Our experiences create our view of the world, good and bad. They also help us create goals and motivate us to achieve them. The characters of Neuromancer are no different than the rest of us in that sense. When we first meet Case, he's obsessed with not only his past but in finding a way to resurrect it. Even the computer-created characters like Wintermute and the Dixie Flatline seem driven by memories of the past. The only problem is that the memories aren't theirs; in cyberspace, memories can outlive the person whom they belong to, interwoven into the algorithms of a program. Yeah, it's all kinds of crazy up in here. Keeping track of the past while looking forward to the future is one of the major issues in the novel.