This is a story about craft beer. But not just any craft beer.

This craft beer is made by West Coast Brewing. I drank a can of this beer last night. I liked it so much that I drove for an hour to West Coast Brewing today to buy another can of the same beer.

Just one can.

What is so important about this beer, you ask?

I happen to like beer, but if you are not a beer person, this story could be about a tomato smoothie or a cup of tea. This Campfire Stories story isn’t just about beer; it is about people bringing other people happiness—a sort of Happiness-in-a-Can story.

Are you calmly reading this now?

Or are you skimming over these words, thinking about the next thing you have to do?

Could you be here with me—just for a few minutes—without preparing to be somewhere else?

I want to share something with you.

This story isn’t just about a beverage; it is about doing something pleasurable, just for a moment, while forgetting about everything else.

It is important and very difficult to do.

It’s therapeutic.

This story is also about the people who make pleasant experiences possible.

Derrek Buston1 is originally from Seattle, Washington. At the University of Washington, he majored in music before switching to Japanese linguistics. His interest in Japan brought him to the Shizuoka area, where I also live. He then became interested in architecture, became an architect, and was commissioned to design a whisky distillery. Designing the distillery inspired him to start West Coast Brewing. His company makes fine beers, including Campfire Stories. Derrek crafts things that make people happy. With all the unbelievable things going on in the world now, isn’t that marvelous?

That’s all I wanted to say.

Walking barefoot in a park near my house, I was reminded of a story I heard a long time ago about the impermanent treasures of life, so I took this picture to share with you. When you read this, many of the blossoms will already have fallen.

When I look at cherry blossoms while thinking of my own life, I realize that some things that seemed insurmountable were only transient obstacles that I could have overcome. Had I done so, I would be a different person now.

One thing that brought me to Japan, and continues to impress me after many years, is how dedicated people can be. A person pursuing their craft is not trying to boost their sales on social media or striving to get likes on Facebook. They are not interested in a shiny dime—an idea made obvious in a short piece of writing, so the reader has to expend little effort to see it. They ignore the gleam of superficial trinkets to dig for deeper treasures, toiling relentlessly for decades in solitude.

Nearly fifty years ago, when I was a judo club member at the University of Victoria on Vancouver Island, my coach told me a story.

Leo was also a boxer, so we often trained together by skipping rope before practicing judo techniques. One day, as we were taking a break from skipping, he said, “A judoka is like a cherry blossom.”

The unlikely comparison intrigued me.

Before I tell you his story, I must explain the colors of judo belts. The highest belts are not black. They switch to red and white stripes and then, at the highest level, to pure red.1

Now I will share my coach’s story.

I discovered a library in Shizuoka City. I thought it would be a comfortable, quiet place to work. A long desk near a big window looked out into the nearby park. It seemed almost magical.

I entered the library and walked to the counter to apply for a card. After I passed my ID to the librarian at the desk, she froze and looked up at me.

“You’re already listed in our system,” she said.

I had an odd feeling of déjà vu.

I couldn’t remember standing in the same place before. But I must have stood in the same place, probably about thirty years earlier.

I had come to the same park, found the same library and walked up to the same desk, thinking it would be a comfortable, quiet place to work. I felt odd not remembering being in the library before.

But the experience was also comforting.

My younger self was drawn to this place. Thirty years later, I was again drawn to this place. Things that were important to me before—books, solitude, nature—are things I still value deeply.

This happened a few years ago, just before COVID-19.

I returned to the park outside the library today to share this place. There is an enormous clock in the park that quietly moves as the time passes. And off in the distance, you can see Mount Fuji if it is not overcast.

It is where I walk barefoot.

If you paste the coordinates 34.9887N 138.377982E into Google Earth (you can click the link, but you may prefer the application), you will be transported to where I stood when I took the photograph. It will look like this:

During the week, the shop sells a few varieties of tomatoes and fresh vegetables, but their café opens on the weekends and offers delicious, frosty-cold tomato smoothies. I ordered one and waited for it to be delivered to my seat.

After getting my smoothie, I thought it would be nice to share it with you, wherever you might be. I will also tell you about my inReach Mini 2, a small device that could save your life.

The inReach Mini 2 is a GPS satellite communicator. I put it next to my beat-up iPhone case to show you how small it is. If a disaster shuts down all communication services here in Japan, I can send a message with a map showing my location within a few meters to rescuers in the United States.

Why the United States?

Imagine a big earthquake here in Japan. Everything is broken. Buildings are on fire. Emergency services are staffed by panicked workers overwhelmed by an emergency and almost no ability to communicate with each other. Some emergency workers, or their loved ones, will have been killed or wounded during the first shocks. If I am alive and able to push the SOS button on my inReach Mini 2, where will my message be received?

My message will be received way over in the US by a couple of guys having coffee and sharing pizza. All their communication systems are working fine. They will keep trying to get through to their counterparts in Japan until they know someone is on their way to my location.

More importantly, I can also use my Mini 2 to send a map showing the location of a café to someone who wants to have a tomato smoothie.

The inReach Mini 2 is around $500, but this small device could save your life if you are lost or injured.1

I sent a message to myself. Now, I will share the link with you. If you scroll down, you will see a map. If you keep scrolling down, keeping the caret over “J. B. Laing” in the center of your screen, the map will disappear, and you will eventually see a photograph of the cafe where I was having my lovely smoothie. Here is the link:

The Kawamura Farm Café

This small—rustic, you might say—café is a refuge from the chaos of the rest of the world. Mr. Kawamura makes very nice smoothies (melon, chai, and tomato) and seems to love his work. I always get a warm welcome when I order my cold smoothie. He very kindly agreed to have his picture taken.

We need more people like Mr. Kawamura in the world. He creates tasty drinks and dishes and serves them in a cozy place where people come to heal. He and his wife have built a happy, therapeutic place.2

Could Mr. Kawamura's small, cozy café save lives? With everything happening in the world now, I think it just might.

This was created using text from ChatGPT that was generated using the following prompt:

The resulting text was then pasted into the fodey.com Website to generate a fake newspaper clipping. Long words tend to mess up the spacing, making the result unrealistic. You can try it out here:

https://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp

If you aren’t interested in fake newspaper clippings, note that the Fodey site will also generate a talking squirrel GIF.

Everyone needs a talking squirrel GIF.

I am writing this because I have been thinking about how to check the truth of what we read. Is it authentic news, or is it nonsense?

I have become quite concerned about AI.

It should be clear that Chat GPT is not the same as a person. It doesn’t care about the facts or problems resulting from the text it generates.

A CNN article1 mentions a lawsuit involving Character.AI, a neural language model chatbot service that can engage the user in conversations:

Chat GPT creates text unconnected to the real world, which can be dangerous.

As far as I know, there is no “president of Earth,” though a recently elected politician might be considering creating the position.

I bought myself a Christmas present—something to bring myself happiness.

When it arrived, I looked at the package with some alarm. Why, I wondered, would someone think it necessary to put the warning "INTERNAL USE ONLY” on this package? I imagined someone pouring out a splash of the contents and rubbing it on their skin.

This didn’t seem possible.

This package seemed to be a sort of canary in the coal mine. Miners used to carry canaries with them when going into mines. Canaries are more susceptible to carbon monoxide than humans. When the birds fell unconscious, the air in the mine was becoming dangerous, and the miners would return safely to the surface. So, a canary in the coal mine has become a metaphor for a sign that something bad will happen.

These days, all sorts of things seem to be quietly whispering that we humans are not evolving into cautious, thoughtful creatures. Evolution, it seems, does not select for intelligence.

The label seemed like a harbinger of more significant problems to come.

Why would anyone feel it was necessary to put the warning “INTERNAL USE ONLY” on a package containing a bottle of single malt whisky?

I felt like rolling down my window and saying, “Take all the time you like. I am not in a hurry.”

But I wasn’t the problem.

The problem was the width of the crossing and the timing of the lights at the intersection. They weren’t designed for an old woman with stiff joints and a painful back to cross the road at a comfortable pace. We have designed our roads and sidewalks for young people to travel quickly in huge, sharp-edged machines.

It is the way we humans have built our world.

What would our world look like if it were designed to serve the old and infirm, as well as children playing basketball? Would the pace be different? Would it sound different? Would it smell different?

I finally arrived at my gas station.

I think of it as my gas station because the staff are attentive and make me feel as if I have bestowed a tremendous favor on them by asking them to wash my car or fill it up with gas.

Japanese gas station staff often bow at their customers as they drive off, sometimes even doffing their caps.

Many years ago, I experienced a moment of culture shock when I watched the film Back to the Future in Japan and Canada, my homeland.

When the hero, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox), travels back in time to 1955, he walks next to a gas station (spoiler alert—the link is a clip of the scene from the movie). A car pulls into the pumps, and four attendants rush out to serve the driver. One guy checks the pressure in the left front tire. Another opens the hood to check the car's vital signs. Yet another enthusiastically begins to wipe the front window. The fourth attendant fills the car with gas.

As this scene unfolded, the movie theater in Canada was silent for a moment, and then the audience broke out in laughter.

The film was released when self-service stations were becoming popular. People found the scene of overly attentive gas station attendants hilarious because it contrasted so strongly with the lack of service at gas stations when the movie was released.

In Japan, the audience didn’t laugh.

For the Japanese audience, the scene of the gas station with enthusiastic attendants was just a typical gas station.

Sitting in the gas station office waiting for my car to be filled, washed, and perhaps given a massage, I noticed a sign on the vending machine next to me.

Near the bottom of the machine, just below the dispensing door, there was a sign with an image of a windmill proclaiming that Daido, the drink company operating the vending machine, was doing its part to protect the environment.

The energy powering this machine apparently did not come from oil or coal burning in a stove but from a sleek, efficient windmill.

I pondered this, sipping the expensive can of coffee I had purchased from the machine while my car was being washed and filled with gasoline.

Recently, I finished reading How the World Really Works by Vaclav Smil. He makes it clear that we are not giving up fossil fuels anytime soon because we are so dependent on them.

Somebody harvested some coffee beans and put them in bags. Trucks probably shipped the bags to where the beans were ground and used to brew coffee. Then, somewhere else, large diesel-powered machines harvested ore from the ground. The ore was smelted into metal and eventually turned into cans. The brewed coffee was then put into the cans, packed into cartons, and trucked to this machine powered by a windmill somewhere far away where I couldn’t see it.

But I knew it was there because of the Green Power label on the vending machine.

I was glad that purchasing my can of coffee was good for the environment and proud to do my part to build a sustainable world.

I went to Tatsukin1 yesterday, a cozy restaurant with simple, reasonably-priced fare2 about a fifteen minute walk from where I live. As I was enjoying my dinner, I heard someone down at the end of the counter say to the owner of the restaurant, “Anohito, shitteirukamoshirenai,” which in Japanese means, “I probably know that person.”

I turned around and looked at the person speaking. She lowered her mask and asked if I remembered her. I said, “Of course, I remember you, Suzuki san.” She was one of the hospice workers who took care of my friend Sunao in the last few weeks of his life. She moved down the counter to sit next to me.

She told me she had stopped working at the hospice.

Then she told me something I hadn’t known before. Most of the staff at the hospice have quit since my friend stayed there. She explained why.

Relatives have to experience the death of a loved one, but hospice staff are caring people who become deeply attached to almost all the people they are caring for. Every one of them dies.

“One day, we lost three,” she said, looking at me with tears in her eyes.

She told me she couldn’t handle the sadness of watching people arrive, knowing they would not leave alive.

I hadn’t thought of what it would be like working at a hospice. Her story reminded me of the lyrics from the Eagles hit song Hotel California.

What made this conversation a bit eerie was that Suzuki san regularly came to Tatsukin for dinner. I often go to Tatsukin too. But in almost a year, we had not seen each other in the restaurant until we met a few days before the anniversary of my friend’s death.

After we had finished our dinners, she offered me a ride home since it was on her way. When she dropped me off, I thanked her again, finally realizing how much she had done for my friend and having a new respect for hospice workers who endure such wrenching pain to serve the dying.

2

Two mugs of beer, an appetizer and very nicely cooked chicken cutlets for around $15 at today’s exchange rate.

Many years ago, I went kayak surfing with a friend of mine at a beach near Hamamatsu City in Japan. After a few waves, my friend and I decided to take a break. He turned to me and asked, “Aren’t you learning to glide?” He wasn’t talking about gliding technique in a kayak; he was talking about gliding in a glider—a plane with no engine.

After I answered, “Yes,” he became quiet for a moment, the way people do when thinking about very serious problems, such as the very best combination of pizza toppings to have on the pizza they are about to order.

“What’s it like?” he asked.

I probably became quiet for a moment myself then. After a few minutes, I answered.

“Ice cream,” I said.

My friend gave me a look that only a friend can give you when they are sure that you are mercilessly teasing them. Someone who is not your friend in similar circumstances will simply try to strangle you.

“If you had to explain the experience of ice cream to a person who had never tasted it, what would you say?” I asked.

My friend agreed it would be challenging, particularly with delicious, exotic flavors. Somehow the words sweet or cold don’t quite get you there.

To understand ice cream, you really need to try some.

I looked at the time. It was still early in the morning. “Want to go gliding right now?” I asked.

“NOW?” my friend asked. I had never noticed his eyebrows at such a height before.

“Yup,” I answered. “ Now. Let’s go.”

So we drove for a bit more than an hour and arrived at a small runway by Fuji River. That is where a flying club gathers every Sunday.

If you go to a flying school or club, there is usually an introductory flight for newcomers to give them a taste of flying. It helps them decide if they would like to learn to fly. The orientation flight is usually less than $100. Considering the expense of airplane gas, that is very reasonable.

After greeting the members of my club, I asked the head instructor if my friend could have an orientation flight. He looked at his watch, glanced over at the remaining names on the roster of people who were going to fly that day, turned to me, and said, “Yes, sure. We have lots of time today.”

My friend was given a brief introduction to the features of the glider. Then someone showed him how to get into the cockpit. He was then buckled in with shoulder straps. When the crew lowered the canopy, he was wedged into a small space surrounded by plexiglass.

The 360° view is spectacular.

A couple of guys connected a rope to the front of the glider. They then connected the other end of the rope to the tow plane—a yellow Piper Cub, a small plane popular with bush pilots.

Everything was now ready.

The expression on my friend’s face was now an odd mixture of excitement and apprehension. You wouldn’t have known he’s actually quite a fearless, adventurous person. I could see that the instructor behind him was saying something. Then my friend, following the instructor’s signal, gave a thumbs up to notify the ground crew that he was ready for takeoff.

The engine of the Piper Cub revved up to full throttle. The rope became taut, and the glider began to move down the runway. Almost immediately, it was airborne. I watched my friend take off and rise into the sky. The glider ascended to around 2000 feet. It was the size of a child’s toy. Around then, he would have been told to pull a lever down by his seat on the left side. This is the lever that releases the rope connecting the glider to the tow plane. Then you are in free flight. There is no engine sound—only the sound of the air rushing over the glider. Sometimes, if you find an updraft, it is possible to stay aloft for hours. Usually, in an orientation fight like this one, the instructor will keep close to the departure point and return in less than an hour.

I waited for my friend to return to the ground.

The glider landed on its single wheel, coasted down the runway, and came to a stop. The crew helped my friend get out. He stood up, stretched, and then walked towards me.

Gliding is an amazing experience. When my university students ask me what experiences I have had that really impressed me, I say that the first time I went scuba diving was amazing, but it was the first time I went gliding in front of Mount Fuji when it was covered with snow that I was nearly moved to tears.

But some people are afraid of high places or cramped spaces, so I was concerned about my friend’s first flight. Was it exhilarating and splendid, or only frightening? I couldn’t wait to find out.

When he walked over to me, I asked him, “Well, how was your flight?” He smiled an enormous smile at me.

“Ice cream,” he said.

I watched my friend Sunao die from cancer just before last Christmas.

After getting a phone call, I rushed to his room. When I arrived, I sat beside him and said, “It’s John. I’m here!”

A few seconds later, he shook ever so slightly and then was still, as if he had something to say but couldn’t quite get the words out. I will never know what he would have said.

Perhaps it was, “Thanks for coming. Sorry, I really have to go.”

When he was a bit younger and much healthier, he was a sturdy man who occasionally had a short temper.

A bit prickly, you might say.

But he was very fun, and more than most people I have met, was also good company.

Sunao and his wife Chieko ran a charming pub just down a hill where I used to live in Fuji City. After enduring long, exasperating staff meetings at my university, I used to wander down to their shop and drink some very nice sake and dine on their delicious food.

One of my favorites was their garlic chicken. It was splendid and went very nicely with sake.

I have many pleasant memories of their cozy shop, though some are a bit fuzzy.

When Sunao got sick with cancer, I tried to visit him and fetch him things he wanted since he was largely bedridden. He was only able to go out a few times on a motorized wheelchair until the cancer had spread so much it was too painful for him to ride in it.

He liked milkshakes, so I would go out and fetch his milkshake of choice for a particular day.

He was particularly fond of vanilla.

As he became increasingly ill, he became more patient and kind. Things that would have bothered him when he was healthy became trivial, and he would quietly wait for problems to be resolved without them affecting his mood.

I wondered if having so little time left made him concentrate on happy thoughts and dismiss irritating ones.

Since I also have a short temper, I want to see if it is possible to work at becoming a kinder person, rather than being changed by a terminal illness.

A few hours after he died, I bought a plant to remember my friend.

The plant I bought is a Pachypodium saundersii, also known as the kudu lily.

It is a sturdy plant with green leaves and thorns.

A bit prickly, you might say.

I wonder if the plant I have chosen to remember him would make my friend smile.

I hope so.

Here in Japan, I am an outsider. People seldom ask me about philosophy or politics. My fellow English professors don’t ask me about the finer points of grammar. The question I am most commonly asked is why I walk barefoot.

“I just wanted to find out what it would be like,” I say.

One day I sat at a counter in my neighborhood pub next to a guy from America. He turned out to be a marathon runner. Sometimes, he said, he ran barefoot, and he showed me his feet, which looked, more or less, like normal feet. He also showed me a picture of his feet blackened and dusty after he had climbed Mount Fuji without shoes. Climbing Fuji, even with shoes, is quite an ordeal. Listening to him recount his climb inspired me.

Running barefoot seemed somehow romantic and brave and, well, fabulously savage. Would it feel naked and free, or just be painful?

I decided to try walking barefoot myself.

To avoid the scrutiny of my neighbors, one early morning I set out barefoot from my apartment in Fuji city. I walked a few hundred meters up the road to a nearby park and turned around.

As I returned to my apartment, one of my neighbors drove by. He said good morning and then, noticing I was shoeless, said something like, “What are you DOING walking with NO SHOES?”

That was the first time I was asked this question, and I responded by saying a friend of mine had climbed Mount Fuji barefoot, and I wondered if I could do the same thing. This seemed to satisfy my neighbor, who nodded in the way a person nods when what you say makes sense, even if they don't totally agree with what you are doing.

As I walked barefoot over the next few months something strange and wonderful happened. My neighbors would greet me, even people who had never said hello before.

“How is it going?” they would ask, peering over their garden wall, “climbed Mount Fuji yet?”

I would smile and say that no, I hadn’t yet, and thank them for asking. They would wish me well, and tell me to watch out for broken glass on the road.

My shoeless feet brought me closer to my neighbors. I was happy about this, though I sometimes wondered if they thought that maybe I was not quite right in the head.

Now I still live in Japan but have moved to Shizuoka City, and I am getting to know people in my new neighborhood. I still give the same answer when people ask why I am walking barefoot.

“Well, I was curious and just wondered, you know, what it would be like,” I say.

After a few years of walking barefoot, and reading things like the magnificent and surprising Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall, I have learned a bit about walking barefoot.

If you run, the shock your body experiences is much greater with shoes than it is if you run barefoot. That is because your body, sensing something between you and the ground, tries to push through the sole of the shoe to reach something solid, increasing the shock of impact.

Your shoes don't fit you well unless you have a generic sort of foot. But your feet probably fit you pretty well.

Now I walk barefoot on a big concrete path in a park near where I live in Shizuoka. Inside the park, there is also a tiny round concrete path, just a few meters around. There is a sign there that says, in Japanese, "Why not take your shoes off and try this path for walking barefoot?" There are patches of pavement with stones embedded in them, there are patches with ridges on them, and there are just plain ordinary patches too.

I suppose if I walked on this path with my shoes on, someone would say, “No, no. You are supposed to walk barefoot.” And the helpful person would shake their head back and forth and point to my shoes and make a cross with their hands in front of their faces that in Japan means, “You shouldn't do that.”

So my real answer is a secret. It makes me uncomfortable. I really want to say that the reason I am walking barefoot, other than to get really good at it, is that I am wondering why all of us are driven to do things by norms that don't make much sense, rather than doing things based on careful, thoughtful discussion of carefully gathered facts.

But I don't ever give the true answer. When someone says “Excuse me, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but why are you walking barefoot?” I do not respond by saying, “Of course I don’t mind. I am walking barefoot to study human behavior. Do you mind if I ask you why you are wearing shoes? Have you ever thought how much better it would be if people stopped buying shoes and just went barefoot? Have you done any research, or do you wear shoes just because everyone else is wearing them?”

I want to be accepted by my neighbors, so I usually just smile and give the answer that I think will make most people comfortable.

“I just wanted to find out what it would be like.”

While sitting in front of his Hermes 2000 typewriter back in the early 80s, William Gibson wrote a novel that predicted many of the technologies we are familiar with today, including the Internet, virtual reality and artificial intelligence, even though he had no experience using a computer himself.

Reading Neuromancer is like ingesting a hallucinatory drug—a drug that moves your mind in exhilarating, unexpected directions and has almost no negative side effects.

Someone reading a draft of this article asked me why reading Neuromancer is like being in a drug-induced haze. I could respond by pointing out that Case, one of the main characters, is almost constantly in a chemically induced state. As you follow his journey through the story, you will likely become a bit drugged vicariously. I could also mention the language that Gibson uses to describe his imaginary world, a language that Bruce Sterling1, a science fiction writer contemporary with Gibson, said was genuinely baffling to people who encountered it for the first time. But I don’t want to give the story away. You really need to ingest the drug yourself. Everyone who takes a hit of Neuromancer has a different trip.

The Birth of Neuromancer

William Gibson was enlisted to write a novel by the late Terry Carr, a science fiction anthologist. Carr had commissioned a limited series of first novels for Ace Books - his Ace SF Specials. He asked if Gibson would care to write one. Gibson agreed to complete a novel in a year and struggled to hand in a finished manuscript 18 months later.

When asked how he came up with the virtual world he describes in Neuromancer, Gibson mentions his experience with the first Sony Walkman, a device with an intimate interface that he could carry around. But it was watching kids playing in arcades that provided the inspiration Gibson needed to realize his vision.

And I thought, well, there’s a space behind the screen …Those spaces are all the same space. And as soon as I thought that …you know … I had it. William Gibson2 

Gibson realized he needed to come up with a buzzword to describe the space behind the screen. He settled on cyberspace. A word he felt was evocative yet essentially meaningless. 

In an interview with Paris Review, Gibson says he needs to begin every book by coming up with the first sentence. After coming up with an opening sentence, Gibson rarely changes it, even after a book is completed. He says he doesn’t have the entire novel “in his head” as other writers claim to do. He writes as though he is removing excess wood from a block to reveal the carving beneath.

It's like that joke about the violin maker who was asked how he made a violin and answered that he started with a piece of wood and removed everything that wasn't a violin. That's what I do when I'm writing a novel, except somehow I'm simultaneously generating the wood as I'm carving it. William Gibson

Gibson also makes it clear that writing for him is hard. The word that he most often uses to describe his emotional state while writing Neuromancer isn’t tired or stressed; it is terrified.

Gibson feels we live in an incomprehensible present, and writes to illuminate the moment. He claims he doesn’t have a conscious creative process at all. His books don’t happen because he thinks about them, they happen because he writes them—they emerge from the actual process of putting one word after another. He says that, if he is achieving something, “the characters become impossible to control.” Despite his best efforts he doesn’t have reliable access to his unconscious creative process. He makes a deal with himself “to turn up and make a real effort to see if there’s any incoming mail.”3 The writing process described by Gibson is like laboriously building a house brick by brick without any idea of how it will look until it is finished.

Neuromancer was released at the same time as the Apple Macintosh.

Reception

Far from being met with the “hostile or indifferent stares,” Gibson expected4. Neuromancer would eventually sell over six million copies. Neuromancer was the first novel to win the Nebula, the Hugo, and Philip K. Dick Awards for a paperback original, an unprecedented achievement described by the Mail & Guardian as "the sci-fi writer's version of winning the Goncourt, Booker, and Pulitzer prizes in the same year." The Nebula Awards Website says of Neuromancer, “It was as if someone turned on a light. The future blazed into existence with each deliberate word that William Gibson laid down.” 

What Gibson Got Right  

In Neuromancer, Gibson coined the word cyberspace and described the future of networked computers with uncanny accuracy. He also predicted artificial intelligence. He had never used a computer but had somehow managed to come up with a vision of what a network of computers might look like.5

Gibson wrote Neuromancer nearly forty years ago in a world with very few personal computers. People looked at each other’s faces rather than at their phones. The World Wide Web wouldn’t appear for almost a decade. Artificial Intelligence didn’t exist. 

We were trying to be more intelligent all by ourselves. 

Imagine sitting in front of a typewriter back then and trying to come up with a vision of how we live now. For most people, it would be an impossible task.

William Gibson did it rather well.

Epilogue

Is there a way of experiencing the sort of vertigo induced by reading Neuromancer back in 1984 forty years later in the present? I used NotebookLM, an AI developed by Google Labs, to process this text (the text you are reading now) to create a podcast. The result might be illuminating.

The podcast isn’t two people talking, it is an AI digesting the text and video it is fed, combining it with material it finds searching the Internet, and then creating two human-sounding voices in order to express its findings. It isn’t perfect, but it is surprisingly powerful, and evolving much faster than a biological organism. If listening to this podcast is unsettling, remember that William Gibson predicted artificial intelligence forty years ago. To try it yourself go to the Website NotebookLM.

NotebookLM-Neuromancer Podcast (10.29)

Additional Material

Article in The Guardian: William Gibson: how I wrote Neuromancer

Wikipedia entry for Neuromancer.

Article in The Creative Mind: William Gibson on a Writer’s Inner Life

Interview in The Paris Review: William Gibson, The Art of Fiction No. 211

Nebula Awards Website entry: Neuromancer

YouTube video 1:27:37 William Gibson Interview "No Maps for These Territories" 

An episode of Science Fiction with Damien Walter YouTube video 9:13 Denis Villeneuve's Neuromancer

YouTube video 9:02 Adam Savage's Top 5 Science Fiction Books (Neuromancer is #1)

Footnotes

Imagine a class at Stanford University.

There are just over one hundred medical students in the room waiting expectantly. They are about to be addressed by an alien from Betelgeuse V. 

It begins to speak.

“First of all, is it true that you remove children from their families at around the age of five and then put them into institutions where they are raised by strangers until they are adults?”

After finally getting nods of agreement from the students, the alien seeks to clarify something.

“You forcibly remove children from their families and put them in institutions for the most crucial years of their development. And they can’t leave or use the washroom without permission. Is that correct?”

 The students nod, but they are beginning to shift in their seats. Some of them seem uncomfortable.

“You incarcerate them,” the alien says, seemingly making notes on a device. 

“We are interested in how you train people in different professions. It seems that the best mathematicians are to be found in mathematics departments at universities, the best chemists in chemistry departments, and the best physicists in physics departments. In short, the best practitioners of a discipline are to be found in their respective departments. Is this correct?”

A flurry of nodded affirmation ripples around the room.

“But there is one exception to this rule. When we searched for the best teachers, very few were found in education departments.” The alien seems to frown, lost in thought, before continuing.

“Unlike other professions, the best teachers—the award-winning ones—appear sprinkled throughout various disciplines, almost with the exception of education.”

“I am here because we have determined medical students are probably quite intelligent, and you are likely to give better responses than students in other departments.

The students seem to relax. Some are smiling.

“How about, say, students in engineering or architecture? Would they be likely to be intelligent as well?”

Another ripple of nods.

“How about education students then?”

Many students frown, and some seem to have expressions of disgust.

“I see,” continues the alien. “Our research has found that education students are generally regarded as being at the lowest level of academic standing at almost any university in the world with the exception of a couple of places in Finland.”

“I have just one last question, and then I must go.”

“If you are so smart, and you think education students are so stupid, why do you let them raise your children?”

And then, before anyone can speak, the alien vanishes in a puff of splendidly multicolored smoke.

Humans have also been critical of education.

In 1991, John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year, resigned, sending a copy of his resignation letter to the New York Times. Here is a small quote:

I've come slowly to understand what it is I really teach … I teach how to fit into a world I don't want to live in.

I just can't do it anymore. I can't train children to wait to be told what to do; I can't train people to drop what they are doing when a bell sounds; I can't persuade children to feel some justice in their class placement when there isn't any, and I can't persuade children to believe teachers have valuable secrets they can acquire by becoming our disciples. That isn't true.

― John Taylor Gatto

Similarly, Ivan Illich in his book Deschooling Society says:

Universal education through schooling is not feasible …  The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse: educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring.

― Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society

All is not lost, however. Sugatra Mitra is known for his “Hole in the Wall” experiment. 

This work demonstrated that groups of children, irrespective of who or where they are, can learn to use computers and the Internet on their own with public computers in open spaces such as roads and playgrounds, even without knowing English. Mitra's publication was judged the best open access publication in the world for 2005. 

― Wikipedia

Let's make a few things apparent in case you are a parent.

You might be wondering if I have indeed said, “We incarcerate our children in institutions at a critical time in their development with some of the least educated among us.”

That is exactly what I am saying.

But  relax.

You are probably a reasonably adjusted person, even though you went through the education system. You managed didn’t you? Your children will too.

If you are in online programs such as Write of Passage, or reading articles on Substack or Medium or Ghost, you are probably an intelligent person. Intelligence has a substantial genetic component. So your children are lucky because your genes will make them smart too.

There are a few things you can do. The first thing is to get out of the way. Support your child with love, a safe environment and the freedom to safely explore. Let them discover the world by themselves.

You could move to a place where schools are awesome, like Finland. Finland is known for having wonderful schools. And you can see the Northern Lights there. 

You might enroll your children in a free school like A. S. Neill’s Summerhill School, a place where students go to classes when they want to.

Be an example to your children by making yourself smarter. 

If you read books instead of watching television, eat nutritious food instead of Twinkies, and scan the news using RSS feeds, or Ground News rather than Fox News, you will serve as a great example to your children.

Check out online learning Websites, like Khan Academy, an American non-profit educational organization with over 10,000 video lessons teaching a wide spectrum of academic subjects.

At the end of my career, I am trying to explain to my students that they don’t need me. All the resources are readily available. They should take responsibility for educating themselves.

I am merely a guide. 

The deepest, most important learning isn’t something a teacher does to you, it’s something you need to experience yourself.

For decades I dreamt of making a perfect cup of coffee.

After watching an excellent review of coffee grinders by James Hoffmann—coffee fanatic and barista champion—I decided to buy a hand grinder from Germany that he recommended. It made me feel good to buy a nice shiny object that would live with me and help me make better coffee.

James has a YouTube channel where he describes the proper technique for making coffee with the V60 brewer.  He recommends starting with 30 grams of ground coffee and 500 grams of water.

Adjust to taste.

When you have finally added 500 grams of water to your carafe, and the water has completely filtered through the coffee grounds, you pour the coffee into your favorite cup, sit down at your favorite place in your favorite chair, and have a sip of marvelous, fresh coffee.

I can’t do this.

What I do instead is exactly the same as I have described, right up until the “sip” part. I discovered that as soon as I get ready to have a sip of coffee—even fabulous fresh-ground coffee—I become uncomfortable, since I start thinking that I have to read something, check my email, wash my socks, or do something, anything, except 

sip

my

coffee.

This bothered me at first until I realized I was satisfied drinking a very small amount of coffee.

After sipping coffee for a few minutes, I rush around doing things, realize there is a whole pot of very nice coffee waiting for me to enjoy, and return to the pot for another sip. 

I repeat this pleasant experience several times, unlike primitive rogues who simply gulp their coffee at one sitting. But my dream of relaxing while slowly drinking fresh coffee didn’t turn out the way I expected.

Instead, something magical happened.

When I began grinding my beans by hand,  I discovered to my complete surprise that I love grinding coffee beans. For me, it is therapeutic meditation.

I spend a few minutes carefully grinding beans until they are completely ground into the reservoir at the bottom of the grinder. The speed of the rotation of the handle has to be exact. Too slow, and the grinding becomes difficult. Too fast, and the grinding is uncomfortable and frantic. There is a speed that is just right.

When I am grinding fresh coffee beans, turning the handle at just the right speed, listening to the beans being crushed into a perfect grind, while the aroma of coffee fills the air, I am removed from this universe and transported somewhere else.

Sometimes, when I feel stressed or the world seems a little lopsided, I make a pot of coffee. While I grind fresh coffee beans, I will be able to relax, just for a few minutes.

And that will be enough.     

Walking along the road near where I live in Shizuoka City, I noticed some clouds building up over Mount Fuji in the distance. I went back to get my iPhone to take a picture. Returning to where I had been standing, I took a picture of the clouds, but I wasn’t expecting the final result.

The clouds were stacking up over Mount Fuji in layers. This often happens when humid air moves up the slope, condensing clouds from the cooling air.

But Fuji itself was completely obscured from view by the clouds it was making, like a matador standing quietly hidden inside his swirling cape.

I was about to begin Write of Passage, a writing course, and my thinking was being altered in anticipation. My mind was filled with images of fountain pens, different types of software for writing, and books.

I wondered if there was an influential book that faded from view the way Mount Fuji dramatically changed the sky around itself while remaining unseen below.

Returning home after taking my picture, I Googled: “book that changed the world and disappeared from view.”

No book appeared in the results. But I discovered Gayle Jones.

A New York Times title proclaimed, “She Changed Black Literature forever. Then She Disappeared.”

A blog post, “My Decades with Gayl Jones: Reflections from an Editor,” begins with the sentence: “Gayl Jones, the highly acclaimed author who was first ‘discovered’ and mentored by Toni Morrison, has twice disappeared from our sight.”

An Atlantic article, “The Best American Novelist Whose Name You May Not Know,” by Calvin Baker, begins: “When her first novels were published, in the mid-1970s, Gayl Jones's talent was hailed by writers from James Baldwin to John Updike. Then she disappeared.”

Intrigued, I did some reading and discovered that the acclaimed Gayl Jones has had a tumultuous life, marrying a man who slit his own throat as he was about to be arrested.

Dig into her story if you are interested.

In the meantime, I have purchased her latest book from Amazon and am embarking on an exploration of her writing.

Jones writes fiction. When I read her writing, will her character be revealed by her writing, or will she remain hidden from view?

I am looking forward to finding out.

Nearly forty years ago, when I was a more frisky and somewhat thinner man, I left my home on Vancouver Island in Canada and came to Japan to seek my fortune. During part of my career, I worked as an English professor at the Fuji campus of Tokoha University for nearly twenty years. If you look at the English page on Wikipedia, the brief entry says that it was chartered as a university in 2000 and closed in 2018. There is no photograph.

Our small university opened and closed without making much of an impression, not even on Wikipedia. But I was happy there and honored to be present throughout the life of a university, even if it didn’t last very long.

For most of the days I worked there, I was greeted by Mr. Machino, a guard at the entrance gate. He would salute me, smile, and wave me into the faculty parking area.

One Wednesday, just before our campus was closing, I arrived at the gate in a foul mood.

Wednesday was meeting day.

If you have not experienced a faculty meeting at a Japanese university, I will gently suggest to you that it might be an experience that you will not want to repeat too often.

One meeting stands out in my mind. After a couple of hours, we had a short break and then gathered again to continue into the evening. A while later, after listening to a few people repeating the same things over and over and over again, I looked across at my colleague sitting in front of me and pointed excitedly at my watch. He looked at me questioningly. I leaned over and whispered, “A total of six hours. That’s a new record!”

My colleague seemed a bit annoyed at me for pointing this out.

As I arrived at the gate and contemplated the horrible meeting that was surely to come, I was thinking the meeting on this particular day would be the longest, most time-wasting one ever, to feel justified in feeling sorry for myself.

Mr. Machino waved to me and greeted me with his splendid smile.

Something shifted in my mood. On this particular morning, Mr. Machino didn’t have many reasons to smile. It was raining heavily, and he had to stand outside to greet people arriving. I, on the other hand, had to teach for a few hours and would then be able to retreat to the comfort of my office for a cup of coffee.

A few meters away from where Mr. Machino greeted people with his smile stood a small shack that a person handy with tools could bang together over a weekend. It was made of plywood, had one sliding window and a door, and a rope over its roof to keep it from getting blown over. It was Mr. Machino’s headquarters.

I need to tell you how awful this shack was.

It was so awful I once went to the president’s office and asked if they might consider building something more substantial for the guard at the gate, pointing out that it became intolerably hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. Wouldn’t it be nicer if it was a building with heating and cooling? Since the guard was the first person who greeted people, it would reflect better on our wonderful university if he looked happy and well taken care of.

As I left the president’s office, I heard the president and vice president chuckling together. They were probably wondering if guards at foreign universities worked under luxurious conditions with espresso machines and deck chairs.

On this particular morning of heavy rain, as I pondered my dreaded meeting, Mr. Machino’s smile made me feel that I was a horrible person who should appreciate just how lucky he was to have things like an actual roof and a nearby power supply.

And I did not have to stand in the middle of a downpour and smile at undeserving people who passed by my gate.

When our campus closed, I walked down to the gate at the entrance, introduced myself to Mr. Machino, and thanked him for his many smiles. I told him how much of a difference he made to my days working there and gave him a small framed photograph.

“This is for you. It’s a picture of where I’m from on Vancouver Island in Canada,” I said. He seemed very happy to receive my small gift.

I asked if he would mind if I took his picture. He smiled, walked over to a nearby sign, placed his hand on it, and apologized. He was sorry, he said, but he had a weak leg, and he had to prop himself up using the sign for me to take a photograph.

So, not only did Mr. Machino smile splendidly for me almost every morning, but he also smiled in the pouring rain, even when it was not easy for him to stand.

He became even more of a hero to me that day.

When something awful happens, and I am about to feel sorry for myself, I remember how Mr. Machino stood in the pouring rain and greeted me with his smile. Then, the world seems like a better place.

Over the years, I have thought about the people I have met. I have met high-ranking people who were often rude and insignificant. But the people who have had the most positive impression on me tend to be humble and kind. I still don’t know why that might be, but I would like to suggest that this story is a bit more than a guy smiling at a gate.

Mr. Machino is an example for us all.

A few days ago, on a walk near where I live, I passed by a bicycle shop named “CRAFT.” It was open even though it was Sunday. The shop owner explained he was open for a few hours to do some work, and invited me in. It is one of those small shops that sell only a few things, but the things it sells are special.

In a corner of the shop, resting on a stand, was a bicycle I had only seen in videos being lovingly assembled by mechanics accompanied by cinematic background music: a Trek Madone.

You may wonder why I want one since it costs more than $10,000 US.

A car costing several times that is regarded as a reasonable thing to buy. Wearing a Porsche while driving down the road to get a loaf of bread is fashionable, while riding an expensive bicycle is seen as a waste of money. “You spent HOW much?” friends will say.

In high school, I was a member of a road racing team. A local bike shop had organized cycling tours. After a few rides, a few of us began to wonder how fast we could get if we trained with a coach. We heard about a man working at a nearby hotel who had raced at the Commonwealth Games. We went to his room and knocked on his door. I remember him opening his door and looking out at us teenagers with a bewildered expression. We explained that we knew he was a pretty good rider and asked him if he would be willing to coach us. After a few seconds, he agreed and said, “Yes.”

Over the next two years, coach Claire Bonner would train us until our team became known throughout British Columbia. Two of our riders would reach the national level (alas, not me, in case you were wondering). At the beginning of our cycling journey, particularly in time trials (riding alone against the clock), Claire could soundly beat us. He was hilarious and fun as well.

I remember when we first met Claire. I thought he was a bit stout-looking and impossibly old. Now that I am old, I am amused to remember how old he was then.

He was at the ripe old age of thirty-eight.

Claire was a prankster. On a training ride, Albert, one of our national-level riders, got a flat and stopped to fix it. Claire called out to Albert, “See if you can catch us!” After a few corners, Claire yelled, “Quick, hide in the bushes!” We all got off our bikes and waited patiently in the woods. After about twenty minutes, Albert went whooshing by trying to catch up to us. Claire smiled and said, “Really moving! Ha ha.” We all got back on our bikes and rode to the end of our course, where we found Albert looking around, wondering where we were. When we explained what happened and how impressed we were with his speed when he went by trying to catch up to us, he had a good chuckle as well.

Bicycle frames were made of metal back then. Building a bicycle out of carbon was a distant dream. Titanium was beginning to be used as a building material. It was difficult to weld into frames.

In the early 70s, at a bicycle race in Campbell River on Vancouver Island, I remember admiring a bicycle with a titanium frame. It was lighter than all the other bikes. Just as the race was about to begin, the titanium bike broke. The rider was unable to race.

Over the years, bicycles have evolved into remarkable machines. They are now astonishingly light and even come in models with electric motors.

A reliable bicycle with a steel frame costing a few hundred dollars might be perfect for a student. Something lighter will have an expensive alloy frame. An electric motor makes the bicycle more versatile, but we are getting to the thousand-dollar mark. When an inexpensive battery runs out, the bike becomes harder to pedal. A lighter bike with a longer-lasting battery will again add to the price.

Some bicycles are works of art, like the ones built by Shinichi Konno at Cherubim in Japan. Some are collaborations between major corporations to promote their brands, like the supercar company McLaren’s collaboration with Californian bicycle manufacturer Specialized to create the Specialized S-Works+McLaren Venge racing bike. Other bicycles, such as the Trek Madone, are built for maximum speed, and because they are built from exotic materials to make them strong and light, they will also make your wallet light.

It used to be normal to buy cars for transportation. But the environment has changed. The climate is heating up, and we are in danger of exterminating ourselves.

A bicycle transforms a human into one of the most efficient machines on Earth. It does not require insurance, needs no fuel, and maintenance is uncomplicated and inexpensive.

A car requires a place to rest when it is not moving. Maintenance, particularly if one is unlucky, can be prohibitively expensive, even if you do it yourself.

Admittedly, a car can carry more stuff and will likely be preferred in unpleasant weather. But a bicycle is not merely transport; it is a way to live a healthy life at a slower speed.

When you are the engine that propels your bicycle, you may, if you ride seriously enough, have the exhilarating experience of regularly attaining vehicular speeds under your own power.

Albert, one of the faster riders on our team, was pulled over for speeding.

As you gain experience, you might enjoy the unique sensation of being in a pack of experienced riders bunched very closely together, centimeters apart. The group leader is working hard, but the others following are “drafting,” using over 30% less energy. There is a humming sound from the tires, which are filled to a pressure about three times that of a passenger car to reduce rolling friction. Each member of the group shares the lead to keep the group moving as fast as possible, allowing everyone to stay rested.

I can’t explain what this feels like.

A few kind readers of an early draft asked me to describe this in more detail. It would be like trying to describe the sensation of chocolate ice cream to someone who had never tasted ice cream before. “Sweet” or “cold” doesn’t get you very far.

The best thing I can suggest is to get some chocolate ice cream and taste it.

When you are in a group of cyclists who are pretty good, you are moving along in a tight group at a speed that makes mistakes dangerous. Each rider needs to be acutely aware of the other riders around them. You become part of a superorganism with a changing head. When the group is on and working well together, it is… well…just awesome.

As you improve, your body will transform into a better one. You will sleep more soundly. Your resting heart rate will drop.

For a few thousand dollars, an electric bicycle offers an economical, practical means of transportation. If you intend to ride hundreds of kilometers under your own power—like me—you might want to consider the Trek Madone.

I like the color called “Deep Smoke.”

Have you ever wondered what would happen if everyone bought a bicycle?

There would be a variety of bicycles for every person: old, young, athletic, or couch potato. Bicycle lanes would be replaced by bicycle-only freeways with barriers protecting riders against rain and wind. They would be built over, around, and under the paths of migratory animals.

The word “roadkill” would only appear in historical documents.

There would be places to rest, with fresh fruit and water, as well as the finest coffee and teas. And, of course, charcoal-fired pizza.

In this quiet, safe world, cyclists would ride without fear of being killed by large, rapidly moving machines.

Cars insulate us from the elements and from each other as well. Cyclists are exposed to the sensations around them and to interactions with other people.

If we all rode bicycles, the world would become slower and quieter. I think it is likely that we humans would become slower, quieter, and possibly kinder too.