In his article The Postmodern Imaginary in William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Tony Myers explains that “The imbrication of Case and the technologies of the matrix may be said to represent something of this outcome, one in which subjectivity is reduced to a function of the system in a manner reminiscent of the most pessimistic critiques of capitalism” (Myers, 905). While Myers points out how Case ends up becoming a part of a larger system and that the novel critiques the negative sides of capitalism, Gibson seems to be emphasizing how cyberspace alters a sense of self, and that capitalism is just one part of that exploration. Although capitalism plays an important role through the fact that major corporations are trying to take over, this aspect…show more content… At the beginning of the novel when Case was punished by his employers for stealing, his “nervous system” was compromised by “a wartime Russian mycotoxin” (Gibson, 6). Case’s employers quite possibly also regarded the body as meat, and so the punishment for Case was not an instance where the employers personalized the type of prison to trap Case. Case explains how he “expected to die, then, but they only smiled” (Gibson, 5). It is possible that the employers were smiling because they knew how tortuous the punishment would be. Another instance of a group of people disregarding bodies is when people fight to the death in an arena while a crowd watches. When Case catches a moment of this kind of fight, his response to seeing blood is an “edge of vomit in his throat” (Gibson, 38). Molly also displays a moment of disregard for another person’s body when she used her “flechettes, at twenty rounds per second” on a boy (Gibson, 38). Although, this situation arose out of defending Case from an attack. Not only are people in this world disregarding bodies, but they are also often repulsed or indifferent to…show more content… Gibson’s anxieties about the power technology has to alter perceptions of identities are fully realized in a dystopian setting, which provoke an introspection into what humans can do now to avoid such disastrous consequences, such as losing identity or developing a hatred of the body. Gibson is not overly critical of the negative sides of technology, but he portrays the central conflicts with an overly cautious tone. Questions of how identity is shaped in cyberspace is not limited to humans, either, as the development of machine identity is explored as well, which allows readers to consider how machines work more seriously. The ending is ambiguous in how Case turns out, and this leaves an open interpretation of whether or not Gibson’s portrayal of cyberspace is more positive or negative. There are several ways in which the blurred boundaries between reality and cyberspace shape identity, and Gibson gives readers a chance to decide how they want technology to change their identity, as for Gibson, change in some form is inevitable with
