William Gibson On Internet Memes and Punk Rock Being The Last Pre-Digital Counterculture Movement

“I suspect — and I don’t think this is nostalgia — but it may have been able to become kind of a richer sauce, initially. It wasn’t able to instantly go from London to Toronto at the speed of light. Somebody had to carry it back to Toronto or wherever, in their backpack and show it, physically show it to another human. Which is what happened. And compared to the way that news of something new spreads today, it was totally stone age. Totally stone age! There’s something remarkable about it that’s probably not going to be that evident to people looking at it in the future. That the 1977 experience was qualitatively different, in a way, than the 2007 experience, say.” See Also* Part 1: William Gibson on Why Sci-Fi Writers are (Thankfully) Almost Always Wrong and Part 2: William Gibson on Twitter, Antique Watches and Internet Obsessions