Virtual Light (Bridge, #1)

by William Gibson

And Yamazaki knew, without asking, that the red dancer represented the way of Shapely’s going, like some terrible base stupidity waiting at the core of things.

Oh, I know, I know you all think you live in all the times at once, everything recorded for you, it’s all there to play back. Digital.

Skinner in bed with the tv, watching one of those shows he liked about history. He was talking about how all his life these movies of history had been getting better and better looking. How they’d started out jumpy and black and white, with the soldiers running around like they had ants in their pants, and this terrible grain to them, and the sky all full of scratches. How gradually they’d slowed down to how people really moved, and then they’d been colorized, the grain getting finer and finer, and even the scratches went away. And it was bullshit, he said, because every other bit of it was an approximation, somebody’s idea of how it might have looked, the result of a particular decision, a particular button being pushed. But it was still a hit, he said, like the first time you heard Billy Holiday without all that crackle and tin.