Posthuman Blues

William Gibson on the Past and Future

If you could build a little binary time-travel switch between 2007 and 1967, and you toggle back and forth, the biggest difference is the Internet. And it's one of the things that you just couldn't have imagined from 1967. That's a very interesting thought experiment, by the way. I recommend that to anyone: Sit down and choose a year -- it doesn't have to be 1967, of course, but it only really works if you choose a year in your own life -- and compare it to your sense of where the present is and look at the difference. What most people experience when they do that is vertigo. It scares them. They say, "Oh, it's really changed a lot," and suddenly feel like they ain't seen nothing yet.