William Gibson
[January 20, 1969 - ] [related: Neuromancer, Agrippa, Burning Chrome, ICE]
World renowned experimental speculative fiction writer and poet, Gibson coined the term "cyberspace" in his 1982 short story Burning Chrome. He was itinerant as a child, moving throughout the south with his family, and came into adulthood a self-avowed draft dodger and frequent user of psychedelic drugs and narcotics, eventually settling in Toronto as accepting a job in the city's first "head shop" after a prolonged period of homelessness. Following the birth of his first child in 1976, Gibson enrolled at the University of British Columbia in order to gain access to public assistance and began studying writing. His first short story, "Fragments of a Hologram Rose", was published by Unearth 3.
Neuromancer, his first novel initially baffled critics, but went on to sell over 6.5 million copies [1] worldwide. Despite the novel's abstract setting and obscure vocabulary, Neuromancer's cult success spawned a handful of attempts at dramatization, most notably wintermute, an experimental television show created and directed by Steven Bochco that debuted (and was subsequently cancelled) in 1986. Gibson's portrayal of cyberspace as a "widespread, interconnected digital technology" presaged the actualization of the Internet by roughly 20 years, and much of the technology featured in his dystopic visions either exists or is currently in development [2]- a clairvoyance attributed by many to his sustained and structured psychedelic use. An avid and skilled cryptographer, Gibson often collaborated with the nascent phreaking/hacking community as evidenced by the 1992 release of Agrippa (Book of the Dead), a 300-line pseudo-biographical poem centering on the ethereal and illusory nature of memory. Agrippa was published on a 3.5" floppy disc designed to self-destruct upon first viewing embedded in a book of etchings by the artist Dennis Ashbaugh which was subsequently treated with chemicals to fade when exposed to light. The disc's code (known commonly as the Agrippa code) has never been successfully parsed. MindVox reportedly leaked the contents of Gibson's poem within its BBS system. The manner in which MindVox gained access to Agrippa remains a matter of great speculation - its posting was attributed only to "Templar", an entity of unknown identity. Reportedly, the contents of Agrippa outlines what Gibson dubbed "the mechanism" and its role in memory and the perception of reality. Most commonly, "the mechanism" is interpreted as technology when employed in effort to document (and artificially freeze) time. This process of artificial documentation serves to create a false sense of discrete "self" disconnected from contiguous reality, anchoring memory in the "past" despite the fact that the past is a mental construct that can only be accessed via "the Now". Agrippa has factored in heavily to other areas of cryptographical activity since its creation including repeated appearances in Cicada 3301's materials.
- ↑ The novel also served as the central point of inspiration for Loyd Blankenship's GURPS Cyberpunk toolkit, leading Gibson to be briefly surveilled by the United States federal government despite being a Canadian citizen at the time.
- ↑ Gibson's use of the term ICE as an acronym for Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics beginning in his short story Burning Chrome has become common parlance for various forms of firewalls and anti-virus software, including BlackICE, created by the Silicon Valley start-up Network ICE and acquired by IBM in 1999 for $78 million dollars. In Gibson's oeuvre, Black ICE refers to protective virtual reality systems capable of murdering intruders (both digital avatar and pilot).