NPR

Artists And Criminals: On The Cutting Edge Of Tech

Sci-fi authors like William Gibson foresaw what the Internet would bring. Inspired by their visions, NPR's Laura Sydell set out to see what artists and criminals think about and do with technology.
Sci-fi writer William Gibson says the best way to imagine new technologies and how they could affect society is not through current expertise but by talking to "either artists or criminals."

Like a lot of science fiction fans, I read William Gibson's visionary novel Neuromancer not long after it came out in 1984. It painted a dystopian world where people spent most of their time on computers communicating across networks in "cyberspace."

When I read it, I thought it was an engaging fantasy. Now, over 30 years later, the prescience of Gibson's novel is unquestionable. In the intervening years, I've wondered how he and other artists were

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