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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

#151

Post by api »

TitaRusell wrote: post #144
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…

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

That just means one giant corporate entity runs the country.

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

#152

Post by Fricken »

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…

Johnny Mneumonic (1995), set in the mid 2020s, depicts Beijing as the global epicentre of power and wealth. Much of the action is set in Newark New Jersey, a dystopian hellscape where civil order has broken down.

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

#153

Post by throw310822 »

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.

"The future should look like the future" said someone, before putting on the market a steel-armored SUV that looks like it came from a 1980s dystopian nightmare.

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

#154

Post by Barrin92 »

zer00eyz wrote: post #126
BoingBoomTschak wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

it didn't recede, this kind of rebellion was what made it thrive (see the book The Rebel Sell, Why Culture can't be Jammed) or Deleuze:

“The death of a social machine has never been heralded by a disharmony or a dysfunction; on the contrary, social machines make a habit of feeding on the contradictions they give rise to, on the crises they provoke, on the anxieties they engender, and on the infernal operations they regenerate. Capitalism has learned this, and has ceased doubting itself [...] No one has ever died from contradictions. And the more it breaks down, the more it schizophrenizes, the better it works, the American way.

It wasn't a coicindence or betrayal that punk bands 'sold out', the punk part is exactly what made them sell out. Demand for authenticity, difference and individualism is what drives consumerism. The heart of consumerism is counter-culture.

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

#156

Post by prettyblocks »

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 disagree. iPhones, EVs, and a lot of architecture is really slick looking.

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

#157

Post by jmilloy »

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…

This video does not look cyberpunk to me. I see cyber, but where's the punk? Where's the "lowlife" or the societal collapse? This is high tech and highly controlled by enormous economic actors, but that doesn't make it cyberpunk at all.

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

#158

Post by jmilloy »

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 think in Gibson, most people and most corporations are boring. Capitalized and homogenized slop. The plots revolve around individuals and nooks and crannies that are cool, against the grain, hence the pink in cyberpunk. I think that exists in reality, too, but of course you have to go find it.

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

#159

Post by thwarted »

Caracas288 wrote: post #128
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 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 i…

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

This is an interesting call out when it comes to the communication/presentation of aesthetics of technology in the book. There's no narrative about actually relieving himself, just the mention that, of course, he has to and this is how it's being handled; the reader fills that in from these few scant details. The need to relieve himself, and ultimately the mention of the Texas catheter, is used as an indicator of how he's able to remain jacked in for so long, and as foreshadowing of expected jacked-in duration as they approach the final stages of the Villa Straylight run (when he purposely neglects to put it back on). So even in the "advanced" technology of the cyberpunk future of Neuromancer, people still gotta piss and wearing a catheter is still uncomfortable.

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

#160

Post by aaron695 »

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…

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