Neuromancer: Difference between revisions
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==Cyberspace, Virtual Realities and the Fusion of Technology with Wetware== | ==Cyberspace, Virtual Realities and the Fusion of Technology with Wetware== | ||
There is no doubt that Neuromancer had a great impact in foreseeing the technologies that would follow its publication, and its level of prescience is still praised; the author’s being named has a prophet of the digital age. Even though there are some technologies that the book foreshadowed, others are still a bit far off <ref name=”1”> <ref name=”2”> <ref name=”3”>. We may not have reached - in the real-world - the bleak aesthetics of the novel, but there still are intersecting paths between fiction and reality that are eerily similar. | There is no doubt that Neuromancer had a great impact in foreseeing the technologies that would follow its publication, and its level of prescience is still praised; the author’s being named has a prophet of the digital age. Even though there are some technologies that the book foreshadowed, others are still a bit far off <ref name=”1”></ref><ref name=”2”></ref><ref name=”3”></ref>. We may not have reached - in the real-world - the bleak aesthetics of the novel, but there still are intersecting paths between fiction and reality that are eerily similar. | ||
One of those, is the idea of a World Wide Web: a global network of millions of computers. The concept of linking computers to each other already existed when the book launched – universities had already connected various systems of servers through a telecom link – but not on the global scale that the novel described. The concept of the internet as we know it today was still a decade away, and it may just have been a wild speculation at the time. Jack Womack has suggested, in the afterword of the 2000 re-release of the book, that it could have even influenced the way the Web developed by providing a sort of blueprint, a guide, to the developers who read and grew up with the novel <ref name=”1”>. | One of those, is the idea of a World Wide Web: a global network of millions of computers. The concept of linking computers to each other already existed when the book launched – universities had already connected various systems of servers through a telecom link – but not on the global scale that the novel described. The concept of the internet as we know it today was still a decade away, and it may just have been a wild speculation at the time. Jack Womack has suggested, in the afterword of the 2000 re-release of the book, that it could have even influenced the way the Web developed by providing a sort of blueprint, a guide, to the developers who read and grew up with the novel <ref name=”1”>. | ||