Towards a poetics of Cyberpunk

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• Towards a poetics of Cyberpunk

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motto

• We are mutating into another species from
  Aquaria to the Terrarium, and now were moving
  into Cyberia. We are creatures crawling to the
  center of the cybernetic world. But cybernetics
  are the stuff of which the world is made. Matter
  is simply frozen information.
• Timothy Leary (Pataphysics magazine)

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The Short History of the Internet

• Some forty years ago, the RAND Corporation, USA's
  foremost Cold War research institute, faced a
  strange strategic problem. How could the US
  authorities successfully communicate after a
  nuclear war?
• Paul Baran had an answer the solution is a
  computer network without a centre.

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The Short History of the Internet

• In fall 1969, the first network node was
  installed in an American university.
• By winter 1969, there were four nodes on the
  infant network, which was named ARPANET.
• Thanks to ARPANET, scientists and researchers
  could share one another's computer facilities by
  long-distance.
• In 1971 there were fifteen nodes in ARPANET
• by 1972, thirty-seven nodes.
• Its decentralized structure made expansion easy.

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The Short History of the Internet

• During the second year of operation, however, an
  odd fact became clear. ARPANET's users had warped
  the computer-sharing network into a dedicated,
  high-speed, federally subsidized electronic post-
  office.
• The main traffic on ARPANET was not long-distance
  computing.
• Instead, it was news and personal messages.
• Researchers were using ARPANET to collaborate on
  projects, to trade notes on work, and eventually,
  to downright gossip and schmooze.

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The Short History of the Internet

• Interestingly, one of the first really big
  mailing-lists was "SF- LOVERS," for science
  fiction fans.
• Discussing science fiction on the network was not
  work-related and was frowned upon by many ARPANET
  computer administrators, but this didn't stop it
  from happening.

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The Short History of the Internet

• Details from Short History of the Internet by
  Bruce Sterling, The Magazin of Fantasy and
  Science Fiction, February 1993.

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The History of Cyberpunk

• The invention of Internet opened a door to a new
  dimension - the cyberworlds also known as Virtual
  Reality. The computer-synthesized worlds were the
  brand new technology, taking more and more
  victims... After those events the world could
  never be the same again... /Details from The
  cyberpunk project (www.project.cyberpunk.ru)/

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Cyberpunk

• The word 'cyberpunk' first appeared as the title
  of a short story Cyberpunk" by Bruce Bethke,
  published in "Amazing" science fiction stories
  magazine volume 57, number 4, in November 1983.
• The story itself is about a bunch of teenage
  hackers/crackers.

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Cyber

• The word cyber comes from 'cybernetics', which is
  a science studying the various forms of control
  and communication in the animal and the
  machine./Norbert Wiener/
• The term originates from the Greek word
  'kubernetes' which means 'pilot' or 'steersman'.
• Originally, the cybernetic system, was a feedback
  loop that gives a controller information about
  the results of its actions.
• Nowadays, and in 'cyberpunk', the prefix 'cyber'
  is a synonym for a kind of cybernetic machine,
  something mechanic, or something, which exists or
  is produced via a cybernetic machine.

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Punk

• The Punk was an anarchistic, scandalizing and
  dynamic youth movement which terrorized the world
  in the 1970's and early 1980's.
• The word originally means 'rotten, 'junk or
  trash.
• In terms of literature and social movements,
  'punk' refers to a 'counterculture' and a sort of
  'street-level anarchy', and tends to focus more
  on attitude and outlook than on music and
  criminal activity.
• In 'cyberpunk', 'punk' means the anarchistic and
  anti-authoritarian part of it.

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The Unio Mystica

• Therefore, the words 'cyber' and 'punk' emphasize
  the two basic aspects of cyberpunk technology
  and individualism. The meaning of the word
  'cyberpunk' may be something like 'anarchy via
  machines' or 'machine/computer rebel movement'.
• The word was coined in the early spring of 1980,
  and applied to the "bizarre, hard-edged,
  high-tech" SF emerging in the eighties.

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The History of Cyberpunk

• The new communities rose from the data world.
  Hackers, FreeJacks and Phreakers were the new
  rulers of this world. They brought the chaos into
  the new creation, but they also brought the
  knowledge to the masses, too. The Cyberpunks the
  offspring of the Cyber Age became the culture of
  the new world. A small community of free thinking
  people began to grow up and attract more and more
  people to the new cause - Information is power!
  Free the Information!...
• The cyberpunk project (www.project.cyberpunk.ru)

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The History of Cyberpunk

• The new world was called 'Cyberspace.
• The Cyberspace became a home for the Cyberpunks
  and the whole Cyber Underground.
• Hackers, Phreakers and other Cyberpunks began to
  rule the new world the way they like - No laws!
  No rules!
• Cyberpunk is a combination of high tech and low
  life.
• The cyberpunk project (www.project.cyberpunk.ru)

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Cyberspace

• The year, when the high technology of the real
  life met with myth was 1984.
• Its a symbolic year due to George Orwells
  well-known novel, 1984. (This was published in
  1948.)
• The first cyberpunk novel, Neuromancer by William
  Gibson, was published in 1984.
• This was a great success.

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Cyberpunk writers

• Cyberpunk writers Tom Maddox, Pat Cadigan, Rudy
  Rucker, Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, Jake
  Smiles.
• Though they were different in many respects,
  these writers were mainly preoccupied by the
  changing place of media in American society,
  especially in the wake of the initial phases of
  the digital revolution.

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Achievement of William Gibson

• He wrote first the expression of cyberspace.
• He inspired the cyberpunk movement.
• He wrote 2 trilogies, books, short stories,
  screen plays and a suicide poem tittled Agrippa.
• Idoru, Johnny Mnemonic, New Rose Hotel,
  Difference Engine etc.

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Cyberspace Trilogy

• The Neuromancer is a first piece of the
  Cyberspace Trilogy or Sprawl Series.
• The second is the Count Zero
• And the last is Mona Lisa Overdrive.

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How Gibson define the cyberspace?

• Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination
  experienced daily by billions of legitimate
  operators, in every nation, by children being
  taught mathematical concepts...A graphical
  representation of data abstracted from the banks
  of every computer in the human system.
  Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in
  the non-space of the mind, clusters and
  constellations of data. Like city lights,
  receding... /William Gibson, Neuromancer/

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The story of Neuromancer

• Case, the protagonist was the sharpest data
  thief/hacker in the Cyberspace, until an
  ex-employer crippled his nervous system.
• Now a new employer has recruited him for a
  last-chance run against an unthinkably powerful
  artificial intelligence.
• His new employer is the same as his new enemy
• He has to acquire the password for the artifical
  intelligence, called Neuromancer/Wintermute,

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The schizophrenic AI Neuromancer/ Wintermute

• It wants to crack its system, in other words, it
  wants to die.
• But it also wants to defend its system. This
  means that it wants to stop the separation or
  death.
• This is the main ontological aspect of the novel.

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Wintermute and Case

• So whats the word?
• You might say what I am is basically defined by
  the fact that I dont know, because I _ cant _
  know. I am that which knoweth not the word. If
  you knew, man, and told me, I couldnt _ know. _
  It is hardwired in. Someone else has to learn it
  and bring it here, just when you and the Flatline
  punch through that ice and scramble the scores.
• What happened then?
• I dont exist after that. I cease.

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Neuromancer and Case

• To call up a demon you must learn its name. Men
  dreamed that, once, but now it is real in other
  way. You know that, Case. Your business is to
  learn of names of programs, the long formal
  names, names the owner seek the counceal. True
  names
• A turing code is not your name.
• Neuromancer, the boy said, slitting long gray
  eyes against the rising sun. The lane to the
  land of the dead. Where you are, my friend.
  Neuro from the nerves, the silver paths.
  Romancer. Necromancer. I call up the dead.

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Neuromancer and Case

• But now, my friend and the boy did a little
  dance, brown feet printing the sand, Im the
  dead and their land. He laughed. A gull cried.
  Stay If your woman is a ghost, she doesnt know
  it. Neither will you.
• Youre cracking. The ice is breaking up.
• No he said, suddenly sad, his fragile shoulders
  sagging. He rubbed his foot against the sand. It
  is more simple than that. But the choice is
  yours.

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After the hacking

• After Cases successful hacking the cyberspace
  could never be the same again.
• A form of God-consciousness is now fragmented.
• The voodoo cultist in the trilogy, who believes
  that they have contacted the voodoo pantheon
  through the Matrix, is in fact dealing with these
  fragmented elements of this God.
• And the fragments are much more daemonic and more
  human.

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About the storyline and characters

• The story lines usually bend toward the world of
  the illegal and there is often a sense of moral
  ambiguity simply fighting the 'system' does not
  make these characters 'heroes' or 'good' in the
  traditional sense.

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Cyberpunk characters

• Case is not a hero, he is a nobody, and his
  companions too.
• Classic cyberpunk characters are marginalized,
  alienated loners who live on the edge of society
  in generally dystopic futures where daily life is
  impacted by rapid technological change, an
  ubiquitous sphere of computerized information,
  and invasive modification of the human body.

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Problems of the genre

• The theorists of the cyberpunk movement declared,
  that cyberpunk literature is the most recent form
  of science fiction literature.

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Preface of The Cyberpunk Anthology

• The cyberpunks are perhaps the first SF
  generation to grow up not only within the
  literary tradition of science fiction, but in a
  truly science-fictional world. For them, the
  techniques of classical hard SF extrapolation,
  technological literacy are not just literary
  tools, but on aid to daily life.
• /Bruce Sterling/ Mirrorshades, The Cyberpunk
  Anthology, ed. Sterling, Bruce, Arbor House, New
  York, 1986, xii.

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Gibson said that

• I'm really not in the business of inventing
  imaginary futures. Well I am ostensibly because
  I'm marketed as a science fiction writer, but
  what I really do is look at what passes for
  contemporary reality and select the bits that are
  most useful to me in terms of inducing cognitive
  dissonance. I have this fantasy that someday in
  the future, I will be written about as a
  naturalistic author. Somebody who was actually
  trying to take the pulse of the late 20th century
  and going at it in a kind of unconventional way.
  But I sometimes think going at it in the only way
  it can be gotten at this far into the game.
  GOLDBERG, Michael, Junk Collage, Nodal Points
  Cognitive Dissonance William Gibson Takes The
  Pulse Of The Late 20th Century, Cover Story,
  www/adsys/getAd

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SF or not SF?

• Gibson has received some famous SF awards. /Hugo,
  Nebula/
• But the famous English SF writer, David Wingrove,
  for example does not think highly of Gibson in
  his SF history

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SF versus CP

• SF is a self-consciously ontological or
  world-building genre, juxtaposing the world of
  contemporary reality with an alternative that
  differs from it in certain specified ways.
• Cyberspace is the alternative world of reality.
  But it can be as real for an average man who is
  playing with an online computer game as for Case
  in the novel.
• So, CP is not one kind of SF. It is an other
  genre.

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High culture versus popular culture

• According to Dwight McDonald the culture has
  three levels, high culture, midcult and lowcult
• His work is based on differentiating between
  three intellectual levels. The high brow, middle
  brow and low brow levels of taste. According to
  him High Culture is what the social elite likes.
  The culture of the high brow.
• The Middle culture, Midcult is what people like
  within the middle classes. Not really and
  perfectly artistic, but not as bad as low
  culture.
• And low culture according to McDonald is the same
  thing to mass culture. This is specifically
  intended for those people who have bad taste and
  are uneducated.

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High culture versus popular culture

• Dwight McDonald was an American sociologist. The
  title of his main work is The theory of mass
  culture. (Published in 1957)
• Umberto Eco, who is a contemporary Italian
  theorist, criticised McDonalds theory.
• The title of Umberto Ecos work is The Mass
  culture and levels of culture, published in 1974.

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High culture versus popular culture

• He said that the distinction between intellectual
  levels and cultural level is merely a mistaken
  preconception (prejudice). It simply isnt true,
  that is it possible nowadays that a lecturer of
  20th century English Literature, likes reading
  comics, or listening to Britney Spears. Or a
  cleaner of a museum likes watching Picassos
  paintings and hates watching Dallas. This
  distinction is only a preconception. Or for that
  matter almost everybody knows the beginning of
  Beethovens 9th symphony. This has become popular
  music and has been adapted to for example the
  tone of the cellular phone. But it is not a low
  cultural product.

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High culture vs popular culture and mainstream vs
marginalised culture

• What about the concept of popular culture.
• There are two major theoretical conceptions in
  the study of popular culture.
• Critics of popular culture, for example the
  Frankfurt School (one of the great German schools
  of sociology in the 20th century) found, that
  popular culture is trivial, commercialized and
  passive. In this perspective popular culture is
  equated with the concept of low culture.
• However, according to John Fiske, popular culture
  is creative and authentic. From his perspective
  popular culture is a specific product of modern
  urban society.

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High culture vs popular culture and mainstream vs
marginalised culture

• According to Miklós Almási there are three almost
  fused parts of culture in the postmodern era. The
  classical culture, the avant-garde culture and
  the popular culture. And they effect each other
  continually in several ways. But these affects
  are not always present.
• The postmodern culture can mix the cultural
  parts, (or the levels of culture). And can mix
  the genres, the media, the ages, the styles.
• From this convergence we can speak about
  mainstream and marginalised culture.

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Cyberpunk

• Cyberpunk is a literary movement, born in the
  1980's, that seeks to completely integrate the
  realms of high tech and pop culture, both
  mainstream and underground, and break down the
  separation between the organic and the
  artificial.

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Postmodern

• According to a Columbia Lliterary History
  Gibsons achievement is partly the achievement of
  post-modern American Literature. .
• Larry McCaffery wrote an article for the Columbia
  Literary History, and then he edited the most
  important casebook for the CP titled Storming
  The Reality Studio, A casebook of Cyberpunk and
  Postmodern Science Fiction.
• According to Brian McHale the Postmodern recycled
  as Cyberpunk, and Cyberpunk recycled as
  Postmodern. (Brian McHale, Constructing
  Postmodern.)

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Postmodern characteristic of Cyberpunk

• Postapocalyptic statement, after the big war
• Chaotic or paranoid world
• Built in contradiction
• Motive of search or seeking
• Diffusion of self or ego
• Fusion of fact and fiction
• Metafictionality

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Consequences

• Cyberpunk is a form of Postmodern Mannerism, a
  form of speaking that we can call postmodern or
  cyberpunk romance.
• Substituting genres
• William Gibson is not a famous SF writer only,
  but an acknowledged postmodern writer, like
  Thomas Pynchon, Ronald Barthelme, Don DeLillo,
  Samuel R. Delany, William S. Burroughs.