to dumbed-down movies with videogame features and Mario/Angry Birds franchise tie-ins, such as

Dead or Alive Xtreme Volleyball models, in swimsuits, in all the future movies!

... all with the face and voice of Jar Jar Binks ...

But this would actually be fantastic if if the movie watcher got to control the remix. There are cut-scenes in Red Dead Redemption that are rival anything in a movie (Marston's last encounter with Bonnie, so polite, so suffused with longing!) and then you can enter the world as one of the characters. Why limit your favorite characters to one setting, legal threats from George Lucas notwithstanding?

In a marvelous talk 10 years ago to the Director's Guild of America (read it!), William Gibson explores the long past of movie-making as storytelling, and predicts the future of it.

Any linear narrative film, for instance, can serve as the armature for what we would think of as a virtual reality, but which Johnny X, eight-year-old end-point consumer, up the line, thinks of as how he looks at stuff. If he discovers, say, Steve McQueen in The Great Escape, he might idly pause to allow his avatar a freestyle Hong Kong kick-fest with the German guards in the prison camp. Just because he can. Because he’s always been able to. He doesn’t think about these things. He probably doesn’t fully understand that that hasn’t always been possible. He doesn’t know that you weren’t always able to explore the sets virtually, see them from any angle, or that you couldn’t open doors and enter rooms that never actually appeared in the original film.

Or maybe, if his attention span wavers, he’ll opt to experience the film as if shot from the POV of that baseball that McQueen keeps tossing.

Somewhere in the countless preferences in Johnny’s system there’s one that puts high-rez, highly expressive dog-heads on all of the characters. He doesn’t know that this setting is based on a once-popular Edwardian folk-motif of poker-playing dogs, but that’s okay; he’s not a history professor, and if he needed to know, the system would tell him. You get complete breed-selection, too, with the dog-head setting, but that was all something he enjoyed more when he was still a little kid.

But later in the afternoon he’s run across something called The Hours, and he’s not much into it at all, but then he wonders how these women would look if he put the dog-heads on them. And actually it’s pretty good, then, with the dog-heads on, so then he opts for the freestyle Hong Kong kick-fest ...

Because I see Johnny falling asleep now in his darkened bedroom, and atop the heirloom Ikea bureau, the one that belonged to his grandmother, which his mother has recently had restored, there is a freshly-extruded resin action-figure, another instantaneous product of Johnny’s entertainment system.

It is a woman, posed balletically, as if in flight on John Wu wires.

It is Meryl Streep, as she appears in The Hours.

She has the head of a chihuahua.

Speaking from the group that saw the 1982 original in a theater, I also embrace the new storyline; the change-up, the suspension of disbelief and the "evolution" of the Tron world. I was just a grade-school kid then, and Tron was a completely unique film for the time.

Aside from being the pioneer of CGI effects, it was also a tale of oppression, tyranny and fighting for liberty. Only later in life did I recognize the paradigm of centralism vs. independence in computing; what one may interpret as the first glimmers of what the Internet should be. (nobody really knew of such a thing then)

In so much as Kevin Flynn wasn't even the "hero" of the movie, he was a sort of everyman/genius figure that we the audience accompanied through his adventure. He was a vidiot with a golden ticket to wonderland. His pivotal role moves the plot along, but only to reveal the true hero; Tron, a program created by the Alan Bradley character.

If you're talking about basing the film in fantasy... gotta say it; you're right! While there were only a few dozen computers in 1982 that could accomplish the 3D modeling and effects; there certainly weren't any smooth-glass full-interaction terminals in a desk, conversations with autonomous AI's that speak with a british accent or lasers that could digitize/record living matter through 'sucking cubes'. [sic]

Although, there were video games and that just about wraps-up Tron's connection to the real world. Of course, I wasn't even a teenager, so for me, that's the only connection it needed.

Barring all that, it was still a fantastic film for the sheer idea that there's an entire world in that one computer; specifically, a certain Encom 511 mainframe.

Learning about CS later in life showed me that the writers weren't completely tuned-in to the reality of computers, (Gibson put them to shame in that regard) but it was interesting to think that Tron represented a version of computing that may exist sometime... somewhere. To me, the fictional Encom corporation represents an application of computer science that we have yet to see... maybe if Amiga had the assets of Redmond, WA to innovate; maybe there's another permutation of IBM Cell architecture around the corner; maybe chips designed from neurological science? It was The Matrix that made the connection between "virtual reality" and identity projection via neuron stimulation. If that much is possible, then projecting one's ego into a Tron-like universe is not out of the question. There's no telling if the study of quantum entanglement will ever manifest into a cube-sucking laser... I'm not holding my breath for that one.

Responding to TFP: Yes, the proliferation and ubiquitous nature of higher technology in our everyday lives has altered our vision of technology. This isn't so much about the over-abundance or dearth of "imagination" for a film, but the presumptions on the part of the audience. If the audience's imagination is limited to what their iThing can do, then there's no way to stretch it to those super-computer dimensions, where this film exists.

The original Tron sparked my imagination about computers in a way that no other film can, from a time when "supercomputers" were actually super. The creation of Tron: Legacy has furthered the ideology of the first film, while managing to shake the Disney-fication veneer enough to make a visceral and gripping experience, and in classic "five steps of epic" style. For consummate film-goers like myself, it was a moving and inspiring tale with a delightfully imaginative and romantic ending.

...and it's got a bangin' soundtrack to match.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer#Film_projects http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/2007_05_01_archive.asp says: "I'VE FORGOTTEN MORE NEUROMANCER FILM DEALS THAN YOU'VE EVER HEARD OF ... As the old saying goes, I'll believe it when I see it."

Neuromancer is a book written by a time traveller. There is no other explanation. How could a guy in the 70's have seen the future so clearly?

Funny how Gibson's later works have gone off on less prophetic tangents. I guess genius only lasts a little while.

If you're at all interested in technology, society, culture, scifi, the near future, science, or ninjas, you must read it, or audio book it on your iGroan:

http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/books/neuromancer.asp

Don't forget he wrote it on an old typewriter (see his own blog: http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/2006_10_01_archive.asp )and was well known for NOT being a computer nerd. I love the book (got it in the 80s and have read it a number of times. I don't think he as trying to predict anything. He was trying to write a good story in a new way and he did both of those things.

Ashbaugh's design eventually included a supposedly self-devouring floppy-disk intended to display the text only once, then eat itself. Today, there seems to be some doubt as to whether any of these curious objects were ever actually constructed. I certainly don't have one myself.

From this I would have to conclude that Gibson wasn't involved in the whole "one chance" aspect of the work.

Try the Whatever blog then:

http://scalzi.com/whatever

It's by science fiction author whatever and covers a large range of topics from science fiction (obviously) to politics, and also bears the honour of being on of the first ever blogs.

It's also quite prolific most of the time.

On the subject of authors, there is also:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/
Charles Stross, science fiction author

http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/blog.asp
William Gibson - surely you know who this is.

http://blog.laurellkhamilton.org/
Laurell K Hamilton, most well known of the Paranormal Romance emerging genre

http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/
Wil Wheaton, author and famous as "Wesley" from Star Trek: TNG years ago.

There are a lot of other feeds on my list, many of which have already been mentioned. One that hasn't however is The Register.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/

A british news site with a tech slant

and Worse than Failure (The Daily WTF)

http://thedailywtf.com/

A site that highlights the worst of the worst in programming and IT stories. Highly entertaining.

There are already thousands of good and affordable actors out there. I think what the studios are willing to pay so much for is not acting skill, but cultural recognizability. The next step is for someone to create, popularize, and license not just CGI actors, but CGI celebrities - an idea already explored by William Gibson.

Also in one other novel I think it was by William Gibson —but I'm fuzzy on the details, maybe I'm mixing it up with Strange Days— they talk about how in the early days of brain interfaces they tried to watch the others recorded dreams but the experience was so bizarre that some of the relationship were broken as a result.

Not everything may be as cool as it sounds...

"[Timothy] Leary once told me that he thought that the best single piece of advice he could give to a writer was to either write stoned and edit sober, or vice versa."

-William Gibson, Blog http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/archive/20030112 _archive.as

Nope. He's already said that he doesn't really care. Short Form Summary: He agrees with Tim O'Reilly, Piracy is Progressive Taxation.

Not sure what he was claiming in 1990, but now he only claims to have used a manual typewriter through 1985:
" Google me and you can learn that I do it all on a manual typewriter, something that hasn't been true since 1985, but which makes such an easy hook for a lazy journalist that I expect to be reading it for the rest of my life."
http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/source/source.as p

Pattern Rcognition is a novel by William Gibson, basically set in the present day or very near future. Image based search plays a central role in the plot. It's a very good read.

Does it strike you as odd that these people are putting millions of dollars into the most advanced visualization system currently known to man, and the best they can come up with is essentially a three-monitor spread? I realize that they are using a bunch of projectors to produce a complex image, but shouldn't we be reaching toward something more out of the ordinary, like our sci-fi writers have already visualized? When William Gibson wrote about virtual reality, Jaron Lanier and his contemporaries said, "That's a neat idea. We can do that." So, what's up here?

or read about it in read William Gibson . He is almost Heinleinian in his ability to fantasize the fantasies first.

This guy does!

Oh, was that not the Gibson you were reffering to?

Here's a link to the Al-Jazeera translation (thanks to William Gibson for pointing it out). Apparently it's a little closer to the meaning of the original Arabic than the other Net translations.

People have seen comparisons to Pynchon (Lot 49 particularly) in William Gibson novels as well. He blogs about it here, if you're interested. Gibson says he thinks it's to do with the abrupt endings, which apply to Stephenson as well (more so, really).

My take is that cyberpunk is an outgrowth of the new wave, and the new wave placed value on non-realistic Pynchon, Kafka etc. (Norman Spinrad talks about this a bit in his book Science Fiction In The Real World).

Pattern Recognition, Yep, that's it - add some AI and get singularly muted.

CC.

Speaking of TV...it's interesting how we can define "generations" as much by the media they consume[d] as by their age range. Since TV is more or less linear, and one-way, TV generations stratify easily. I can relate to you if you watched G.I. Joe, but I'm pretty lost if you were a generation that watched Howdy Doody.

What is interesting is I think with the advent of digital media we are reaching an event horizon in which media is not one-way...it can be consumed, but then altered and reproduced again. Evidence of this is fan pages about almost everything everywhere, fan-fiction and fan-made videos, music mashups (where two independent songs are combined into one new song), video mashups, and the crazy ass non-sense flash movies that are out there (an entire art field itself).

Will this definition of "generation" even mean anything to kids that were raised with immediate access to ALL media from ALL times?

Think Meryl Streep with a chihuahua head.

Ok, I'll give in...my secret dream is that sometime in the future every citizen is given a large ergonomic knob. They can turn this knob to any date/time they want and experience all media from that time. They can watch current daily TV from that date (that is if the TV was invented), they can listen to current radio of that date, they can look at billboards and see current advertisements of that date... etc.

Mr. William Gibson announced through his counsel today that he is suing the Sony Corporation (SNE) for patent infringement in its forthcoming "Cyber World" technology.

"Our client holds the prior art for all forms of cyberspace, jacking in, and networked virtual worlds," said David Boies, citing Neuromancer (1984).

"William Gibson is in the enviable position of owning the Internet," said Boies, in an interview with eWeek Tuesday. "It is clear from our stand point that we have an extremely compelling case against Sony. Mr. Gibson has millions of circulating copies and defending these ideas is as important today as the day they were published."

When asked if Gibson was contemplating further lawsuits, Boies replied "Right now we're focused on Sony. It's not that there's a shortage of companies in violation but, in terms of our resolve issues, we are not trying to announce a litigation path. For now, we are trying to get things resolved with Sony."

Mr. William Gibson announced through his counsel today that he is suing the Sony Corporation (SNE) for patent infringement in its forthcoming "Cyber World" technology.

"Our client holds the prior art for all forms of cyberspace, jacking in, and networked virtual worlds," said David Boies, citing Neuromancer (1984).

"William Gibson is in the enviable position of owning the Internet," said Boies, in an interview with eWeek Tuesday. "It is clear from our stand point that we have an extremely compelling case against Sony. Mr. Gibson has millions of circulating copies and defending these ideas is as important today as the day they were published."

When asked if Gibson was contemplating further lawsuits, Boies replied "Right now we're focused on Sony. It's not that there's a shortage of companies in violation but, in terms of our resolve issues, we are not trying to announce a litigation path. For now, we are trying to get things resolved with Sony."

As if inane, trite blogs/boards/et al., weren't enough - now we're going to get hordes of semi-produced/casted business versions...

I spent all of 5 minutes browsing the spot, and it was blatantly obvoius that most "post" we're little more than product placements. "Amanda" "hears" about how [swedish retailer of semi-disposable furniture]'s got some great(!) stuff - going there now!! The "Kai" character takes up surfing - i.e. goes to a named and praised surf shop (link+logo included of course), the guys at shop X we're awesome!!

So, this is apparantly business' take du jour, on the latest mainstream trends online - we get the likes of the spot and the subservient-chicken. Viral marketing ey? Well, let's start spraying some virus-killing poison then.

I'm so reminded of the ad agency in Gibson's Pattern Recognition it's not even funny.

Wherever and whenever real people try (and do) find each other in - to them - meaningful ways, you can be goddammed sure that advertising leeches will find a way to nestle their way in between them. Gotta get yer earnin' on.

Gibson used to maintain a fairly interesting blog, but he quit to work on his "day job", which is really too bad - I like looking in on the lives of the writers I read, although it feels a little voyeuristic at times (and that's when I stop). It's fascinating seeing the creative process in action.

Cayce Pollard's skin would crawl, or at least more than her usual reaction to Prada merch... On my list, RFID tracking is ranking up with "viral marketing" schemes (e.g. hired bloggers and word-of-mouth adverts). 'Course, I don't buy or wear Prada either!

Or you're thinking of William Gibson's book Pattern Recognition. Good read.

William Gibson just stopped blogging, stating that informal blog/journal writing gets in the way of writing fiction.

Is there a conflict for you between maintaining your journal, and writing fiction? How do you manage your time / ideas / approach, in order to stay active in both?

• Ian M. Banks (the Culture stuff - not the fantasy stuff)

• Kage Baker (The Company Series is rather fun).

• William Gibson ... obviously.

• arrive @ 8.30
• delete spam
• read emails and logs
• check seti@home proxy status
• check computer mags, blogs (William Gibson], Joel) and slashdot
• 9.00 ready to code & debug

What if game engines and machinima are the first step in this 'do it yourself' movie? Now all someone needs to release is software that makes the directing and editing of such a movie very simple, and BAM! new generation of home movie making. I wonder what kind of software can be used to simplify this work and enable Joe Everybody to get their hands dirty in the wonderful world of home video production.

it has happened. wintermute is here.

what does william gibson have to say about it? someone find out.

<offtopic>
Johnny Mnemonic sucked. I love Gibson, all of his books are genius but their transition to film has always failed. One day I will track down New Rose Hotel even though it too enjoys the William Gibson curse.

Gibson maintains that JM was not his fault:

[JM as I wrote it, and Longo shot it, is only available as the published screenplay (but quite readily available as that). I only agreed to publish it, in the first place, because I wanted to be in the position to demonstrate the difference between what I wrote, and we shot, and what they released. I doubt there's even a remote possibility of there ever being a restored "director's cut", although the Japanese version of the DVD is a little closer to our intention.]

More from Gibson.

</offtopic>

The ecology of Gibson's relationship to technology is vital to his writing. His strength, like Coupland's in Generation X and Microserfs, has been his understanding of the zeitgeist of digital culture. He has an orgranic relationship to - and a prescient understand of - what is happening.
His latest book reflects this more than any other, and this is why it was not well-received by geeks. The social impact of the internet is reflected in things like teenage girls texting each other, not unix programmers with bad facial hair.
This interview explains Gibson's intentions.

Rather than expound on how some things just can't be created visually, no matter how fast your computers are, I'll let William Gibson do the expounding for me.

I asked him for some pearl of wisdom. He offered: "Never eat anything bigger than your head!" Should have thought *a head* and gotten a few extra signed books for eBay... ;) - Alex

I asked him for some pearl of wisdom. He offered: "Never eat anything bigger than your head!" Should have thought *a head* and gotten a few extra signed books for eBay... ;) - Alex

You might be interested to know that Gibson has started keeping his own blog (as of this week)

Oh, come on. He uses a computer, he has a blog.

He hadn't used a computer at the time he wrote Neuromancer, but that was long ago.

I'm guessing he uses a computer when he writes his Blog. You can find it at williamgibsonbooks.com. It's pretty interesting to read.

I actually saw him read last week, and he said that is one of the funniest things he hears about himself--that he doesn't use a computer. Like someone else noted, he didn't for Neuromancer, but hardly anyone else wrote on computers, either. And yes, he does use email; he just zealously guards his email address.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading the book.

http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com

I liked his entry about the Columbia (2/1/2003). I had one of the Space Taxi models he describes.

Stefan

Hey, he must use a computer because he has a blog now.

Don't believe me? Check out his site, with his rather interesting blog here

Free Pattern Recognition sample chapter.

William Gibson home page.
A bot modeled on Gibson's take on AI.
The Aleph - all things Gibson.

Mod Parent +1 Insightful

Seriosuly, this guy has a point. What do you define as new? Is Card new? I mean, another book from the Ender series just hit the shelves a few months ago (Shadow Puppets). How about Sterling? Or Rucker? Or Stephenson? Or Gibson? Word on the street says that Gibson's got a book coming out in just a few scarce weeks called Pattern Recognition.

Or do you mean new as in the last ten years? Greg Egan's great. So's Charles Stross (off-topic: Charles Stross ALSO happens to be a Linux user...it's a wonder Slashdotters don't cling to him like they do to Neil Stephenson). Ian MacLeod's pretty good, too.

"Downloading a novel from the net is not something I'd ever likely do myself, but mainly because reading novels on the screen of a PDA is something I might get into only if I were incarcerated, with no alternative. ... You could have sex relatively comfortably on a platform of books, but not on a platform of PDA's. Hardcover books. Paperbacks might start sliding around. Though I'd still prefer paperbacks to a pile of PDA's." -- William Gibson

for those other slashdotters completely uninterested in tv land

from the biography notes on his official site -

...the really peculiar thing about me, demographically, is that I probably watch less than twelve hours of television in a given year, and have watched that little since age fifteen. (An individual who watches no television is still a scarcer beast than one who doesn't have an email address.) I have no idea how that happened. It wasn't a decision.

...

I suspect I have spent just about exactly as much time actually writing as the average person my age has spent watching television, and that, as much as anything, may be the real secret here.

Hotmail downloads four messages, none of which she feels like opening. Her mother, three spam. The penis enlarger is still after her, twice, and Increase Your Breast Size Dramatically.

Deletes spam. Sips the tea substitute. Watches the gray light becoming more like day.