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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

#121

Post by Animats »

asnelt wrote: post #118
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…

That's an interesting video. If the skyscrapers were flickering just a little faster, the sky would be the color of a television tuned to a dead channel.

That's just a normal night. For special events, the skyscraper lighting is much more dynamic.[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDNkcKiD2Ow

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

#122

Post by vinyl7 »

nfnfjfjdj wrote: post #120
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…

it just looks like a normal city. If we're declaring things cyberpunk based on LED displays Las Vegas probably wins but China is a horrifying totalitarian dictatorship with a market economy and by that measure sure, guess they beat us to the dystopia! go communism! go China! weeeeee

Well maybe there's something to be said about that when comparing against the decaying and crumbling corrupt US

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

#123

Post by ajmurmann »

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…

https://youtu.be/JJl5UWh-wA8?is=1oX24Nd45lHt99vZ

This video gives a decent explanation why fashion has gotten the way it is, particularly for men. The author ultimately traces it back to the French revolution.

I'm probably just sharing it though because of the line "Big brother is here and he looks like shiiit".

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

#124

Post by tgv »

martythemaniak wrote: post #69
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 impro…

The effects of mobile phones, "social" media and AI are showing signs of Idiocracy. Thinking is abandoned, living is consumption, and difficult tasks are taken over by machines.

What will differ is the autocratic nature we seem to be heading to. Political power may come to rely even more on exploitation of lower instincts. The result can be some kind of 1930s tyranny without high culture.

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

#125

Post by ajmurmann »

over_bridge wrote: post #80
dgellow wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a fucking depressing timeline. We could have built such a beautiful world instead

Today's billionaires aren't like yesterday's. They could be doing cool shit but they are just padding their own private real estate and stock portfolios. Yawn. Why not make an epic bridge or tower with gargoyles on it? Why not a museum or park? You can walk around Europe and see buildings from centuries ago. Who is building the things and spaces people in 2426 will marvel at?

Isn't it better that Bill Gates instead pumped huge amounts of money into philanthropy? Meanwhile SF has the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital and Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. A cathedral would be nice to look at but preventing malaria or helping sick kids seems preferable. In the past money couldn't have easily be deployed for good like this and helping fund cathedrals was likely done to increase the donors likelihood of getting into heaven.

But I guess George Lucas is a billionaire who has you covered: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas_Museum_of_Narrative_Art

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

#126

Post by zer00eyz »

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?

No,

It was a rare magical moment where consumerism receded - flannels were never about brands. Your band had to be "authentic" (and I hate that word) and anti corporate. It's the point in time where we all started hating ticket master.

It was replaced by GAP sweatshirts and Britney Spears, and you can draw a straight line to people waiting on lines for iPhones, your C suite in fleece vests and Taylor Swift.

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

#127

Post by Caracas288 »

sporadicism wrote: post #117
o-mo-ka-saaaay wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Asian superpowers feature so heavily in the genre that it's a cliche. Also Ballard was British.

...And he grew up in Shanghai, China

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

#128

Post by Caracas288 »

thwarted wrote: post #70
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 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 AIs are supposed to be very expensive, but it's left to the reader to figure out why—maybe it wouldn't work out that way in real life, but if the reader can't explore every part of the economic and technological space of the world (they can't), they become immersed within it, and allow the subconscious to come up with reasons for why such technologies exist in the story.

What's interesting in sci-fi at the time is that, because software wasn't fully solidified as a concept (nowhere near, in the case of Neuromancer) everything acts like a tool. What you buy stays just as it is, until it becomes obsolete. There's something quite appealing in that completeness. As you say, software is jarring in a way firmware isn't, and it lets developers be lazy.

As for toilets:

> Sometimes he resented having to leave the deck to use the chemical toilet they’d set up in a corner of the loft. - Neuromancer

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

#129

Post by commieneko »

svachalek wrote: post #90
eithed wrote: post #56

I love that Gibsons cyberpunk is "realistic" and mundane (at this point): a girl replaces a virtual singer (Mona Lisa Overdrive), another girl steals glasses containing plans for urban redevelopment (Virtual Light), virtual world is as inhabited as real one and you only need helmet to access it (Pattern Recognition). We already are living with these stories and dystopia is already here, to a degree.

Life certainly feels like the "Troubles" of The Peripheral have started.

Gibson had a hell of a time getting the second book, _Agency_, out the door because the real world kept leap frogging him. I fear we may never get _The Jackpot_ because we'll get Jackpotted for real before he can finish it.

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

#130

Post by antonvs »

Apocryphon wrote: post #103
antonvs wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You get the Cybertruck because we are far too accomodating of nepobabies.
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