Speaking before a standing-room-only crowd at Stacey's Bookstore in San Francisco on Wednesday, William Gibson, the man generally credited with coining the term "cyberspace" in 1982, said the prefix cyber is going away. He said "it's going away like the word 'electro' or 'electra' was used to modify products." He also said the word "digital" is rapidly becoming obsolete as well.
Gibson is on tour for his new, present-day novel Spook Country. The book includes high-tech international terrorism among its many threaded plots. He also makes fun of the word cyberspace within the book, having a French character pronounce it "see-bare-espace."
Gibson is best known for writing Neuromancer (1984) and his most recent bestseller Pattern Recognition (2003).
"Bree" is no more.
In the "season finale" of the Web series "Lonelygirl15," which was broadcast in a well-publicized event on Friday on the MySpaceTV platform, the cute teenage protagonist met her death at the hands of a religious cult's sacrifice. A dramatic, soap-opera worthy exit indeed--especially considering that Lonelygirl15's videos were mundane enough at first to fool scores of viewers into thinking they were the real Webcam diaries of a flesh-and-blood teenager.
Lonelygirl15 was exposed as an actress last September, but the video series continued and grew increasingly elaborate. Leading lady Jessica Rose, 20, has since gone on to several movie roles and a regular spot on the ABC Family Channel sitcom Greek, but had continued to play Bree in the meantime.
The video series was occasionally maligned for being cheesy and melodramatic, but at the same time, the production team's tactics--guerrilla filming style, use of multiple platforms and social-networking sites, and interaction with a highly engaged viewer community--was also hailed as an influential step in the evolution of Internet video fiction. Unfortunately for the team behind Lonelygirl15, it may be somewhat telling that most people seem to have learned about Bree's death from blog posts on Monday--it didn't exactly create an online uproar outside of the series' loyal viewer community (some of whom refer to it as "Lonelycrack" on the official Web site). But even though Bree's out, it's apparently not the end of Lonelygirl. A British spinoff, "KateModern," has already started, and there's a chance that future Lonelygirls may appear as well. The final episode, after all, alluded to more young girls being pursued by the same cult. We've e-mailed representatives from the series' small production company and will update this post if they comment.
Fake Steve Jobs unmasked, and now this? What a weekend.
UPDATE (7:34 PM PT): A correction was made to this post. Greek is on ABC Family, not the Disney Channel.
I was reading an article the other day that mentioned Neal Stephenson's ground-breaking novel, Snow Crash, and I started thinking that surely, a lot of science fiction has at least partially inspired some of the technology we use every day.
Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash inspired 3D virtual worlds
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)So I got to the office and started researching sci-fi that had a hand in future technology or science. And, sure enough. There's a ton of it.
The result? My package, The sci-fi effect on high tech, which ran on CNET News.com on Friday.
In the package, I discuss the technology inspired by Snow Crash, as well as William Gibson's Neuromancer, Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Minority Report, and several others.
But now, we want to hear from you. We'd love to hear other examples of great sci-fi that inspired technology or science or other innovation. So please post your ideas into TalkBack. And please, know when you do that I didn't omit your favorite example because I don't care. We had a limited amount of space, and besides, I wanted to give you the chance to speak up yourself.
Trekkies rejoice (or beware): The rumors are getting stronger that New York-based blog network Gawker Media will be launching a science fiction themed title in the near future, and we're hearing that Wired blogger and freelance writer Annalee Newitz has been chosen for the top post at the new blog. The original rumor, as reported last week by the Huffington Post hinted that Gawker Media had nabbed a writer for its new, yet-to-be-named blog from Wired; a source confirmed to CNET News.com that the title will indeed be launching soon and that an editor has been hired.
A separate person familiar with the hire told us that the editor in question is longtime tech writer Newitz, currently a freelancer at the Wired.com Table of Malcontents geek-subculture blog. Newitz is also a columnist for AlterNet and runs her own blog, Techsploitation.
Annalee Newitz, Gawker's latest scoop?
(Credit: techsploitation.com)Additionally, the Wired blog that Newitz has been writing for will soon be no more. On Monday, Table of Malcontents confirmed "dark murmurs" that it would be shutting down on June 30. Editor John Brownlee attempted to reassure readers by saying that he and contributor Eliza Gauger would be "very likely to have at least one new blog for you to visit come June 30th" and that fellow contributors Newitz and Lisa Katayama would continue to blog for Wired's "Underwire" pop-culture blog.
Wired News is discontinuing several blogs, including iTable of Malcontents and another called Listening Post. Underwire, a digital music and media blog, will absorb most of the writers who were working on the closed blogs in an effort to consolidate resources. The site will now have 12 blogs, down from 16 in February.
"Fewer titles with more writers is the new strategy," said Wired News Editor Evan Hansen.
There have been personnel connections between Table of Malcontents and Gawker Media blogs in the past. Brownlee contributed to Gawker Media's Consumerist blog before leaving in October 2006 to helm the then-new Table of Malcontents. Contributor Lisa Katayama also has contributed in the past to Gawker's Gizmodo title as a freelancer.
In effort to broaden its thinking about terrorist attacks, the Department of Homeland Security is tapping into the thinking of a group of science fiction authors called Sigma, according to USA Today.
"We need to look everywhere for ideas, and science fiction writers clearly inform the debate," said department spokesman Christopher Kelly.
Science fiction authors are often prone to flights of extreme fancy, but they can be good prognosticators. Indeed, in the novel Footfall, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, the government assembles a group of science fiction writers to seek their counsel about an alien invasion. Pournelle and Niven are in the group.
According to USA Today, author Greg Bear said the group brainstorms about methods of attack and prevention as well as the governmental and social responses to attacks.
Sigma's motto is "science fiction in the national interest," and authors must have a doctorate in a technical field to join.
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