Kevin Kelly

October 19, 2007

To be honest, while I am a huge fan of William Gibson, I don’t read much of him. Don’t read much fiction in general. But every conversation I have had with Gibson, and every time I have heard him speak, or read an interview with him, I have come away amazed and giddy. He’s among the best conversationalists I have ever met. He tosses off insights the ways others toss off curses. I just caught up to a good one in a rave interview with him by Joel Garreau in the Washington Post. Gibson said:

“I saw an older gentleman walking down the street in San Francisco last week,” Gibson says, “and he was like majorly Bluetoothed and rigged for very high connectivity and I thought, that’s what we’re all going to look like. The geezer of the future will have more plugs and jacks — will be more into that, probably, than younger people — because he’ll need it.”

I like that image: that out of geriatric need the baby boomers may be more jacked in than the young. Hip replacements, hearing aids, and 24/7 embedded online connection. And half of what the geezers (that’ll be all of us soon) are talking about will be our health.