Stop me if you've heard this one, but I was just reading Frank Zappa's 1983 proposal for digital music downloads and came across a reference to what he calls Fondlement & Fetishism Potential or F.F.P. Given the timeline, the subject matter, the bloke proposing it, and the obvious format similiarity, is this where the F.F.Fers got their board name from, and by extension Mr. WG?

Has this been discussed before?

Maybe it just reminded me of the Rolling Stone's interview with Gibson this past summer, where Gibson refers to the advent of Walkmans in our lives. But I could not find the Zappa reference there, man I know I have seen it some where though..hmmm F.F.P.
Anyway, thanks for the post, am curious now.

My hypothesis is that Gibson took the name from an old sci-fi comedic mailing list that resurfaced recently:

Future Feed Forward

Here is the thread I made about it:

http://williamgibsonboard.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/6406046771/m/9641042153

I rather doubt it, as what Zappa seems to be getting at with the FFP concept is a particular property, a use-value that music collectors get from record packaging that they would not get from his cable-TV-distro model. I'd be more inclined to identify the word "fetish" in the second position of each initialism (FFP, F:F:F) as a coincidence, and diagnose some low-grade apophenia.

But imagine: Zappa predicted digital downloading in the year before Gibson predicted the internet. Mon téte, c'est asplode!

Thanks, Vertigo.

[edit: Oops, I was doubting Vertigo's hypothesis, not CP's.]