[Air-l] Re:origin of gibson quote

[Ann DeVaney]

A comparison of the '80s Gibson with the 2003 Gibson on the topic of 
the "future" nets the following;

"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."

Gibson, Wm. (2004) Pattern Recognition. New York; Berkeley Books, 57.

This quote is found not only on page 57, but Gibson repeats it for 
emphasis elsewhere in his text. I don't know how it relates to a 
current paper on the digital divide, but it does provide us with a 
Gibson sliding signifier. Depending on how you perceive it, his current 
description of the "future" is either more jaded or more accurate. Fun 
for all of us!

Ann D.V.

Ann De Vaney, Visiting Professor
Department of Education
2001 Berkeley Place
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697
Phone (949) 824-6097
Fax (949) 824-2965
adevaney at uci.edu





On Monday, February 16, 2004, at 01:27 PM, Eszter Hargittai wrote:

> I tried:
>
> http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001334.html
>
> Eszter
>
> ---
> http://www.eszter.com
>
> On Mon, 16 Feb 2004, Barry Wellman wrote:
>
>> Folks, I can use a little bibliographic help.
>>
>> Wenhong Chen and I are at the end of writing a Digital Divide paper 
>> for
>> the Blackwell Companion on Social Stratification. We want to use a 
>> quote
>> attributed to William Gibson,
>>
>> "The future is already here; it's just unevenly distributed."
>>
>> Now the quote itself is widely posted on the web.
>>
>> But never with a specific reference to a page number.
>>
>> Sometimes, a web poster will say "As William Gibson said in
>> _Neuroromancer_, `The future is ...' But I went thru Neuroromancer
>> yesterday and couldn't find it (Ace original edition, 1984).
>>
>> Can anyone pin down the exact reference for this quote. Or is this an
>> urban legend, oft repeated but never sourced? In which case we shall 
>> say
>> "(attributed to William Gibson)"
>>
>>  Barry
>>  _____________________________________________________________________
>>
>>   Barry Wellman         Professor of Sociology        NetLab Director
>>   wellman at chass.utoronto.ca  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman
>>
>>   Centre for Urban & Community Studies          University of Toronto
>>   455 Spadina Avenue    Toronto Canada M5S 2G8    fax:+1-416-978-7162
>> 	     To network is to live; to live is to network
>>  _____________________________________________________________________
>
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