It is fairly widely known that William Gibson coined the term “cyberspace” to describe a multi-user virtual world contained within computer networks.
It is less widely known that the concept of such a world was not Gibson’s but that of another author, Vernor Vinge, whose short story “True Names” introduced readers to multiplayer online worlds where one could assume outsized identities and wreak havoc in the real world.
The idea of a technological singularity, a moment when mankind’s computational and connection capacity reaches a tipping point at which everyone could become one with their processors and one another, achieving a new kind of consciousness which we literally cannot imagine from this side, is not new today.
It was shockingly new when Vinge introduced it as a plot point in his novel “Marooned in Realtime.”
Vinge is not often cited among the giants and Masters of science fiction, and perhaps that is appropriate. Old Masters like Heinlein, Asimov, and Dick gave us pictures of the what the world might have become. Vinge, while he was really just another speculative author playing with trends he saw moving in the world, turned out to be so prescient that his he didn’t write a world that might have been, he wrote a good bit of the one we’re having to live through right now.
Everything from augmented reality to hacker gangs to space lasers (religious affiliation unknown) ready to blaze California can be found in a just one Vinge story. Conventional armored divisions against VR-helmeted drone pilots was just something he used to move a story along.
Put simply, while others imagined possible futures, Vinge laid out the present-to-be in impressive detail, most often because he needed something that looked like that to further his plot idea.
Whether prophecy or luck, Vernor Vinge’s future turned out to be more like ours than almost anyone in his field has created, a feat made more remarkable by his limited output, compared to many of his peers.
Vernor Vinge passed away last week in La Jolla, California. The world he predicted goes on. Respect.
“Lo Tech Don't Mean No Tech.”
