Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson

precastreinforced.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 194 posts

Re: New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson

#11

Post by lofaszvanitt »

rbanffy wrote: post #9
lofaszvanitt wrote: post #3

It's more like a deliberate, manufactured future by the bigdiks that slowly takes place in certain countries.

The unevenly distributed future is a William Gibson thing. A couple months back I had at a Chinese place in the western parts of Dublin (Ireland) and we could see the operating base of the Mana food delivery drones. Ireland was never known to get early issues of whatever the current dystopian future is being distributed, so it was an interesting sight - drones autonomously locating landing platforms and waiting to be…

Nah, I wasn't talking about WG and his quote.

Re: New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson

#12

Post by languagehacker »

tolugenius wrote: post #8
Der_Einzige wrote: post #4

The only reason I know who J.G. Ballard is is because of Jean Baudrillard. I'm convinced it was the similarity of their names which convinced Jean to read J.G's work.

Where would you recommend I start with J.G.? I got into Baudrillard and have been meaning to go further down the train of thought.

Crash, Concrete Island, High Rise

Re: New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson

#13

Post by fullshark »

api wrote: post #5

Another thing they got right was the merger of governments, large corporations, finance, intelligence agencies, and globalized organized crime into one big sprawling mass of Machiavellian nihilists scheming for power. None of these people really believe in anything, though sometimes they pretend to as part of some power play. Gibson in particular nails this, especially in his original Sprawl trilogy. This sprawling m…

Yeah it's really amazing how prescient these books are given when they were written. I wish I enjoyed them more, I'm reading Mona Lisa Overdrive now and other than intellectual admiration of it all I mostly find the Sprawl trilogy a chore to get through. I don't enjoy the prose, and how dense it is I guess cause I am not a careful reader.

Re: New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson

#14

Post by compass_copium »

tolugenius wrote: post #8
Der_Einzige wrote: post #4

The only reason I know who J.G. Ballard is is because of Jean Baudrillard. I'm convinced it was the similarity of their names which convinced Jean to read J.G's work.

Where would you recommend I start with J.G.? I got into Baudrillard and have been meaning to go further down the train of thought.

Super Cannes should be a perfect place to start for anyone reading this site.

Re: New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson

#15

Post by hypfer »

api wrote: post #5

Another thing they got right was the merger of governments, large corporations, finance, intelligence agencies, and globalized organized crime into one big sprawling mass of Machiavellian nihilists scheming for power. None of these people really believe in anything, though sometimes they pretend to as part of some power play. Gibson in particular nails this, especially in his original Sprawl trilogy. This sprawling m…

> I sometimes wonder what's really happening here. Maybe with our large scale and large population we have exceeded Dunbar's number and the individual human cognitive "context window" so much that coherent social systems are no longer sustainable.

I think we might just not have run out of money yet. A lot of debt (social, structural, technical, financial, cultural, etc) is going to hit us like a freight train if AI turns out to not be the magic cure people desperately hope it is going to be.

The power of "the biz" rests on cash not running out. Certainly not on loyalty of the workers.

Re: New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson

#16

Post by watutalkinbout »

api wrote: post #5

Another thing they got right was the merger of governments, large corporations, finance, intelligence agencies, and globalized organized crime into one big sprawling mass of Machiavellian nihilists scheming for power. None of these people really believe in anything, though sometimes they pretend to as part of some power play. Gibson in particular nails this, especially in his original Sprawl trilogy. This sprawling m…

"They might not be able to deliver them because we have exceeded the scale on which human social structures can coherently operate."

Sounds unlikely to me without the caveat "within this particular brand of politics and socioeconomics".

Re: New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson

#17

Post by JKCalhoun »

languagehacker wrote: post #12
tolugenius wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where would you recommend I start with J.G.? I got into Baudrillard and have been meaning to go further down the train of thought.

Crash, Concrete Island, High Rise

"Crash" I know of by reputation.

I can't see the dystopian music of John Foxx's Ultravox! (or Gary Numan for that matter) without seeing it through the Ballard/Crash Zeitgeist of the "New Romantics".

(Although I see now that "Crash" was published first in 1973—wow.)

Re: New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson

#18

Post by xnorswap »

keiferski wrote: post #10

I am a big fan of both, but I think what's missing in reality, but in their fiction (and cyberpunk fiction in general) is a sense of coolness and caring about aesthetics. For all the evil that the mega corporations do in a Gibson novel, they still have an aesthetic appeal. Real-world corporations aren't that interesting. Amazon, Facebook, or Google have nothing "culturally" or aesthetically on Hosaka, Arasaka or Sens…

I would disagree with that, I've seen people anchor their own identity to that of brands like Apple or Disney.

They may not be aesthetics you find cool, but clearly they appeal to a large number of others.

Re: New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson

#19

Post by [deleted] »

tolugenius wrote: post #8
Der_Einzige wrote: post #4

The only reason I know who J.G. Ballard is is because of Jean Baudrillard. I'm convinced it was the similarity of their names which convinced Jean to read J.G's work.

Where would you recommend I start with J.G.? I got into Baudrillard and have been meaning to go further down the train of thought.

[deleted]

Re: New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson

#20

Post by staplers »

keiferski wrote: post #10

I am a big fan of both, but I think what's missing in reality, but in their fiction (and cyberpunk fiction in general) is a sense of coolness and caring about aesthetics. For all the evil that the mega corporations do in a Gibson novel, they still have an aesthetic appeal. Real-world corporations aren't that interesting. Amazon, Facebook, or Google have nothing "culturally" or aesthetically on Hosaka, Arasaka or Sens…

They had to make it cool to make it palatable and not a slog for entertainment purposes. Without that it's just a depressing read of reality.
Post reply on HN