Posthuman Blues

This is a truly embarrassing thing to admit, but packing a laptop computer makes me feel "cool." I feel "with it," man. The reasons for this are probably science fiction-induced; if you read William Gibson's first three novels, you find his characters inhabitating an unspecified near-future where "cyberspace decks" are all-but-ubiquitous. Cyberspace decks are decidedly unlike most real computers, such as the Compaq Presario I'm writing this on. For one thing, they're sleek and very portable -- kind of like a laptop.




The man.


My laptop has Gibson-esque potential. It's a token from the world of "Neuromancer" and "Count Zero"; its ideological lineage can be traced to nonexistent rain-slicked streets and the inescapable pallor of brooding outdoor holography.

Gibson made computers sound sexy. Of course, he didn't own one when he wrote "Neuromancer," so he didn't know any better. J.G. Ballard intentionally reinvented the subtext of the automobile for his novel "Crash." ("Crash" is satire, although elusively so.) "Neuromancer" was written with consummate punk naivete.