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From: brothers@paul.rutgers.edu.UUCP
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: authors' real knowledge of CS
Message-ID: <1717@who.rutgers.edu>
Date: Sat, 17-Oct-87 13:15:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: who.1717
Posted: Sat Oct 17 13:15:31 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 19-Oct-87 04:37:55 EDT
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Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
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Unfortunately, most of the writers who DO know about computers are
really not such good writers (Vernor Vinge, Jerry Pornelle, for
example)*. Oh, they're competent at connecting sentences, but not in
Gibson's class. Hogan, BTW, as I recall, was a DEC salesman. Not to
detract from his abilities, but we all know computer salesman, right?

I didn't really find Neuromancer and Count Zero's use of computers
that far-fetched. Of course AI today has very little to do
with intelligent machines, but if there WERE intelligent machines,
no doubt we would call them AI's. Whether or not Gibson really
has deep knowledge of computers, I found it laudable that he has
obviously done a lot of research on his own into random bits
of esoterica such as the history of net.


*"Raise the flame-retardant shields, Mr. Spock."
-- 
			 Laurence R. Brothers
		      brothers@paul.rutgers.edu
            {anywhere}!rutgers!paul.rutgers.edu!brothers
         "...and I don't know why I'm here, or how I came..."