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"The world is really so surreal these days that it's necessary for us to blunt it somehow in order to stay sane. The artist functions to short-circuit the buffering mechanism, so that people can occasionally perceive the weirdness of things as they are."
- William Gibson
 |
| Cybernetic Water Witch | ||
| A job that involves a lot of surfing for patterns in information. |
| He was an intuitive fisher of patterns of information: of the sort of signature a particular individual inadvertently created in the net as he or she went about the mundane yet endlessly multiplex business of life in a digital society. Laney's concentration deficit, too slight to register on some scales, made him a natural channel-zapper, shifting from program to program, from database to database... in a way that was, well, intuitive. And that was the catch, really, when it came to finding employment: Laney was the equivalent of a dowser, a cybernetic water witch. He couldn't explain how he did what he did. He just didn't know. |
| Technovelgy from Idoru,
by William Gibson. Published by Putnam in 1996 Additional resources -
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Cybernetic Water Witch-related
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- NSA Data Mining And 'Cybernetic Water Witches'
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'...Anything was possible in my imaginary environment.'
'Somewhere in space, a chrome and blue automobile raced the green light of Earth.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair...'
'We had discovered that metal was relatively impervious to the telepathic effect.'
'Detailed plans for the construction of the Gundstetter-Halone warp drive were flowing.'
'Do not waste your priceless company on the unappreciative folds of a sleep pod...'
'...so we've promised him a generous pension from the royalties.'
'Hocus-pocus religions and archaic weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.'
