William "cyberspace" Gibson gives up on the future

Science-fiction novelist William Gibson -- he coined the word "cyberspace", imagined post-globalized worlds, etc -- has given up on trying to imagine the future: His new book, "Spook Country", is set in the recent past. That's because, he explained in an interview with silicon.com, the present has hit a speed and complexity that make the future inscrutable:

"The trouble is there are enough crazy factors and wild cards on the table now that I can't convince myself of where a future might be in 10 to 15 years. I think we've been in a very long, century-long period of increasingly exponential technologically-driven change.

We hit a point somewhere in the mid-18th century where we started doing what we think of technology today and it started changing things for us, changing society. Since World War II it's going literally exponential and what we are experiencing now is the real vertigo of that - we have no idea at all now where we are going.

Will global warming catch up with us? Is that irreparable? Will technological civilisation collapse? There seems to be some possibility of that over the next 30 or 40 years or will we do some Verner Vinge singularity trick and suddenly become capable of everything and everything will be cool and the geek rapture will arrive? That's a possibility too.

You can see it in corporate futurism as easily as you can see it in science fiction. In corporate futurism they are really winging it - it must be increasingly difficult to come in and tell the board what you think is going to happen in 10 years because you've got to be bullshitting if you claiming to know. That wasn't true to the same extent even a decade ago."

Comments

[Julia O'Brien]

@Bruno: As you know, Bruno - I couldnt agree more with what William Gibson has been writing. We have indeed entered the exponential swirl.. One exemple being actually your precedent post on robots, which does shed a light on the dangers on the particular and critical times we have entered.

[Kenneth Rougeau]

We're moving ever-forward at a frenzied, fevered pitch & we're always looking to kick it up another notch. I've no doubt it's getting harder and harder for Gibson to imagine the future - it's already here.

[Guy-Philippe Goldstein]

The additional ingredient is not only that we're thrown into a technical change that is transforming our societies in ever breathtaking ways always harder to comprehend; it is also that this "wave of the future" gets superposed at the same time with older "times" that have not yet disappeared - from age-old medieval religious intolerance brandished by Al-Qaeda followers, to XIXth century great power thinking from current Russian leadership or to XXth Cold Warrior mentality from some corners of the soon to disappear Bush administration. Not even to mention congressional leaders, ready to repeat the mistakes of 1929 for sake of ideology. And as a Depression has yet to hit our shores - still fascist party straight from the 30's can get sobering electoral results both in 2002 France or 2008 Austria. This great short-circuiting of different time horizons , all conflicting one with the other, all harnessed with the means of an ever increasing exponential technology power - this is what could provoke an ultimate spark. History does not repeat itself. But the patterns are scary.