William Gibson: Tech drives all change

Even renowned science fiction author William Gibson has given up guessing what the future looks like - for now at least.

The novelist is famous for inventing the word 'cyberspace' and predicting the implications of the networked world long before it became a reality. But his latest book Spook Country is set in the present (in fact, the near past) rather than the far-flung future.

In an exclusive interview with silicon.com, Gibson said: "The trouble is there are enough crazy factors and wild cards on the table now that I can't convince myself of where a future might be in 10 to 15 years."

William Gibson talks tech...

"I think that, generally speaking, technologies are morally neutral until humans beings pick them up and use them for something."

Click here to read the full Q&A

Gibson has been exploring the relationship between technology and society ever since his influential novel Neuromancer in 1984.

He told silicon.com: "Most societal change now is technologically driven, so there's no way to look at where the human universe is going without looking at the effect of emergent technology. There's not really anything else driving change in the world I believe."

But he added: "All of the big changes that emergent technologies bring us are, for the most part, completely unanticipated by the people that introduce those technologies. It's out of control by its very nature and if you could control it, it wouldn't work."

Follow the link to read the full interview in which he talks about where Neuromancer went wrong, why he's not a Luddite or a technophile, corporate futurism... and spotting escapees from Second Life.