We don’t often comment on our loglines, the rotating quotes describing this blog. We throw them at you, soon through Twitter, and trust that if they pique your curiosity you know about copy/paste, and Google*.

But this is one for which I have have a special appreciation.

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

The quote is, of course, the first line of Neuromancer, probably the most important, influential work of Science Fiction ever written.

Three quick points and then back to iPhone development:

• The book starts in Japan, and Japanese writing traditionally starts with a description of the weather.
• The metaphor is inverted. Comparing nature to technology implies that technological immersion is now the state we’re comfortable with, and we’re using that to describe something foreign — the sky.
• Do we still have dead channels? I think I can get static on my LCD, but not a white glow. I wouldn’t be surprised at a black or solid blue screen from my TV either. I’ve historically read that color as “bright grey” but it’s written in such a way that all of those colors are valid interpretations (though blue doesn’t set the same emotional tone). Implicit metaphors like that are a robust way of writing about rapidly-advancing technology: Note to self.

* It might be time to see if we can link-ify loglines with the new WP.