News: William Gibson
Legendary science fiction author on punk, K-pop and internet memes
SCIENCE fiction novelist William Gibson has spoken in an interview with Wired about his views on punk, memes and K-pop.
Gibson, known as the “noir prophet” of the cyberpunk subgenre, answered a hypothetical question about the impact of punk if it emerged today. “You’d pull it up on YouTube, as soon as it was played. It would go up on YouTube among the kazillion other things that went up on YouTube that day,” Gibson speculates. “And then how would you find it? How would it become a thing, as we used to say? I think that’s one of the ways in which things are really different today.”
Asked whether punk would have gone viral if introduced in the internet age, Gibson drew comparisons to Korean pop star Psy. “You know that ‘Gangnam Style’ video from Korea? That’s kind of in the ballpark, you know? That’s something from a subculture we would have no way of knowing anything about, and suddenly it’s on YouTube and it’s got millions and millions of hits, and people all over the world are saying, ‘Wow, will you check this out?’ That’s something. That’s something like that,”Gibson said. “But it doesn’t necessarily play out in the same way. Our expectations and what it could become are different.
“But you know, I want to see his next video [laughs],” he added. “I will be totally on it. I’m sure I will be, because people will tell me about it on Twitter.”
