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Comment by jere | Hacker News Reader

The headline had me cringing in expectation for a brain dead article, but how stupid of me! It's fricking William Gibson. Almost everything he said in this article seems to be spot on, then and now.

In case you have any remaining worry that Gibson is some crotchety "get of my lawn" type, check him out on twitter. He is one the most prolific, bizarre, and interesting users I follow: https://twitter.com/GreatDismal Recent examples:

>Once saw fake Zippo lighters with Confederate flags with swastikas in Shinjuku. Mindless mashup getting it right anyway.

>I've had the tv-in-the-mirror in bathrooms of a few hotel rooms. Have never turned one on. Feels like bad sci-fi prop-design.

>Fellatio illegal in 11 states. Lawmakers afraid to risk being known ever after as "the blowjob senator", if they act to strike them down?

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If you havn't already seen it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Maps_for_These_Territories

http://archive.org/details/NoMapsForTheseTerritories

New York Times experimenting with link-bait headlines back in 1996.

Link-bait is just a new word, the phenomenon must date back to the invention of the printing press.

Arguably, printed materials gave you more context along with the title, without opening up the full article.

Seeing the link is akin to passing the newsstand from a medium distance. Clicking the link is akin to picking up the newspaper and seeing the small print. Skipping the ad is akin to opening the newspaper to the continuation of the story inside.

Pamphleteering: http://www.thepamphleteers.com/overview.htm

But I think the most relevant artifacts are what were referred to as "broadsides" Explosive or dramatic one pagers were printed (often as advertisements) and pasted on sides of buildings usually at night under the safety of darkness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_literature

> link-bait headlines

Otherwise known as headlines.

It still makes me kind of wistful considering how their headlines today are usually completely anodyne to the point of euphemism, which it sound like the author was in some Valium-induced fugue state.

I had to look up a lot of the words you used in this sentence.

The level of prescience is astounding and this is almost 17 years ago.

The swastika symbol in Japan is the sign for a temple. It was used in Japan and many other cultures well before the Nazis adopted it. /end off topic reply

The symbols aren't the same, one is a mirror of the other

Try googling "swastika temple". It's been used in both directions as a religious symbol.

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