King: i can't believe elon's grok is pretending i'm friends with him
King: i need to stop that AI before everyone believes it!
King: i've got to hire a hacker
King: franz, you've got to help me
Franz Kafka: what? me?
Barker: steve, no
Kafka: i'm not a hacker
King: oh i thought franz was a hacker
Barker: what gave you THAT impression?
King: you know, with the cat ear headphones and the striped thigh socks
Barker: no steve that's something ENTIRELY different
Kafka: n-no it isn't, on second thought yes I'm totally a hacker
Kafka: it means i'm a hacker, nothing else
Barker: sure franz
Kafka: it does! it totally means i'm a hacker!
Barker: franz, go play with your blahaj plush, the adults are talking here
Barker: you know who you need? you need william gibson
Barker: the best hacker money can buy
King: william gibson? how do i contact him?
Barker: you don't
Barker: he'll contact you
King: can you really hack grok, william?
William Gibson: [wearing black duster and fingerless black gloves] my hacker name is shadow gigabyte
King: oh sorry
Gibson: can i hack grok? listen kid i was cyberbyting the megabyte mainframe when you were just rebooting your motherboard mouse data bandwidth modem email
King: wow!
Gibson: my CPU is a neural net processer, a learning computer
King: wow he really sounds like he knows what he's talking about!
King: that definitely sounds like hacker talk to me
Gibson: CD Rom
Gibson: internet
Joe Hill: dad can i talk to you for a second
King: not now joe daddy's hiring a hacker
Gibson: [wildly slapping keyboard] i'll re-index the mega bit blaster cyber codex
Gibson: [wildly slapping keyboard] now we'll cybersecurity the lock box data center
King: hey what happens if you push that button?
Gibson: what the-- no!!
[klaxons sound]
King: what's that mean?
Gibson: shit
Gibson: we've got company
Gibson: sentient cyber virus electronic guard cyberbots
Gibson: real high tech
Gibson: state of the art in bio-tech wetware neural-data scrapers
Gibson: [putting on sunglasses with red laser scope] and they ain't friendly
King: what are we going to do?!
Gibson: kid, you keep your hands to yourself unless you wanna become roadkill on the information super highway!!!
Gibson: hold on to your CPU (central processing unit)!!!
Gibson: [wildly slapping keyboard] gotta reconfigure the darkweb logistics for ethernet wavetech
Gibson: [wildly slapping keyboard] upload the memory downloader for dumpware backup
Gibson: [wildly slapping keyboard] uncodify the cyberpatch modifer aaaaand
Gibson: i'm in
King: wow, you hacked twitter?? how did you do it?
Gibson: the greatest hackers never reveal their secrets
[earlier]
Gibson: [wearing fake mustache] hey elon its me catturd
Gibson: could you give me your password?
Elon Musk: sure it's "picklerick420"!
The Worst of All Possible Worlds #110: William Gibson's Neuromancer
Hacktivist/irl tiny kitten maia arson crimew (maia.crimew.gay / @nyancrimew) returns to discuss Neuromancer, the 1984 sci-fi novel that coined the term “cyberspace” and inspired a generation of hackers. Topics include breasting boobily up and down stairs, the parallels with 1995's Hackers, and how impressively William Gibson manages to capture the feeling of being perpetually on the run.
The Terror, s1e9; "The C, The C, The Open C"
José de Ribera; The Head of Saint John the Baptist
Guido Reni; Ecce Homo
The Terror, s1e4; "Punished, As A Boy"
Honestly, the thing about the stolen RAM chips might be one of my favourite little details in Neuromancer, because it's both the most obviously ridiculous detail to modern audiences, and practically the only thing about computers the text actually gets right. Prior to the price crash of 1996, RAM genuinely was the most expensive component of a desktop computer – like, by an order of magnitude. There really was a thriving black market in stolen RAM chips. This was literally the one thing William Gibson actually knew about computers, and now it's one of the silliest lines in the whole book.
older oil pastel & crayon anxiety stuff on newsprint. penny-a-sheet my beloved.
quotes are from William Gibson's 'A Season in Heaven: Being the Log of an Expedition After That Legendary Beast, Cosmic Consciousness' (1974) & Margaret Atwood's 'Speeches for Dr. Frankenstein," (2012) respectively.