Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Fully imagined cultural futures were the luxury of another day, one in which 'now' was of some greater duration.For us, of course, things can change so abruptly, so violently, so profoundly, that futures like our grandparents' have insufficient 'now' to stand on.We have no future because our present is too volatile. (William Gibson, Pattern Recognition)Homo sapiens is about pattern recognition… Both a gift and a trap.The opening quotes were written by William Gibson, a science fiction author and ingenious futurist thinker, who famously coined the term "cyberspace" and left an imprint on the imagination of generations.Gibson, in his entire literary corpus, especially in Pattern Recognition, 1 the 2003 novel from which these quotes are taken, expressed a vision that is proving increasingly apposite.It is the vision of a society where traditional modes of meaning-making are becoming disrupted and obsolete, and are being rapidly replaced by new ways of understanding the world, reaching decisions and operating.Contemporary changes are indeed profound, sudden, and in many ways violent.Over time, it seems that the Gibsonian vision captured the nature of humanity's virtual present, missed by utopian thinkers who predicted quite a different digital future.One of these early cyber-thinkers, John Perry Barlow, formulated a cyberutopian manifesto in 1996, naming it 'A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace'. 2 Barlow published the manifesto in response to early attempts by the
Source: Pólemos
Authors: Shulamit Almog, Gal Amir
Institution: University of Haifa
Language: English
Topic: Law in Society and Culture
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,712
OpenAlex ID: W4409068860