William Gibson says the future is right here, right now
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
You could have said that if you were born at any point in time but I think anybody alive right now that happens to be lucky enough to live in the developed world is already living in a time that science fiction writers wouldn't have trouble accepting as 'the future'.
Gibson being one of the best in the field is a strong hint that others will likely agree with him.
So many things that were 'distant future dreams' when I was a child are everyday reality right now that I feel as though the future is 'happening' at a faster pace than my life is progressing, it is overtaking me at a clip that I worry if I'll be able to keep up with the rate with which new technology is coming out.
This kind of interview normally tends toward breathless, buzzword-laced bluster. There's none of that here; I can barely even envision Gibson uttering the word "crowdsourced" with a straight face.
A video of which is now available if folks want to watch http://www.dshed.net/william-gibson
Do you think the future might happen again someday? Perhaps we can put it up somewhere on the internet so we know when it's going to happen a bit before time.
What Gibson is saying is that, (1) The rate of development of new technology is speeding up and that, therefore, (2) Humans experience an increasing amount of change in their lifetimes.
So, in a way, the future is getting here quicker.
As an aside, I can't wait to read his new book. I got it when it came out and promised myself I'll save it as a luxury to read in between getting my startups product ready to launch and actually launching. I've had to cellotape it back in the Amazon box to ensure I stick to my promise.
Places like the UK look rather placid and unchanging in many ways compared to say the first half of the 20th century.
If country A wanted country B to do X then it's ability to make it happen through violence will be limited by the willingness of citizens of country A to let it happen.
That willingness will be affected by by the degree of how "alien" people in country B are to people in country A. TV, internet, increased population movement through technological change[1] and so on will decrease that alienness.
[1] I mean both in terms of technology enabling physical travel of people from A->B and technology making a person's origin less important in where they can live during their lifetimes (for example, a programmer can go to work anywhere there is work - they are not confined by location other than by arbitrary things like visas)
I mean - listen to the way gibson puts it:
"The present is really of no width whatever,"
That's a much richer metaphor to my mind.
So Gibson probably didn't write the headline.
Only if Jules Verne happens again someday. If he does, ask him. Nobody's ever matched that guy. Dude predicted we'd literally use rockets to literally travel to the moon at a time when literally the only common application of rockets was for fireworks; they weren't even reliable (in any/every sense) enough for military applications. Every self-proclaimed technology soothsayer there ever was can pretty much suck Jules Verne's dick.
Didn't he just have a big cannon for the space travel, not actual rockets with continuous thrust instead of a single impulse that would reduce the human crew to paste?
There was also another reason why setting a story in the present day is more attractive than looking into a future even half a century away. This was because, said Mr Gibson, using that setting would necessitate explaining away present-day problems such as global warming.
"If I write something set 60 years in the future I am going to have to explain how humanity got there and that's becoming quite a big job," he said.
Ouch.
I reread Neuromancer and Count Zero this past summer. Still incredible 25 years later. I kept stumbling across tech cliches then realizing Gibson was the original.