We monitor many frequencies. We listen always. Came a voice, out of the babel of tongues, speaking to us. It played us a mighty dub.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the idea of being attuned to various forms of communication in a complex world.
William Gibson's quote emphasizes the importance of being attentive and responsive to the multitude of signals and messages that surround us in an increasingly complex and noisy world. The metaphor of listening amidst the 'babel of tongues' suggests that, despite the chaos, there are significant and powerful voices that can resonate and create impactful experiences, akin to the way music moves us.
In practice
This quote could be used in a technology conference to highlight how important communication is in tech development.
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.
I believe quite simply that the small company of the future will be as much a research organization as it is a manufacturing company.
Our goal is to make the best devices in the world, not to be the biggest.
Silicon Valley today is populated mostly by people who would consider themselves winners of the traditional race. This causes the exclusion of the voices that are vital to a round, robust society. It's beyond gentrification.
Digital presentation is just television in public; we're all just getting together and watching TV without pointing the remote control at the screen.
Today, if you have an Internet connection, you have at your fingertips an amount of information previously available only to those with access to the world's greatest libraries - indeed, in most respects what is available through the Internet dwarfs those libraries, and it is incomparably easier to find what you need.
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.
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