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William Gibson on The Age of The Remix

Posted by Zonk on from the re-re-mixing dept.

wordisms writes "William Gibson of Neuromancer fame gives his thoughts on remix and innovation in the digital age, in a short essay at Wired Magazine entitled God's Little Toys. From the article: 'Our culture no longer bothers to use words like appropriation or borrowing to describe those very activities. Today's audience isn't listening at all - it's participating. Indeed, audience is as antique a term as record, the one archaically passive, the other archaically physical. The record, not the remix, is the anomaly today. The remix is the very nature of the digital.'"

2 of 300 comments (clear)

  1. Race, what a nice concept by missing000 · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Please, drop that idea like it's a hot potato.
    Really.
    It's the 21st century, pretend for a second that you can behave like a member of it and not whatever hollow you "learned" that attitude about others from.

    Science sees no racial distinctions among us, why should you?

  2. Future shock! by Urusai · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    The medium is the message! I'm OK, you're OK! Men are from Mars, women are from Venus! All I really need to know, I learned in kindergarten! This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius! Don't trust anyone over 30!

    Gibson needs to go back and learn how to write before his techno-utopianism has any credibility. After all, he is a writer, and if he isn't good at his primary job, his extracurricular plausibility suffers. It's like a second-rate actor spouting off about Scientology.

    Before anyone defends his authorship, I suggest they stop thinking of Ayn Rand as a gifted novelist as well.