History Headscratchers / Neuromancer

** She changes her name and appearance so as not to be recongnised. I don't understand why she doesn't use her claws anymore either.

** Maybe, as each of them is made to complement the other, Wintermute was given the ambition that Neuromancer lacked. Putting it in the AI capable of perfectly recreating people and making its own avatars from scratch might have been too obvious to the Turing Police. Much better to put that desire in the one that can't even talk directly to people without elaborate workarounds, where it could go unnoticed for years. And does.

** Wintermute is trying to operate under the radar. If it recruited a well-known cowboy [t wold alert the authorities that something is going on. That's why it rebuilt Armitage instead of using a more functional mercenary leader.

** All of them were integral, if unwitting, participants in the plans of [[spoiler: Wintermute/Neuromancer and it's AI offspring]] to prevent Josef Virek from becoming a cybernetic immortal via Dr. Mitchell's biochip technology.

* The book never did explain why [[spoiler:Wintermute]] wanted Case specifically as opposed to paying some better, world-class cowboys. Maybe because he was more easily manipulable? Or because Case studied under the Flatline, and the Flatline had some experience against an AI's black ICE?
** Just guessing here, but [[spoiler:Wintermute]] seemed to have a 'thing' for broken people it could rebuild to serve its purposes. It specifically [[spoiler:rebuilt Corto as Armitage]] to have a serviceable middleman for [[spoiler:the Run to let it merge with Neuromancer]]
** Case has a death wish [[spoiler:which makes him surprisingly able to turn down Neuromancer's seductive pseudo-immortality.]]

** The reason it seems like AIs are an abandoned concept is precisely because of the Turing Police. Gibson never gave a good reason for these guys having the reach and authority that they do, but it's clearly the case that they clamp down hard on anyone who has something that looks or acts like a self-improving conscious program. Recall that across each and every book, the perpetual hacker-hackee arms race is [[ComputersAreFast driven entirely by AI-written worms and ICE]]. On top of those, you have Colin and Continuity, who are non-improving AI, and [[spoiler: Wintermute and Neuromancer who were made during a time when big AI]] was either less policed or more popular of a business concept.

** It's certainly the case that Molly is trying to hide her identity. The alludes to as much in "Mona Lisa Overdrive" whilst talking to the hired British goons. Recall that there are at the very least twenty years between the events of "Neuromancer" and "Mona Lisa". While Case cashed out and had kids, Molly has moved halfway across the world and continued to be a street samurai. She's halfway between an assassin and hired muscle; I would assume that as she aged she became less direct, leaning more on the wisdom of her long career to accomplish jobs. That, combined with twenty-plus years of vendettas and unpayable debts has probably made her incredibly wary of using her real name and signature moves in public.

** He gets off on betraying people, remember? And he probably would've ended up betraying 3Jane later on.

*** While in the novel at least some commands are input on the deck, the feedback from the matrix is directed to the brain. What gets flatlined is EEG (brain electric activity), not EKG/ECG (heard electic activity). Assumably the things the console jockeys do require the reaction speeds achievable only by the direct neural interface.

** The reason it seems like AIs are an abandoned concept is precisely because of the Turing Police. Gibson never gave a good reason for these guys having the reach and authority that they do, but it's clearly the case that they clamp down hard on anyone who has something that looks or acts like a self-improving conscious program. Recall that across each and every book, the perpetual hacker-hackee arms race is driven entirely by AI-written worms and ICE. On top of those, you have Colin and Continuity, who are non-improving AI, and [[spoiler: Wintermute and Neuromancer who were made during a time when big AI]] was either less policed or more popular of a business concept.

** Neuromancer had already evolved beyond that desire. The AI literally learned how to recreate human intelligence, making digital souls. Why does that matter? Because it learned how to be smarter by mimicking humans to the higher level than any other AI. Case makes the point that Wintermute couldn't create a believable Linda Lee, only Neuromancer could. It didn't need to combine with Wintermute to evolve. Wintermute on the other hand needs Neuromancer.

* Why is Neuromancer trying to thwart Wintermute's plot? Marie-France had Wintermute built with a desire to bond with its counterpart, so why not do that to Neuromancer too?

*** While in the novel at least some commands are input on the deck, the feedback from the matrix is directed to the brain. What gets flatlined is EEG (brain electric activity), not EKG/ECG (heard electic activity). Assumably the things the console jockeys do require the reaction speeds achievable only by the direct neural interface.

** The deck is hooked up directly to a cowboy's brain, and it's some kind of a neural feedback loop that stops the cowboy's heart, not simple electrocution.

** Well you also have to consider that there is also the nail, you manage to get something like one or two centimeter of nail and that also add to the perceived lenght

** Probably they do, but one constant is attacking ability is always going to outdo defensive ability, and that applies to software as well.

* So ICE is capable of killing or severely harming cowboys who get attacked by it. We know this because of the Dixie Flatline, who wound up braindead ''three times'' during his life; at one point, reminiscing about the first time he flatlined out, he mentions that his assistant "smelled the skin frying and pulled the 'trodes off me". My question is this: Why isn't it a simple matter to install security measures in your own deck to keep the ICE from killing you or bricking your computer? I don't know what kind of computer program could possibly fry another computer's motherboard, or cause a malfunction that ''electrocutes the other computer's user'' -- and even so, you'd think there ought to be something one could install to ''prevent'' that from happening.

** Case has a death wish [[spoiler:which makes him surprisingly able to turn down Neuromancer's seductive pseudo-immortality]]