re-reading william gibson in bengaluru
"the sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel"
I was doing my usual thing of floating around the airport bookshop on the way out, when Neuromancer jumped out at me and I thought, why not? Let’s see how it meets the current moment of the just-starting-to-curdle “AI revolution”, and how it translates from Tokyo, The Sprawl and Freeside to modern-day Bengaluru (previously known as Bangalore).
So I landed without much in the way of an agenda, other than to do my customary flâneur routine (walk around a bunch of different neighbourhoods, eat and drink, take pictures, and get into the right kind of trouble).
Turns out Gibson is a very entertaining ride-along companion when exploring Bengaluru’s signature mixture of chaotic humanity, wide-eyed techno-optimism, and crumbling antiquity.
