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Comment by pmoriarty | Hacker News Reader

"what they failed to capture is the dissonant tone of our modern dystopia"

I just reread Neuromancer and Count Zero, and the main thing I was struck by that Gibson didn't predict was today's omnipresent surveillance.

The people in his novels don't voluntarily carry around tracking devices and recoring devices. What they read and watch isn't tracked, and neither are their preferences or the opinions they express. They tend to have much more privacy than most people do today.

In this respect, I find today's society closer to 1984 than to Brave New World. It's 1984, complete with Newspeak, doublethink and Two Minutes of Hate for the boogeyman of the day, telescreens that combine televisions with security cameras and microphones what monitor what you do.

It's interesting that Gibson chose not to incorporate such dystopian themes in his books, and opted for what is in many ways a more optimistic dystopia.

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You make a good point about surveillance, but I'd argue it's still more Brave New World, a dystopia built on consumerism, hedonism, and the compliance of the willingly oppressed over 1984's brutal, spartan, war economy. The citizens of Oceania may choose to buy into propaganda and nationalism, but they're also forced to by an all-powerful police state. The inhabitants of Huxley's World State certainly are subject to an oppressive state and brainwashing, but they also do so under far more comfortable circumstances. 1984 is motivated by pain, Brave New World is motivated by pleasure- I'd consider the latter to be closer to modern consumerist society.

I would assume Gibson simply didn't consider the technological ramifications of ubiquitous surveillance, or it's just his setup of a decentralized oppressive world of feuding megacorps and criminal super-gangs would have less thematic use for it than 1984's setup of one (or three) totalitarian governments able to monitor everyone.

That perspective is a bit Eloi; plenty of people are not doing well.

It isn't; a society can be dominated by emphasizing values of consumer-driven hedonism or social jockeying within castes (as in Brave New World) over totalitarian war and hatred (as in 1984), and still fall short of its aspirations.

I think he missed wifi/cell phones, mostly. Had he thought of that, he would probably have explored these themes a bit more.

In Neuromancer there is an episode (second half, when they have already moved away from Earth surface) where a character is targeted by a sort of drone/service droid.

But I also sorta remember that in a subsequent story (I think it was Count Zero? Not sure anymore) one of the characters... cuts a videocall or something similar by actually yanking the cord out of the wall.

You're correct, it was in 'Count Zero'.

I had the same thought regarding surveillance. At the risk of sounding like devil's advocate, had Gibson accurately predicted the high-tech panopticon of the modern day, he could create a much better thematic environment by ignoring or downplaying it. Much of the "high-tech, low-life" that characterises the sprawl would become near-impossible in the high-surveillance climate of a country like modern China. I feel like you'd have to expend so much literary energy constantly explaining how they shake the basic, ubiquitous surveillance we're used to,'excusing' the characters from overexposure. Then again, explaining the mechanics of anti-surveillance might provide the kind of cyberpunk brain food that we all love.

That being said, there's plenty of ubiquitous surveillance happening in the Sprawl Trilogy. Marly's pursuit by Virek in Count Zero springs to mind here.

"there's plenty of ubiquitous surveillance happening in the Sprawl Trilogy. Marly's pursuit by Virek in Count Zero springs to mind here."

But that's an exception, only made possible by Virek's virtually limitless wealth.

When Marly becomes aware of this surveillance it's a shock to her, because she and most people in that world are not used to that level of surveillance.

Contrast that with today's world, where most people know they're being tracked and surveilled, but are ok with it, or even willingly participate in surveillance of themselves.

No one today would be surprised to be told they were recorded in public (due to ubiquitous cameras in public places) or that someone knew where they were (due to the tracking built in to their cell phones).

Gibson did not foresee this.

You've made some great points! You're totally right that Gibson did not foresee this. I think there's a difference between Virek's near omnipotence, which terrifies Marly, and the modern surveillance state. The idea that someone's phone is monitoring their location and browsing habits wouldn't surprise someone today. The idea that someone had a network of people analysing their actions in real time definitely would though.

When I originally read the Sprawl trilogy in the early 2000s, these instances of omnipresent surveillance really made an impression on me. Particularly those of Wintermute monitoring and protecting Case. The scene where Wintermute intercedes in Case's arrest ( which someone above mentioned ) stands out in particular.

There's a playthrough on Youtube ( with commentary ) of 1993's Cyberpunk classic game System Shock by the original developers. They laugh together about their lofty predictions of video mail becoming the normal mode of communication. Instead we're still sending 120 char text messages in 2020. The future is hard to predict for many reasons.

> I feel like you'd have to expend so much literary energy constantly explaining how they shake the basic, ubiquitous surveillance we're used to,'excusing' the characters from overexposure.

Cory Doctorow does a fairly creditable job explaining that in his Little Brother / Homeland/ Radicalized series.

Why not .. all of the above?

If this sort of thing scratches an itch you have, try Lawrence Sander's The Tomorrow File, from 1975. The author rather gleefully throws as many dystopian tropes into the mix as is feasible (and then a few more for good measure), and makes it work, oddly enough.

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