Richard Metzger of Dangerous Minds interviews the godfather of cyberpunk and legendary novelist/futurist William Gibson in this fascinating video. Gibson’s currently on a rare 36-stop book tour for the just released novel Zero History, and he hasn’t lost an ounce of brilliance. One of the many interesting points in the discussion is when Metzger asks Gibson — for a man’s who’s been called everything from a visionary author to a prophet — where does he get his information, the stimulus for his often on-point premonitions. And what’s his source?  His answer: Twitter. Twitter?! “I find Twitter to be the most powerful aggregator of shared novelty that humanity has yet possessed,” Gibson argues. “Quite seriously, if you’re following the right 70 people, each of them is a full-on aggregator of novelty, and you’re getting their picks through the course of the day. You’re getting this incredible, triple-filtered hit that would be the 1990s equivalent of a shopping bag filled with $500 of imported magazines.” Wow, talk about shining a positive light on one of the most mocked cyber-institutions out there. Boy do I feel stupid for following Cousin Balki. Other topics covered in the half-hour discussion include Pornbots, the cyberpunk chorus, his fondness for Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs, the archaic-ness of the mainstream media and his ever-running “mainstream ignore module”. Gibson even notes that Glenn Beck is “DEVO‘s vision made flesh.” As in, the embodiment of human de-volution. Brilliant. I know it’s hard to watch long videos at work, but this one’s most definitely worth a gander…

A Discussion with William Gibson from DANGEROUS MINDS on Vimeo.