Original artwork, not a still
The future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed.
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
The future does not arrive everywhere at once: some people already live in it while others wait years for it. Gibson was describing the present, not predicting, and the idea fits his fiction, where high tech sits beside street-level poverty. Tech talks and strategy decks use it constantly, usually to point at something that is old news in one place and unknown in another.
Context reviewed
In context
May contain spoilersShow the scene
William Gibson never pinned this line to one text. The earliest recorded use Quote Investigator found is Gibson speaking in the 1990 documentary Cyberpunk, and a San Francisco Examiner piece by Scott Rosenberg quoted a version in April 1992 as "The future has arrived, it's just not evenly distributed yet." He repeated it in interviews, including an NPR conversation in 1999, each time with slightly different wording. Management writer Peter Drucker had published a similar idea, that the futures had already happened, in the Economist in 1989.
Sources (2)
- Quote Investigator: The Future Has ArrivedBibliographic notes: 1990 Cyberpunk documentary, 1992 Examiner, 1999 NPRReference checked
- Wikiquote: William GibsonPage lead captionReference checked
Context reviewed
