William Gibson

future fiction become

“The future is there... looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become.”

― William Gibson

future distribute

“The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed."

― William Gibson

study work apart design

“When you want to know how things really work, study them when they're coming apart.”

― William Gibson

time memory direction forget

“Time moves in one direction, memory another. We are that strange species that constructs artifacts intended to counter the natural flow of forgetting.”

― William Gibson

see move

“We see in order to move; we move in order to see.”

― William Gibson

stand high lightning

“Stand high long enough and your lightning will come.”

― William Gibson

net internet waste of time

“The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it.”

― William Gibson

things different object

“Things aren't different. Things are things.”

― William Gibson

time money

“Time is money, but also money is money.”

― William Gibson

past present future

“When the past is always with you, it may as well be present; and if it is present, it will be future as well.”

― William Gibson

time memory move

“Time moves in one direction, memory in another.”

― William Gibson

cyberspace concensual hallucination

“Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation.”

― William Gibson

money seal self

“We have sealed ourselves away behind our money, growing inward, generating a seamless universe of self.”

― William Gibson

era convenience label handle thing

“Eras are conveniences, particularly for those who never experienced them. We carve history from totalities beyond our grasp. Bolt labels on the result. Handles. Then speak of the handles as though they were things in themselves.”

― William Gibson

fiction symbol mark vision mind

“Fiction is an illusion wrought with many small, conventionally symbolic marks, triggering visions in the minds of others”

― William Gibson

safe gun medical insurance scary

"People who feel safer with a gun than with guaranteed medical insurance don't yet have a fully adult concept of scary."

― William Gibson

technology moral neutral use good evil

"I think that technologies are morally neutral until we apply them. It's only when we use them for good or for evil that they become good or evil."

― William Gibson

bullshit odorless transparent

"The deadliest bullshit is odorless, and transparent."

― William Gibson

future google

"The future is not Google-able."

― William Gibson

ignorance thinking people

"If ignorance were enough to make things not exist, the world would be more like a lot of people think it is. But it's not. And it's not."

― William Gibson

writing future present people scary

"I don't have to write about the future. For most people, the present is enough like the future to be pretty scary."

― William Gibson

problem interesting

"My problem is that all things are increasingly interesting to me."

― William Gibson

time traveller older age

"Sometimes, I feel like a time traveller, cause the only way that we can really travel in time is just to get older."

― William Gibson

internet species-long project tree savanna communication

"The Internet is part of this ongoing, species-long project we've been working on since we climbed down out of the trees in the savanna. We've been working on it without really knowing it."

― William Gibson

arrive Future present

"Upon arriving in the capital-F Future, we discover it, invariably, to be the lower-case now."

― William Gibson

emergent technology telephone wireless people

"I watch for emergent technologies and pay attention to what people say they'll be good for, then see what we actually use them for. It never occurred to me that a tiny telephone with a wireless transceiver would do whatever it is that it's done to us."

― William Gibson

grandchildren hardware computer

"Our hardware is likely to turn into something like us a lot faster than we are likely to turn into something like our hardware...I very much doubt that our grandchildren will understand the distinction between that which is a computer and that which isn't."

― William Gibson

science fiction toolkit rexamine present

"I think science fiction gives us a wonderful toolkit to disassemble and reexamine this kind of incomprehensible, constantly changing present that we live in, that we often live in quite uncomfortably."

― William Gibson

language phone cigarette

"Some very considerable part of the gestural language of public places that had once belonged to cigarettes now belonged to phones."

― William Gibson

future present volatile risk management

"We have no future because our present is too volatile. We have only risk management. The spinning of the given moment's scenarios. Pattern recognition."

― William Gibson