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http://smh.com.au/articles/2003/01/23/1042911483315.html
TopBlog
William Gibson
William Gibson only invented cyberspace, so the appearance of his very own
Weblog was sure to excite the digerati.
Gibson has a history of being something of a Luddite in practice, while
making accurate if somewhat dark predictions about the future. He once
wrote in Wired magazine that buying old watches on the eBay auction site
was his only reason for going online.
Now the author of Neuromancer (where the word "cyberspace" was first used
in print) and Snowcrash has his own little corner of the Web, where he
discusses much that will excite his fans.
For instance, there's the effect of drugs on his novels: "Yes, I did,
rather textually obviously, take some of those, most notably LSD of the old
(and I gather rather different) variety, though that now seems a lifetime
prior to the writing of Neuromancer. My drug of choice during the
composition of Neuromancer, for the record, was O'Keefe's Extra Old Stock
Lager..."
More relevant to the books themselves are his musings on style: "There may
well be people who abandon Neuromancer on the grounds that it's riddled
with sentence fragments, but, in a sense, the sentence fragments are there
to scare off readers who aren't ready for that, and to encourage those who
want to see the envelope of language pushed even further, the pedal taken
even closer to the metal."
Gibson is a writer before all else, and his blog doesn't shy away from that
experimental grammar - something of a relief after countless
spelling-doesn't-matter-online efforts by lesser mortals.
If you want that kind of thing, you can head over to the forum area to talk
to other readers about Gibson's novels and questions such as whether they
should be made into films, how new readers find their way to Gibson, the
quality of computer games based on his books.
Back on the blog, Gibson offers comments on the discussions like a
benevolent ruler watching over the masses, but says: "I regard my being me,
ultimately, as a sort of cosmic accident."
Blog this
Blogger
The first stop for many a young blogger, Blogger has just passed the "(to
be said in your best Dr. Evil voice...) 1 Million Registered Users" mark.
It acts as a one-stop shop, providing online blog editing via a simple
logon system, as well as a choice of a "blogspot.com" address or pointing
the blog to your own Web address.
When you update your Blogger blog, it appears ever so briefly on a list on
the site's heavily-trafficked front page.
The service is free, but BloggerPro is a beefed-up version for advanced
users or blogs that are part of a commercial enterprise.
Meme of the Week
The Mickey Mouse Act
When the US Supreme Court upheld a law extending copyright - the so-called
"Mickey Mouse act" - cyberspace rumbled with annoyance at the perceived
bias towards big corporations such as Disney over smaller potential users
of material.
By early this week a proposal that would move much non-commercial material
into the free public domain was being touted by Stanford University law
professor Lawrence Lessig, who was lead lawyer on the Supreme Court case.
Lawrence Lessig: cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/blog/
Sources: daypop.com, blogdex.media.mit.edu/.
http://smh.com.au/articles/2003/01/23/1042911483315.html
Neal I wrote to the reporter ...
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Neil Stephenson
wrote 'Snowcrash.' not Gibson.
"The white man knows how to make everything,
but he does not know how to distribute it."� Sitting Bull
