Nueromancer and The Body

Gibson deploys the body as a item ready and able for technical logical modifications. It is not a stagnant item that is wholly natural but something that can last for many years with the right technical upgrades. In some cases, the body is not necessary for a sustained life as the brain can be uploaded on to a computer and a person’s mind can live endlessly.

This is similar to many current day modifications such as plastic surgeries that make people look younger, organ transplants, and medications available to sustain life. When the natural body has a heart of liver failure, we are now able to replace these organs and sustain peoples’ lives much longer than ever previously possible. The same is true for vision impairment—we can conduct eye surgeries—bone and joint problems—screws and metal can be added—or hearing impairments—we have hearing aids. While we haven’t figured out a way to look young forever, there are many surgical procedures that we can conduct to tighten people’s skin and create this effect in a semi-permanent way.

Aside from surgical procedures, we have come up with thousands of vitamins and medications to thin blood, strengthen immune systems, and do everything else in between to sustain our lives. While people used to just get old and die, now, in the west, with all of our medical technology, people are living to 90, 100 and 100 + years of age.

While we have not come up with a way to directly upload our whole, thinking brains onto computers, we have come up with ways of preserving our greatest thoughts and ideas by storing important information on data bases both in print and electrical. In many ways, his work does have an eerie feeling of prophesy within it, which to me, at least, is a scary thought. The presentation of Gibson’s work may be categorized as science fiction but in many respects, it feels like its is more science reality that he writes about.