![]() ![]() Thankfully, science fiction writer William Gibson has never been one for making that error. ![]() The future is messy, and anyone who strives to predict it cleanly is selling short the strangeness of reality. You just know that, even if we did create a SkyNet tomorrow, there would still be bitter political in-fighting among all the humans trying to save themselves from it. Technology hasn’t given us SkyNet so much as the mediocrity of social media as an eroding force in our democracies, as in our economies. The idea of collective human resistance against external foes is a bit quaint today, though. In the middle of the Cold War, amid fears of human beings impulsively pressing buttons to set off a nuclear winter, how could that not be at least somewhat cheering? The idea that something else might be responsible for our ruin, for once? ![]() Gritty, darkly lit, with text grimly informing us that this was the city of Los Angeles in 2029, it showed us tank treads crushing human skulls beneath a machine-dominated gray skyline, with lasers and explosions marking humanity’s struggle against a cruel external force. In some ways, the opening scene of The Terminator (1984) had to have come as a relief to its first audiences. Amazon's take on The Peripheral is an easy viewing experience that lacks the express messiness of the future depicted in Gibson's source text-and with it, the point Reading Time: 6 minutes ![]()
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