The Gibson aesthetic. 10 years from now, today.

“10 years from now”. Taken on February 11, 2006 somewhere in lower Manhattan by the author. This photo played well with his professor at The School of Visuals Arts in NYC during the his brief and not particularly remarkable tenure at the college. He left SVA when he began a career in advertising.

Fly out for 30 minutes, get back in 10

In the early 2000s I took some time and went to Europe with two friends. College wasn’t going well and the prospect of not being around that misery was appealing. We first flew from Chicago to the London Gatwick airport without incident.

Then we took our next flight, from London to Barcelona. 30 minutes after takeoff the pilot of our discount airline announced that we had “ingested a bird” and we would be turning around. We made it back to London 10 minutes later greeted by tens of firetrucks on the runway. It was a spectacle.

Being underfunded and unprepared to deal with the news that “the next flight is in two days” we needed a plan. First we tried heading into the city to explore. I don’t remember how much it was to take a train to the city, but it felt like all the money in the world.

We realized our only hope for continuing the trip was to live in the Gatwick airport. I bought a book, drank earl grey with cream, and explored the mostly empty airport without interruption. The book I bought was William Gibson’s “Pattern recognition”.

In the book, Cayce Pollard is something of a marketer. She’s allergic to bad brand design and messaging— physically allergic. She consults with organizations as they develop branding and her reaction results in the life or death of a concept. At the time I was totally unfamiliar with advertising, marketing, and branding. It would later consume my days as a career.

Photo by the author. 48 hours in an airport

“After dinner with some Blue Ant employees, the company founder Hubertus Bigend offers Cayce a new contract: to uncover who is responsible for distributing a series of anonymous, artistic film clips via the internet.”

The plot of the book is a remarkably interesting mystery, but the aesthetic it generated in my head stuck with me more.

Cayce wears clothing without branding- she rejects the very thing she works to validate. She only wears shades of black and grey. Another character refers to her possessions as “CPUs” — Cayce Pollard Units. She defines a very specific way of thinking, one I still hold onto today. She defines what I have come to think of as the “Gibson aesthetic”.

Into the future, 10 years back.

The metaverse, today. These are screen stills from my workstation running 3D games at resolutions and framerates that make it feel like reality. Team this up with an oculus and you are in the metaverse.

If Pattern Recognition was the gateway drug, “Snowcrash” by Neal Stephenson went straight to the real shit. It had come out roughly 10 years prior, and if you are looking for a crystal ball to view into the future— you found it.

Crypto

“People increasingly began to use electronic currency which they exchanged in untaxable encrypted online transactions.”

Electronic currency, which is exchanged in encrypted online transactions. This was published in 1992. That is some pure futurism right there. If you still read “blockchain” and “crypto currency” as geeky sounding buzzwords you have a hazy understanding of — you need to do some homework. This technology is real now, and it’s aimed at solving the same problems predicted by Stephenson. If you regret not buying Bitcoin 10 years ago, imagine how you will feel 10 years from today.

Satoshi Nakamoto invented Bitcoin and built the first blockchain. I would consider it remarkable if Snowcrash wasn’t a part of the inspiration. Pay attention to this highly logical trajectory of human nature, trust, and currency.

Virtual reality and the computational needs to power it

“The Metaverse, a phrase coined by Stephenson as a successor to the Internet, constitutes Stephenson’s vision of how a virtual reality–based Internet might evolve in the near future. Resembling a massively multiplayer online game (MMO), the Metaverse is populated by user-controlled avatars as well as system daemons.”

I’m sitting here in front of a workstation I built. It doesn’t have any particularly extravagant components, but it’s able to digitally render alternate universes to such a degree that it consumes the imagination. None of the components of this machine seemed possible even a handful of years ago. The metaverse Stephenson described is becoming increasingly real. Unlike the attempts made in the 90s with VRML, it’s no longer a great idea without the backend tech required to make it happen.

Google sells an $8 cardboard box that you place your phone in that puts you right into the center of another reality. It’s the least impressive way to see this today, yet it’s deeply impressive.

Understanding the future is reading futurism

I’m a firm believer that art, science, and technology drive our cultural aesthetic— and to go a step further, I think they each define it with more significance than those who purport to direct fashion.

Aesthetic— the word — doesn’t capture this concept fully, but the name exists in my head as an imperfect, but playful use of the English language. This “aesthetic” not only predicts where things head— it actually makes them happen. It’s not so much a prediction, but an analysis and a blueprint of the future.

This way of thinking, this aesthetic, this futurism, exists for those who look for it. No one knows exactly how things will progress, but if you want some clues look no further than Gibson, Stephenson, and their peers.

It takes 30 minutes to fly out, but only 10 minutes to get back. And it takes just 48 hours in the Gatwick airport to adopt a new model for thought.

-Andy