Cyberpunk is dead?
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Cyberpunk is dead?
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Re: Cyberpunk is dead?
#2The problem with cyberpunk is that it's no longer the future, it's the present. Sometimes when I read the news I've got the idea we're kind of living in a dystopian 90's cyberpunk future...
When it's the new normal it makes sense that the word is "dead" as a denominator.
Re: Cyberpunk is dead?
#3Not dead, just moved. I think the whole bitcoin thing is very cyberpunk-ish. A digital crypto-currency.
Re: Cyberpunk is dead?
#4The problem with cyberpunk is that it's no longer the future, it's the present. Sometimes when I read the news I've got the idea we're kind of living in a dystopian 90's cyberpunk future... When it's the new normal it makes sense that the word is "dead" as a denominator.
My thoughts exactly. I don't mean to threadjack, but I'm running a new startup where I'm building augmented reality displays ( http://gothameyewear.com/ if anyone is interested -- haven't posted it here before, simply because there's not much there), and I occasionally have that "well shit, it's the future" realization in working on it. We may not be in the 2011 of Shadowrun, but we'll have decks soon -- they'll be our smartphones.
Re: Cyberpunk is dead?
#5"If I write something set 60 years in the future I am going to have to explain how humanity got there and that's becoming quite a big job," [Gibson] said.
"Compared to that further investigation of our alien present seems actually way more doable and it may be more fun to do because it shakes all sorts of people out of the woodwork that want to talk to me," [Gibson added].
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11502715
Also, http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/09/william-gibson-interv...
Re: Cyberpunk is dead?
#6I thought the last two paragraphs were delightful and might help explain the recent trend for people to leave HN.
Otherwise, the piece is barely legible.
Re: Cyberpunk is dead?
#7The problem with cyberpunk is that it's no longer the future, it's the present. Sometimes when I read the news I've got the idea we're kind of living in a dystopian 90's cyberpunk future... When it's the new normal it makes sense that the word is "dead" as a denominator.
That's exactly Gibsons take on it which is why he wrote a book like Pattern Recognition which interestingly enough is much less dystopian than his first three books.
These days cyberpunk seems to be more about transhumanism and posthumanism ala Charles Stross books "Accellerando" & "Singularity Sky".
Re: Cyberpunk is dead?
#8This piece reads awfully. I haven't seen anything like this since trying to understand inscrutable postmodernist literary criticism at college.
I am very interested in this, but I'm having a lot of trouble understanding it. What's he trying to say?
Todays market of representations means that we exchange images that are valued by statements without consequence, statements whose only value is the one of attention, something we have learned from the advertising process, which has become the key process of culture. This cultural praxis fails to find a history of the human faces. The faces tried to break the boundaries of word and image, they were processes of conscious creation of speaking images for the feelings that words fail to describe.
Re: Cyberpunk is dead?
#9"If I write something set 60 years in the future I am going to have to explain how humanity got there and that's becoming quite a big job," [Gibson] said. "Compared to that further investigation of our alien present seems actually way more doable and it may be more fun to do because it shakes all sorts of people out of the woodwork that want to talk to me," [Gibson added]. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-1150271…
Interestingly, Gibson's latest book - Pattern Recognition - is set in the present. It's very good.
http://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Recognition-William-Gibson/dp/...
It's not the same dystopian future he envisioned in the 1990s. But his keen eye draws out the darker sides.
Re: Cyberpunk is dead?
#10The problem with cyberpunk is that it's no longer the future, it's the present. Sometimes when I read the news I've got the idea we're kind of living in a dystopian 90's cyberpunk future... When it's the new normal it makes sense that the word is "dead" as a denominator.
Yes, the only thing truly missing is the idea of a direct neural interface and some kind of virtual world... but in reality that virtual world will likely never exist outside games.
Why, you ask? Because the main conceit of the cyberpunk virtual world is that it's entirely like reality with the exception that it's more fantastic. But an amazon/itunes search with a quick click to buy is infinitely faster and more convenient than jumping in to a virtual world and 'physically' trying to find something.
Alternate reality is the new future, not virtual reality. We already have a perfectly good reality, so we'll just spice it up.