Original artwork, not a still
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it.
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
Gibson says the internet's worth lies in its idleness, a rebuke to every productivity sermon about the net. Written when the Web was dial-up and pages loaded line by line, it reads now as a gentle prophecy about scrolling, forums and the way a medium wins by being a place rather than a tool. People quote it to defend lost evenings online, and as a reminder that the writer who named cyberspace never thought it would be efficient.
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In context
May contain spoilersShow the scene
The sentence is the title of an essay William Gibson wrote for The New York Times Magazine, published on 14 July 1996, when the World Wide Web was only a few years old. Gibson, who coined the word 'cyberspace' in his 1982 story 'Burning Chrome' and made it famous in the novel Neuromancer, was by then the genre's best-known voice on the net. The essay argues, as summarised by readers, that the early Web is a clumsy first stage of a bigger medium to come, and that wasting time on it is exactly its charm. He reprinted it in his 2012 collection Distrust That Particular Flavor.
Sources (3)
- William Gibson, Wikiquoteentry for the essay title (New York Times Magazine, 14 July 1996)Reference checked
- Gibson bibliography, Athabasca Universitynonfiction listing for 1996Reference checked
- William Gibson, Wikiquote (cyberspace)lead paragraphReference checked
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