William Gibson on Why He Loves Twitter

I agree - but his view on Twitter is pretty interesting as well, namely the fact that Twitter is countless parallel groups and cultures that have little or nothing to do with each other.

I am using Twitter to follow friends - though, sadly, most of them don't use it anymore - and as a news aggregator. For the latter, it's brilliant. Following William Gibson now.

Neuromancer?

Gibson does seem like a rewarding conversationalist. I wish I liked his last book more than I did. Everything Gibson said in this interview was interesting and worthwhile. But I found Spook Country mediocre and I am unlikely to read Zero History. I'm trying to come to grips with that. On the surface, I can say that I found it much easier to empathize with Chia or Cayce than with Holly.

My best distillation so far is that he used to write about people, technologies, and their relationships, with some peripheral stuff about brands. Now he writes about brands - and people and technologies have become a means to that end. Also the brands used to be fictional, which helped avoid the Spook Country feeling of reading some company's ad copy. Perhaps as a result of the emphasis on brands, his character are less sympathetic. They have always been out of control of their own lives, but they used to try to take control now and then. In Spook Country they seemed more abject, victims of forces far beyond their ken or control. I have no doubt that he has a valid point of view, and he is somewhat upfront about that shift, in this interview. But his interests no longer match mine.

There's also the William Gibson documentary, No Maps for These Territories. It's very conversational, actually mostly just him talking. You can find it on Youtube.

I read Zero History over the Thanksgiving holiday (it was on the new arrivals shelf at the library).

Because it is set in the present, I wouldn't call it "cyberpunk," but it is thought provoking in many of the same ways as Neuromancer. The writing style is better developed and more coherent though less cutting edge(all as one would expect after more than twenty years). It's a solid read.

But they don't. I did a whole comment there pointing to the statistics about how most bombs are unclaimed, hours ago.

You might like this http://www.dshed.net/william-gibson

It's a talk he gave on his new book Zero History. I found it really cool hearing his opinions on how fast technology is advancing.

Here he is talking to Richard Metzger (Twitter comes up too): http://vimeo.com/14918761

"The tea party is a bunch of racists" is not an especially original, insightful, or accurate take.