<story><title>William Gibson says today’s internet is nothing like what he envisioned</title><url>https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/810570879/william-gibson-says-todays-internet-is-nothing-like-what-he-envisioned</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>_red</author><text>&amp;gt;I don&amp;#x27;t see this as a pathetic premise.&lt;p&gt;You might agree with the politics of it which could be clouding your vision (I&amp;#x27;m not intending that as anyway critical). Sometimes it&amp;#x27;s helpful to view it from another angle:&lt;p&gt;Imagine if back in 2015 I told you my big book idea was set in 2200 and was about a group of renegade patriots who traveled back in time to stop Obama getting elected because 80% of the population had been killed in the FEMA camps he set up....&lt;p&gt;Would you think that was somehow a profound idea? Or would it strike you as pathetic attempt of me shoehorning politics into my work? Wouldn&amp;#x27;t that come across as hysterical and insulting to the future?&lt;p&gt;The notion that 120+ years in the future the world will have changed so little that its still follows the same MSNBC vs Fox News script of today borders on hubris.</text></item><item><author>arkades</author><text>&amp;gt; But then it struck Gibson that he could save his manuscript by creating a future world in the year 2136 — a world in which 80 percent of the population has been wiped out by climate change, but also a world where characters time-travel to create an alternate past in which Clinton won the election. &amp;quot;After giving that only a few hours&amp;#x27; thought, I realized that the world in which Hillary won wouldn&amp;#x27;t be a happy world either. Because all of the drivers of the stress we feel today — minus one — would still be very much be present.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t see this as a pathetic premise.</text></item><item><author>_red</author><text>&amp;gt;[2136 book idea]....a world in which 80 percent of the population has been wiped out by climate change, but also a world where characters time-travel to create an alternate past in which Clinton won the election.&lt;p&gt;This is strange on so many levels...sort of pathetic that these are the plot ideas the grandfather of cyberpunk fiction is dreaming up...</text></item><item><author>baryphonic</author><text>This article is odd. It gives a shallow treatment of the subject in the headline, and then takes a wild turn into talking about the 2016 election, his emotions around it and its hypothetical impact on a future climate change-induced apocalypse.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ordinaryradical</author><text>You missed the part where he wrote the bit about the Clinton timeline being written prior to her election. He then had an alternate timeline by accident, and tried to come up with a reason for why his 2017 is different.&lt;p&gt;And if you’d, oh, I dunno, read the book instead of judging it by its cover you’d understand that the Clinton world is still barreling toward apocalypse because Gibson isn’t a hack and the point is not “if only democrats would save us” but rather “our whole system is built on corruption and will destroy us.”&lt;p&gt;So your comments make zero sense. Your critique is aimed at an abstract idea of what you think a book should be and has no relation to the text itself.</text></comment>
<story><title>William Gibson says today’s internet is nothing like what he envisioned</title><url>https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/810570879/william-gibson-says-todays-internet-is-nothing-like-what-he-envisioned</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>_red</author><text>&amp;gt;I don&amp;#x27;t see this as a pathetic premise.&lt;p&gt;You might agree with the politics of it which could be clouding your vision (I&amp;#x27;m not intending that as anyway critical). Sometimes it&amp;#x27;s helpful to view it from another angle:&lt;p&gt;Imagine if back in 2015 I told you my big book idea was set in 2200 and was about a group of renegade patriots who traveled back in time to stop Obama getting elected because 80% of the population had been killed in the FEMA camps he set up....&lt;p&gt;Would you think that was somehow a profound idea? Or would it strike you as pathetic attempt of me shoehorning politics into my work? Wouldn&amp;#x27;t that come across as hysterical and insulting to the future?&lt;p&gt;The notion that 120+ years in the future the world will have changed so little that its still follows the same MSNBC vs Fox News script of today borders on hubris.</text></item><item><author>arkades</author><text>&amp;gt; But then it struck Gibson that he could save his manuscript by creating a future world in the year 2136 — a world in which 80 percent of the population has been wiped out by climate change, but also a world where characters time-travel to create an alternate past in which Clinton won the election. &amp;quot;After giving that only a few hours&amp;#x27; thought, I realized that the world in which Hillary won wouldn&amp;#x27;t be a happy world either. Because all of the drivers of the stress we feel today — minus one — would still be very much be present.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t see this as a pathetic premise.</text></item><item><author>_red</author><text>&amp;gt;[2136 book idea]....a world in which 80 percent of the population has been wiped out by climate change, but also a world where characters time-travel to create an alternate past in which Clinton won the election.&lt;p&gt;This is strange on so many levels...sort of pathetic that these are the plot ideas the grandfather of cyberpunk fiction is dreaming up...</text></item><item><author>baryphonic</author><text>This article is odd. It gives a shallow treatment of the subject in the headline, and then takes a wild turn into talking about the 2016 election, his emotions around it and its hypothetical impact on a future climate change-induced apocalypse.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>justin66</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re not well informed about the book and that makes your comments pretty painful to read, a problem which the radio clip obviously didn&amp;#x27;t remedy. Although in fairness to NPR, it&amp;#x27;s just radio, it&amp;#x27;s not exactly the New York Times Book Review.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The notion that 120+ years in the future the world will have changed so little that its still follows the same MSNBC vs Fox News script of today borders on hubris.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Agency,&lt;/i&gt; and its&amp;#x27; predecessor &lt;i&gt;The Peripheral,&lt;/i&gt; are set both in (a version of, or more precisely multiple versions of) the present day or the very near future, and in the future. There&amp;#x27;s no way to not take the present day into account. But the politics of Gibson&amp;#x27;s future are not reminiscent of &amp;quot;MSNBC vs Fox News,&amp;quot; if that makes you feel any better.&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with what you are writing about.</text></comment>