Linda Braly
English 2342-S70
Dr. William Brannon
April 20, 2012
“Neuromancer” – Journal #5 While reading “Neuromancer”, it is hard not to compare the characters journey through “cyberspace” to our current day “cyberspace”. Obviously, Gibson was well ahead of his time when he created this novel. Case was subjected to large amounts of “ICE” and touring agents that were employed to prevent IA’s from getting too large. The fact that the author required Case to get through so many layers in order to achieve their mission, made it is obvious that author placed great importance on the need to maintain control of the information and prohibit access to unauthorized users that was floating around “cyberspace”. This can be compared to our current technology. We place an exorbitant amount of personal information into “cyberspace”, potentially allowing ourselves the chance to have our identities and our money stolen. Cyber-criminals must still go through layers before they can penetrate our information, but as we all know it is possible. Much like in “Neuromancer”, they had touring agents and massive amount of ICE to try and protect their information, in the end it did not matter. We must rely on virus applications and hopefully a dash of common sense to keep our information from landing in the hands of people like Case. However, with the ease of shopping, banking, and bill pay on-line, it is obvious that we are more concerned with convenience than we are with identity theft. I guess that is a good thing for the cyber-criminals of the world, those like Case who ride away into the night never to be found.

Word Count: 257