William Gibson: The Rolling Stone 40th Anniversary Interview - The Travelin' Librarian

And, more important, the internet already is what it is. It has already become the central organ of contemporary life. It has already rewired the brains of its users, returning us to a state of primitive hyperawareness and distraction while overloading us with much more sensory input than was ever possible in primitive times.

our relation to the space-time axis will be very different from what we have lived with for millennia. We will be swimming in impulses and data—the microchip will make us offers that will be very hard to refuse.

We currently see these two sets of traits—fixity versus fluidity—as opposites, driven by the dominant technology of the era. Paper favors fixity; electrons favor fluidity. But there is nothing to prevent us from inventing a third way—electrons embedded into paper or any other material. Imagine a book of 100 pages, each page a thin flexible digital

If I were writing the same essays now, I would lay much more stress on the fact that all our new technologies affect us in tandem. They modify our reflexes and expectations at the same time that they wrap us up in an invisible fabric—like the one that the fabled Emperor wore, only this fabric is strangely actual, and capable of obscuring the nakedn