Don’t you hate it when you can’t track down a citation? Amazon’s full text search of books shows that William Gibson’s Neuromancer certainly doesn’t contain the words “the street finds its own use for things” or any sentence, in fact, with the words street, use or uses and things in it. The line is all over the web, though, always attributed to Gibson, and usually to Neuromancer. Where it is not. And me, well, I like the line, which makes me think of Neuromancer, and I want to use it!

7 thoughts on “faulty attributions?

  1. derik

    Could be that Amazon’s search is less than reliable. I can’t believe Gibson didn’t use the word “street” at all in that book.

  2. Jill

    Oh, he used street a lot, just not close to “use” and “things”, that’s all 🙂

  3. Tama

    The quote is actually from an article Gibson wrote called “Academy Leader” in the collection Cyberspace: First Steps. Transcript here.

  4. Martin GL

    That’s from his second novel, too. Count Zero. I think it’s the scene where Turner is out in the desert, talking to the Asian doctor from the medical lab.

  5. Tama

    Martin GL is quite right: “The street tries to find its own uses for things, Mr. Turner.” (p. 69 of the Amazon link above). Since Count Zero came out first (1987), Gibson must have been quoting himself in the “Academy Leader” article. Of course, either would do nicely for a reference. 🙂

  6. Jill

    You guys are awesome! Thank you so much!!!

  7. Jose Angel

    There’s a nice connection between that sentence and Stephen Jay Gould’s notion of “exaptation” as an evolutionary principle (e.g. wings became an instrument for flight not by design but because of a collateral use). Although perhaps the connection is an instance of exaptation, too.

Leave a Reply to Jill Cancel reply

Recommended Posts

Triple book talk: Watch James Dobson, Jussi Parikka and me discuss our 2023 books

Thanks to everyone who came to the triple book talk of three recent books on machine vision by James Dobson, Jussi Parikka and me, and thanks for excellent questions. Several people have emailed to asked if we recorded it, and yes we did! Here you go! James and Jussi’s books […]

Image on a black background of a human hand holding a graphic showing the word AI with a blue circuit board pattern inside surrounded by blurred blue and yellow dots and a concentric circular blue design.
AI and algorithmic culture Machine Vision

Four visual registers for imaginaries of machine vision

I’m thrilled to announce another publication from our European Research Council (ERC)-funded research project on Machine Vision: Gabriele de Setaand Anya Shchetvina‘s paper analysing how Chinese AI companies visually present machine vision technologies. They find that the Chinese machine vision imaginary is global, blue and competitive.  De Seta, Gabriele, and Anya Shchetvina. “Imagining Machine […]

Do people flock to talks about ChatGPT because they are scared?

Whenever I give talks about ChatGPT and LLMs, whether to ninth graders, businesses or journalists, I meet people who are hungry for information, who really want to understand this new technology. I’ve interpreted this as interest and a need to understand – but yesterday, Eirik Solheim said that every time […]