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Neuromancer, the acclaimed novel from William Gibson published in the eerily appropriate year of 1984, stands as a precursor to not only so much popular speculative fiction which followed, everything from Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Holodeck concept to the virtual world of The Matrix, but in many ways postulates the technological ideas seen in plenty of real world concurrent developments, so many of which are taken for granted today, from virtual reality to immersive multi-player online games to ‘predictive’ financial and military database systems to the entire conceit of cyperspace (a term which Gibson first coined) itself. I’m certain countless authors and theorists have studied the book and its story top to bottom, connecting it with so many different science fictions and science realities, that to try to summarize all the potential connections here would be exhaustive. Instead, I hope to focus on artificial intelligence as a potential threat to humanity in this review, a question which lays at the center of the book. I also hope to connect that threat concept to the way cyberspace exists today as a human communications medium, and what potentials our future may hold.
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