William Gibson on Movies, Music, Media

automatic_jack writes "William Gibson gave a talk at the Directors' Guild of America's Digital Day last week. The text of it is up in his 'blog, and in it he says some intriguing things about the nature of the entertainment and media industries. There's a bit of a surprise conclusion at the end!"

Comments

Blogs

[bih]

In only a single draft, even the greatest of writers will only produce content on par with the average thinker. Mr Gibson has "pettered out" as it were as a novelist. As if to reward himself he publishes countless first drafts: unpolished ramblings not ready, nay, not WORTHY, of consumption. Most blogs, including this one are about as narcissistic as hit counters on your personal home page.

Re:Blogs

[MadElf]

Ironically, he basically acknowledges this ("when the wings wobble"), and also gives a nod to the difficult situation of someone who actually does have something to write about - Salam Pax. Even with my blog intake almost solely drip-fed and moderated by such group entities as slash, kuro and so forth, such things as content (on even close to the level of gripping), ideas (at least worthy of retransmission) and writing ability do tend to stand out. I don't wonder at what the majority is like...

In his own blog, Salam Pax refers to a section of postwar Baghdad looking Gibsonesque. Gibson refers to Salam, almost wistful about what the order of magnitude differences in doses of harsh reality in their lives does to the vitality of their content.

So, in our age of trailer-park-quality public confession, Gibson looks pretty good; I can see how it would seem almost like artistic duty to put one's diary on public display in such a dearth of ideas, content and skill.

Maybe he's honing himself by repeated discipline - what's better training for a writer than writing? Or perhaps it's simply an attempt at reducing work , or increasing output, by reusing necessary material in promotion (he'd have to write the speeches and likely keep a diary, at least in note form, anyway. We demand extras from our DVDs, why not our writers?).

Anyway, the entry lower down about a deleted Dolph Lundgren scene from Jonny Mnemonic is so worth it.

more on books and change

[lingqi]

Well, if you want to be punctilious - I believe the bible has been originally been on parchment (i.e. processed horse-skin). I don't know if people are aware of this, but paper was invented in china many centuries later (600-900CE, i forgot), and not introduced to the west until even later.

My point, however, was that books has INDEED changed (even since the press). For one it's more accessible and more convenient. That, by itself, changed books in ways that greatly altered the way information is consumed from books. For example, what's the most frequent method of getting things out of (especially on-line) reference manuals? I usually load up the PDF and search for the item I am interested in. Now, I wouldn't do this to a novel, but that's exactly the thing - books are no longer only a medium to convey a continuous string of information like news or story, and this "search" functionality greatly improved the usefulness of books that are not continuous.

Moreover, the format of books are changing. Not even going to the tell a story with nothing but pictures approach, you can view a blog as a living book that's constantly updating itself to reflect the present, and re-examine the past.

So yes, books have changed. but of course you have to look at it at a different angle - though, really i guess the problem is that definition of a "book" isn't so clear anymore.

Re:my take on it

[Mooncaller]

I'll pass on the beer. I've had enough already for one lifetime.

It is appearent that you did not get the gist of what Mr. Gibson was saying. People have an inborn drive to create. They have a capacity to project their imaginations and to interpret the creations of others. These characteristics can be traced back through the earliest artifact made by man. But more importantly, man can abstract reality through sybolism.A study of "cave painting" shows the skill and creative nature of some of our most distant ancestory. Some of this art actualy needs to be interpreted as if its a movie. What apears to be several individuals, in some cases is realy the same individual at different points in time, a moving picture. Now we have tools that can enable us to express ourselves unimaginable to our ancestors. Mankind will always find ways to use the cutting edge tech for self expresion. Our childrens childrens childrens will be doing things that today are just fantasy. And guess what, it will still be in the quest for self expresion

Not to insult your family or anything, but you guys seem to be completely lacking in imagination. The 10 year old that I babysit, was into putting jackel heads on his drawings ( influence of the mummy movies). He creates his own Pokemon and DBZ characters. Some can be rather bizzare. If your children do display some imagination, are you going to punish them? BTW, I've been doing anthropmorphic art since I was a kid. I have started retraining to become an animator. This is truley a great time to be alive. I am able to express myself in ways that I could only dream about as a kid. And I did dream. Only hope the MPAA and that other mafia controled organization don't totaly screw us over.

Memorable quotes

[Bish.dk]

As usual with Gibson, the text is full of memorable quotes.

Had nations better understood the potential of the Internet, I suspect they might well have strangled it in its cradle. Emergent technology is, by its very nature, out of control, and leads to unpredictable outcomes.

Probably correct.