Neuromancer doesn't name the current year, so the future us won't have the navel-gazing satisfaction of critiquing its technological naïveté or marvelling over its Cassandra-like soothsaying. But something about the book's central conflict made me think about how science fiction (mostly) seems to divide into two camps when it comes to optimising technology:
One camp prefers to optimise for the tools. Death Stars, phasers, spaceships, mech-suits, tricorders, time-machines, transporters. You get the idea: It's a galaxy where a laser-on-a-stick is retro, yo. Any cybernetic life-form (e.g. ST:TNG's Data or the androids in the Aliens movies or Blade Runner's replicants) provokes suspicion at best. And, of course, we do not for a second pity Darth Vader for being dependent on machines for his survival. (Five seconds of imitating his whooshy breathing was enough to reduce my little sister to, "Doreeeeeeen! I'm telling Mo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-om!!!".) Small wonder he's been Evil's poster boy for about three generations so far, hey?
The other camp optimises for hacking humans rather than tech. Radioactive spiders accidentally give us crime-fighters (Spiderman). Implants can turn us into walking flash drives (Johnny Mnemonic). Or meat-grinders (Wolverine). Government experiments of dubious ethical oversight (and even worse quality control) can save Europe (Captain America)...or trash entire city blocks at a pop (The Hulk). Gibson's weltanschauung might just be the most dystopian of all, however. On the sketchier streets of Japan's Chiba City, yakuza goons flex vat-grown muscle, the eyes of the fashionable are replaced with cybernetic cameras, and high-rent prostitutes have neural implants that allow them to cater to a client's fantasies literally in their sleep. Naturally, cosmetic surgery boutiques are as rife as Starbucks in Seattle.
Granted, my experience of SciFi is admittedly rather thin. Then again, I'm mainly concerned here with the bits that the genre contributes to the general zeitgeist. And apart from the Star Trek universe, I can't think of any where universally decent standard of living is assured for anyone willing to live under the benevolent--if slightly banal--auspices of a civilisation capable of supporting it. (For the record, I'm typically okay with that flavour of banal, thanks. People are capable of amazing levels of productivity when they don't stay awake at night wondering how they're going to pay the bills.)
Also, so many of popular science fiction's prediction's haven't come true. An average 21st century #firstworld teenager can't afford a hoverboard. The 20th century did not host a Third World War, followed by a one-world government. Thankfully, we're still waiting on the AI insurrection. And why, for pity's sake, doesn't Siri use Majel Barrett's voice?
And, yes, I've watched enough Mystery Science Theater 3000 to have developed a healthy "It's just a show; I should really just relax" reflex. Not that it's always a reliable reflex, mind you. By all rights, I should have been kicked out of the Lon Cheney Phantom of the Opera--ask Dennis.
Yet surely there is a niche in storytelling for a universe in which our species can focus its attention and know-how on bettering our culture--and by extension, our world. There are certainly demons enough to fight in that battle:
- Institutionalised greed -- including the complicity of the disadvantaged...at least in some cases
- Inane bureaucracies (public and private) that entrench the above greed
- "Charities" that exist only by prolonging the problems they purport to fight
- Fanatics who can't abide a world different from their self-serving fantasies
- Eleanor Roosevelt's "small minds discuss people" paparazzi culture
- The impulse of the Have-Lesses to shut out the Have-Nots so that the former can at least feel superior to somebody (which is, frankly, as much a distinction as being the smartest Kardashian)
- Magical thinking (e.g. "Everything happens for a reason") and the special snowflake syndrome it engenders
- (as Will Smith put it) People spending money they don't have on things they don't need to impress people they don't even like
Again, much of our futuristic visions haven't come true...yet. All the same, when we cast our future in terms of our present, all the technology really boils down to is mere window-dressing. Props for the play. It means we've given up hope. At which point our best and most forward-thinking writers of fiction (which, IMO, is heavily skewed toward SciFi writers) might as well get to work on the human race's epitaph.
