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

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61–70 of 194 posts

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

#61
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 li…

There was some coolness in the tech, though. The Ono-Sendai Cyberspace VII deck, the mirror shade digital glasses (cut Gibson some slack, it was the 1980s), artificial limbs finished in onyx or chrome. Meanwhile in the real world we get Nvidia DGX Spark which has a front finished in beige carpeting, or Meta glasses which make you look like either a dork or a pervert.

These things were cool when coveted or adopted by the cool characters.

The tech devices were also used as markers of uncool rich people. Symbols of excess disposable income, rather than carefully invested aesthetics.

In the seedy areas, the implants and augmentations were depicted across an array of cool and uncool characters. Some character were meant to think they themselves were cool, while the narrator or the main characters saw them as part of the uncool backdrop. Try-too-hards, wannabes, etc.

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

#62

And some idiots actually want to live in a cyberpunk dystopia (some dude literally said to me one he would "do anything he could to bring it about"), because they were so enamored with the tech the dystopia part flew over their heads.

Why would someone who has never experienced systemic oppression fear systemic oppression? Techbros and techbrowannabes live in a magnitude-10 reality distortion field.

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

#63

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…

writing often romanticizes everything, reality feels stupid by comparison

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

#64
post #48

Old 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

Maybe they'll be cute though. Like Grogu.

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

#65
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is there something wrong with being critical of bands for selling out, though?

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

#66
post #29

I 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.

You're still being very magnanimous. Feels more like a tech Ankh-Morpork without the humour to me.

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

#69
post #29

I 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.

100% I know that "Idiocracy" gets thrown around all the time, but the reason I think it does is that they do have advanced tech but at the same time everyone is a blathering idiot. That's what gets me about our present reality - on one hand we supposedly have all the world's information at our fingertips, but the absolute dumbest, most bullshit theories get real traction and cause real damage. When they had the UFC f…

I have to post my rant every time Idiocracy gets mentioned, so feel free to downvote (it is the best way to spend my karma!)

What we're seeing is fundamentally nothing like idiocracy - the similarities are only surface deep, but the structures are vastly different. In Idiocracy, the nation is led by a person who cares about the well-being of all his constituents and seeks out the most capable person in order to improve the material state of his people. Despite his wrestling persona, President Comacho is far, far, FAR closer to Jed Bartlet from the West Wing, than Trump. People in the 2000s could not imagine the true nature of the 2020s.

What you're seeing is a sort of slow-motion civil war. The Trumpist Republicans fundamentally believe only they are allowed to rule and everyone outside their group is an enemy. They despise their enemies and wish to see them suffer, from denying disaster relief, to targeting cities with ICE, the more suffering there is the better. Sadly, reality turned out nothing like Idiocracy.

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

#70

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 never thought about this before, but you made me realize that Sense/Net sure had a lot of employees considering the in-story world had true AGI, enough employees that the Panther Moderns exploited to cause chaos during the Dixie Flatline run. Or was it that the Turing Police were in the habit of shutting down really smart AI resulting in an aggressive need for white collar workers?

On aesthetics, the way the Hosaka is described is as the experience of touching and using it. The reader doesn't actually know what the aesthetics are, nor does the reader get a taste of what it's like to actually use. In stories, they don't show people having driver problems, or their microphone not working, or having to go to the bathroom (unless it's integral to the plot), which in some sense is similar to talking about lickable/fluid UI widgets and how material design is great and not mentioning that Hosaka moved the setting dialog again, you have to update drivers before jacking in, the sliver of "microsoft" inserted behind your ear makes you watch an ad before giving you access to live prices of antique art, or cyberspace now has a ribbon instead of a toolbar.

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