Abstract

For more than thirty years, through three series of futurist works, the “Sprawl,” “Bridge,” and “Blue Ant” trilogies, Gibson has substantively contributed to a collective, popular revisioning of ourselves as social, cultural, political, and technological beings. Whether by prognostication or invention, this writer anticipated both the internet and the World Wide Web through his “cyperpunk” figures of “cyberspace.” The intrigues of data smuggling, information piracy, information liberation, and the world of hackers that we now see expressed through Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and other digital Robin Hood figures formed the plots of Gibson’s early “Sprawl” and “Bridge” series of novels, while speculations on the morphology of personal and collective, cognitive cultures informed the plotlines of his post 9-11, “Blue Ant” series.