colin, dare I say it - ICE

shadoth, I do of course play with rooters everyday - I only "critique" "literature" for shits and grins and to piss off the natives


I'd like to bring up a point since this thread seems to be staying at the top without much effort: I would like to encourage any lurkers to jump in and express themselves - what do you think about WG?

ICE, huh?

I'll have to go back and see how it is described. I remember what it was supposed to be, but I can't remember being bothered by it. (It does occur to me that what is called ICE today is named that because of Neuromancer, more than anything else, even though it bears no resemblance.)

It may take a while; I sold my copies of the Neuromancer books when I moved. I have been feeling like I wanted to re-read them though, since I joined this board.

There's not a lot of traffic in this section since PR has been out for a while now. Except for the occasional passer-by it seems to me that it's just you and me in here.

Of course, anybody with something to add is welcome.

Ne? Ne!

Ping - Sorry, I didn't realize you were trolling. My bad. Gibson has never made an secret of the fact that his technology was one molecule thick, and it was clear from page one of Count Zero (which I read first) that he didn't really know much about computers. But imagine someone, say, fifty years ago. How would those card shufflers have imagined the computer world? If a scifi writer then had obtained technical support from these experts, would their writing have been any more accurate?

Enough redundant questions. You don't like him, don't read him.

quote:

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Originally posted by Ping:
I do of course play with rooters everyday

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Would those be Roto-rooters??

(Check out those graphics and jingle!)

In reality, a truly successful technology is transparent (or unnoticable) to its users. "The door opened." It shouldn't matter, if it irises, swung in on leather hinges, or dematerialized. Tech's use in a story should likewise be transparent or peripheral [sic] to the story.

When was the last time you started the car, then did a quick mental inventory of how the internal combustion engine worked?

This is probably my first post in this forum, so I just thought I'd say hi.

And even though this discussion seems a little out of my league, I'll give you my 2 cents.

I agree that at least some parts are of the cyberspace concept are a little too radical.
First, the idea that you can project data into cyberspace, wich doesn't exist anywhere else but in cyberspace. As it is now, data must exist on one computer or another. Either your computer or Geocities' server, it exists somewhere.
Second, (something wich I'm actually not sure exists in WG's books, but in most other modern cyberpunk), the idea that you "wire your brain" into cyberspace seems rather odd. It would probably be real hard to pinpoint the part of the brain that would have to be connected, and it's not like it'd be good for anything. The only real reason I can see is that it would be more dangerous to go hacking, since you can actually get psychically and physically damaged. It seems a little illogical that a tool would be developed to make surfing the net more dangerous, though.
But, if you can accept the "wire your brain"-bit, ICE isn't hard to accept. If your brain is wired directly into cyberspace, it's logical that it can be attacked from cyberspace. And we already have programs that kick people out when they misbehave; bots in IRC channels are an example of that.
Other than that, there really isn't a lot I can't accept about cyberspace. Projecting yourself into a digital world seems pretty far out, but think of avatar chats. Technically, you project yourself into the chat's cyber space. Try http://www.habbo.com, for example. And we already have web pages that are almost totally consisting of Flash animations, the whole net could easily be rebuilt to be more like WG's cyberspace.
So, the sum of it is that if we got rid of the point-and-click interface and replaced it with a VR interface and learned to "digitalise" data, we wouldn't be far from WG's cyberspace.

And as for WG's writing skills, seeing as most of the members here enjoy the books and you, Ping, don't, I think it's merely a question of taste.

Who cares about minor technical errors when you have prose like "the color of television tuned to a dead channel"?

<hr><i>Hey God, I think you owe me a great big apology</i>

quote:

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When was the last time you started the car, then did a quick mental inventory of how the internal combustion engine worked?

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Are you agreeing with me or giving me the piss?

BJ - I know what you mean about that technical transparency thang. I get so fed up with SF authors who think throwing in stuff like "He palmed the door open" or "She vidiscreened work to tell them she was off sick that day" makes up for crappy scene-setting. No doorknobs? Oh yeah, we're really in the future now!

quote:

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Originally posted by Black Jacque:
Are you agreeing with me or giving me the piss?

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I beleive that was aimed at Ping. So: agreeing with you.

In the UK, one who mocks another is taking the piss rather than giving it. However, 'giving the piss' sounds fairly undesirable too.
My friends, I believe we have been present at the birth of a neologism! Hoorah! Cigars all round!

totally agreeing with you. One of the things I can't stand in certain scifi writers is this tendency to infodump. People don't think about technology because we're used to it.

Infodump is the easiest way to tell that the story is about the technology, rather than the characters. I think that in good scifi, the technology is just a tool to get at themes and tropes and stuff. It adds to the story, rather than impeding it with paragraphs of technological detail. Ick.

I think Ping, that you're paying way too much attention to the quality of the set designs and props and missing out on the story. I agree with what shaddoth said, you want dry, technical correctness, buy a text book. I don't read WG for technically correct writing. I mean, it's fun reading about speculated gadgets of the Nth century, but you can't care about gadgets. you care about character, you care about eloquence and elagantly crafted moments. The Cornell Box quality of WG's writing, the rose petal falling on that September 11. Frozen in literature.

If writers stick to writing about what they know, they wouldn't need to apply their imagination do they?
We'd have a lot of stories about working dead-end jobs, dreaming about writing about working dead-end jobs whilst dreaming about writing. Do you have to be a serial killer to write crime fiction?

If they stick to writing reality, we wouldn't even have science fiction, how many writers been in space, travelled faster than light? through wormholes?

The best Sci-Fi doesn't tell us about gadgets of the Nth Century, it tells us about us.

I am Otaku Lite™

I agree, sort of.

The image of the Boxmaker (an abandoned artefact sifting through the detritus of a dead clan and somehow making art that pierces the soul) is poetry. You don't quibble about how the thing might be wired.

Mind you, until PR one of the pleasures of reading WG was his projected cool tech toys. The VR glasses, the chain gun, etc etc. All slipped smoothly into the narrative.

I'm still not inclined to pick and gripe. I just read and enjoy.

I'm going to respond to Wraith, he has several times seen the chip within the Chip.

btw - i liked your chapter reading - it was like PR was a banned book and you were hiding out in a dark room up in an attic with a mic broadcasting to the captive world their key.

Scenery! Ya maybe I do get caught up in the scenery. I have always been sensitive to internal and external consistancy. I realize everybody that seems to read this thread thinks that I dislike WG, but as I keep saying - I like his writing, I just want more.

There is a job in the movie industry called 'continuity'; basically this person makes sure that if a glass was half full in one scene that it isn't three quaters full in the next. I pick up on these kinds of errors all the time. This I guess is the crux of my gripe with WG or any writer really. Pay attention to the continuity.

And continuity isn't just whether an object is called the same thing in one scene or chapter to the next. Or whether you can really smoke in Japanese pseudo-starbucks. Its also whether there is logic within the scenery.

For example, cyberspace. How exactly is it that if I die in cyberspace that I die in the real world. This is one on the worst incontinuities in Gibson's work and unfortunately in his many biters who have used this idea to death; a la the Matrix.

Great for the plot, but so isn't time travel, but that doesn't mean it makes the slightest bit of sense. It breaks the scene. It breaks the continuity with reality. But like I've said before, perhaps I'm asking too much.

I just feel that the best writing is not only internally consistent but externally consistent. A seemless transition if perhaps delayed by time from one known reality to another proposed reality. Transparent fiction.

Still haven't done my research, but...

The Matrix, yes, fairly silly, though they could perhaps explain around it if they tried really, really hard. Which they didn't.

ICE, though, if your problem with ICE was that it would kill you, seems more likely. ICE doesn't "kill you in cyberspace, and therefore you die for real." ICE kills you-- physically-- bare wires on the brain. At least, that's the way I remember it.

Remember that we are talking about a system wired directly to your nervous system. Seems likely that buggering with it, in the right way, could kill you.

Saftey checks? Maybe Microsoft wrote them. Full of holes, perhaps deliberate.

Don't think that people would kill hackers if they could? Do you forget the attempt, not so long ago, to create a law that would allow companies to break your system if they suspected you of the heinous crime of copying music without their permission? If corporations could make software that would kill people trying to get their secrets, they would. No question in my mind.

Was there an instance of the more traditional (and stupid) die in the matrix and you die for real thing in the books? Can anyone out there pull out an example?

If so, yeah, you have a point there Ping. Still, books written by technically knowledgable writers (or with the help of a comittee) are often 1) dreadful, boring, nearly unreadable trash and 2) not particularly better at creating a compelling vision of the future. Just my opinion.

I heard you when you said you liked WG, though I think people could be forgiven for getting that impression during your play-acting self-introduction up there.

Ne? Ne!

ICE = Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics. Anti-viral software, if you will. Used legitimately to protect data systems from external threat.

Black ICE is illegal, "some kind of neural feedback weapon, and you connect with it only once. Like some hideous Word that eats the mind from the inside out. Like an epileptic spasm that goes on and on until there's nothing left at all...".

Not quite "if you die in cyberspace, you die in the real world".

at the end of the day, its fiction, not a history book from the future.
If you want to read 2000 pages of RAND-approved futurology, be my guest.

they have the internet on computers now?

quote:

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btw - i liked your chapter reading - it was like PR was a banned book and you were hiding out in a dark room up in an attic with a mic broadcasting to the captive world their key.

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well, the thought-police were at the door, I think they were tipped off that i was leading this dual online-life. I had to hide in the box that my computer came in, using the light from the screen to read. They were yelling out' Big Brother wanted to know why you covered your television with a blanket!'

reality and fantasy.
Every time I hear a warp drive powering up or a spaceship or a moon or the goddamn Deathstar blow up, the little nerd inside of me goes, in it's best impersonation of the comic book guy from the simpsons, 'but there's no air in space, how can it make a sound?'

That's why I'm beating it to death with liberal amounts of THC.

sick of sigs

Sic of sigs ,
liberal amounts of THC

Right on Wraith

Cheers from town of deliverymen bearing
Orange Haze and
silently exploding Death Stars

there are some prety silly convions going on here. One bothers me more than others.


"hack SF texts (don't predict future / not intended to):

Gulliver's Travels
Frankenstein
The Invisible Man
Brave New World*
1984*"

etc..
Did you read any of these?
Can you not see Franensteinian science in process today?
Are not brave new economics now in style?

When you read literature are you thinking too literally?...perhaps

do you ever feel watched in 2003?

Chillton