Letters to the Editor
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Dinosaur?
You're shitting me, right?
Gibson's books aren't about technology, or politics. They are about the effects of technology and politics on people, and he does this better than anyone else ever has. I know people who hate science fiction but love William Gibson, just as I know people who hate books about war but devour anything by Glen Cook, because the technology is only there to provide context for the motivations, aspirations, and actions of people. And that's what makes Gibson (and Cook) so special - within genres that have historically been about the genre itself, they write about people.
He isn't Nostradamus, nor is he trying to be. But if you're so hung up on Gibson being a prognosticator, you're still wrong.
He didn't predict Bush, but he showed us characters who live in an America where the government doesn't give a shit about it's citizens - actively, aggressively, and with no pretense of caring at any level.
He didn't predict YouTube, but he did understand that the pervasive avalability of video would not only expose us to some fascinating art and further blur the line between reality and make-believe, but become a world-wide obsession.
He didn't predict the world we live in today, but he did show us a world where everything has become monetized, where no secret is safe from anyone who is determined to find it, and it turns out that pervasively available technology doesn't make everybody's lives better after all. Sound familiar?
And like it or not, and I think Gibson himself may not like it, but he did play a large role in creating the world we live in today. Without Neuromancer (and to a lesser extent Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash) there wouldn't be a Second Life - just because the technology today is decidedly second rate doesn't minimize the impact of his ideas - possibly wouldn't be an Internet as we know it. Engineers and entrepeneurs all get their ideas from somewhere, and the influence of Gibson on the creative forces in tech is impossible to overestimate.
Gibson doesn't predict the future, he helps create it.