The official WWDC prediction / reaction thread
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From: Jaimie Vandenbergh on 8 Jun 2010 07:45 On 8 Jun 2010 10:46:55 GMT, richard(a)cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Richard Tobin) wrote: >In article <1jjrlh2.1mzja9x1wm7imwN%peter(a)cara.demon.co.uk>, >Peter Ceresole <peter(a)cara.demon.co.uk> wrote: > >>I've read all of those, but Neuromancer is by *far* the best. Best >>story, best writing, most fun. > >I have a feeling it might seem a little dated now. "Four megabytes >of hot RAM". Isn't that Johnny Mnemonic? (riffle riffle) Oh - no. That was "hundreds of megabytes stashed in my head", which actually isn't so bad - I've got a Ford workshop manual that covers several models of car in under 600meg, so that's pretty fair. But in Neuromancer, as a bit of background colour Case is trying to shift "three megabytes of hot RAM in the Hitachi", where the Hitachi is a pocket computer. Nothing more is made of it. The average micro at the time of writing had under 64kilobytes, I believe. Possibly under 16k. Cheers - Jaimie -- human /mia'ow/ n.: Combination can-opener and heated chair-cover
From: Peter Ceresole on 8 Jun 2010 07:51 Woody <usenet(a)alienrat.co.uk> wrote: > And count zero, and Mona Lisa > overdrive. Both terrific. Mona Lisa Overdrive shows how good Gibson really is in the way that his iconic tough girl heroine gets older and softer and more motherly, while still kicking all the arses she needs to and still torturing the baddies. I read his later books too, and for instance 'Pattern Recognition' indulges his love of London, and folds in the New Russia. Also a lovely book. -- Peter
From: Jim on 8 Jun 2010 08:00 On 2010-06-08, Peter Ceresole <peter(a)cara.demon.co.uk> wrote: > Woody <usenet(a)alienrat.co.uk> wrote: > >> And count zero, and Mona Lisa >> overdrive. > > Both terrific. Mona Lisa Overdrive shows how good Gibson really is in > the way that his iconic tough girl heroine gets older and softer and > more motherly, while still kicking all the arses she needs to and still > torturing the baddies. I've got a feeling you might enjoy "All Fun And Games Until Someone Loses An Eye" by Christopher Brookmyre. It's not cyberpunk at all, but it _is_ good fun. Jim -- Twitter:@GreyAreaUK "If you have enough book space, I don't want to talk to you." Terry Pratchett
From: address_is on 8 Jun 2010 08:14 Peter Ceresole <peter(a)cara.demon.co.uk> wrote: > Richard Tobin <richard(a)cogsci.ed.ac.uk> wrote: > >> I have a feeling it might seem a little dated now. "Four megabytes >> of hot RAM". > > Oh well; it's not techology. Like all futurist books, it's *magic*. I > mentioned to Gibson that I'd seen the US DoD videos he refers to in > Neuromancer and said how much I admired his imagining of immersive > interfaces, at a time when the thing that welcomed you to the most > widely used database of the time, DBase 1, was a single *dot* on the > screen. He said 'Oh, I wasn't thinking of computers, I was thinking of > how people used television.' Which made perfect sense. His interest > wasn't in the tech, it was in how people related to it. Yes, that is clear in the books, the way that the electronics were generally used for consumption, and it was only the hackers that were actually interacting. The street finds it's own use for things -- Woody
From: Peter Ceresole on 8 Jun 2010 08:32
<address_is(a)invalid.invalid> wrote: > The street finds it's own use for things That *was* from Gibson wasn't it? I always thought so but I could be wrong. Not Sterling... It has that perfect Gibson swing, and the sharp insight... -- Peter |