Modern Proverb: The future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed (attrib William Gibson 1995 Sept 1)

[Jonathan Lighter]

At some time in the 1990s, _Mystery Science Theater 2000_ subjected a 1939
World's Fair short to the MST2K treatment.  The short burbled on about all
the wonders of tomorrow: moving sidewalks (everywhere), family aeroplanes,
the works.  The Future was going to be great!

The comment that sticks in my mind was (more or less) "Your future may vary.
Future not available in Asia, Africa, and parts of South America."

JL
On Sun, Sep 5, 2010 at 4:51 AM, Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Modern Proverb: The future is already here, it's just
> unevenly
>              distributed (attrib William Gibson 1995 Sept 1)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Who said "the future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed"?
>
> These are the words of a questioner at the Quotes Uncovered:
> Freakonomics website in September 2009.
>
> Members of the digerati periodically attempt to trace this quote.
> Science fiction luminary and one-time wunderkind William Gibson is
> always given credit. This is the earliest cite I have located:
>
> Cite: 1995 September 1, Rocky Mountain News, Conflict Certain in
> Cyberspace By Cyrus McCrimmon, Page 78A, Denver, Colorado. (NewsBank)
>
> "There's a great (cyberpunk writer) Bill Gibson line: 'The future is
> already here, it's just unevenly distributed ,' " said Electronic
> Frontier Foundation co-founder and Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry
> Barlow. "You really can see that in this room. It's the high end on
> the getting-it spectrum but the spectrum within this room is
> incredibly broad. It makes you think about how broad it really is
> across the face of society."
>
> There is a lead of unknown reliability to a possibly earlier cite.
> Here is an excerpt from a website called BrianStorms about a thread on
> Usenet:
>
> Ok, it looks like this subject was covered fairly well in a USENET
> thread from Feb 2004, wherein one of the participants mentioned that
> the original quote comes from a 31 August 1993 interview with Terry
> Gross in NPR's Fresh Air.
>
> http://www.brianstorms.com/archives/000461.html
>
> I have checked another radio program in 1999 and verified that the
> quote does appear in the audio stream on November 30th 1999 in the NPR
> program Talk of the Nation. It is possible that the 1993 claim is
> incorrect and is due to confusion between radio programs. I have been
> unable to check the 1993 claim because I cannot find an archive for
> NPR's Fresh Air in 1993.
>
> Garson
>
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