The story takes place in a near-future where the United States is in decline, having been negatively affected by some event referred to as the "devaluations."
[7][8][9] The crate-packaged installation, which was surrounded by scrap metal, computer chips, and pages from manga comic strips, featured a model of the towers, along with Gibson on a monitor discussing the future and reading from "Skinner's Room".
[4] The OMNI version concerns an unnamed girl and an old man named Skinner who live in the one-room shack built on top of the first cable tower of the Bridge.
The New York Times hailed the "Visionary San Francisco" exhibition as "one of the most ambitious, and admirable, efforts to address the realm of architecture and cities that any museum in the country has mounted in the last decade".
[9] Despite organiser Paulo Polledri's claim that the collaboration was an "appeal to civic responsibility by showing the effects of its absence",[7] The New York Times judged Ming and Hodgetts's reaction to "Skinner's Room" a "powerful, but sad and not a little cynical, work".