The color was a very flat gray color.
this post was submitted on 18 May 2026
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Gibson has said that he was imagining a TV from when he was growing up. Quote:
"I actually composed that first image with black and white video static of my childhood in mind, sodium silvery and almost painful, [...] the texture and color of a signal free channel on a wooden cabinet motorola with fabric covered speakers.
So like this:
The scariest part about this is realizing there was less time between 1985 to 2005 then there is from 2005 to now (2026).
ONLY JUST BARELY GODDAMNIT
Neuromancer reference, btw
Neuromancer if anyone is curious. One of the best opening lines in literature.
Beat me to it. I was going to ask whether any non-science fiction readers would know this famous opening line. IIRC, Gibson himself notes how the interpretation of the line changed with the change of technology.
Yall had color static? I only remember seeing black and white static.
You could get color if a weak signal drifted in (and had a color TV), but generally it was black and white. OP needs to take that pixelated mess back and fix it.
I had a tv that output static with the colors when signal was missing, it did NOT make the fuzz sound tho.
This was the early 90s
I think early digital may have done that, but not analog.
Digital is either on or off. You need analog to get static.
Right, it was simulated static, instead of the blue screen.
For the tv we had my recollection was that it only happened when there was no input plugged into the UHF.
Or if the Nintendo inline was plugged in and the Nintendo was off, and no other input.
We had cable since that late 80s so I don’t recall ever dealing with signal loss beyond VH1 becoming scrambled at 9:30 for the playboy channel.
OP was playing with magnets
Gibson talks about this in his prologue, and other anachronisms in Neuromancer (specifically his lack of imagination regarding phones)—he was envisioning the dull grey of a dead tv signal of his childhood, not the crazy black and white static of the late 20th and early 21st century; but the sentiment tracks even though he probably wasn’t event thinking that about any of the implications, given his displeasure of even being lumped in with cyberpunk as a genre (which I think is really confoundedly stupid on his part).
We had a really old tv in my basement when I was young. If you messed with the hue knob while on a non existent channel you could get a lot more colorful static
Well that is wildly upsetting.
Should have just been the Roku City haha
Take me down to Roku City, where the remote is good, and the advertising pretty!! Awwww will you please take me hommmeeee!
Why was it blue and not another color
Same reason they use blue for maxipad commercials
They all fit pretty well as cyberpunk, particularly 2025. The quote's held up well, really.
there are two too many towers in the post 1985 skylines.
That's not New York.
Bonus points for anyone who knows where Neuromancer does start, go!
It is a bit funny because Chiba is fairly rural, definitely no cyberpunk metropolis
Yet
Night City.
pfft. still two too many.
Praytell, which city is that?
No idea, I don't know the skylines of all cities in the world and it could be fictional.
Fantastic 😂