{
  "type": "book",
  "site": {
    "name": "Leafy Quotes",
    "language": "en",
    "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com"
  },
  "formats": "Every page has two versions with the same data: JSON (the page address + .json) and markdown (the page address + .md). Append .json or .md to any `url` in this document.",
  "title": "Distrust that Particular Flavor",
  "slug": "distrust-that-particular-flavor",
  "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-gibson/distrust-that-particular-flavor",
  "json": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-gibson/distrust-that-particular-flavor.json",
  "markdown": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-gibson/distrust-that-particular-flavor.md",
  "author": {
    "name": "William Gibson",
    "slug": "william-gibson",
    "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-gibson"
  },
  "cover": "https://quivercdn.com/covers/penguin/william-gibson/distrust-that-particular-flavor_978-02-4196-098-1.jpg",
  "quotes_count": 7,
  "quotes": [
    {
      "id": "fdd15bb2-b2d8-43e9-8463-d11d7a587ed0",
      "slug": "as-new-technologies",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-gibson/distrust-that-particular-flavor/as-new-technologies",
      "text": "As new technologies search out and lace over every interstice in the net of global communication, we find ourselves with increasingly less excuse for...slack. And that, I would argue, is what the World Wide Web, the test pattern for whatever will become the dominant global medium, offers us. Today, in its clumsy, larval, curiously innocent way, it offers us the opportunity to waste time...It will probably evolve into something considerably less random, and less fun — we seem to have a knack for that — but in the meantime, in its gloriously unsorted Global Ham Television Postcard Universes phase, surfing the Web is a procrastinator's dream. And people who see you doing it might even imagine you're working.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": null,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "the internet",
          "slug": "the-internet",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/the-internet"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Gibson#Distrust_That_Particular_Flavor_(2012)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:10"
    },
    {
      "id": "df13f1b7-4b88-483d-95ba-64b85667ab3c",
      "slug": "surfing-the-web",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-gibson/distrust-that-particular-flavor/surfing-the-web",
      "text": "“Surfing the Web” (as dubious a metaphor as “the information highway”) is, as a friend of mine has it, “like reading magazines with the pages stuck together.” My wife shakes her head in dismay as I patiently await the downloading of some Japanese Beatles fan's personal catalog of bootlegs. “But it’s from Japan!” She isn't moved. She goes out to enjoy the flowers in her garden.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": null,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "humor",
          "slug": "humor",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor"
        },
        {
          "name": "the internet",
          "slug": "the-internet",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/the-internet"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Gibson#Distrust_That_Particular_Flavor_(2012)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:10"
    },
    {
      "id": "d162525e-cd4c-4335-a8eb-7df670c30543",
      "slug": "time-moves-in-one",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-gibson/distrust-that-particular-flavor/time-moves-in-one",
      "text": "Time moves in one direction, memory in another. We are that strange species that constructs artifacts intended to counter the natural flow of forgetting.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": null,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "time",
          "slug": "time",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/time"
        },
        {
          "name": "memory",
          "slug": "memory",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/memory"
        },
        {
          "name": "forgetting",
          "slug": "forgetting",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/forgetting"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Gibson#Distrust_That_Particular_Flavor_(2012)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:10"
    },
    {
      "id": "ca840e67-d9f6-4e90-8711-a5143444f3d0",
      "slug": "i-was-born",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-gibson/distrust-that-particular-flavor/i-was-born",
      "text": "I was born in 1948. I can't recall a world before television...Initially there was nothing on it but “snow,” and then the nightly advent of a targetlike device called “the test pattern,” which people actually gathered to watch. I imagine that the World Wide Web and its modest wonders are no more than the test pattern for whatever the twenty-first century will regard as its equivalent medium.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": null,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "television",
          "slug": "television",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/television"
        },
        {
          "name": "the internet",
          "slug": "the-internet",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/the-internet"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Gibson#Distrust_That_Particular_Flavor_(2012)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:10"
    },
    {
      "id": "a589c849-12fd-484a-a8a6-79226abac7e9",
      "slug": "my-first-impulse",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-gibson/distrust-that-particular-flavor/my-first-impulse",
      "text": "My first impulse, when presented with any spanking-new piece of computer hardware, is to imagine how it will look in ten years' time, gathering dust under a card table in a thrift shop. And it probably will.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": null,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "humor",
          "slug": "humor",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor"
        },
        {
          "name": "technology",
          "slug": "technology",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/technology"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Gibson#Distrust_That_Particular_Flavor_(2012)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:10"
    },
    {
      "id": "954e6da5-50a7-49a2-beed-2144a1a3964a",
      "slug": "in-the-age",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-gibson/distrust-that-particular-flavor/in-the-age",
      "text": "In the age of wooden television in the South where I grew up, leisure involved sitting on screened porches, smoking cigarettes, drinking iced tea, engaging in conversation, and staring into space. It might also involve fishing. Sometimes the Web does remind me of fishing.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": null,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "rest",
          "slug": "rest",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/rest"
        },
        {
          "name": "the internet",
          "slug": "the-internet",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/the-internet"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Gibson#Distrust_That_Particular_Flavor_(2012)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:10"
    },
    {
      "id": "6d5fb896-195c-4d13-9ef2-573cf01f0bcd",
      "slug": "this-newfound-state",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-gibson/distrust-that-particular-flavor/this-newfound-state",
      "text": "This newfound state of No Future is, in my opinion, a very good thing. It indicates a kind of maturity, an understanding that every future is someone else's past, every present someone else's future. Upon arriving in the capital-F Future, we discover it, invariably, to be the lower-case now. The best science fiction has always known that, but it was a sort of cultural secret. When I began to write fiction, at the very end of the Seventies, I was fortunate to have been taught, as an undergraduate, that imaginary futures are always, regardless of what the authors might think, about the day in which they're written. Orwell knew it, writing Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1948, and I knew it writing Neuromancer, my first novel, which was published in 1984.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": null,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "literature",
          "slug": "literature",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature"
        },
        {
          "name": "the future",
          "slug": "the-future",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/the-future"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Gibson#Distrust_That_Particular_Flavor_(2012)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:10"
    }
  ]
}