One could imagine a very ascetic sort of life growing out of this, where the body is ignored.
Predictor: Gibson, William
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 interview in Stockholm, Sweden, conducted by Dan Josefsson for “Rapport,” Sweden’s most popular TV-news program, William Gibson, author of the term “cyberspace,” talks about the future of the Internet. When asked, “Is cyberspace a better place to be than this physical world?” he says: ”There is an tendency in our culture, in a broader sense the western civilization, to reject the body in favor of an idea of the spirit or the soul. I have never been entirely sure that that’s such a good thing, and in an interesting way this technology is pointing in that direction. One could imagine a very ascetic sort of life growing out of this, where the body is ignored. This is something I’ve played with in my books, where people hate to be reminded sometimes that they have bodies, they find it very slow and tedious. But I’ve never presented that as an desirable state, always as something almost pathological growing out of this technology.”
Biography:William Gibson published the influential book “Neuromancer,” in which he coined the term “cyberspace,” in 1984. Through the early 1990s, he was asked to comment regularly on the coming age of the Internet despite the fact that he claimed to use it rarely, if ever. (Author/Editor/Journalist.)
Date of prediction: November 23, 1994
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Interview
Title, headline, chapter name: I Don’t Even Have A Modem
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
www.josefsson.net
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney