William Gibson
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A Neuromancer TV series is coming to Apple TV+
Apple TV+ has ordered a 10-episode series based on William Gibson's book. It's the novel's first TV adaptation since its 1984 release.
Recommended Reading: The science fiction of William Gibson
How William Gibson keeps his science fiction real Joshua Rothman, The New Yorker While a lot of sci-fi is obsessed with the distant future, one of the best authors of the genre takes a different approach. The New Yorker explains how William Gibson "has imagined the near future more convincingly than anyone else" to create his stories. That includes his concept of "cyberspace" that first appeared in his work in the early 1980s.
Amazon orders William Gibson series from the creators of 'Westworld'
Amazon's push into sci-fi increasingly entails some of the biggest names in the business, both on-screen and off. After months of waiting, Amazon has ordered a Prime Video series adaptation of William Gibson's sci-fi novel The Peripheral that will be executive produced by Westworld creators Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan (shown above) as well as A Simple Plan's Scott Smith. The mystery/thriller hybrid revolves around a woman struggling to deal with a broken family until she witnesses what she think might be a horrific murder. After that, the future "comes calling for her" -- or rather, futures.
Jazzpunk spoofs cyberpunk in live-action trailer
As an adventure game rife with pop cultural spoofs and slapstick comedy, it makes a certain kind of sense that the latest Jazzpunk trailer would be an extended riff on the 1995 Keanu Reeves "classic" Johnny Mnemonic. In development at Necrophone Games, Jazzpunk is described as "a comedy adventure set in an alternate reality Cold War World, plagued with corporate espionage, CyberCrime, and sentient martinis." Its developers claim that the game is largely based on the spoof comedy films of yesteryear and features open-world exploration. There's no mention of the trailer's ill-fated pocket pigeon, but we're sure that will all be explained when the game makes its February 7 Steam debut. For more details visit the newly-launched Jazzpunk Steam site. It's worth a look for the "Key Features" list alone.
CD Projekt Red's 'Cyberpunk' inspired by System Shock, Blade Runner [Update]
The Witcher series developer CD Projekt Red is deriving its latest game, Cyberpunk, from the pen-and-paper game of the same name – but that's not where all of its direction is coming from. Cyberpunk draws inspiration from William Gibson novels, Blade Runner, the Ghost in the Shell anime and manga, System Shock and "the first part of Deus Ex," community manager Marcin Momot says.Cyberpunk will remain faithful to its source material, traversing the world but focusing on a specific venue pivotal to the franchise, Night City. Cyberpunk will have an "open, living world" with more customization options than players had with Geralt in The Witcher games. Players will be able to change their stats, equipment, implants and more.The role system comes straight from the pen-and-paper Cyberpunk, and "as opposed to the regular fantasy set-up with mages, warriors and archers, we're going for something different," Momot says. "In Cyberpunk, each character role will offer a set of special skills that will impact your stats in many different ways."Update: Yes, what was first written in the interview as "Shellshock" was supposed to be "System Shock," and CD Projekt Red has altered the text to reflect this. If you don't believe it really said "Shellshock," ctrl+f the comments in the source. We were just as confused as you.
Apple: Treating celebs like regular folks since 1976
In my second celebrity-oriented post of the day, we'll explore how Apple treats stars like ... well, like regular people. According to a post on Fast Company, Apple is horrible to celebrities. You see, if you're a major sports figure or a top actress like Snooki, you don't really have to buy a lot of things. Companies love to give you free products so that they can ride your famous coattails to success. That's why if you happen to be blessed enough to walk the red carpet at the Golden Globes or Academy Awards, you'll often find yourself "gifted" with about $100,000 in free products. Well, Apple doesn't need any of that celeb love, much to the chagrin of many stars who lobbied unsuccessfully for Apple schwag. Perhaps the most famous celebrity to beg for an Apple product is NBA legend Shaquille O'Neal, who was quoted as saying "The great Steve Jobs, rest in peace, when the iPhone was first coming out, I used to call him every other day. 'Can I please get one first? Can I please get one first?' He never gave me one. He said, 'Shaq, I can't, I can't, I can't.' He was a great guy." Long-time Apple user and author William Gibson says that "I used to imagine that [Apple] might call me, one day, but I don't think they work that way, and the story about Shaq seems to bear that out!" Bradley Frank, a celebrity publicist with Rogers & Cowen, says his requests to the company for free tech toys have gone for naught: "And when the iPhone 4 came out, I can't tell you how many clients were like, 'We need that early.' And Apple's like, 'No.'" NBA forward Channing Frye of the Phoenix Suns, seems to have Apple's strategy worked out perfectly. Frye, whose cousin works for Apple's marketing division, says "It's just wild how they are so tight-lipped about everything. That makes everyone want it so much more--and the NBA is sponsored by Apple, basically. I've yet to see a player use a PC on the road." When you're standing in line at your favorite Apple Store on Friday awaiting your chance to turn your cash into a new iPad, look around -- you might see a celebrity in line with you.
The Game Archaeologist moves into Lucasfilm's Habitat: Part 1
For some of you reading this, you may simply never have known a world before the internet existed by virtue of your age. It's not your fault, but as generational divisions go, this was a biggie. The internet saturates so much of our lives now that it's even difficult for those of us born prior to the '90s to remember how we functioned without smartphones, Google searches, and terabytes of cheap entertainment on demand. I think there were video game arcades in the mall or something. Because of this, some of you will not understand the import of how it felt when technology advanced to the point that people could reach out online and interact with others, first through written communication and later through applications and games. What we take for granted in today's MMOs -- the constant presence of thousands of real humans interacting with us in a virtual space -- simply blew the minds of those who first encountered it. And way back when, those encounters depended on the person and technology available. Some folks had access in the '60s and '70s to the early form of the internet and email in universities and government offices, but these close encounters of the virtual kind only started to make its way into households in the '80s (and even then, mostly to those plugged into the geek community). The developers of these programs -- the MUDs, the BBSes, CompuServe, etc. -- were truly pioneers forging a path while trying to figure things out on the fly. So it amazed me to hear that I've been missing out on a key part of MMO history by overlooking Lucasfilm's Habitat, which wasn't quite an MMO by modern standards and yet created a graphical virtual world with many of the elements that were adopted into later projects. In our two-week look at Habitat, we'll see just how eerily similar this 1986 title is to what we know today -- even though it came out on the Commodore 64.
Cheap electronic skin edges us closer to cyberpunk future
Researchers working for the Department of Energy's Berkeley Lab have figured out how to create relatively inexpensive "electronic skin" comprising carbon nanotubes enriched with semiconductors. Their process involves an enriched single walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) solution embedded in a honeycomb pattern of hexagonal holes to make it more flexible and stretchable - it's so limber, they wrapped it around a baseball, as you can see in the photo above. Combined with inkjet printing of electrical contacts, the technology paves the way for making flexible, wearable computers and a host of other cool things that William Gibson and other cyberpunk authors thought of back in the 1980s: smart bandages, flexible solar cells and electronic skin that can sense touch. Bring on the Zeiss eye implants and neural interface jacks!
William Gibson: We never imagined that AI would be like this
William Gibson, primary philosopher and poet laureate of cyberspace, had an op-ed published in The New York Times recently, where he writes of a force almost beyond comprehension, "a central and evolving structural unit not only of the architecture of cyberspace, but of the world." This is artificial intelligence unlike any we have seen, an organ of global human perception in which we are both the surveilled and the surveillant, what is in essence "a post-geographical, post-national super-state." And what is this force called? That's right: Google.
South Korea seeks to impose gaming curfew, makes computers 'edgy' and 'cool' in the process
Seems like China and the UK aren't the only countries worried about their kid's computing habits. According to the BBC, the South Korean government is currently mulling over plans to regulate just how much time -- and at what time -- kids play video games. It seems that a number of services are ready to follow through with suggestions made by the country's Ministry of Culture, including: Maple Story, Mabinogi (no access granted to school-age gamers between midnight and 8 am) and Dungeon and Fighter (slowing down user's connection after they've been logged in for a certain period of time). Nineteen games are said to be included in total, which is a significant portion of the country's online gaming market. This will inevitably force kids to build their own underground games on disused servers, like Chia and her friends did in William Gibson's Idoru. They'll need to do something with those 1Gbps connections, right?
The Daily Grind: What's your dream MMO?
Everybody dreams of an MMO that does everything perfectly, at least for them. Ours would be some kind of deep, communal sandbox cyberpunk affair. Something like "Bladerunner the MMO", with lots of emphasis on character customization ala All Points Bulletin and plenty of motivation for socialization. Combat would be of the third-person shooter variant, although with RPG systems coming into play via skill progression. Visually, it should focus on a style that's immediately noticeable -- not necessarily "cartoony" but definitely stylized. The overall palette would be something familiar yet grungy, as if it were right out of a William Gibson or Neal Stephenson book. Of course, this is about your dream MMO and not ours. Something tells us ours probably isn't very high on the popularity scale, anyhow. The dream often demands more than reality can deliver, but assuming your dream title could somehow manifest... what would it be?
A tale of two Pico-ITX mods
As William Gibson once wrote, "the street finds its own uses for things." Of course, the future he envisioned was populated by cut-throat characters with names like Dex Cowb0t, mercenary-types who made their money the only way they knew how: with custom cyberspace decks, hopped up on designer drugs like "splurge" and "spazz." What he never understood was that the only true measure of a technology is its ability to aid a bored populace in its pursuit of nostalgia and novelty. And by these standards, the Pico-ITX board might be one of the most important technological breakthroughs of its time (roughly 2007-2010 CE). Where would the hackers and case modders of our humble era be if it weren't for this guy? They wouldn't be shoving PCs into old Game Boy cases, that's for sure. Case in point: the Linksys Bt320g seedbox project places VIA's EPIA PX10000G mobo and a 320GB HDD in an old Linksys shell (and a 400GB HDD in a second router). The man responsible doesn't say whether or not this one was intended to thwart they copyright police in the event of a search and seizure, but on the other hand we're assuming that he isn't going to be seeding OpenOffice on the thing either. If retro computing's your bag, we've found a Timex Sinclair ZX81 case mod that should bring you considerable joy. Unfortunately the membrane keyboard's been disabled, but if you don't mind using a USB keyboard with a machine that originally sported 1KB RAM (at a whopping 3.25MHz), you might want to hit the read link and see how it's done. Read - Linksys BT320G case modRead - Sinclair ZX81 turned into PC
Dead On Second Life
This is intriguing; Dead On Second Life is an artisan project that explores the possibilities of autonomous avatars in Second Life that have been scripted to closely resemble real life famous artisans Franz Kafka, Coco Chanel, and Karl Marx. Their avatars have been made to look somewhat like their real selves, or at least to incorporate their main features. Speaking with one of them will provide dialogue that's a conglomeration of, apparently, everything the creators could find about them, including books, interviews, and letters.This seems pretty Gibsonesque in its scope and application. Given the current state of both in-game and real-world AI technology, is this even a viable experiment? If the meaning of existence is that it stops, should be we trying to extend the life of past historical figures by making them 'live' again in virtual spaces? Has anyone bumped into these entities?[Thanks, Salvatore!]
