Why did William Gibson said that net is just a waste of time?”
I coined the word “Cyberspace” in 1981 in one of my first science fiction stories and subsequently used it to describe something that people insist on seeing as a sort of literary forerunner of the Internet. This being so, some think it remarkable that I do not use E-mail. In all truth, I have avoided it because I am lazy and enjoy staring blanky into space (which is also the space where novels come from) and because unanswered mail, E- or otherwise, is a source of discomfort. But I have recently become an avid browser of the World Wide Web. Some people find this odd. My wife finds it positively perverse. I, however, scent big changes afoot, possibilities that were never quite as manifest in earlier incarnations of the Net. I was born in 1948. I can’t recall a world before television, but I know I must have experienced one. I do, dimly, recall the arrival of a piece of brown wooden furniture with sturdy Bakelite knobs and a screen no larger than the screen on this Powerbook. Initially
I believe you may be taking Gibson out of context just a bit. I believe he may feel that the Internet is a great tool but most people just use it to waste time and don’t take advantage of it properly. For most people being on the Internet is kind of like using their own brain – they only use about 1/10th of it. He probably meant that in the nicest way possible, and is more than likely echoing every parents wish that their children leave the dang computer alone for a change, go out and learn how to play ball, or take a hike, a real hike. Sometimes we get misquoted out of context.
