[Metacelsus]

I started reading that essay, and then ran into two back-to-back howlers:

>The electrons streaming into a child’s eye from the screen of the wooden television are as physical as anything else. As physical as the neurons subsequently moving along that child’s optic nerves.

[zozbot234]

Not sure what's wrong with that sentence. A CRT screen works via an electron gun (cathode) literally shooting an electron beam at the screen; then the screen emits even more electrons towards the viewer and the typical glow is experienced as a side effect of that.

The cells that "move along" nerves in the PNS to support neural development are Schwann cells that would not be considered "neurons", but that's a minor slip in terminology. The basics is entirely correct.

[tialaramex]

The things streaming into the child's eyes are photons. If the electrons from the cathode stream into the child's eyes you're charging the child up with electricity and it'll get a nasty shock when subsequently grounded.

So now you've learned what was wrong with that sentence.

[antonvs]

His point is still valid, he just used the wrong technical terms. He's a writer, not a scientist.

He's writing about how these things impact human life, and details like this don't really matter at that level.

[tialaramex]

Gibson doesn't know anything about technology.

He's from the school of American SF writing that Stanisław Lem criticised (Lem wrote actual criticism as well as his SF that's in the form of criticism of works that don't actually exist, which was translated as "A Perfect Vacuum").

I don't have much time for this myself, preferring writers to speculate about things they actually know something about - but he's been very successful.

[0_____0]

It tickles me to know that, for all the future-gazing technology-laden stories he spun, that his seminal novel Neuromancer was composed on a typewriter

[staticman2]

So-called hard science fiction writers do not seem to make more plausible predictions about the future. It's not clear they are even trying to, since plausibility doesn't necessarily mean entertaining. The so called hard science fiction writer just throws some references to math or physics among the implausible world building.