John M. Ford Quotes

When my generation grew up, our only sources of knowledge were books, teachers, parents and friends. The encyclopedia was an item of luxury. We faced big limits in what we could learn, where we could be and who we could reach.

Look, I live in the modern world as much as anyone else.

I was standing on the shoulders of other science fiction writers like William Gibson, who had written 'Neuromancer' on a typewriter before home computers even really existed, and Neal Stephenson who wrote 'Snow Crash' in the early '90s and imagined an online virtual world before the birth of the modern Internet.

I've always been very fascinated by technology - the Internet, social media.

There seems to be no limit to the exciting possibilities that come from combining technical innovations, the Internet, and social media.

I don't think many people anticipated how the Internet was going to revolutionize the way we disseminate information.

'Cyberspace' as a term is sort of over. It's over in the way that, after a certain time, people stopped using the suffix '-electro' to make things cool, because everything was electrical. 'Electro' was all over the early 20th century, and now it's gone. I think 'cyber' is sort of the same way.

I do all my shopping on the Web. I do much of my research online. I have a blog, too. It is definitely a distraction. It is definitely a blessing. What blessing isn't a distraction, though?

In this age of media and Internet access, we are much more talkative than ever before.

It was not until the appearance of cyberpunk in the 1980s that SF began to grapple in a broadly meaningful way with the reality of computers as something other than giant mainframes tended by crewcut IBM nerds.

I almost feel like we do live in a world like 'Caprica.' The fact that it's so close to home is why it appeals to me so much. You're making statements about what's going on right now. You take Facebook and Wii and add it together, and that's what the virtual world in 'Caprica' is.

I came out of a culture when there wasn't tweeting and everyone with a camera in their hands. I didn't grow up with it, so I'm not always thinking about it, but there have been times when I looked over, and I saw that someone was recording my conversation.

The digital revolution is far more significant than the invention of writing or even of printing.

My muse is the digital world.

The future is electronic. It's radio, television and the Internet; it's not really newspapers anymore.

In America, everyone writes but no one reads. Everyone's writing all day long - sending emails, tweets, text messages; they all think they're James Cameron's Avatar, performing in some video game for which they make up the script.

There is a great deal of cyberpunk that I admire, especially the work of William Gibson which I think is excellent. Somehow he speaks from his own heart and cyber punk is what comes out.

The more we elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.

And I'm sure after Facebook it will be the little cameras that we have implanted into the palms of our hands and we'll be debating whether we should get them, and then we'll all get them.

I had a book of essays out in 1997 in which I talked about the increasing virtuality of our lives. I've always been afraid of that in my own life.

I know when I grew up, it was, if it was daylight outside, get outside. Well, now, with the technological age of computers and everything, everyone's inside virtually going everywhere they want to go, virtually having relationships, virtually traveling across the neighborhood, virtually going to that island.

I like having my cellphone. I like the Internet. I like being different.

Oh, I'm online all the time now. I'm not an outdoorsy type.

Characters written in 1990 would be acting like idiots if they were cast into the present. For example, the reader might wonder: Why isn't she texting? Where's her cellphone? Can't she have a simple paternity test? For God's sake, look on the Internet and check him out!

I think the future stopped looking American when you think back to Blade Runner and Neuromancer, when it started to look more Japanese.