1. Predicts the future
2.
Directs the future
3.
Prevents the future
Cyberpunk can be read
as distant warning systems, warning us about future developments in which
there is no future that human beings can control and mold to fit their
purposes.
Cyberpunk is not technophilic and not technophopic, but
leaves an open question.
- Globalization: Implosion of classes, genders and political differences.
- Technocapitalism: Power means corporate power and corporate control of information and technology.
- Off-world colonies: symbolizes not only physical fleeing from earth but can be seen on a spiritual level. e.g. matrix where some people want to go back to the oblivion of the Matrix.
- Continuous rain and
absence of nature: The
scene of cyberpunk seems to be a postholocaust environment where nature has
shriveled and died. This postholocaust environment is not seen as a gray world
but a vibrantly melancholic with strong colors.
- Faster ways to travel
- More advanced communication
- More lethal weapons
ð The triumph of technology. Typical for science fiction to predict new technologies, e.g. Jules Verne and Leonardo da Vinci.
- A.I. : an as yet uninvented computer program of such sophistication and complexity that it has the same qualities as human consciousness.
- Operators in cyber space
- Turing test: a test to determine whether a computer has achieved A.I.
- Prosthetic memory
”As a Cyberpunk, you grab technology by the throat and hang on. You've got interface plugs in your wrists, weapons in your arms, lasers in your eyes. Biochip programs in your brain. You become the car you drive, the gun you shoot...With cyborged fingers you pick computer locks; with enhanced senses, you see into the Future.”
 | Implosion
between humans and technology. |
| Cyborgs can be
seen from the other side as well.. as evolved humans, not only evolved
machines. |
| Prosthetic
memories also for humans. |
| Quest for
immortality. |
”The
world of Cyberpunk is a violent, dangerous place, filled with people who’d
love to rip your arm off and eat it. The traditional concepts of good and evil
are replaced by the values of expedience-you do what you have to do to
survive. If you can do some good along the way, great.
But don't count on it.”
-
Individual selves trying to survive, maintain control and even to
preserve honor and dignity in a threatening world.
-
The dominant human emotions are greed and hatred. Positive emotions arise
from experiencing. Strive for experiences: ”It’s the question that drives
us, Neo.”
-
Aesthetic style permeates everyday life and high and low cultures implode
in a commodity universe.
-
In the future world of cyberpunk the Modern world has not died but
ruthless capitalist-modernists still economically dominate the world of
cyberpunk.
- What is human
identity if it’s programmable?
1) Style Over Substance.
2) Attitude is Everything.
3) Always take it to the Edge.
4) Break the Rules
Quotes taken from the rulebook
of the role-playing game Cyperpunk. Written by Mike Pondsmith, Colin Fisk, Will Moss, Scott Ruggels and Dave Friedland.
Original version published 1988 by R. Talsorian.
The role-playing games are like a virtual reality themselves.
Virtual reality: computer-generated environment that mimics reality
Cyber space:
| Generic term that refers to a cluster of different technologies, real & fictional, which have the ability to stimulate the environments in which humans can |
interact.
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| William Gibson’s |
| Neuromancer: A consensual hallucination ... unthinkable complexity... lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. |
Cyberspace democracy: increased participation in public debate, political
& cultural expression
Simulacra: Copies no longer refer to any original but actually precede the original
What is reality?
| Addresses the ongoing flood of communications technology. |
Highlights the new key phenomena of the current moment and their possible effects.
This is the strength of cyberthrillers in predicting the
future. They don’t just imagine things but take those revolutionary
things from the present reality and make them dominant.
1) Cyberpunk tends toward an implosive view of culture: doesn’t take into account the amount of differences and conflict in the present.
For
example: growing racism, emphasis on cultural and national differences and
fragmentation.
[[- Is it so? Cyberpunk picks the emerging globalist generation and makes it dominate the world. The old modern world is the reason for most of the modern conflicts, postmodern conflicts are different. ]]
2) Cyberpunk doesn’t address the current national need for spiritual values.
”Doesn’t
deal with the problems of disintegrating families, addictions to alcohol and
drugs and tobacco and sex. Doesn’t answer the contemporary question of
values and meaning. ” Kellner
[[
-
Actually it does. Cyberpunk says that
all these problems stay and become part of society. e.g. no families. ]]
Blade Runner(1982)
- globalization
- replicants
- Off-world colonies
Matrix (1999)
- virtual reality
- AI
Dark City (1998)
- unreliable memory
Cube (1997)
- Can humans control technology?
Strange Days (1995)
- virtual experiences
The 5th
element (1997) - globalization
- Cloning of humans
Alien (1979)
- Technology as the slave of capitalism
How can we
use technology to enhance human life,
promote
democracy and produce a better future?
Does
technology help us understand the basic
question of
life, the universe and everything?