Hacker Cinema
No Maps for These Territories
2000 · Film · documentary · 89 min
Directed by Mark Neale
On an overcast morning in 1999, William Gibson, father of cyberpunk and author of the cult-classic novel Neuromancer, stepped into a limousine and set off on a road trip around North America. The limo was rigged with digital cameras, a computer, a television, a stereo, and a cell phone. Generated entirely by this four-wheeled media machine, No Maps for These Territories is both an account of Gibson’s life and work and a commentary on the world outside the car windows. Here, the man who coined the word "cyberspace" offers a unique perspective on Western culture at the edge of the new millennium, and in the throes of convulsive, tech-driven change.
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7 comments on Hacker News
The indie documentary https://wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Maps_for_These_Territories
has 3 main themes: 1) Gibson talking about Americana because he had a captive audience (the director) who promised to listen. 2) Gibson being self-deprecating because he promised the director he’d answer questions about himself. 3) Lots of other writers explaining what an experience it was to read Neuromancer when it first came out.
Surely you have already seen it, but for anyone else that finds this interesting there is "No Maps for These Territories". A close to 25 year old documentary with Gibson talking that is still enjoyable. Can be found on The Internet Archive and YouTube.
Another bit of recommended Gibson ephemera, if you haven't seen it already, is the documentary No Maps for these Territories[1], which certainly had lots of biographical details I didn't know about.
1: https://archive.org/details/NoMapsForTheseTerritories
I’ll plug the Gibson documentary No Maps for These Territories. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Maps_for_These_Territories
Gibson is very self-deprecating throughout. He attributes people’s favorite aspects of the Neuromancer to work-arounds he used to cover his inexperience as an author. Meanwhile, the film interleaves interviews with other sci-fi authors who has early access to the book. They all knew the book was something new and special immediately.
God damn. I don't think I've ever disagreed with William Gibson.
This documentary from 2003 (really a long-ish interview) was pretty interesting as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Maps_for_These_Territories
There's also the William Gibson documentary, No Maps for These Territories. It's very conversational, actually mostly just him talking. You can find it on Youtube.
William Gibson gives an interesting perspective on this sort of world view in the documentary "No Maps For These Territories":
"I think what I'm most aware of is the extent to which people are unaware of the extent to which they've been penetrated and co-opted by their technology. I mean, I take it for granted that I've been, but I think a lot of people today have this sort of Rousseau-esque idea that it's possible for humans to return to the natural state. But in fact I think that it's not, and if it were, they really wouldn't like it.
I mean, I'm immune to a number of really terrible diseases, because I was inoculated against them as a child - that's technology.
I'm a male human in my 50's and I still have most of my teeth - that's technology.
I'm myopic, to the point of near blindness, and yet I can see - that's technology.
It's too close to us to be very aware of it, if we could be stripped of it - which we can't be, because it's actually altered our physical being, we'd be pretty unhappy; and we'd start dying big time!"