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  • From: Sil Greene <Sil_greene AT unc.edu>
  • To: "Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/" <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] Email from beyond the grave
  • Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 11:54:49 -0500 (EST)


.:> I can't remember if it was "Neuromancer" or "Mona Lisa Overdrive" but one
.:> of William Gibson's stories has a character, ...I have this image of a
dude
.:> being carried around on a stretcher with a car battery powering a
computer
.:> he's connected to that's online, "jacked in to cyberspace."
.:> I think he was still alive. That character was, but there was another
.:> character that had died, but was still online.
.:
.:It was Neuromancer. The character was Dixie Flatline, who got his name
.:from being fried by anti-intrusion software while jacked in and cracking
.:into someplace he wasn't wanted. I have longed for such software myself
.:ever since I started getting spam, back in 1995.

Dixie was the another-character-that-died-but-was-still-online. His mind
was recorded before his death, and the resulting recording ("construct"
was the term Gibson used) could be accessed for advice, or to do tasks in
cyberspace, or whatever. An expert system built on the memories of the
expert. (And this was in Neuromancer -- tho another Neuromancer
character, the Finn, appeared as a construct in Mona Lisa Overdrive.)

The dude on the stretcher appeared in Mona Lisa Overdrive, and was indeed
alive. He was Count Zero, title character of the second book. He wasn't
jacked into _the_ cyberspace, but something more like his own private
cyberspace, in a device called an 'aleph' that was mounted on the
stretcher.

--sil

--
"If you put your supper dish to your ears you can hear the sounds
of a restaurant." --Snoopy (Charles Schultz 02-12-2000 RIP)
Sil_Greene AT unc.edu





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