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@uci.edu On Monday, February 16, 2004, at 01:27 PM, Eszter Hargittai wrote:
I tried:
http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001334.html
Eszter
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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