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"Science fiction operates a little bit like science itself, in principle. You've got thousands of people exploring ideas, putting forth their own hypotheses. Most of them are dead wrong; a few stand the test of time; everything looks kind of quaint in hind"
- Peter Watts
 |
| Matrix | ||
| A shared virtual reality space; users project their consciousness into a representation of networked data. |
See the entry for cyberspace, also by William Gibson.
| A silver tide of phosphenes boiled across my field of vision as the matrix began to unfold in my head, a 3-D chessboard, infinite and perfectly transparent... If anyone else had been jacked into that part of the matrix, he might have seen a surf of flickering shadow roll out of the yellow pyramid that represented our computer. |
| Technovelgy from Burning Chrome,
by William Gibson. Published by Not known in 1982 Additional resources -
|
Here's the same term used in Neuromancer, Gibson's classic 1984 novel.
`Don't,' Deane said. `You're right. About what this all is. What I am. But there are certain internal logics to be honored. If you use that, you'll see a lot of brains and blood, and it would take me several hours -your subjective time -to effect another spokesperson. This set isn't easy for me to maintain. Oh, and I'm sorry about Linda, in the arcade. I was hoping to speak through her, but I'm generating all this out of your memories, and the emotional charge... Well, it's very tricky. I slipped. Sorry.'
Case lowered the gun. `This is the matrix. You're Wintermute.'
`Yes. This is all coming to you courtesy of the simstim unit wired into your deck, of course. I'm glad I was able to cut you off before you'd managed to jack out.' Deane walked around the desk, straightened his chair, and sat down. `Sit, old son. We have a lot to talk about.'
Case brought the gun around and looked down the line of sight at Deane's pink, ageless face.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Burning Chrome
More Ideas
and Technology by William Gibson
Tech news articles related to Burning Chrome
Tech news articles related to works by William Gibson
Matrix-related
news articles:
- Virtual Faces With Personality And Emotion
- 'My Boss Is A Robot' Project Automates Journalism
- Still Wondering If You'd Work For A Robot Boss?
| Is Agentic AI The Wrong Kind Of Smartness? |
| Jetson Orin Nano Super 70 Just $249 |
| Automatic Bot Traffic Is 38 Percent Of HTTP Requests |
| Neuroplatform Human Brain Organoid Bioprocessor Uses Less Electricity |
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'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
'So the parent drone carries a spotter that it launches...'
'...nurse drones that would cruise around dumping large amounts of power into randomly selected pods.'
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
'...for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff.'
'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
