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William Gibson on his Tech Life and Latest Novel
An anonymous reader writes "The Philadelphia Inquirer is running a brief article on William Gibson. In it he discusses his tech life, the ad that inspired Neuromancer, and his latest book, Pattern Recognition. He says, 'Between my wife and daughter who still lives at home, I'm always the one with the slowest computer. I don't find that being really up on all the latest tech ever does me any good.'"
"I don't find that being really up on all the latest technology ever does me any good."
Indeed.
I am at the 6th semester of Computer Science and I see a lot of guys who got low grades and don't know even how to code really basic programs looking for top computers. I belive all they want is to play games.
Personally I don't need a top-ultra-fast box to get my programs working or improve my programming skills, and even get some fun (ie. MUD).
Of course if you work with production servers, high definition graphics or movies you need power machines, but regular and ordinary users who only surf on the net, compile some code, edit some texts don't need that all IMHO.
There's also a pretty good interview with4 _2.rm
Gibson on Tech Nation here
http://www.technation.com:8080/ramgen/02100
He was also interviewed on Unscrewed last night. Unscrewed Wednesday Episode Not much at that link, but check the schedule to see when it'll be replayed.
The dire thing that multinational globalization seems to be doing is reducing the amount of genuine stuff in the world and replacing it with imitation genuine stuff.
To speak of visionaries, this is actually an important theme in PKD's The Man in the High Castle. Of course, even PKD had a tendency to (unknowingly?) refashion ideas that were first put into writing by Plato and Aristotle. I guess it is true, in some sense, that there is nothing new under the sun.
He also did a movie called "No Maps For These Territories" that lends a good deal of insight into his personality. I just watched it, and thought it was pretty cool.
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
The Fact Checkers at the Philly Inq missed something: there is another movie based on a Gibson short story - "The New Rose Hotel". Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, and the delectable (OMFG where does that tattoo end) Asia Argento. The film was a commercial failure - it's rather slow and amateurish, but it's much better than that awful Keanu/Ice-T mess. I have the DVD right here in my sweaty little hand. Excuse me, gotta go watch Asia in the swimming pool again. Oh, and many thanks to my old buddy Marrow who gave me his copy.
-The Mad Duke