1984: The way we were

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Featured image, Bogong Magazine 1984

   Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony,  14 December 2016

1984: The way we were and the way we are now

It is 1984. I am just shy of 19, Reagan is about to be re-elected in the US, Thatcher is administering the UK, and our new prime minister, Bob Hawke, along with his treasurer, Paul Keating, is planning his own quiet revolution in Australia.
Christos Tsiolkas The Monthly December 2016 — January 2017

Preamble

1984 was the beginnings of the personal computer revolution. Apple’s 1984 advertisement at the superbowl was impudent but memorable. William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer seemed to show the way the future was going, at least to SciFi buffs. And, those of us interested in technology and societal change seemed to feel that we had a sort of handle on the future, we were excited by accelerating change and the ‘so called’ transition to post-industrialism.

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Classic SciFi 5: William Gibson’s Art of Prophecy

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   Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony,  10 June 2016

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Introduction

The articles Classic Scifi 4: William Gibson Neuromancer 1984 and The Art of Prophesy & William Gibson provide a necessary background. The articles to follow on Count Zero 1986 and Mona Lisa Overdrive 1988 will complete the series.

I introduced the Guardian article by Ed Cumming published in 2014 on Neuromancer’s 30th birthday and discussed it a little in the Further information section of Classic Scifi 4: William Gibson Neuromancer.

Cumming’s begins with the truism:

Prescience can be tedious for science-fiction writers. Being proven right about a piece of technology or a trend distracts from the main aim of the work: to show us how we live now.  William Gibson knows this as well as anyone. Since the late 70s, the American-born novelist has been pulling at the loose threads of our culture to imagine what will come out. He has been right about a great deal, but mainly about the shape of the internet and how it filters down to the lowest strata of society.