neologic spasm

William Ford Gibson
 

William Gibson‘s comment on academia’s appropriation of the word “cyberspace”:
 

Just a chance operator in the gasoline crack of history …
 
  Assembled word cyberspace from small and readily available components of language. Neologic spasm: the primal act of pop poetics. Preceded any concept whatever. Slick and hollow—awaiting received meaning
 
  All I did: folded words as taught. Now other words accrete in the interstices.
 
  “Gentlemen, that is not now nor will it ever be my concern …”
 
  Not what i do.
 
  I work the angle of transit. Vectors of neon plaza, licensed consumers, acts primal and undreamed of … (↵Gibson 1991: 27)

In the same short text I found proof that Gibson indeed makes use of Burroughs’ cut-up-and-paste method ;-), as there is a whole paragraph stemming from Rocket Radio (↵Gibson 1989), containing the eternal sentence “The Street finds its own uses for things—uses the manufacturers never imagined.” (↵Gibson 1991: 29).

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