I have seen two presentations in the last week in which the William Gibson quote “The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed” has been used. This elevates it, in my view, to the level of a fly-blown cliche. I’m now officially starting a game of Cyberpunk Bingo. When I get four of these events in a row, I get to cry “FUUUUCK!” and murder the speaker with my cybernetically enhanced skull-gun, and you guys (if you exist) have to arrange my legal defense. I am going to claim diminished responsibility. I think it’s reasonable.
April 28, 2009
Compromise and Conceit 
May 1, 2009 at 10:10 am
This sounds like it’d be fun to trigger. Given that I’ll use the following quotes and then start watching the news for cyber-enhanced flipping out in London.
“The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed” – William Gibson
Yeah, but who’d want the future shown in Gibson’s novels? I’m glad the lawless urban corporate dominated dystopia is not distributed towards me. And futhermore, why didn’t a mathematician beat him to death when he say this, sceaming “Even distribution’s don’t work like that!”
“Unfortunately, no one can explain what the matrix is. You have to see it for yourself” – The Matrix
http://www.xkcd.com/566/ covers this pretty thoroughly.
“Have you ever had a dream, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?” – The Matrix
Isn’t the point of thes questions that I wouldn’t know the difference? Remember the bit in your question where you said “you were so sure was real”.
“There is no spoon” – The Matrix
Yeah, the entire world is procedurally generated. What’s your point? Next you’ll be telling me I shouldn’t pay real money to get gold in World of Warcraft…
“I didn’t imagine that art girls in the Midwest would be flashing their tits in cyberspace…but I’m glad that they’re doing it.” – William Gibson
This I can only respond to with another quote “So say we all” – Battle Star Galactica
May 1, 2009 at 10:13 am
maybe we should start a business farming out one-use-fits-all quotes to corporate presenters.
The annoying thing was that the quotes didn’t even really fit the content, which was suggesting that various organisations were working hard to get to the future. So it wasn’t actually here, or unevenly distributed.