Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts.
Interpretation
This quote refers to the internet as a shared and accepted illusion that billions experience daily, influencing learning and communication.
William Gibson describes cyberspace as a collective experience akin to a hallucination, where individuals across the globe interact and connect through digital means. This phenomenon shapes not only adult interactions but also the educational experiences of children, as they grasp complex concepts in a virtual environment. The quote emphasizes how entirely integrated and essential this digital realm has become in our daily lives, blurring the lines between reality and virtual existence.
In practice
During a seminar on digital education, this quote could illustrate the importance of the internet in modern learning.
She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that Damien's theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can't move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.
If you've read a lot of vintage science fiction, as I have at one time or another in my life, you can't help but realise how wrong we get it. I have gotten it wrong more times than I've gotten it right. But I knew that when I started; I knew that before I wrote a word of science fiction.
I think I'd probably tell you that it's easier to desire and pursue the attention of tens of millions of total strangers than it is to accept the love and loyalty of the people closest to us.
As a writer of fiction who deals with technology, I necessarily deal with the history of technology and the history of technologically induced social change. I roam up and down it in a kind of special way because I roam down it into history, which is invariably itself a speculative affair.
His eyes were eggs of unstable crystal, vibrating with a frequency whose name was rain and the sound of trains, suddenly sprouting a humming forest of hair-fine glass spines.
I don't have to write about the future. For most people, the present is enough like the future to be pretty scary.
What technology makes easy is not always what nurtures the human spirit.
The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don't really even notice it, so it's part of everyday life.
As more intelligent computer assistance comes into being, it will amplify human progress.
Animal factories are one more sign of the extent to which our technological capacities have advanced faster than our ethics.
The biggest problem is that Facebook and Google are these giant feedback loops that give people what they want to hear. And when you use them in a world where your biases are being constantly confirmed, you become susceptible to fake news, propaganda, demagoguery.
We are stuck with technology when all we really want is just stuff that works. How do you recognize something that is still technology? A good clue is if it comes with a manual.
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