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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

#141

Post by alexashka »

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 Trumpist Republicans fundamentally believe only they are allowed to rule and everyone outside their group is an enemy

Both parties believe it. It's why you only have two parties.

Your country's only real God is making a quick buck and everyone believes it their duty to do so. The immigrants, the non-immigrants, the politicians, the business people, everyone.

There's money to be made in cruelty, so there's money being made in cruelty. There's money to be made in being outraged about someone making money from cruelty, so there's money being made from being outraged.

Your only God is a quick buck, remember. Nothing else. Nothing.

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

#142

Post by folkrav »

o-mo-ka-saaaay wrote: post #62
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.

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

Because anyone rational with very minimal education on history knows how little separates a free society from systemic oppression.

I do realize "rational" and "tech bro" doesn't jive too well.

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

#143

Post by speed_spread »

Alephinitesimal wrote: post #44

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.

I liked the aliens in District 9. It was a really messy and rich universe.

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

#144

Post by TitaRusell »

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…

The CCP is firmly in control of China. They don't let corporations run the country.

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

#145

Post by TitaRusell »

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.

Man that is actually true.

In reality nobody has a plan and everyone is just winging it for the next shareholder meeting.

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

#146

Post by righthand »

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…

What are meta camera sunglasses or Apple airpods but aesthetic? It’s here.

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

#147

Post by suprjami »

kergonath wrote: post #132
asnelt wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

(For those who did not get it, it’s the first line of Neuromancer).

And from John's parent comment, "The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed." is a quote attributed to William Gibson.

We're all just quoting authors now.

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

#148

Post by HashHishBang »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #110
BoingBoomTschak wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nah, the aesthetics argument is a distraction. Engaging with art is engaging with another human being. Finding out that the other human being is, in fact, a corporation in a trenchcoat sucks. I would go so far as to label it a feeling of betrayal that leaks into everything else the artist touches.

Does anyone think The Rock has anything of substance to say about anything anymore? Do we think Post Malone isn't just trying to make a few more bucks after selling out entire genres?

Seeing Iggy fucking Pop shill insurance is genuinely painful.

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

#149

Post by apercu »

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.

Isn’t Gibson Canadian?

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

#150

Post by pessimizer »

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…

It's important to mention that the counterculture "punk" part was simply an totally extraneous embellishment to make the story "cool." The noir part is a perennial pulp crutch to make things seem dark; it's simply a coloring of addiction and betrayal.

Gibson is doing something with that: he's saying that technical culture has ceased to be exclusive and elevated, and has become part of the fabric of human existence. Just like his broken prism-Hemingway prose says something about the nature of identity when there so much of it is virtual and artificial.

But if there hadn't been a "punk rock" substrate in the mid-70s to mid-80s to associate with people who weren't wealthy - if there hadn't ever been garage rock - then he'd probably have had to express the same thing through Steinbeck-style techno-field workers and Upton Sinclair derived techno-socialist plotters. He's inspired by computer criminals, which are really an unimaginable thing right before then - the closest analog might have been counterfeiters. A subculture immersed in high technology. Maybe clandestine LSD chemists are somewhere in there.

He still, as most all vulgar "cyberpunk" derived stuff still lazily does, would have been able to rely on noir tropes. And note how the "Yakuza" is simply a stand in for 1920s Chicago gangster tropes, but given a global edge because of his vision that the virtual future would collapse distances.

The "coolness" was utterly shallow, and instantly became assholes stapling circuit boards to leather jackets. Or "steampunk," which was exclusively a surface aesthetic for people who thought that technology was too hard to reason about, so they just decided that if tech was simply magic, why not just do fantasy at the dawn of the industrial age? Dispose of all of those pesky questions about identity(s) and just ask "wouldn't it be cool if..."

edit: there were people working in the same vein at the time, the Semiotext(e) SF anthology and the Mirrorshades anthology showed what cyberpunk (and cyberpunk-adjacent) thought of itself; questions about identity, reality, and linearity; and their interactions with communication and simulation technology. They were ignored for noir retreads with circuitboards and leather jackets. Almost immediately it was saturated with childish fantasy - actual hackers working on Tolkienesque "cyberpunk" roleplaying scenarios for Steve Jackson Games. Ironically the situation ("E911") around creation of a childish, escapist "cyberpunk" product was a historical expression of the actual themes that the cyberpunks were largely chasing. No wonder Sterling (also fairly pulpy writer) wrote the definitive account.

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