When I began reading William Gibson's novel Neuromancer, I was confused as to what world I had entered. As I continued to read, I found myself in cyberspace with Case as my tour guide. I felt as though I was reading the story of virtual gamers out for some evil artificial intelligence. As I learned all the lingo and frequently googled terms that seemed to be in another language, I found the book dark and ominous.
Gibson uses harsh language to show the devastation that we can create and bring into our world. One of the reasons it is so scary to me is because it could become real. As far away as some of the concepts that Gibson presents may seem, with our advancing technology, they may not be so far fetched. This book has become something that I fear and I am afraid to open at night. The way it pulls me into this warped world of cyberspace is frightening mainly because I know that it could be our future.
"But he also saw a certain sense in the notion that burgeoning technologies require outlaw zones, that Night City wasn't there for its inhabitants but as a deliberately unsupervised playground for technology itself" (11). This quote, which I analyzed in class, troubled me in a way. Gibson was describing Night City as a dangerous place with no supervision. I drew a parallel to the Internet and cyberspace in general. There are young people accessing the Internet and posting things in cyberspace without realizing that it is not a safe "playground". This disturbs me because there are so many people who abuse the Internet and can cause harm to other people.
Gibson's book inspires fear in readers for what could become the future of our world. Our world would be treacherous. We could be replaced by technology. We could accidentally build a form of artificial intelligence that would defeat us. We could advance technology to the point where we would never have to leave our rooms because we could travel virtually through cyberspace. We could lose all need for face to face interaction. We could be facing a very gloomy future such as that in Neuromancer.
Such a world where technology replaces social interactions would be a gloomy future indeed. Communication technology can serve two purposes: (1) to extend the reach of the human body's social ability or (2) to replace the human body's social ability. The former is hugely beneficial to the human race. Today, I keep in touch with nearly all of my high school friends on a regular basis through channels of text messaging, Facebook, cell phone conversation, video chat, iChat, etc. I imagine a previous generation would easily see these relationships deteriorate. The latter is the detrimental alternative where "we could lose all need for face to face interaction". The blog entry clearly describes the dangers of this future and draws connections with Gibson’s world of cyberspace.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Neuromancer presents its reader with a gloomy version of the world. Although I believe that we will never be replaced by technologies, I do think that living symbiotically or being reliant on technology creates problems that may need to be worked through. The potential issues that arise with any advancements are scary because a lot of times one must learn through mistakes or disasters. I believe that the regulation of the technological world we have already created is a hurdle we must surmount before we can worry about the advanced world of Neuromancer. Before we can worry about computer chips that go behind the ear and SimStim, we must first regulate the Internet, Cellphones and other technologies of that sort. As said by Jeff there are some purposes for technology that may create varied results. Technologies that extend the social abilities of the human body are more beneficial and to me less unnerving than the ones that replace the social abilities of the human. In short, I am afraid of a world like Neuromancer and hope it never comes into fruition.
ReplyDeletePush the analogy of Night City to today's Internet further: don't companies benefit from the innovations that casual users invent online? Had Napster's and Limewire's outlaw method of file-sharing not emerged, when would iTunes and other money-making services have come onto the scene?
ReplyDeleteThis quotation is connected very well to some of Wu's ideas about how disruptive forces fuel positive change.
To be honest, I'm less worried about what is happening online than how much your generation and mine rely upon it. Sometimes the oldest Americans seem the healthiest, the most human, because they prefer personal to virtual connections.
And to follow up what Jeff posted, yes, I don't see virtual interaction as being as good as face-to-face contact. At least, in person, I have some assurance of privacy. Here, what I type lives on, potentially forever.