Lecture 9 - Cyberpunk

Notes -

• Cyberpunk is a science fiction genre based in the possibilities inherent in computers, genetics, body modifications and corporate developments in the near future.
• . The word comes from the amalgamation of Cybernetics (the study of communication, command and control in living organisms, machines and organisations) and Punk.
• The term cybernetics comes from the Greek kybernetes which means steersman or pilot and the concept developed during and after WWII to indicate the use of a systematic approach to complex issues such as managing a large number of computers at distributed sites or understanding the operationms of the brain.

William Gibson

• William Gibson is a US/Canadian writer whose fictional work has spawned a number of key concepts like 'cyberspace' and 'virtual reality'.

Matrix

• It deals with philosophical issues at some depth.
• It explores a possible future world where machines dominate humans but keep them inignorant bliss of their real state.

Cyberpunk Themes

• Technology and Mythology - Cyberpunk sought to demythologise technology but effectively predicied/created the World Wide Web and so was used to remythologise technology.

Utopia and Dystopia

• Utopias (from the Greek, meaning nowhere) are literary works that tell of imaginary places where everything is perfect, usually because people and technology are in harmony.
• Technology itself has often been visualised as Utopia.
• There have not been many literary Utopias in the 20th Century, but there have been a rash of Dystopias - George Orwell's 1984 (1949)[?1948...] .

Cities as Machines

• the city is a machine for living ... it creates human lifejust as humans create it
• the city is a natural thing, created by natural beings (humans)just as bee-hives and ant nests are created by natural beings
• the city is a living being ... a cyborg which combines humantissue with synthetic infrastructure.
• In the 1960s, a group of English architects designed a new typeof city. This project was called Archigram and was detailed in a set of posters called ArchitecturalTelegrams.

Technological change - The First Media Age (centralised dissemination) versus the Second Media Age (decentralised interaction)

• Early forms of electronic communication technology bore many similarities. Mark Poster calls this period the first electronic media age and argues that it was characterised by the use of one source (or relatively few) and many receivers.
• The telephone equalised the positions of the sender and receiver of messages / information. Anyone could both send and receive messages with a minimum of technical and financial resources.
• The latest development to mimic the equalising structure of the telephone is the Internet. The Internet made it possible for an individual to 'publish' to a huge audience. By the middle of the 1990s there were over 30 million users around the world. In early 2000, it was estimated that there were 262 million Internet users world-wide.

Modernism to Postmodernism

• Just as postmodernism is built upon modernism, the second media age is built on the first and is thus largely dependent on the the world view inherent in existing technologies.
• The new media brings with it a need for new understandings - particularly political ones - to protect the public interest.
• Virtual reality brings with it even more complex questions about the nature of society. If the medium is the message, then what is the message of virtual reality? In virtual reality, a type of cyborg structure exists in which your body - your mind and senses - is part of the medium.