Advertisement
We all know the laundry list of cybernetic and information technologies we read in Sci-fi novels that are now real. In some parts of the some US cities (not to mention places out side the US) are as degraded as a cyberpunk city. So when in your opion did we start living in a primitive cyberpunk setting? or what bench mark are you waiting for?
posted by:
|
SF Bay Area
|
Advertisement
Advertisement
-
Re: When did Cyberpunk arrive?
Wed, August 30, 2006 - 10:59 AMOh, I think you're absolutely right. It's almost like we're living in a steampunk version of what cyberpunk will be.
Like this guy driving around in his rickety spider vehicle:
www.youtube.com/watch
It's kind of hard to see the forest for the trees, but what we're living in right now is the beginning of the singularity. It's happening before our eyes. The ants can't see the shape that the pheromone trails make on the ground, the chemical brain that remembers where food is, but the intelligence of the hive is there nonetheless.
In our case it's increasing all the time.
Environmental desolation, heat waves, increased populations of displaced people, unprecedented prosperity, all in a climate of extreme technological ferment. These are the things that make cyberpunk.
Strangely enough, I'm rather thinking that the technology of Sterling and Gibson is going to take a back seat to the more wild stuff. There's not just an AI singularity. There's also a materials science singularity coming.
Wait and see.
-
-
Re: When did Cyberpunk arrive?
Wed, August 30, 2006 - 11:46 AMwe already take for granted many things that, even 5 years ago, was science fiction.
NiMH rechargeable batteries. nickel-metal hydride stores electricity much more effectively than the old NiCads, and from what I hear can even be used to store hydrogen fuel in an inert state.
Memory metal- Forged in a certain way, at a certain temperature, the metal holds a specific state, until bent at around room temp. It will stay bent, like a pipe cleaner, however, when it comes into contact with low temperatures it springs instantly back to its original shape.
And theres all those rumors from the UFO crowd about fabrics that, when charged in a certain way, display whatever is behind them at the moment, like an invisibility cloak, as well as an xray cloak, but this is HIGHLY debatable. But the truth is, we, the public, are the last ones who will know about such things.
i always think, how many very wealthy idividuals have funded strange research? Ive heard stories of cybernetic limbs indistinguishable from flesh, from a source who has a very good record of trustworthiness. But anyone can imagine anything, and become convinced of its truth. How many rich people have managed to get scientists to fulfill their technological fantasies? What have they discovered?
It is possible, now, for implants to be placed in the brain, which allow a person to manipulate a mouse cursor by thought alone. I saw this on some PBS special, all about such things. A quadriplegic former college football player, injured at play, now uses his computer with his mind.
A stroke victim, elderly woman, can hear again due to an implant and attached microphone.
With implants in the phosphene centers of the brain, images can be translated by external cameras into phosphenes (the lights you see when you close your eyes), allowing the blind to see, in a sense. Phosphenes have nothing to do with the optic nerve.
These are still experimental, but my point is that these are what we know of! Imagine....
-
-
Unsu...
Re: When did Cyberpunk arrive?
Wed, August 30, 2006 - 4:26 PMWhich parts of which US cities would you deem as "cyberpunk"? -
-
Re: When did Cyberpunk arrive?
Wed, August 30, 2006 - 5:32 PMI think that it's punk areas that are cyberpunk. There are plenty of areas that are cyber, but sitting in your coffeeshop in your black turtleneck with your Mac doth not a cyberpunk make. It's people who are doing things like weld bikes together into strange and unusual configurations that are doing it. The people who are perverting technology to unintended means.
I don't really think there are physically based CP cultures yet. There really aren't enough of us and the punks still have too much of a luddite ethos.
But that will change when they start to understand the havoc that's possible.
-
Re: When did Cyberpunk arrive?
Wed, August 30, 2006 - 9:47 PMI said as degraded as a cyberpunk city - no real emergency services, public schools so bad you are litteraly better off skiping them, rampend crime etc. Thats all. MY main point is that ever last building block we for a CP setting exists in our lives. So do you think we should call the real world Cyberpunk or not? -
-
Re: When did Cyberpunk arrive?
Wed, August 30, 2006 - 11:19 PMLast night, I was at a streetcorner coffeeshop in Minneapolis.
The area is filled with Somalians. They've become increasingly violent.
There was an armed robbery just down the block from me and two girls were beaten. The cops took 15 minutes to arrive.
Law enforcement funding has been gashed by the Bush administration-- arguably, increased levels of crime are part of their agenda.
A study was just released that stated that the US infrastructure was crumbling and it would cost 1.6 TRILLION to repair it, money which doesn't exist.
Some areas of the country are so polluted that whole neighborhoods have died of cancer.
We just had an environmental Wexelblat disaster that killed thousands of people and destroyed a major american city causing untold pollution and environmental damage.
You wonder what cities are cyberpunk cities? Take a look at Nola. A year ago, New Orleans was a freefire zone and there were tanks in the street. -
-
Re: When did Cyberpunk arrive?
Thu, August 31, 2006 - 1:59 AMTo me, it's the entire world taken as a whole that is cyberpunk.
The fact that I sit in a cafe wearing a black turtleneck while using my Mac, editing digital video and checking my e-mail via free WiFi while our government destabilizes the Middle East and Africans commit genocide is completely cyberpunk, in the sense that there is a major technologocal divide between the first and third worlds, between rich and poor. Technology is truly one of the most important modern symbols of wealth, and clearly deliniates the haves, early adopters with their Blackberries and PSPs, and the have-nots, who are happy if they can get decent TV reception on the 20-year-old static-filled set in their village. Countries that produce suicide bombers or promote warlordism typically have much less in the way of either technology or economic opportunity, yet a few still manage to carve out a technological niche that futhers agendas (presumably) very different from yours or mine. A great example are the 3D shooter computer games designed to train Muslim terrorists in the same way our own Army trains its soldiers - how fucking cyberpunk is that?
Technology erases boundaries in strange and often unpleasant ways: How about assassinating enemies of the state using remote-piloted drones? Procuring Russian brides over the Internet? The relentless Nigerian scam e-mails? Downloading insurgent-produced videos of Iraq truck-bombings on BitTorrent? William Gibson couldn't even imagine this shit.
It's all cyberpunk, baby.
-
Unsu...
Re: When did Cyberpunk arrive?
Thu, August 31, 2006 - 9:28 AMXyzzyx,
I lived through Katrina here in NOLA. It was all punk, no cyber. :) And, it sucked... -
-
Re: When did Cyberpunk arrive?
Thu, August 31, 2006 - 9:51 AMOver in Houston people were sipping their lattes and watching the refugee trains on huge widescreen televisions. And remember the people who came in to start up the emergency comms networks? "Powerless government" and "not giving a fuck government" are both cyberpunk themes: the administration was unable or unwilling to do jack shit. I'd also argue that Wexelblat disasters are in themselves cyberpunk-- but I guess that of the Three Apostles, I gravitate toward more toward Sterling than the others.
-
-
-
Unsu...
Re: When did Cyberpunk arrive?
Thu, August 31, 2006 - 9:33 AMI would disagree with equating poverty with cyberpunk. Cyberpunk would exist when the prevalence of technology becomes so widespread that diffuses into the "have-nots", causing an "absurd" condition as seen from our modern culture.
Currently that technology would be the television and the cell-phone. We might be at the cusp of a cyberpunk society, we might have one foot in the door, but we're not in it yet. -
-
Re: When did Cyberpunk arrive?
Thu, August 31, 2006 - 9:56 AM"I would disagree with equating poverty with cyberpunk. Cyberpunk would exist when the prevalence of technology becomes so widespread that diffuses into the "have-nots"
Without poverty, there's no punk. In a sense, punk is self-imposed poverty.
I think the second part is true: the DIY style of the LoTeks, high technology streetgangs (already happening to some degree) et cetera. In many places, computer literate kids from broken suburban homes are beginning to interface with drug trafficking gangs. There are groups procuring and setting up PCs for impoverished people.
I'd argue that it's happening right now-- the tendrils are beginning to creep into the cracks-- and in the near future it'll just be more of the same along an increasing curve. -
-
Re: When did Cyberpunk arrive?
Thu, August 31, 2006 - 1:39 PMAnother cyberpunk poverty/technology interface:
Chinese poor digging through mounds of computer and tech refuse for metal that can be resold, exposing themselves to being poisoned by heavy metals and other toxics in the process. It's Gibson's "gomi" in real life:
www.cbc.ca/consumers/ma...hitech_trash/
greenyes.grrn.org/2002/03/msg00240.html
-
-
-
-
-
Re: When did Cyberpunk arrive?
Sat, October 28, 2006 - 1:52 PMHmmn, good question. But isn't cyberpunk a type of fiction, and our current mode of real life information-technologies-saturation an example of cyberculture?
-
-
Re: When did Cyberpunk arrive?
Sun, October 29, 2006 - 12:03 PMI'd say that cyberpunk WAS a type of fiction that's now becoming a type of reality. Obviously, we're not 100% there yet.
But look at something like Second Life -- it's creator was inspired by "Snow Crash," and though it lacks the telepresence aspect, it has avatars moving through shared virtual space (then again, so does World of Warcraft, though you can't build stuff to the extent that Second Life lets you).
And there have been several recent breakthroughs in neural interface technology.
So certain aspects of cyberpunk are true or coming true. Arthur C. Clarke, you might recall, thought up the idea of satellites. Now there are dozens circling the globe. So would you call Clarke's original idea merely "science fiction"?
Transition points between imagination and realization are not always clear, but they do happen. And labels to describe the process are often inadequate.
-
-
Re: When did Cyberpunk arrive?
Sat, February 3, 2007 - 8:49 PMWell, we have pace makers, designer drugs, cheap technology, easy access to information, quite a few cities with wireless grids for free now but more and more we're coming out of primitive cyberpunk. Personally, I think this who thing with Boston that just went down is a prime example. I know there's many definitions to cyberpunk and each is personal but based on these definitions I'm posting, the whole snafu with ATFH promotion and the 'near-future dystopian society' is right here right now. You've got the paranoid crazies calling a government into action over a perceived terrorist threat in a nation where 'normal citizens' are crippled by fear already, a street level group of dread wearing artists with a video camera and access to getting their information out worldwide through the web, remixed to music utilizing an urban landscape, a marketing firm who hired a bunch of these small groups of tech saavy punk/artists, a small technology affiliate known as adult swim residing on another broadcasting company known as Cartoon Network and a Mega Corporation behind them known as Turner Broadcasting. Even after being caught they don't back down, plead not guilty, run the media into a frenzy discussing everything but the case and Turner working with law enforcement to settle the dispute and let the punks go free though now marked but famous. It seriously sounds like a novel I'd pay to read.
Definitions I gathered below.. ok, google gathered them for me.... ;)
Definitions of Cyberpunk on the Web:
* A subgenre of Science Fiction; this deals with the effect of the internet/virtual reality/cloning/etc. (ie, plausible science fiction) within a Dark Science Fiction setting. Generally set in the near future, often with psychadellic effects, often dangerous morality. An example is the film The Matrix.
www.christianfantasy.net/glossary.html
* A literary movement that swept the world of science fiction in the mid to late 1980s. The famous Sprawl trilogy by Vancouver author William Gibson, (Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive) is the canonical example of the genre, which emphasizes a gritty, streetwise view of technology, set in a near-future dystopia. ...
teladesign.com/ma-thesis/glossary.html
* A term coined by science fiction writers William Gibson and Bruce Sterlingreffering for a sub-group existing in an overindustrialised society. It is a cultural label used for many different kinds of human, machine, and punk attitudes, including clothing and lifestyle.
www.maptrax.com.au/standardsc...ftermsatoh/
* Cyberpunk was originally a cultural sub-genre of science fiction taking place in a not-so-distant, dystopian, overindustrialised society. The term grew out of the work of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling and has evolved into a cultural label encompassing many different kinds of human, machine, and punk attitudes. It includes clothing and lifestyle choices as well. See Also: Cyberspace
web.orbhost.net/glossary/glossary_cd.html
* hacker: a programmer who breaks into computer systems in order to steal or change or destroy information as a form of cyber-terrorism
* a writer of science fiction set in a lawless subculture of an oppressive society dominated by computer technology
* a genre of fast-paced science fiction involving oppressive futuristic computerized societies
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
* Cyberpunk (a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk) is a sub-genre of science fiction which focuses on computers or information technology, usually coupled with some degree of breakdown in social order. The plot of cyberpunk literature often revolves around the conflict between hackers, artificial intelligences, and megacorps, tending to be set within a near-future dystopian Earth, rather than the 'outer space' locales prevalent at the time of cyberpunk's inception. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk
