[HN Gopher] William Gibson Predicts in 1997 How the Internet Wil...
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       William Gibson Predicts in 1997 How the Internet Will Change Our
       World (2019)
        
       Author : DanBC
       Score  : 34 points
       Date   : 2021-04-24 20:12 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.openculture.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.openculture.com)
        
       | NotPavlovsDog wrote:
       | It might all still go the way of the TV [0]. We've been seeing
       | the demise of general computing in real time. The current
       | generation may be the last that got to pop the hood on the
       | internal workings of the Internet, from inspecting HTML source of
       | a web-page to disassembly of whatever was running it, if source
       | code was not available (or at least port scanning and possible
       | stack bashing).
       | 
       | With corporations doing their best to remove that ability, and
       | consumers gladly buying curated experience boxes, it all might
       | culminate with an encapsulated silo park selling all you can eat
       | broadcasting (think one-way directed stream, with consumer only
       | getting to send back analytics). So in a way, Gibson got very
       | many things right, maybe even the core thing. I remember thinking
       | in the 90's "Oh, he got it so wrong, the Internet changes
       | everything". Hah.
       | 
       | Alan Kay's "the computer revolution has not happened yet" is more
       | relevant today than ever [1]. It's up to us to change that.
       | 
       | [0]I think JWZ (Jaimie Zawinski) spoke about that in "Coders at
       | work", can't find the exact source.
       | 
       | [1]PDF:
       | http://worrydream.com/refs/Kay%20-%20The%20Real%20Computer%2...
       | There's also a youtube video of his presentation
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYT2se94eU0
        
         | tshaddox wrote:
         | I don't really understand. In your TV analogy, what is
         | analogous to looking at HTML source code? Looking at composite
         | video on an oscilloscope? You seem to imply that at one time we
         | had a more open age of TV, but now TV is all locked down, and
         | you're worried that the same might happen to the Internet
         | and/or computing?
        
       | justicezyx wrote:
       | Mostly true, but was legalized gradually in the process. That's
       | how things have always been.
        
       | bradbeattie wrote:
       | Gibson also wrote on how our abilities to predict the future are
       | superbly limited in his 2003 essay In The Visegrips Of Dr Satan:
       | http://williamgibsonblog.blogspot.com/2003/01/?m=1#90248174
        
         | Metacelsus wrote:
         | I started reading that essay, and then ran into two back-to-
         | back howlers:
         | 
         | >The electrons streaming into a child's eye from the screen of
         | the wooden television are as physical as anything else. As
         | physical as the neurons subsequently moving along that child's
         | optic nerves.
        
       | [deleted]
        
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