I just watched No Maps for these Territories: a documentary about William Gibson. I was expecting to like it — I’m a big fan of Gibson, especially of Pattern Recognition — and I did. But the visuals, I thought, were trying too hard to add an additional layer of meaning to what Gibson was saying, when there was more than enough packed into the words.
The Salon review is interesting. The reviewer reveals that an interview he did with Gibson in 1993 was the first piece that he ever composed digitally.
The subject line? Well, the documentary came out in 2001, pre-9/11. It was filmed in the late nineties. Web 1.0. And while there’s mention of the dizzying pace of modern life, and how things are different now than they’ve ever been, you notice as you watch: that now is gone.