The title does the contents a disservice - his views on global culture are far more interesting and make up a much larger bulk of the article than why he loves twitter.
I agree - but his view on Twitter is pretty interesting as well, namely the fact that Twitter is countless parallel groups and cultures that have little or nothing to do with each other.
I am using Twitter to follow friends - though, sadly, most of them don't use it anymore - and as a news aggregator. For the latter, it's brilliant. Following William Gibson now.
I actively disliked Twitter, but I've started using it recently solely for an online collaborative competiton I'm involved with (not programming/HN related). It's fairly useable for that since signing up is very easy, but there are plenty of times when a basic chat room would be better.
I had no idea William Gibson was so insightful and urbane. I suppose I might have read Necromancer without any appreciation of how early it came in the timeline of cyberpunk literature, but I was never able to get into it.
After reading this interview, I feel pretty compelled to give Zero History a look.
Gibson does seem like a rewarding conversationalist. I wish I liked his last book more than I did. Everything Gibson said in this interview was interesting and worthwhile. But I found Spook Country mediocre and I am unlikely to read Zero History. I'm trying to come to grips with that. On the surface, I can say that I found it much easier to empathize with Chia or Cayce than with Holly.
My best distillation so far is that he used to write about people, technologies, and their relationships, with some peripheral stuff about brands. Now he writes about brands - and people and technologies have become a means to that end. Also the brands used to be fictional, which helped avoid the Spook Country feeling of reading some company's ad copy. Perhaps as a result of the emphasis on brands, his character are less sympathetic. They have always been out of control of their own lives, but they used to try to take control now and then. In Spook Country they seemed more abject, victims of forces far beyond their ken or control. I have no doubt that he has a valid point of view, and he is somewhat upfront about that shift, in this interview. But his interests no longer match mine.
There's also the William Gibson documentary, No Maps for These Territories. It's very conversational, actually mostly just him talking. You can find it on Youtube.
I read Zero History over the Thanksgiving holiday (it was on the new arrivals shelf at the library).
Because it is set in the present, I wouldn't call it "cyberpunk," but it is thought provoking in many of the same ways as Neuromancer. The writing style is better developed and more coherent though less cutting edge(all as one would expect after more than twenty years). It's a solid read.
Just wanted to extend that offer to everyone here as well. I too have the overload problem and am passionate about the value of Twitter, which is why I'm building something that will help. Happy to share & discuss further: http://slipstre.am/
he didn't say they all were. just implied that a significant subset were, at least in part. and I think based on the documented evidence any reasonable person would say that's accurate.
William Gibson is an insightful observer of social trends and a fantastic writer, but I was a little disappointed to see that politically he is a pretty standard liberal transnational elitist.
