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.
Allowing a handful of broadband carriers to determine what people see and do online would fundamentally undermine the features that have made the Internet such a success, and could permanently compromise the Internet as a platform for the free exchange of information, commerce, and ideas.
With our Paleolithic instincts, we're simply unable to resist technology's gifts. But this doesn't just compromise our privacy. It also compromises our ability to take collective action.
For many oppositional movements, the Internet, while providing the opportunity to distribute information more quickly and cheaper, may have actually made their struggle more difficult in the long run.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
Our first computers were born not out of greed or ego, but in the revolutionary spirit of helping common people rise above the most powerful institutions.
Yes, I was the one people credit with inventing the cell phone. Now, whenever anyone gets a dropped call, they blame me.
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