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"We are all repositories for genetically-encoded information that we're all spreading back and forth amongst each other, all the time. We're just lousy with information."
- Neal Stephenson
 |
| Microsoft | ||
| A small piece of firmware inserted into the brain that provides data on a particular subject, or special features, for the user. |
One of the key concepts introduced in Neuromancer is the idea of a microsoft, a small piece of electronics that is inserted into a socket placed in your brain. In the novel, it is implied that this practice is new, edgy - kind of like multiple body piercings in the late 1990's.
| Her destination was one of the dubious software rental complexes that lined Memory Lane... The clientele were young, few of them out of their teens. They all seemed to have carbon sockets planted behind the left ear, but she didn't focus on them. The counters that fronted the booths displayed hundreds of slivers of microsoft, angular fragments of colored silicon mounted under oblong transparent bubbles on squares of white cardboard ... Behind [one] counter a boy with a shaven head stared vacantly into space, a dozen spikes of microsoft protruding from the socket behind his ear. "Larry, you in, man?" She positioned herself in front of him. The boy's eyes focused. He sat up in his chair and pried a bright magenta splinter from his socket with a dirty thumbnail. |
| From Neuromancer,
by William Gibson. Published by Phantasia Press in 1984 Additional resources -
|
Throughout this novel, and the ones that followed, Gibson expands on this basic idea. Microsofts can have the following kinds of features:
For those who don't recall, Microsoft Corporation was not always a corporate giant; at the time the author wrote this book, Microsoft was one of the many small companies that made software for those newfangled microcomputers. Microsoft the company was started in the mid-1970's; the company name was registered in 1976 and went public in 1986.
Just a couple of years before this novel was written, most software for microcomputers came in a plastic bag with a disk and some photocopied instructions (if you were lucky).
Compare to chiphead, from Nanotime, by Bart Kosko.
So where did Gibson get the name?
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and Technology from Neuromancer
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and Technology by William Gibson
Tech news articles related to Neuromancer
Tech news articles related to works by William Gibson
Microsoft-related
news articles:
- Chips In Your Head - Artificial Brain Prosthesis Under Development
- Brain Coprocessor Platform Needed
- Cyborg Rats Have Digital Brain Parts
- Neurological Engineering - Creating Silicon Substrates For Brain Replacement
- Military Implants To Boost Memory
- ARM Wants To Build Brain Chips
| OrganEx Revives The Organs In Dead Pig |
| Prototype 3D Printer Could Print Arteries In Seconds |
| NextSense Earbuds Spy On Your Brain |
| Do Contagious Vaccines Work Better? |
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'A cable, here, from the controller to the interface plug... wires from that to the brain.'
'The slender stalks of a sunshade-photocell collector...'
'Holodeck 4 was waiting to be programmed...'
'... he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'I stood in line for half an hour for this, and it's just a blob!'
'A young man... advanced with nervous strides along the gravel path which leads to the bronze doors of the Lethal Chamber.'
'... we'll give him in his brain what he needs for creation.'
'Rapidly, purposefully, the metallic fingers moved over the key-boards...'
'...vast man-made disk of metal set spinning about the sun to supply the Earth with power.'
