Technology in Neuromancer

“You have time to do what I'm hiring you for, Case, but that's all. Do the job and I can inject you with an enzyme that will dissolve the bond without opening the sacs. Then you'll need a blood change. Otherwise, the sacs melt and you're back where I found you.” (Gibson 46).

“They all seemed to have carbon sockets planted behind the left ear, but she didn't focus on them. The counters that fronted the booths displayed hundreds of slivers of microsoft, angular fragments of colored silicon mounted under oblong transparent bubbles on squares of white card- board. Molly went to the seventh booth along the south wall. Behind the counter a boy with a shaven head stared vacantly into space, a dozen spikes of microsoft protruding from the socket behind his ear.” (Gibson 57).

After thinking about all the technology that is incorporated in the novel it was interesting to find that Gibson for the most part casts a negative shadow on the technology. Or at least he shows that although it may be beneficial there are downsides as well. The first quotation is during a scene following Cases surgery. In this case the surgery was a good this because it did save Case’s life however Armitage puts toxic sacs in Case’s system, which obviously demonstrates how easily technology can be used for ‘evil’ purposes in a futuristic setting. The second quote talks about microsofts in Neuromancer. In Neuromancer the people have slits behind their ears where they can insert chips that can give them abilities that would otherwise take hours upon hours to master. Once again this can be viewed as a good and bad thing. Good in the sense that people can gain new skills without having to put in the hours of practice, but bad in an ambiguous fashion because if anybody could say learn fly a plane then that takes away from the personality of someone who has worked hard and has had the passion to fly plane. This is just one example but in essence microsofts take away the ‘unique-factor’ that make us who we are.

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