Steam engine time

You know steam engine time? Humans have built little toys, steam engines, for thousands of years. The Greeks had them. Lots of different cultures. The Chinese had them. Lots of different cultures used steam to make little metal things spin around. Nobody ever did anything with it. All of a sudden someone in Europe did one out in a garden shed and the industrial revolution happened. That was steam engine time. When I was writing those first stories, I didn’t even know to call the thing the digital. But it was steam engine time. It was happening.

William Gibson em entrevista à Wired.