Digital Resistances - Digital Culture - page 171

Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination, experienced by
billions of legitimate operators, in every nation by children
being taught mathematical concepts . . . A graphic represen-
tation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer
in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of
light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters of constel-
lations of data. Like city lights, receding . . . 77
Part of Gibson's brilliance is the reticence with which he articulates
such concepts. In this he lets his ignorance of computing work to
his advantage. Neuromancer was famously written on a manual
typewriter, and it is clear that Gibson is uninterested in the practi-
calities of what might actually be possible. Despite this, the concept
of cyberspace in the terms articulated by Gibson became, and to
some extent remains, a legitimate and fashionable area of concern,
responsible for example for a number of academic conferences.
Through his notion of cyberspace Gibson also managed to find a
more exciting way to represent hackers and hacking. In his future
vision hackers have become 'console cowboys' (thus invoking the
frontier mythology that has animated much discussion of networks
and hacking). Such cowboys 'jack in' to cyberspace, which effectively
means being able to move virtually through cyberspace in order
to access data.
Gibson followed Neuromancer with two more topics set in the
same future, Count Zero 78 and Mona Lisa Overdrive , 79 and has since
developed similar ideas in a number of novels and stories. Though
Gibson is not the originator of the term Cyberpunk or of the
ideas it embodies, he is possibly the most interesting and gifted
exponent of the genre. This is, perhaps, because of his adventurous
and sophisticated use of language, which far exceeds that of other
Cyberpunk writers, and his refusal to try to present convincing
future technological scenarios. In this he is closer to experimental
writers such as Burroughs or Pynchon than to most of his peers