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

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

#91

Post by Animats »

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…

> we are getting the cyberpunk dystopia with none of the aesthetics that have made it a household word.

Sure we are. The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed. Here's a nighttime walk through Shenzhen.[1] Shenzhen is cyberpunk made real. Giant display screens everywhere. Light shows on major buildings, synchronized between the buildings. Robots on the streets. Drones in the sky. Cameras everywhere. Night markets where you can buy both food and electronics. Self-driving cars. Electric buses and taxis. Women in colorful outfits on motorcycles.

Shenzhen looks more cyberpunk than Cyberpunk 2077, the game.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiXpYbCZyjs

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

#92

Post by MomsAVoxell »

I was young, and needed the money. A week-long contract in San Francisco, to do some contract work. Instead of a vacation.

Well, so I flew to the Embarcadero center, some late fall.

The task was to work on some audio code, and maybe networking, for a popular multiplayer cyber- tank battle game.

It was a great gig. I onboarded with another dev, who sat with me for the first 30 minutes after a few rounds, while we watched dark shapes out in the bay and tried to determine if they were submarines or whales.

Then, when it got dark, we decided to stop testing and do some work, looking out over the bay as our machines rebooted into developer modes.

After our sprint and midnight pizza, the boss came in, introduced himself, and asked me a question that kinda changed my life: “have you read Snow Crash yet?” .. it had just been released, I hadn’t gotten there yet.

“No, I brought the new 2600 with me though, you wanna .. “ .. “Stop”, he said. Walks to his office, digs through a box, gives me a brand new, fresh copy, first edition. Because of course he had a box of them.

“Don’t work on anything else until you’ve read this cover to cover”, was the directive.

“Really”, yes really ..

My onboarding colleague looked at me with an amused smirk, shrugged, and said “yeah, you gotta ..”

So I spent 3 work days and a weekend, reading it.

Get to Monday, I’m good to go. I’ll make this audio code listen to reason.

37th floor, Embarcadero like I said, I get out of the lift and .. there’s a dark mood in the room. DOOM had just hit.

Well, I’ve been living Snow Crash since the day I read it, is all I’m saying.

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

#93

Post by SoleilAbsolu »

krapp wrote: 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.

Was going to say something similar, and my real issue with Gibson is that after reading several of his books - he's a fantastic stylist but, I don't really know what he stands for, compared to someone like PKD, Stanislaw Lem, Octavia Butler, or Kurt Vonnegut.

And any day now - we will actually wake up to realize we are living in Kim Stanley Robinson's Anthropocene climate future from The Ministry of the Future, New York 2140, or the "Science in the Capital" trilogy.

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

#94

Post by thwarted »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #86
thwarted wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. And this is how it should be. Johnny Mnemonic's 320GBs became the reality in mid 90' and mundane by 2005.

Agreed. My point is that there's the perception of the characters and corporations as having some meaningful/cool aesthetics in these stories and in the genre, but you'd be hard-pressed to identify what they are or how they are different than what we have today. And that's part of what makes good stories timeless.

320GB progressed from amazing, to reality, to mundane, to trivial today, but it would take on different meaning if there was some breakthrough real-life research that indicated the human brain is, in total, say, only 325GB. Which is what Johnny Mnemonic is really about, even if the numbers and units used are dated.

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

#95

Post by tolugenius »

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.

Just want to say thanks for all the suggestions everyone!

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

#96

Post by anthonyrstevens »

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.

High-Rise and The Drowned World are both excellent IMHO

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

#98

Post by justsomehnguy »

thwarted wrote: post #94
justsomehnguy wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. And this is how it should be. Johnny Mnemonic's 320GBs became the reality in mid 90' and mundane by 2005.

Agreed. My point is that there's the perception of the characters and corporations as having some meaningful/cool aesthetics in these stories and in the genre, but you'd be hard-pressed to identify what they are or how they are different than what we have today. And that's part of what makes good stories timeless. 320GB progressed from amazing, to reality, to mundane, to trivial today, but it would take on different…

> but you'd be hard-pressed to identify what they are or how

Oh, that's easy! They are cool!

NB in ~50 years cool would change it meaning and things would be no longer cool for a contemporary reader but some other word designating an awesomeness and delight.

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

#99

Post by o-mo-ka-saaaay »

Animats wrote: post #91
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…

> we are getting the cyberpunk dystopia with none of the aesthetics that have made it a household word. Sure we are. The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed. Here's a nighttime walk through Shenzhen.[1] Shenzhen is cyberpunk made real. Giant display screens everywhere. Light shows on major buildings, synchronized between the buildings. Robots on the streets. Drones in the sky. Cameras everywhere. Night m…

I think what is confusing some people is that those novels and authors are all American and they can’t seem to believe another country beat us to it. It’s like they expected God had made it so that America would be the leader in techno culture evolution. It would be endearing if it weren’t for their impotent rage response to enable fascism for their own ends.

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

#100

Post by rightbyte »

thataccount wrote: post #33
newsclues wrote: post #26

Dystopian fiction was supposed to be a manual but a warning that was ignored.

I'm not sure it was ignored, so much as people are apathetic.

Even worse it gave the wrong people ideas. Some sort of Poe's law spin off.
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