In 1984, Neuromancer, the debut novel of a largely unambitious American-Canadian named William Ford Gibson was published. Opening with the line, “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel,” Gibson unwittingly tapped into the emerging literary and artistic aesthetic known as cyberpunk, realized previously in the form of films such as Blade Runner and in the works of fellow science fiction writers such as Bruce Sterling.
In Neuromancer, a disgraced ex-hacker named Henry Dorsett Case, who has been literally drained of his talents after attempting to double-cross his last employer, is hired by a mysterious benefactor willing to restore his talents for the ultimate hacking job. Paired with a cybernetically enhanced street assassin named Molly, Case descends into the Byzantine world of black ops technology and must eventually confront a rogue artificial intelligence seeking to achieve digital transcendence.
Neuromancer depicted a more immediate future than those imagined by other science fiction authors by presenting a society transformed by various transhumanist technologies such as artificial intelligence, genetic engineering and virtual reality. It essentially represents one of the most consistent themes of Gibson’s work: the use of technology to extend the human condition in the form of mediated experiences and biomechanical augmentation. It is also famous for having coined the word “cyberspace,” which Gibson describes as “a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions,” and has since been used to refer to the Internet.
Gibson maintains that he got the inspiration for the term from watching stoned teenagers play videogames. In an interview with Dan Joseffson, Gibson contends that ‘cy...
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Joseffson, Dan. “I Don’t Even Have A Modem.” November 23, 1994. Retrieved August 1, 2008 from: http://josefsson.net/artikelarkiv/36-artiklar/93-qi-dont-even-have-a-modemq.html
Lillington, Karl. “Inventor of cyberspace steps back to the present.” Irish Times. April 25, 2003. Retrieved August 1, 2008 from: http://radio.weblogs.com/0103966/stories/2003/04/25/inventorOfCyberspaceStepsBackToThePresent.html
Newitz, Annalee. “William Gibson Talks to io9 About Canada, Draft Dodging, and Godzilla.” Io9. June 10, 2008.
Rapatzikou, Tatiani. Gothic motifs in the fiction of William Gibson. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004.
No Maps for These Territories. Dir. Mark Neale. Perf. William Gibson. 2000. DVD. New Video Group, 2003.
It could be the near future or the distant future. It could be in the biggest companies or in your den. It could be traditional science fiction or it could be cyberpunk. Technology is pervasive. There is nothing in our lives that technology does not touch; it doesn’t matter if you use it directly, chances are that something (if not everything) in your life relies on technology to function or even exist. "Traditional" science fiction, if there even is such a thing, uses extrapolation as a foundation for its stories. Extrapolation, predicting or tracing a path of continuation for an idea or event, is also used in cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is known for its use of extrapolation in the fabric of daily life. (Sterling 348) It takes common science fiction themes, such as body and mind manipulation, and events of daily life and describes them with intensely dizzying detail. Neuromancer by William Gibson is a perfect example of cyberpunk writing because it uses this dense, rapid-fire description and language in combination with the themes of body/mind manipulation.
Nicholas Carr gives a sense of unbiased in his work when he writes, “I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the database of the internet. The web has been a godsend to me as a writer” (394). Though this statement it is clear that he sees both sides of the argument and by demonstrating this to the author he strategically is appealing to ethos and supporting his own argument. In hopes of building credibility, he begins to write, “Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going ─ so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think” (394). Granted that he writes this in the beginning of his essay he is trying to credit himself as a victim which helps him support his argument against the constant usage of the internet. Nicholas Carr is aware that without building credibility within his essay the audience will dismiss his points as uneducated and meaningless.
...ysterious technology. When referencing the new technology he states, “They supply the stuff for thought, but they also shape the process of thought” (6). Carr’s main point is the effect of technology, especially the Internet, is changing the programming of the brain.
From communicating with one another to researching for an essay, these high-tech gadgets are constantly being used. Unfortunately this is slowly becoming a danger to the human mind and an individual's ability to carry out simple tasks. This can be shown through the examples in Carr’s novel. He states multiple times that technology is damaging the brain and is struggling to do the simple tasks it should be able to do. Through his multiple examples, it is clear that technology is hurting us because we can no longer contemplate, concentrate, remember certain details, and more. Although, we cannot avoid using technology, we should be mindful of how often we use
Gibson, J. J. (1977). The theory of affordances. In R. E. Shaw & J. Bransford (Eds.), Perceiving, acting, and knowing: Toward an ecological psychology (pp. 67–82). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Mississippi Twain tells us of a man with a dream. As imperfection has it this
Works Cited The Matrix. Larry Wachowski, DVD, Warner Brothers, 1999; Bruskman, Amy. "Finding One's Own in Cyberspace" Composing Cyberspace Edited by Rich Holeton, San Fransisco: McGraw Hill, 1998, 171-180 Rheingold, Howard. " The Heart of the Well" " Composing Cyberspace Edited by Rich Holeton, San Fransisco: McGraw Hill, 1998, 151-163
In the beginning of the twentieth century, literature changed and focused on breaking away from the typical and predicate patterns of normal literature. Poets at this time took full advantage and stretched the idea of the mind’s conscience on how the world, mind, and language interact and contradict. Many authors, such as Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, and Twain, used the pain and anguish in first hand experiences to create and depict a new type of literature, modernism. In this time era, literature and art became a larger part of society and impacted more American lives than ever before. During the American modernism period of literature, authors, artists, and poets strived to create pieces of literature and art that challenged American traditions and tried to reinvent it, used new ways of communication, such as the telephone and cinema, to demonstrate the new modern social norms, and express the pain and suffering of the First World War.
"Finding One's Own in Cyberspace." Composing Cyberspace. Richard Holeton. United States: McGraw-Hill, 1998. 171-178. SafeSurf. Press Release.
Gray, (Curador) Raphael. Who are Hackers? March 2003. 30 September 2003. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/hackers/whoare. html> Hackers. Dir. Iain Softly. Metro Goldwyn Mayer, 1995.
J B Harley, 1989, Deconstructing The Map, Ann Arbor, Michigan: MPublishing, University of Michigan Library.
In conclusion, technology has evolved and influenced our society drastically when it comes to human interaction. William Gibson’s Burning Chrome is a postmodernism/cyberpunk story that blurs the boundaries between what is being human. The story also blurs the line between the physical and the virtual that a human being interacts. The advances we had made with our technology have gotten to the point where it has entwined with human anatomy. Gibson’s novel was partly based on how our civilization is more and more coming together with technology. Another thing Gibson portrayed was how a person’s mind is transferred into a whole new world with the use of our modern devices. In the end, our society’s interaction with both machines and humans is getting to the furuturistic virtural world that Burning Chrome depicts in its text.
In Conclusion William Gibson created a cyberpunk/ postmodernism tale that has blurred not only the physical state between mechanics and human anatomy, but has as well blurred the line between the natural and virtual world. He is making the reader contemplate how both software and hardware have influenced the natural world. Gibson’s fictional world would have not been possible without the existence of software and hardware, that is why the distinction between them is very crucial and play a different part within the text. Without these two things, the reader would not be able to comprehend and relate to Gibson’s view on how our society is interlocking with the advances of technology and the normality of today will no longer exist in the future.
De, Blij Harm J., and Peter O. Muller. Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts. New York: J. Wiley, 1997. 340. Print.
Gabbel, Alfred S. "How the Internet Changed Our World." Science and Technology June 2004: 73-75.