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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

#101

Post by Apocryphon »

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…

Those aesthetics are only "cool" in the sense that stylized comic book / military sci-fi conceptions of tech are cool. Also '80s nostalgia, and satire. In reality, none of that could exist practically in the modern day. Real-world high-tech is either consumer-oriented family friendly or hopelessly enterprise beige and gray. LA NIMBYs are not going to let you build a corporate pyramid. The closest we have in reality is the Memphis Bass Pro Shop.

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

#102

Post by georgemcbay »

o-mo-ka-saaaay wrote: post #99
Animats wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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.

Gibson's novels predicted Asian ascendency (insomuch as you can have ascendency in a dystopia). Through a quirk of the time period in which they were written they happened to present it as emanating from Japan rather than China.

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

#103

Post by Apocryphon »

antonvs wrote: post #59
saltcured wrote: post #50

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.

There are attempts to make stylized "coolness" in tech. That's how you get the Cybertruck, or RGB lights everywhere in custom desktops. Be careful of what you wish for.

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

#104

Post by Apocryphon »

saltcured wrote: post #50
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…

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…

That was before it was discovered that every single counterculture could be marketed to and commercialized.

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

#105

Post by cocacola1 »

xnorswap wrote: post #18
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.

They might be then only ones. Cult of Mac, Disney Adults, etc. But they’ve aesthetics that resonate with a lot of people. Meta, Google, etc., for whatever reason, don’t.

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

#106

Post by Apocryphon »

cocacola1 wrote: post #105
xnorswap wrote: post #18

Earlier 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.

They might be then only ones. Cult of Mac, Disney Adults, etc. But they’ve aesthetics that resonate with a lot of people. Meta, Google, etc., for whatever reason, don’t.

Product/design-first vs. engineering-first orgs

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

#108

Post by tancop »

palmotea wrote: post #60

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.

Most of them just want neon lights, dense and chaotic cities, space stations, advanced VR, robots and superpowered implants. None of that requires a corporate dystopia, and I think they would make our lives better.

Then you have the sociopaths who see Night City as a model for a perfect world. They see themselves as someone who can rise to the top quick and become a benevolent dictator ruling the equivalent of a country with none of the inconvenience that comes from being accountable to the people. Someone who can make all the right decisions to maximize shareholder value.

They don't care that it ruins other peoples lives or that it doesn't even benefit them personally because there's only so much you can spend in a lifetime. Life for them is like a video game where the goal is to have more money and power than everyone else. Capital is both the means and the end in a loop that chases fake growth. Which is exactly how corpos in cyberpunk stories think. And the real-life executives in SV boardrooms.

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

#109

Post by TheWrongGuy »

morsch wrote: post #23
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…

AI and creativity/art is actually explored through Data in Star Trek. He was a painter, played the violin, gave poetry readings...

Data is much closer to being a neurodivergent human than he is an LLM

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

#110

Post by bryanrasmussen »

BoingBoomTschak wrote: post #65
zer00eyz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

the concept of selling out often seems seriously under-specified, and thus, like many things in our society, it becomes a tool for one set of people to improve their own status by attacking another set of people.

It is in the end a moral stance on what are the proper aesthetics, which is the kind of thing that manages to make both morality and aesthetics extremely suspect.

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