| In his classic cyberpunk novel Neuromancer,William Gibson depicts a picture of a futuristic world in which technology is well-developed and capital is highly globalized but cities and humans have been exposed to decay and disintegration.This era is experiencing the intense process of “time-space compression,” where the speed of capital turnover and human life keeps accelerating,where technology and capital jointly rule the world,and where virtual space and the physical world are fully integrated.One of the consequences of this compression is that human beings have completely lost their homes and started their journey to search for a home in fear of being rootless.Neuromancer presents the home consciousness in three aspects: firstly,the novel depicts the physical and spiritual homes that have collapsed in the process of spacetime compression.Secondly,the novel constructs a virtual home illusion-cyberspace-that is both “homely” and “unhomely”,the duality of which lies in the protagonist Case’s identification with cyberspace,and on the other hand,it is always a field of power game full of sensory stimulation.Thirdly,the novel explores two paths to reconstruct the home,the local community “Zion” returning to the rule of the elders and religious belief,or building a new homeland by unlocking the self-awareness of artificial intelligence to overturn the current power pattern of the world.By writing about the three aspects of home consciousness from the perspective of time-space compression,Gibson not only expresses his criticism of the rapid development of capitalism and technology and his concern that humans cannot adapt to such development so quickly but also expresses his optimism of a turnaround in the apocalypse. |
