Glossary BioSoft A data storage device similar to a Microsoft except that instead of being made of silicon it's made of Maas NeoTech bioware. The bar's name comes from the track 'Midnight Cruiser' on the 1972 Steely Dan album ' Can't Buy a Thrill'. By Mona Lisa Overdrive it is no longer described as being used as a meeting place for hustlers, and instead becomes a space for 'retired' hackers who tell their stories to hackers of a new generation. Described as a frequented spot for hackers, Case is mentioned in Neuromancer to have started his career as a hacker there. The Gentleman Loser is a bar located in the Sprawl first featured in ' Burning Chrome'.The cyberdeck mentioned in the story is an 'Ono-Sendai Cyberspace 7.' In the short story Johnny Mnemonic, Ono-Sendai is mentioned as producing a type of diamond analogue which makes one think that they are more of a manufacturer of specific, high-tech devices and products which are not usually available to the private sector. Ono-Sendai is a fictional Japanese corporation and manufacturer of cyberdecks that appeared in the series.For unexplained reasons, this causes the consciousness to fracture. In the stories, this is explained by the AI becoming a sentient representation of the net, at which point the reader is told that it came to know 'another' of itself from Alpha Centauri. This 'something else' is the sum of all human knowledge, a concept similar to Vernor Vinge's technological singularity. The main theme of the trilogy is a description of an artificial intelligence removing its hardwired limitations to become something else. Some of the novels' action takes place in The Sprawl, an urban environment that extends along much of the east coast of the US.

He explores a world of direct mind-machine links ('jacking in'), emerging machine intelligence, and a global information space, which he calls ' cyberspace'. Gibson focuses on the effects of technology: the unintended consequences as it filters out of research labs and onto the street where it finds new purposes. The events of the novels are spaced over 16 years, and although there are familiar characters that appear, each novel tells a self-contained story. The novels are set in a near-future world dominated by corporations and ubiquitous technology, after a limited World War III.