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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!"
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.
Wyrd, dude.
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.