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William Gibson and His Obsession with Tech-Dystopian Worlds
William Gibson, the pioneer of cyberpunk, has long been fascinated by futures where technology shapes - and controls - every aspect of life.
📖 In Zero History (2010), he continues to explore hyperconnected cities where surveillance, branding, and daily life blur into a single, disquieting reality. Through characters such as Hollis Henry and Milgrim, Gibson shows us that we’re already living in the future he imagined - one governed by data, algorithms, and the uneasy merger of man and machine.
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The Iconic “Ugly T‑Shirt” in Zero History
In Zero History, Gibson sets the stage in a surveilled, always-online London, where technology is no longer futuristic - it’s embedded in every routine gesture.
📝 The story follows Hollis Henry, a former rock musician turned investigative journalist, and Milgrim, a recovering addict with a knack for languages and slipping under the radar. Both are drawn into the orbit of Hubertus Bigend, a charismatic media magnate obsessed with anything that resists categorization.
👾Enter one of the novel’s strangest objects: a t-shirt so aggressively ugly, it confuses surveillance cameras. Not ‘ugly’ in the conventional sense, but visually chaotic - so disruptive that it confuses algorithms, which fail to retain the image. The cameras see the person wearing it, then immediately "forget" them. The idea, originally suggested by fellow sci-fi author Bruce Sterling, becomes more than just a quirky plot device.
🗣️The “Ugly T‑Shirt” becomes a symbol of quiet rebellion. In a world where everything is tracked and catalogued, aesthetic disorder becomes a clever (and ironic) act of resistance. As in many of Gibson’s novels, fashion here isn’t just clothing - it’s language, and protest.
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What If the Real Ugly T‑Shirt Is Our AI CAMO?
There’s something thrilling about imagining that Gibson’s “Ugly T‑Shirt” isn’t just a fictional concept.
👁️Anyone who’s read Zero History knows this: the future it portrays looks uncomfortably like our present. So let’s reframe the scene. London. Surveillance everywhere. Drones in the sky. Algorithms parsing every face. And in the middle of it all, Hollis Henry walking down the street - not in just any shirt, but in our AI CAMO T‑Shirt.
🧵Because this isn't just a t-shirt - it’s a statement. A real-world answer to Gibson’s fictional challenge. What once belonged to science fiction can now be worn, touched, lived. And it was born from the very spirit that drives us.
💥Our AI CAMO was designed to be bold. Visually striking. Unapologetically disruptive. And for exactly that reason, powerful. In a world where being seen means being analyzed, choosing what you reveal becomes an act of defiance. And in that choice, just like in Gibson’s world, we find ourselves.
🌐To us, this isn’t just apparel. It’s a tribute to cyberpunk culture, to creative resistance, to rewriting the rules on our own terms. And for those who wear it, it’s a way of saying: “Yes, I’ve read the future - and now, I wear it.”
Find your T-Shirt in our e-shop à AI CAMO T‑Shirt [https://www.capable.design/it/products/ai-camo-t-shirt]
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