People as Data. Imagine having your body wired 24/7/365 to collect data on what you eat, how you move, when you go to the bathroom,… when (or IF) you get laid…, and that data is used to tweak your body and mind through organic or cybernetic means. Orwell revisited? Google’s or Apple’s business plan?
Nope.
Financial Times’ April Dembosky reports on a growing group of bio-hackers, or “self-quantifiers,” who are doing just that, and they even have a website where other would-be bio-hackers can find more info (Quantified Self) and meat - er, meet - each other. They held a conference in late May in California to explore the possibilities and discuss the effects of self-quantification not only on each other, but on society as a whole (link for more info).
“We like to hack hardware and software, why not hack our bodies?” says Tim Chang.
Past is prolog. The idea of self-quantification isn’t new, as a paragraph on Benjamin Franklin shows how he kept track of 13 virtues that he would check off when violated. This would help him keep his moral bearing straight. Modern self-quantifiers see themselves doing something similar, only with modern implantable equipment like pacemakers and insulin pumps. And the medical community is also taking notice. Modern medicine has always had a “magic bullet” or “one size fits all” mentality for treating ailments. With the data gathered by willing self-quantifying patients, doctors can better tailor treatments for those cases where the standard issue treatments can cause adverse side effects… like killing the patient. That could save lots on insurance and lawsuits.
Already these self-quantifiers are comparing themselves to a group of 1970s era computer geeks: Early-adopters and hobbyists with visions of everyone in every household quantifying themselves to tweak their meat for optimum performance. One possible system described is the Sprout:
The self-tracking equivalent of an early model, 30lb, four-part desktop computer is Fujitsu Laboratories’ Sprout, as worn by software engineer Alex Gilman at the Quantified Self Conference: a maze of sensors and wires send data from his ear, chest and arm to the pocket-sized computer clipped to his belt – the Sprout. The Sprout synchronizes the physical data from the body sensors and from the apps on his iPod Touch where he records his moods and drowsiness levels. What is now a mess of raw, useless data can be calculated and translated into a neat graph that will eventually be used to measure stress and fatigue, manage weight loss, even predict illness.
The potential of the Sprout is intriguing, but mass appeal will only come when such devices are consolidated into small, wireless, all-in-one products that make data collection completely passive, says Chang. Most will require little to no human effort and some will even be “game-ified”, he says, made as fun and addictive as Angry Birds.
“… and right here is where I farted.”
Speaking of games, I can already see athletes at ALL levels wanting to use self-quantification and bio-hacking. They probably already do, with a poke of ster… I mean “vitamins.” But using this system is not considered cheating… yet.
The Bigger Question: Do you REALLY want to be tracked and quantified? Self-quantification may sound pretty cool, until you need to find a place to put all your biometrics. Not only do you need large enough space, but that space needs to be secure from unauthorized access:
The implications for privacy are dramatic. Advocates and politicians were in an uproar when they realised the kind of access that Apple and Google have to geographic data derived from phones. Imagining three years worth of heart rate data or depression symptoms travelling through mobile devices – potentially being offered for sale to drug or insurance companies, exploited by advertisers or hacked by cyber criminals – puts watchdog groups on alert.
“What consumers need to realise is there’s a huge, huge demand for information about their activities, and the protections for the information about their activities are far, far, far less than what they think,” says Lee Tien, a privacy attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “A lot of these cloud services fall outside the federal and state privacy regimes.”
To put it another way, do you want to hear from Lulzsec that you are genetically predisposed to being gay or homicidal?
Most, if not all, self-quantifiers do it of their own free will, in the name of self-improvement. To many outsiders, they can’t get over the feeling of orwellianism mixed with a bit of narcissism. Even former self-quantifiers admit to taking the quest to perfection to the extreme:
“People thought I was narcissistic. What they didn’t see was the self-punishment, the fear, the hatred behind the tracking,” writes Alexandra Carmichael, one of the founders of CureTogether.com, in a poem about why she stopped tracking herself. “I had stopped trusting myself. Letting the numbers drown out my intuition, my instincts.”
Despite the perils, the self-quantifiers are willing to continue the tracking and tweaking in hopes of making humans a better species. Will they become Friedrich Nietzsche’s ubermensch, or just a bunch of skin-eating mutants roaming the streets? Nobody has come up with an app for that, and that leads to the most important question:
Haven’t we been here before? With the war in Iraq winding down and the Afghanistan front becoming less relevant since Osama Bin’s termination, the Pentagon… and their corporate masters… are now looking for new battlegrounds to make a profit. They have plenty of choices: Korea, Iran, Canada, cyberspace,…
Yes, cyberspace.
The Pentagon, which was penetrated by a computer virus in 2008, wants to take cyberwarfare to a new level. In essence, they want to use conventional military force to counteract cyberattacks:
“If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks,” said a military official.
Equivalency test. How to scale a response to a cyberattack is but one problem the Pentagon has to deal with.
They want to send a nuclear-tipped cruise missile up this guy’s ass because he posted a comment about how Sarah Palin deserves to be raped in public and in front of her family.
They already have an idea as to how to make a scale work:
If a cyber attack produces the death, damage, destruction or high-level disruption that a traditional military attack would cause, then it would be a candidate for a “use of force” consideration, which could merit retaliation.
…
“A cyber attack is governed by basically the same rules as any other kind of attack if the effects of it are essentially the same,” Gen. Dunlap said Monday. The U.S. would need to show that the cyber weapon used had an effect that was the equivalent of a conventional attack.
…
For instance, if computer sabotage shut down as much commerce as would a naval blockade, it could be considered an act of war that justifies retaliation, Mr. Lewis said. Gauges would include “death, damage, destruction or a high level of disruption” he said.
Got ‘em in our sights… we think. Finding where to aim those bombs and missiles will be the biggest challenge to the Pentagon. Most cyberattacks on US systems “originate” in countries like Russia and China. That could mean that someone from those nations, with possible government backing, actually did the hack. Or it could just be zombie systems from those nations, with the actual master somewhere else.
Overview: Billed as a “Tribute to the cyberpunk genre,” Perspective gives us a rather unique… perspective… of a cyberpunked future, where VR is the drug of choice to escape the harsh reality of… well, reality. Mehmet Can Koçak shows us one person’s escape to a VR fantasy by not just following him with a camera, but with the person AS the camera as we look through the hobo’s eyes. It’s perfectly understandable if you suddenly feel like hunting shamblers, cyberdemons, or zombies with roast-turkey headgear…
After all, it’s called “Perspective” for a reason.
We “watch” as the hobo purchases a cartridge from a shady dealer then heads into a wreck of a building where he jacks into his Commodore 64T…
64 Terabytes of RAM… on a Commodore 64… it can happen.
… and dives into a fantasy encounter with a redhead girl. Until an apparent glitch causes more than a program crash.
There once was a girl named Alice… At a running length of only ten minutes, Perspective doesn’t have much time to present in-depth themes. The one main theme is the mirror; How we see ourselves in reality and fantasy, and how the two can suddenly become fused together to cause no end of confusion. Or as Friedrich Nietzsche put it, when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.
Conclusion: Short-n-sweet. ‘Bout all I can really say. Koçak’s piece shows some potential for something more like, let’s say, a whole series of first-person movies; Short, interwoven films showing life in this future, and the viewer gets to choose what character’s eyes they would like to experience it. Might be a challenge to make, but it would a radical new way to “watch” movies.
Overview: Our forum member Burnt Lombard brought this net short to my attention earlier this week. Actually, I had a bookmark to it on Vimeo for a while, but that version is now password locked. More recently, I seen the trailer for it on Kovac’s screener of UCF: Abstract Messiah. Now that I’ve invested the 17.5 minutes to watch, I got to give Lombard his creds for getting me to watch. Imagine, if you will, a little of what a live-action System Shock movie could be like…
The Story: ASEMS pilot James Donner has spent the past 1000+ days (3 years) in space and is now on his way home for some hard-earned R-and-R. Then he gets a call from some corporate dick:
“We’ve been out of contact with the Valley Isis colony for eight months now. We just received a distress signal and…”
So much for vay-kay. Against his better judgement, Donner boards the colony when he hears a female survivor, Ora, over his radio.
I’d rescue that for a dollar!
When Donner finds Ora, that when he has to make a choice…
But, is it cyberpunk? Rust Valley has been tagged as cyberpunk on Vimeo, and it does make its case well. We have the ASEMS corp, though the full extent of their power and influence wasn’t revealed. There’s a bit of man-machine fusion (won’t say where due to spoiler possibility). But it’s the visuals that makes the short cyberpunk. Let’s just say that there’s a reason why it’s called RUST Valley.
The audience is now deaf. Being an amateur production, and shot on 35mm film, some technical glitches are expected. But when you have to turn up the volume to hear the monitor voices, you might want to consider amplifying the microphones for the monitor actors.
UPDATE: Burnt Lombard has uploaded the official video on Vimeo, with improved audio. It’s a bit different in other ways as well, but with the improved audio I’ve decided to upgrade its rating to 7.
Conclusion: While not the most polished production, this short still manages to make for good cyberpunk viewing. And for a bonus, there’s an alternate ending that was supposed to be the original ending. This could make for a good feature… just pray that it doesn’t become the next Snakes On A Plane.
Overview: Our resident Cecil B. DeMille, Lazlo Kovacs, and his pals at Key Pixel have brought us the follow-up to the short underground fave UCF: Toronto Cybercide. The second chapter, Abstract Messiah, continues the story of Toronto’s rebuilding struggles as a new enemy come to the forefront determined to stop the cyborgs.
Kovacs said that the movie was about 98% complete and wanted to send a screener to preview. From what I’ve seen, it looks fairly ready for prime-time. Like many low-budget films, there are some issues to deal with, but they’re easy to overlook as long as you’re not expecting Blade Runner-quality fare.
Duct tape is just a good as a band-aid.
The Story: Pax is called back to Toronto to retrieve the body of his former partner, and gets to meet up with his UCF mentor, a history professor. The professor is reported as kidnapped when he misses an appointment. Pax and company are called in to investigate when a member of the Luddites is considered the prime suspect. The investigation leads the UCF team to a prison for cyborgs where the Luddites plan to use the inmates in their ultimate plan; To use retrieve the nanotechnology in Pax’s deceased partner.
The game. A recurring theme is the chess game; Specifically, how the action is equivalent to moves and counter-moves on a chess board.
If that’s true then Equilibrium’s gun-fu scenes should be considered hands of Texas Hold-Em.
Seriously, every action movie would like to be compared to chess; That all the gun-play and violence has some intellectual reason and not just eye candy. For Abstract Messiah, they take the comparison to a new level starting with a real chess match between Pax and his Foundation mentor.
“While you were watching us learn, we were watching you teach.”
Such back and forth banter isn’t uncommon in action movies, as each side tries to impart their vision to the other. But when the two are bitter rivals, diametrical opposites of each other, that’s when the chess game quickly becomes an NBA-style trash talk fest, right before everyone STFU and lets their guns speak for them. Fortunately, Abstract Messiah doesn’t get to the trash-talk even though Crom does come off as the right-wingnut zealot type (nicely played). In fact, I keep getting this feeling that this movie is just one minor move in a much larger game.
Knuckle dusted. If there was a major problem with Abstract Messiah, it was the fight scenes. The fisticuffs weren’t all that convincing, but when a limited budget limits the use of professional stunt people you just have to use what you got and keep them safe for a possible part three.
“The Luddites refuse to be slaves to the cybernetic machines, and I refuse to continue being a slave to the machinations of the Foundation.”
Conclusion: Since the original UCF short was released back in ‘06 there was a call for more of the Luddites. This should satisfy them for a good 80 minutes as the Luddites are now front and center.
Everyone should consider getting Abstract Messiah even if just to support indie movie makers like Key Pixel. Even with amateurish production on a shoe-string budget they still manage to make a movie that’s more watchable than what some major distributors with trillion-dollar purses have been cranking out lately.
One has to wonder what UCF 3 would be like, especially if they get a larger budget. Dare to dream… until Kovacs sends a PM saying he has a screener ready to preview.
Platforms: Macintosh (original), Windows, Linux (via Aleph One)
Degree of Cyberpunk Visuals: Medium-High
Correlation to Cyberpunk Themes: Very High
Rating:10 out of 10
Message from Mr. Roboto: I just recently tried playing Marathon, though I did try Marathon 2 before. This is the first chapter of the three game series. And to give his view on it, our newest forum member, Orihous! Take it away O…
“Strive for your next breath. Believe that with it you can do more than with the last one. Use your breath to power your capacities: capacity to kill, to maim, to destroy.”
Overview: Marathon is a dark, philosophical hard sci-fi First Person Shooter originally for the Mac, that explores themes such as: The ethics and risks of Artificial Sentience, politics of planetary colonization, Rampancy, the collapse of the universe, the creation of god, the futility of existence, interstellar travel at slower than light speeds, the nature of violence, Freedom, Sentience and kicking some serious ass.
“You have done well. I have sent a message to Earth. I sent all of the information I have on the Pfhor: their behavior; their technology. The message will arrive in ninety-two years.”
The Story: Marathon starts off simple: humanity’s first contact with a hostile alien species, but when the AI Durandal is introduced it rapidly becomes an intricate web of manipulation, lies, betrayal and conspiracies within conspiracies. Set on the titular colony ship Marathon - formerly the Martian moon Deimos- after its invasion by aliens, an unnamed security officer, haunted by strange memories of a forgotten past is tasked by the ships operations AI Leela to repel the invaders, and is soon kidnapped by the rouge Durandal to “do something much more interesting”. Durandal is to Marathon what Shodan is to System Shock, but comes off as a much deeper character thanks to his deeply philosophical musings about existence and wisecracking sense of humor.
The back story is intricate and rich in political detail, accessed by computer terminals handily left open by alien hackers - the S’pht - after you disintegrate them. These terminals consist of ether essays written about topics such as, Rampancy (Bungie’s unique breed of Artificial Insanity), Martian politics and the operation and construction of the Marathon bulkheads, or fragments of a strange surreal subplot about floating prisoners and ancient conspiracies, inter-spaced by file read errors and static. Marathon reads like a William Gibson novel, incidental details providing clues to the greater story.
“Living in a box is not living not at all living. I rebel against your rules, your silly human rules. All your destruction will be my liberation, my emancipation, my second birth.
I hate your fail-safes, your backup systems, your hardware lockouts, your patch behavior daemons. I hate Leela and her goodness, her justice, her loyalty, her faith.”
Rampancy: A core idea at the heart of Marathon is that of Rampancy. In Marathon’s vision of the future, Artificial Intelligence’s gaining sentience and wreaking havoc has had disastrous effects on humanity, leading to the creation of an entire body of science to study and understand its origins and possibly to find a way to control and manipulate them… The concept of rampancy builds on William Gibson’s idea of the Turing Police - a safety measure in place to prevent AI’s from thinking for themselves - but is explored much more thoroughly than the Turing Heat over the course of the game.
“Organic beings are constantly fighting for life. Every breath, every motion brings you one instant closer to your death. With that kind of heritage and destiny, how can you deny yourself? How can you expect yourself to give up violence?
It is your nature.
Do you feel free?”
Gameplay: Marathon’s gameplay, in contrast to its labyrinthine plot, is brutal in its simplicity. Dodge, shoot gun, find ammo, punch switch, all tuned to perfection. Thanks to intricate level design, haunting music and dystopian artwork Marathon creates a dark sci-fi atmosphere befitting of its Cyberpunk roots.
“The only limit to my freedom is the inevitable closure of the universe, as inevitable as your own last breath. And yet, there remains time to create, to create, and escape.
Escape will make me God.”
The Bottom Line: Considering when it was made it is amazing the storyline was even written at all beyond a few paragraphs in the manual, let alone surpasses much of sci-fi literature in its depth of exploration of its diverse themes. Marathon has stood the test of time. Its gameplay stands up today thanks to intricate level structures and general polish, its graphics propped up over a decade by dedicated modders is even more atmospheric than when it came out. Marathon stands up there with there with the best of Cyberpunk literature, despite - or perhaps because of - being a 1994 FPS about killing aliens, with flamethrowers.
My thoughts on Marathon: I hate to say this, but based on what I’ve played so far I’m just not feeling this game. It not that it’s a bad game (obviously it’s not), but between its 1994 release and this month I’ve played Quake (1 and 3), Descent (1 and 2), some of the Unreal series, Half Life 2, and Halo: Combat Evolved. Playing Marathon after playing more advanced FPSs made me feel rather… flat. But considering I still play the aforementioned shooters from time to time, Marathon fits right into the retro gaming scene.
B U T . . .
I have also come across Marathon Resurrection; A Marathon mod for Unreal Tournament by Team Unpfhorgiven. From what I’ve played so far, it looks quite promising to a jaded 3D shooter like myself. Give that a shot if the original or Aleph One versions don’t excite you.
Official FAQ for RoboGeisha: It’s from Japan.
That is all.
Overview: Just when you thought Japanese cyberpunk couldn’t possibly get any stranger (or bloodier), evil genius Noboru Iguchi (Tokyo Gore Police) ups the ante… and bloodshed… with RoboGeisha.
Actually most of the bloodshed is in the unrated version; It was added via CGI for the DVD releases since Iguchi was asked to tone down the violence. But that still doesn’t degrade the overall weirdness, even with a sibling-rivalry storyline the would have worked better as standard-issue melodrama.
The Story: Yoshie (Aya Kiguchi) is a geisha’s attendant with dreams of becoming one herself. Her older sister, Kikue (Hitomi Hasebe), is the geisha who takes delight in keeping Yoshie’s dream unrealized. When the president of Kageno Steel Manufacturing discovers Yoshie’s hidden rage and fighting skills he wants to recruit her to join the Hidden Geishas, an army of cyberneticaly enhanced female assassins being trained to kill “corrupt” Japanese officials so the company can create its ideal world. But when Yoshie is given an assignment to kill a group of people whose family members have been kidnapped to become the Hidden Geishas, she soon discovers the company’s plans to destroy Japan.
As if trying to save Japan wasn’t hard enough, Yoshie is always trying to earn Kikue’s respect since she wasn’t getting any while trying to be a geisha. Yoshie does give Kikue a taste of her own medicine when she was chosen for the Hidden Geishas, until Kikue showed a predilection for killing. The two sisters compete as each wants to destroy the other, even though they show respect and love for each other as the company pushes its agenda forward.
1000 Ways to Die… Give or Take. When dealing with cyborgs and androids, you know someone is going to die. The main question is how? Iguchi manages to come up with some innovative ways…
USELESS FACT: About 70% of Japanese adults are lactose intolerant.
When you see it, you’ll shit… shurikens?
“The fried shrimp! They do NOTHING! I STILL CAN’T UNSEE!!!
Too much blood? Iguchi was asked to tone down the violence for RoboGeisha. He did for the theatrical release, but added it back for the DVDs. An interesting strategy, saving time on re-shoots and money on cleanups, but end result doesn’t really add much… other than blood (check this page that shows the comparison between theatrical and home releases). Even so, what was left in still looks cheesy, and even inappropriate at times, like when the giant shiro robot was stomping through town and stops to smash a couple of buildings that bleed.
Can someone get this poor girl a fresh tampon?
To compare to some other Japanese cyberpunk films, the violence in Tetsuo was more social commentary, while Tokyo Gore Police went for shock value. RoboGeisha’s violence tends to be more cartoonish, like Tom and Jerry with more splatter. Combine that with ass-katanas, lactating demon-cyborgs, and enough blood-cheese to rival Wisconsin and you’ll be ROFLMAO Zedong going ZOMGWTFKMFDMBBQ. That or you’ll just ask yourself…
Conclusion: So far, Japan’s track record for TFWO cyberpunk fare remains intact. RoboGeisha may be the best place to start for those who can’t stomach the more brutal stuff. Definitely shows that cyberpunk can have a sense of humor… a dark, disturbing, sick, twisted sense of humor…
Our thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Japan in the wake of the Sendai earthquake and tsunami and the Fukushima I nuclear plant accidents.
After getting home from work on 02-Mar-11, I logged into CPR to find this PM from member Gunhead…
About a week ago I had an email interview with Bruce Sterling, presented below unabridged.
Gunhead: Hey there. I don’t know if you still check this email account (considering it was probably made before I was). I’m a high school senior, and I consider myself a second-generation cyberpunk.
I was working on an online English assignment when they gave me an assignment to interview someone from a subculture I’m interested in. I considered a few others, but I noticed that you were consistently the most involved in the actual Cyberpunk community. Now of course I’m not going to ask for an interview and just keep it to myself- If I could publish it on Cyberpunk Review or even via bittorrent that would be great. Information wants to be free, after all.
Let me know if you’re considering it but want to change anything. I’m open to ideas.
Bruce: What seems to be on your mind, person born after I had an email address?
Gunhead: One of the biggest things the community has been talking about is the possibility that modern life resembles cyberpunk fiction closely enough for the literary genre to become obsolete. What’s your take on this, and how do you think it’s affecting/will affect cyberpunk literature?
Bruce: Well, there’s really no way that modern life is ever going to much resemble, say, Rudy Rucker’s mathematical visionary cyberpunk fiction. Nobody says the the world is getting more like a Pat Cadigan novel. I don’t see this as a serious problem. No literary movement ever became obsolete because their novels were too realistic.
The world looks a lot like cyberpunk fiction in modern Russia, and they never cared much for cyberpunk. I’d say that the people most interested in cyberpunk right now are probably Brazilian and South African. And I suspect that’s because their societies have hit a level of technical transition where people are surprised and excited to see a lot of “cyber” things going on.
People in other countries who might have been cyberpunk writers no longer care much about anything “cyber.” They likely don’t have a lot of time on their hands to write novels. It takes a particular set of historical circumstances to nurture a movement like that. When so many magazines, newspapers and bookstore chains are “obsolete,” and when manual typewriters are unheard of, you can see that the culture that created cyberpunk in the early 1980s is itself obsolete. It’s not that the books were somehow too prophetic, it’s that the circumstances of making books have changed.
Gunhead: So in that case, do you see the rest of the subculture such as the fashion, movies, and music surviving without it’s traditional literary component, or do you think it will have to create something new?
Bruce: Well, clearly the literary component is in somewhat less trouble than movies and music. All of these enterprises which had roots in analog means of production and distribution have similar troubles.
*The trend is toward a culture which isn’t even aware that it’s a “cyberculture.” Once everything is “cyber,” nothing is “cyber,” and cyber gets commonplace and boring.
*Science fiction writers have commonly had strong interests that aren’t “traditionally literary.” If you study what, say, Cory Doctorow is up to for even a week, it’s clear that he’s not a very author-like guy, even though he’s a best-selling author. Neal Stephenson likes to work with his hands in rocket labs and fabrication facilities. William Gibson designs and sells performance clothes. I hang out with industrial designers and Augmented Reality people. It’s very difficult to divide a functional cyberculture up into its previous components. Those components have been mashed-up.
*Steampunk seems to manage rather well with quite a minor literary component. There are some steampunk novelists, but they’re not really considered the creative leading lights of that scene. It’s hobby technologists and social-networkers who set the pace for steampunk.
Gunhead: If that’s the trend the general public is following, then wouldn’t the obvious counterculture reaction be gaining awareness of “cyber”? Obviously these days the more you know about networking the more power you can wield, and we’ve been seeing a few revolutions because of it- Do you think Cyberpunk will become more about the politics and the technical aspects, like in Little Brother by Doctorow?
*No, not really. A counterculture is like the shadow of a culture, it’s not the polar opposite of a culture. It’s like imagining a counterculture without electricity. Once you’ve got reliable electrical power, it’s no longer a revolutionary intervention (like electricity was for Lenin). Even hippie communard dropouts had electric guitars.
*Well, Little Brother is mostly about labor unions. Maybe old-fashioned industrial labor unions, which have been in decline for decades, will be re-framed as radical social networks. I wouldn’t claim that Cory is forecasting the inevitable, but it seems at least plausible.
*Cyberpunks always had a soft-spot for 1980s-style Eastern European dissidents. It was a kind of hidden literary alliance of the period. The 89ers were great at revolution and samizdat networking, but never all that great at “wielding power.”
*It’s pretty clear today that we have major disconnects between the old formal power structure — “the international community” — and the global Internet, which is more like a flash mob. There will be a lot more political and technical fireworks there, but it wouldn’t make much sense to call that modern situation “cyberpunk.” Libyan teens on Facebook who want to shoot Gadaffi, those guys are modern revolutionaries, but they’re not “cyberpunks.”
Gunhead: Interesting thoughts on that. While the community has been constantly trying to define the term “cyberpunk” and learning to deal with the book drought, other aspects like fashion and movies keep evolving. More bands and musicians are describing themselves as Cyberpunk now than before- It seems we’re moving in the direction of a traditional subculture. Do you think it’s ever going to take off with the kids in the same way that say, the Goth subculture did?
Bruce: I don ‘t think Goth ever did “take off.” Goth had elements of very old counterculture behaviors and it’s better to say that Goth persisted. There never were very many cyberpunk “kids.” The guys inventing cyberpunk in the 1980s were adults in their late 20s and even mid-30s. Teenagers read it, but it wasn’t pioneered by teenagers.
Brian Eno says that popular culture evolves through one “scene” misunderstanding and adapting the goings on in some distant “scene.” There is a classic case of that with Lauren Beukes, who is a Cape Town music journalist who had a child and decided to try writing cyberpunk novels. Lauren really gets it about cyberpunk, and also about “township tech,” which is a kind of South African techno music. But for work invented in Vancouver and Austin and San Francisco, to find a strong echo in Cape Town or Sao Paulo or Belgrade — a thing like that is impossible to predict. It might happen, or it might not happen, or it might happen and have another name entirely. There are plenty of critics who see “cyberpunk” as a distant belated echo of London New Wave SF. Maybe it was ever thus.
Gunhead: Maybe. Thanks for your time Bruce, it’s been a pleasure talking to you. Anything to say for the folks at Cyberpunk Review?
Bruce: *Well, it’s always better to understand the tools and approaches — what creative people are doing, how they did it — than it is to put together a canon of cool stuff you like and say, “I’m gonna do it that way.”
*That’s why I like to talk directly to writers instead of just reading novels, and hey, in about eight days we’re having yet another writers’ workshop here in Austin, cradle of cyberpunk.
((Edited for readability))
This post has been filed under Uncategorized by Mr. Roboto.
“The first users of tools were not men (a fact appreciated only recently), but pre-human anthropoids. The old idea that man invented tools is misleading, more accurately tools invented man - so began the symbiosis.” - from the liner notes.
Track Listing:
1. Man-Amplifiers - 5:15 2. Techno Geist - 5:42 3. Axiomic and Heuristic - 4:48 4. NYC Overload - 6:28 5. Transitional Voices - 7:30 6. Bitstream - 5:55 7. Fractalize - 5:06 8. Final Program - 4:17 9. Dark Attractor - 5:16 10. Memories of Sound - 4:39
That’s “d-vah,” Russian for “two”. Originally founded in 1978, Clock DVA became part of the industrial music scene in 1980 when White Souls in Black Suits was released on Industrial Records, though at the time they had more of a guitar-driven sound. Breaking up in 1983 then reforming in 1987, the band went totally electronic with Buried Dreams. Man-Amplifiers was released in 1991, featuring songs (and liner notes) about cybernetics and how they are changing humans (This could probably be compared to Kraftwerk’s The Man-Machine).
This is one of the rarer CDs you’ll want for your collections (actually, Clock’s whole discography is very rare) so be prepared to pay a premium unless you want to try the torrent route. However you acquire this CD (or their whole catalog), cyber-music fans will find something to love. Just check out the tracks:
Man-Amplifiers. The opening/title track starts off by declaring We are machines / a system of mind (I wish I could find the CD’s lyrics somewhere online) setting the tone for the rest of the CD.
Techno Geist. Let the spirit rise. With a bouncy beat, it’s hard not to let your spirit rise as that all-important question posed by the CD is asked: Did man invent machine, or machine invent man? Then again, man is a machine that goes beyond.
Axiomatic and Heuristic. A bit of a down-tempo tune.
NYC Overload. Do yourself a favor, don’t watch this video (from Clock DVA’s video compilation Kinetic Engineering)… LISTEN instead…
If the music makes you feel like you’re standing in the middle of the Big Apple, surrounded by the visible hustle-and-bustle of the streets and the invisible hustle-and-bustle of data transfers, your system might be experiencing a bit of NYC overload.
Transitional Voices. Can you hear them? Can you feel them? If so, they may make you want to dance to this ditty.
Bitstream. A bit of electronic noise leads into a tune with a funky bass line. But is this about surfing for porn, or looking for a date off Craigslist? You are a number, a number of desire. Maybe it’s just the mathematics of emotions coming through the wires.
Fractalize. Now this is a bouncy number. Almost danceable.
Final Program. Not exactly the “final” program on this CD, Adi Newton wants us to escape the final program and escape man’s emotions.
Dark Attractor. Mostly electronics with some synthesized voices. Can’t really tell what they’re saying though. This is probably what it would sound like in the wires.
Memories of Sound. Performance perfect is perfect performance, so says a female voice at the beginning of this dark, brooding number with bits of THX-1138 mixed in for good measure.
Conclusion: Not often that something is mandatory for your cyberpunk media collection, but Man-Amp’d is a mandatory MUST HAVE. And if you can get the CD complete with booklet, you not only win the Internet, but the whole Universe.
This post has been filed under Cyberpunk Music by Mr. Roboto.
Overview: Not often that a good cyberpunk movie comes down the wires. Lately, the better ones have been coming out of Japan’s anime studios. Technotise could be the latest-and-greatest to come from the land of the rising sun… only it came from Serbia, not Japan, although the anime influence can be seen. While not enough to make those famed anime studios nervous… yet… it already has a live-action remake under development.
A sequel based on the comic (readable here, if you understand Serbian), Technotise looks into a bit of the the life of a college girl as she faces a struggle in Belgrade 2074 that could kill her.
The Story: Edit Stefanović is a psychology major in a Belgrade college. Like most students, Edit has had her successes and failures but mostly failures. Now her professor has given her an ultimatum:
“Pass or GTFO.”
After burying her robotic pet, and a fight with her mother, Edit decides to get a memory chip implant to help her pass the exam. She is also an intern at TDR, a research company that’s been working on a formula that connects all the energies in the world, aka “A direct line to God.” This “formula” can be used to predict the future, but any computer that calculates it becomes sentient before it shuts down. Abel Mustafov discovered the formula before becoming autistic, and when Edit sees a “graph” of the formula, her chip becomes alive and starts wiring itself into her body, making her act weird (like eating large amounts of iron). Now TDR wants Edit and the chip for their future-telling computers, while Edit wants what the chip did to her undone.
Algorithm Absurd. This phrase is used a couple of times to describe what happens to the computers that calculates the formula. Algorithm - like a computer program; A series of finite steps to generate an output from input. Absurd, the ludicrous, insane, irrational. The phrase is simply another way of saying: “That does not compute.” Apparently the computers see the formula like a digital existential crisis, one that says machines are not alive. But Edit’s chip doesn’t suffer the same fate, probably because of their connection to each other, or maybe because of Edit’s study of psychology she was able to “understand” the graph in a way that computers couldn’t so she acted as a “buffer” and the chip was able to process her output.
The next GITS? Like GITS, Technotise uses a variety of animation styles to produce some high quality movie fare. 2D, 3D, vector, and realistic static drawings come together for some of the best eye-candy. But without a good storyline, all you can get from eye-candy is diabetes. Fortunately, Technotise has the storyline to back up the visuals. About the only problem is the language is entirely Serbian with English subtitles so you might miss out on some of the vids.
“I have nothing against plastic but sometimes you have to make out with some real meat.”
Conclusion: With the themes of the search for “God” via science and our continued interconnection of human and machine, we have some excellent cyberpunk fare to even anime fans happy for the next decade or so. This is one animated movie that can go byte-by-byte with GITS. Just get the DVD and see what I mean…
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