Friday, August 10, 2007

Spook Country

Thank you Salon for reminding me that the new Gibson is out, and for the decent interview with the man. Here's a quick excerpt:
" I've always felt a serious obligation to be absolutely agnostic about emergent technologies. I think a case can be made for technology being morally neutral. I think what scares people most about new technologies -- it's actually what scares me most -- is that they're never legislated into being. Congress doesn't vote on the cellular telephony initiative and create a cellphone system across the United States and the world. It just happens and capital flows around and it changes things at the most intimate levels of our lives, but we never decided to do it. Somewhere now there's a team of people working on something that's going to profoundly impact your life in the next 10 years and change everything. You don't know what it is and they don't know how it's going to change your life because usually these things don't go as predicted.

To get back to Fredric Jameson, I find that both dreadful and exhilarating."

Gibson is one of the handful of people who actively inspires and propels me to better myself occasionally. If only so that I can get a fragment of his references. :)

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