the future is here, it's just not evenly distrubuted
conversly, there is no human technology that isn't still bieng practiced in it's original form, ie: there are still people knapping stone tools that learned it from there parents and grandparents going on strait back to the first members of our "species" who learned it from there hybrid parents, in an unbroken chain, which is directly connected to ALL modern technology, in that early metal working was done with stone tools, as metal was far to precious for mundane or general use, and still at this moment ALL technolgy is powered by fire, wheels and levers at it's base and is instantly understandable and intuitive in it's use, but as others are pointing out, that matters little in relation to the setting and the style of our gadjets and tools, which as some others point out, may be impossible to understand from a certain asthetic back ground or as I am always happy to find out that something is in fact a WHOLE THING which a bunch of people are realy realy into, or even better when someone has a THING thats just for them.
all fine by me.
New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson
41–50 of 194 posts
Re: New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson
#42It's telling that The Ghost in the Shell, the 2026 adaptation, is still set in 2029-2030.
Re: New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson
#43We get the future that sells the most novels?
Re: New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson
#44Old dystopias were too neat. Even the evil systems had a plan. Reality is messier and more absurd. Maybe aliens are the only thing left that's still safely fictional.
Re: New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson
#45Another 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…
> he predicted that the AIs would make art. As far as I know he's the only one to predict this Plenty of forebears here. Orwell's 1984 has mass-produced trash novels generated by a machine. Stanislaw Lem''s Cyberiad has a poetry generator.
The difference is that the AI-made art is strikingly good. And that underlines that it's a superconsciouness and not just a bot.
Re: New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Anchoring your identity to brands is tragically uncool no matter how you slice it.
This comment feels like it's from the early 90's when people were being critical of bands for selling out.
Re: New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson
#47the future is here, it's just not evenly distrubuted conversly, there is no human technology that isn't still bieng practiced in it's original form, ie: there are still people knapping stone tools that learned it from there parents and grandparents going on strait back to the first members of our "species" who learned it from there hybrid parents, in an unbroken chain, which is directly connected to ALL modern techno…
Or, as the quote attributed to the late Paul Harvey goes,
"Man — despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments — owes his existence to a six inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains."
Re: New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson
#48Old dystopias were too neat. Even the evil systems had a plan. Reality is messier and more absurd. Maybe aliens are the only thing left that's still safely fictional.
Aaah don't jinx it aaaaah
Re: New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson
#49I disagree. Gibson's dystopias are too competent, too well organized, too serious. I feel like we're headed somewhere between the satire of Neal Stephenson and the lunatic delirium of Philip K. Dick.
With CRISPR and AI, sapient pearwood is just a few years out.
Caves of Qud had it right all along.
Re: New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson
#50I 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…
At least with Gibson, I think cyberpunk idolized actual punk culture. The coolness was found, brought, or arranged by these characters.
The scifi backdrop wasn't inherently cool. It was often soulless and dystopian. The crass commercialism and the teeming masses were often depicted as uncool, at least to the narrator's eye.
The coolness was found in the counter culture niches, in the urban underbellies, and in the little noir vignettes where the poets and rebels infiltrated.