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William Gibson Quotes about Technology

All William Gibson Quotes Age Art Character Children Culture Design Film Giving Growing Up Internet Life Memories Past Reality Science Fiction Technology quotes Time Violence Writing
I think that technologies are morally neutral until we apply them. It's only when we use them for good or for evil that they become good or evil.

I think that technologies are morally neutral until we apply them. It's only when we use them for good or for evil that they become good or evil.

William Gibson
Military, War, Technology
"I don't have a modem". Interview with Dan Josefsson, www.josefsson.net. November 23, 1994.

It's impossible to move, to live, to operate at any level without leaving traces, bits, seemingly meaningless fragments of personal information.

William Gibson
Moving, Technology, Leaving
William Gibson (2014). “Burning Chrome”, p.17, Harper Collins

Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts.

William Gibson
Children, Technology, Cyberspace
1984 Neuromancer. This is the first recorded use of the term 'cyberspace'.

I watch for emergent technologies and pay attention to what people say they'll be good for, then see what we actually use them for. It never occurred to me that a tiny telephone with a wireless transceiver would do whatever it is that it's done to us.

William Gibson
Technology, People, Done
Interview with Amy Cavanaugh, www.avclub.com. October 14, 2011.

The 'Net is a waste of time.

William Gibson
Technology, Waste, Wasting Time
"The Net Is a Waste of Time". The New York Times Magazine column, www.nytimes.com. July 14, 1996.

I'm often saddened and dismayed to see myself portrayed as either a Luddite or as a raving technophile. I've always thought that my job was to be as anthropologically neutral about emerging technologies as possible.

William Gibson
Jobs, Technology, Saddened
Interview with Noel Murray, www.avclub.com. August 22, 2007.

You know what your trouble is? You're the kind who always reads the handbook. Anything people build, any kind of technology, it's going to have some specific purpose. It's for doing something that somebody already understands. But if it's new technology, it'll open areas nobody's ever thought of before. You read the manual, man, and you won't play around with it, not the same way. And you get all funny when somebody else uses it to do something you never thought of.

William Gibson
Technology, Men, Play

That's something that tends to happen with new technologies generally: The most interesting applications turn up on a battlefield, or in a gallery.

William Gibson
Technology, Interesting, Gallery
William Gibson (2007). “Spook Country”, p.84, Penguin

The nature of emergent technology is, as Kevin Kelly once said, right out of control. It's an element of human evolution that's completely out of control. It's sort of driving itself, and I don't see it ceasing to do that.

William Gibson
Technology, Elements, Kevin
Interview with Noel Murray, www.avclub.com. August 22, 2007.

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.

William Gibson
Technology, Special, Fiction

We don't legislate emergent technologies into existence. We almost never do. They just emerge, dragged forth by Adam Smith's invisible hand. Then we have to see what people are actually going to do with them, and try to legislate to take account of that.

William Gibson
Technology, Hands, Invisible Hand
Interview with Noel Murray, www.avclub.com. August 22, 2007.

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