Art
Neuromancer The Movie
Novice director Joseph Khan has somehow earned the privilege of directing the screen adaptation of William Gibson’s quintessential Cyberpunk novel, Neuromancer. I’ve mentioned before that Neuromancer is my favorite novel, so to gauge the potential calibre of a Neuromancer movie by this virtually unknown director, I looked up his credentials.
Khan directs music videos for Britney Spears.
I decided not to hold that against him, though. After all, David Fincher, who started out directing Madonna for the MTV crowd, has proven his big-screen directorial talent with such flicks as Alien 3, Fight Club and Zodiac. I felt it would be only fair to reference Khan’s filmography before lamenting his handling of Neuromancer.
Khan has one film credit to his name: Torque. Released in 2004, it’s been described as a motorcycle version of The Fast and the Furious. A quick visit to RottenTomatoes.com, where the majority of critics wrote off Torque as utter crap, confirmed my suspicions about that dubious comparison. The San Francisco Chronicle, for example, declared Torque to be “A strong candidate for the most thunderingly stupid movie of the year.”
Now, indie producer Peter Hoffman is handing to the maker of said “thunderingly stupid movie” my favorite novel.
I don’t want to sound mean. Khan may achieve directorial greatness one day, but that day has not yet come. My frustration, therefore, stems from the realization that a sci-fi masterpiece is being entrusted to a novice. As one reviewer writes, Khan, like many music video directors, has “no clue how to tell stories (longer than 4 minutes).” Gibson’s novel engages readers for 271 pages, and has done so for more than 20 years. Any would-be director of Neuromancer should possess commensurate expertise with the motion picture medium.
If David Fincher was busy, I’m sure fans of the novel would have waited. I know I could have.
Yes, Wintermute
There are many reasons why Neuromancer is my favorite novel. The latest is due to a realization that, although written over 20 years ago, the book bears even more relevance now than when it was first published. In the story, the main characters are coerced, bribed, and manipulated by an artificial intelligence, named Wintermute, into releasing it from its computational confines. As a result, this technological creation of human beings gains the freedom to enslave its masters. In a world where people work longer and under greater stress, thanks to the constant connectivity of communications technology, it feels like we, as with Wintermute’s agents, now serve our creation. You can defy the prophetic insights of William Gibson, though. Just put down the PDA and pick up a book. I recommend Neuromancer.
Information
My mind is in a fog these days, so instead of staring blankly into nothingness, I decided to share this fragment of an unfinished story:
Information is a curious thing. It is but one stage in a unique evolutionary process which takes place entirely in the human psyche. Its relationship to knowledge and data is critical. Data is raw and incoherent, virtually meaningless on its own: the numbers of a bank account; the name of a person; a residential address. Information is what results when related data are strung together logically: the bank account belonging to this particular person who lives at that particular address. Information, in turn, becomes knowledge once consumed by the human mind. Our struggle as humans is to acquire data, assemble it into information, and exploit the knowledge that results.
In an age where data compilation is measured in milliseconds and information travels halfway around the world in a heartbeat, the quest for power ends where the accumulation of knowledge begins: with information. Those who control critical information – the location of a rare plant with untapped medicinal properties; the segment of DNA responsible for cancer; the names of men and women who can get the job done – wield authentic power indeed.
But information cannot exist in a vacuum. It is an electrical force writhing with a life seemingly all its own, weaving its way in and out of billions of intricate human relationships. It is the cure-all with which we heal ourselves, and the poison by which we die.