What is cyberpunk? WAS: Where is Everyone
Kevin Calder
>Omar, old top! What have you been up to?
<snip>
>==Various regulars from the silver age, mid 90's:
>The Passenger: Not seen around for a while
Cyber-what?
Sorry, I don't understand.
What is Cyberpunk exactly?
--
Kevin Calder(-+tpass+-)
I'll be here for the duration...
alie...@hotmail.com
> Alienthe (alie...@hotmail.com) writed:
>
> >Omar, old top! What have you been up to?
>
> <snip>
>
> >==Various regulars from the silver age, mid 90's:
> >The Passenger: Not seen around for a while
You know, I think he just made an appearance...
> Cyber-what?
??
> Sorry, I don't understand.
>
> What is Cyberpunk exactly?
Normally the answer is something like "High tech, low life" or
"The most frequently asked question around here" but this time
I think the right answer is "Nice try".
Now, where did that alt.cp helpdesk go?
==<)
Kevin Calder
alie...@hotmail.com writes
>Kevin Calder <kca...@cableinet.co.uk> wrote in message news:<8q2YGLAAwhd7EwoM@c
>ableinet.co.uk>...
>> Alienthe (alie...@hotmail.com) writed:
>> What is Cyberpunk exactly?
>
>Normally the answer is something like "High tech, low life" or
>"The most frequently asked question around here" but this time
>I think the right answer is "Nice try".
Pah! The day that Bill Gates implemented troll detection in OE as
standard was "The Day He Ruined Everything"... Shit, uh, maybe that was
some other day.
I might not be quite as skilled as the infamous dick@aol, but I'll get
you one of these days! Anyway, as we all know, dick was just omar in
disguise, in the huff ;)
Actually, you missed out ol' dick from your list, and he was a feature
character for a while. And smaug, and schwann...
Strange things, newsgroups...
--
void The Passenger((Kevin Calder), (-+tpass+-));
Kevin Calder
<kca...@cableinet.co.uk> writes
>I might not be quite as skilled as the infamous dick@aol
Seriously, this deserves a repost:
***
From: Julia Witwer (jlwi...@uci.GRRRedu)
Subject: life without di...@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
Date: 1998/02/01
<Lilting, slightly mournful music. A deserted city street at twilight.
Garbage cans, drifts of snow and crumpled fax. The only bright colors
are on the hoardings pasted on the cheerless brick walls of endless
tenement houses. A young cyberpunk dressed in ragged clothes walks
slowly through the urban detritus, head hanging low. Sings>
Oh, di...@aol.com,
look what's become of us without you.
Oh, di...@aol.com.
a.cp is a hollow shell without you.
Other trolls may come and go,
analytical, virtuoso,
Trolls that give us vertigo,
but they're not *you,*
they're not you,
oh di...@aol.com!
<Crescendo. Sings, sternly, lifting head>
The cyberpunks ashiver in their concrete holes
Should not be forced to suffer such incompetent trolls!
<reverts to near-despair>
Oh, di...@aol.com!
Tho' the trashcan fires have stopped burning,
Oh di...@aol.com,
Cyberpunk hearts are still yearning.
Your trolls they were true,
we're still waiting for you,
oh, di...@aol.com!
<Silence. Cyberpunk heaves sigh. Exits.>
--
Kevin Calder
Kevin Calder
We should take a moment to remember him, especially as things are a
little slow right now.
This is a classic, you must agree :)
Message 10 in thread
From: dick (di...@aol.com)
Subject: Re: Idoru-Gibson losing his edge?
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
Date: 1996/09/30
In article <52faoc$3...@mtinsc01-mgt.ops.worldnet.att.net>
tra...@worldnet.att.net (trancer) writes:
>From: tra...@worldnet.att.net (trancer)
>Subject: Idoru-Gibson losing his edge?
>Date: Fri, 27 Sep 1996 04:27:59 GMT
> First a disclaimer. I really liked Idoru. Even more than VL, I think.
> In fact, I think Idoru is technically (in the literary sense) the
>best thing Gibson 's written yet. One thing it seems to be lacking ,
>however is that sense of "urban grittiness" so evident in the sprawl
>trilogy and in N in particular.
> It's often said that an author's early works tend to be "edgier"
>perhaps as a result of their youthful impetuousness and that as they
>mature and hone their craft, something is lost in the process. I fear
>this may be the case (no pun intended) with W.G.
> So tell me, Am I on to something here, or am I speaking from the
>wrong orifice?
>Trancer
I like Idoru much better than William Gipson.
He is by far a much better writer.
dick
"trecking down the information super-highway, i suddenly realize....
i am lost in syberspace!!!! yikes!!!" by dick
dick from ~ ~
di...@aol.com @ @
please email me your comments to ^
dick at AOL.COM ---
THANKS _
dick
Kevin Calder
Kevin Calder
From: alie...@my-deja.com (alie...@my-deja.com)
Subject: Re: The Passengers Updatory Ramble (Was RE: Neuro Film)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
View complete thread (8 articles)
Date: 2000/03/09
>In article <8a0pu4$129$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> The Passenger <kca...@computing.dundee.ac.uk> wrote:
>> In article <38C2ADF1...@planetoftheapes.freeserve.co.uk>,
>> Tom Knight <kni...@planetoftheapes.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> > kca...@computing.dundee.ac.uk wrote:
>> > > Concerning the impending(so im told) neurmancer film.
>> > > Does anyone know if the film will be made from gibson's 1990
>> > > screenplay I should hope not...I just read it and its pretty bad.
>> > I don't know. It's a fuck of a lot better than I expected. It's got
>> > that noir edge to it, a bit of potential.
>>
>> You think? I kinda got the feeling the Gibson hadn't yet (granted it
>> was like 10 years ago) developed sci-fi cliché control. I suppose
>they
>> weren't clichés when he made them up tho...:)
>
>Bruce Sterling wrote about this, that they, the barbarians at the
>gates were all of a sudden met by worshippers at the opened gates.
>A sufficiently big success will quickly be coopted for other uses,
>the mainstream too finds its own uses for things.
Seems all too true, do you think then that Gibson (and others) should
take this into account when picking material for their new novels? Or
should the concentrate on their artistry?
Seriously man, I *am* asking you a question about something you posted
more than a year ago :)
<snip>
>I'd say the Matrix has upped the visual demands of the next high
>tech themed movies to be made. for instance I would not be
>surprised if Mission Impossible 2 now was being retrofitted with
>more vinyl clothing for the women, enormous coats for the guys
>and cools shades for everyone.
Didn't this actually happen?
Wow, you prophet, you...
>
>> Oh yeah, and the philosophical sophistication of a stoned 15yr old. :)
>
>Which, the Wachowski brothers or William Gibson?
W. Bro's...
Do you think Gibson presents his work with any kind of philosophical
stand-point? His work seems a pretty neutral depiction to me.
>> I don't want NM to be anything like the matrix really...
>> Tho I suppose thats what a lot of people will be comparing it to...
>
>More importantly, the produces will look at the Matrix for what
>passes for inspiration. I heard the producers got blamed for the
>way Johnny Mnemonic turned out. Anyone here seen the Japanese cut?
Yeah, *has* anyone seen the jap cut?
C'mon, guys, you've had a year to think about it!
I watched NM on t.v. the other night, and I must say I disliked it less
than usual. I found that if you pretend it was an anime that they made
a live action film of then you make allowances for exactly the things
that are wrong with it! Ingenious!
>
>> I don't really think that NM should have any of the gratuitous loud
>> music action scenes (nice tho they were) that the matrix had. In NM
>> when Case is getting chased by molly he doesn't run up walls while
>> firing two machine guns or start doing ultra-fast-kung-foo. He turns
>> tail and runs like fuck... I think that the combat should be played
>> down in NM, over fast and brutally realistic. I think NM was work
>best
>> as a low-key art flick, instead of a high-budget, sooper-trendy
>special
>> effects fest. I think that the emphasis should be taken off the tech
>> and the sci-fi stuff and should instead by placed on mood and
>> character, like bladerunner, or to a lesser extent Strange Days. I
>did
>> like the stuff in SD where Nero(?) is getting beaten up by the
>> bouncers, and even though he's taking a pounding he is still trying to
>> bribe them :)
>
>If you remove too much of the tech angle you are left with a 30's
>Dashiell Hammet story in the future, pulling that off without
>burning your audience is quite the challenge.
Do what Gibson does best, imply. Just don't linger on the tech, don't
masturbate with it.
Actually, that's probably good advice even if yr *not* making the NM
film.
>You would still need messily gritty scenes where Molly disposes of
>various other low life in her particular style. I think the book
>used the phrase "died with a wet sound" or something similar. And
>here I would guess you can fit in a lot of loud music.
Good for the 'wet sound' club scene. I wouldn't want overdub music in
*my* NM film :)
ASIDE (I just finished a new album of funky tunes. It has one track
called "Goodnight Sweet Polly", and one called "js4smaug", so it must be
cyberpunk. Maybe *my* NM film will use *my* music. Howdya-likea-that?)
>> Personally I think that the chick who played Lola in 'Run Lola Run'
>> (german flick, best film I saw last year, go see it!) shouldn't play
>> Molly. I don't think she speaks english tho...nevertheless lots of
>> presence. Maybe they should make Molly foriegn... Leastways she
>> shouldn't be like the matrix chick, she didn't come over as being
>> tough, just uppity. Difference = Molly doesn't need to try...
>
>Unlike Stephenson who gives you the genetic makeup of his main
>characters, WG's style is to hint in ways that make people use
>their imagination.
Its a sneaky trick, but a good one. If you are describing faces, there
are certain vague triggers you can use that prompt people to
unconsciously 'fill in the blanks'. The end result is that they get a
clear picture in their mind (of a face they made up themselves) and
attribute the clarity to your marvellous descriptive skill!
> Everyone has different views on the Sprawl
>universe in general and Molly in particular. Seems to me that
>people who saw JM
>< http://us.imdb.com/Title?0113481 >
>before reading the book liked it better than
>those who had already read the book, having made up their idea
>of what it looked like, which ties in with my first guess.
I suppose we are disappointed. JM is a lovely little set piece on
paper. Its all pretty simple really, so it should have been hard to
mess up. Its a shame that someone on the production team thought it
would be a good idea to mess around with the details of the story so
much. Where was the killing floor? What the fuck happened to the
LoTeks? They looked pretty HiTek to me! Why could you see the mono
filament wire? Why was the one, mild mannered, little japanese assasin
replaced by a team of machine gun toting goon? Why on earth did they re-
write ralphie's death? What the fuck was dolph lundgren doing? Did he
just wander onto the set and start doing stupid stuff??!?!
Anyways...
Now that we are post "Crouching, Hidden", what about Michelle Yeoh?
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Yeoh,+Michelle
I think she'd make a great Mol, she has tons of presence, and she deals
out some mean whoop-ass!
>
>I can like the art movie idea so why not then use an art movie
>actress? Closest description of Molly I can remember was that
>she was shaped like a dancer. I got these links some time ago:
>< http://www.sirenent.com.au/images/irmavep.jpg >
>< http://us.imdb.com/Name?Cheung,+Maggie >
>should provide looks, high speed action and high art.
If i'd bothered to read this a year ago she would have been my next
choice! I really think Mol should be asian, kinda freshen's up the
whole razor girl thing.
I find it hard not read american, female leads in "Blockbuster" mode.
The saturation of the AFL archetype has ruined a lot of good films,
IMHO.
I think Mol deserves a total redesign. She was conceived about 20 years
ago, and we are far more de-sensitised and cynical than we were then.
She'd find it hard to have any impact on a prospective film audience of
today.
She needs to stop being a male fantasy figure.
She should have her breasts removed, her muscle structure re-arranged,
and her hair removed. This makes her *scary*! She doesn't seduce
people first and *then* kill them, she isn't the female James Bond. She
is all about function, and she doesn't need to be sexy. She is perfect
in other ways, ways that are more useful to her.
Having inset mirror shades and a funny hat isn't enough for her to be
classed as an "exotic" these days.
I don't think her fight sequences should be stylised either, I think
they should be harrowing. She fights quick n' dirty, and shows now
mercy, just cold professionalism.
I just can't think of any american actresses that could look
convincingly mean.
>> Yeah, and the dialoge&plot in NM need to be totally gutted, because
>> quite frankly, they suck. Don't get me wrong, I really like NM, but
>> anyone who has ever studied literature (and I think WG would be the
>> first to agree) can see that technically NM is a bad book. Hrm...is
>> Raymond Chandler dead? I think so, shame...
>
>Noir is a big part of WG's writing, it will be hard to gut the
>text and retain the style.
True, I mostly meant the crappy eighties overdone dialogue.
Everything anyone sez in JM is kinda 'deep' and 'meaningful', and loaded
with rhetoric. Its so melodramatic it just makes me cringe. I wouldn't
want NM to be the same. Not that this damn film is ever going to get
made anyway!
>> A while back I had some ideas (see: thread 'Dead Horse Rides Again')
>> for re-styling cyberpunk by stripping out the clichés that have
>> softened its once aggressive edge. The project was to involve a few
>> written pieces on the stylings and components of CP and screenplay and
>> short story which would act as exemplar to our findings. While the
>> other collaborators and I were working through it we came to the
>> conclusion that CP was pretty routed in the eighties and couldn't
>> really be re-created now. So the project was abandoned as far as the
>> collaboration was concerned. I have been messing around with the
>> screenplay idea, just for something to do, and am working on something
>> that is kind of half screen play and half continuos prose... Anyway
>> it’s basically a rehash of some old (like 8 years ago) cp stories that
>> I wrote. I’m not really hoping for any originality points because
>> there aren't many themes in CP that haven't already been well treaded
>> (trod?) but I think that y'll be impressed by my non-cliched
>> (hopefully) updates on some popular CP elements...
>
>Why not go back to the first principles? Rather than go back to the
>style and topic of yesteryear, why not rather look at what brought
>it all about?
I did :)
Check out Dead Horse Rides Again, on alt.cp.
> From what I can see and have heard it was a lot about
>revival of SF as literature and viewing that today of the 80's in
>their of centered projections.
Pretty much the conclusions of the thread :)
<snip>
>I'll be posting a link to a site with some other work Ive
>been
>> doing recently, but I’m not sure it’ll be to everyone’s tastes. Its
>> not really CP, but is post-modern noir (ala chunking express) stuff
>> dealing with sexual politics and surrealism...
>
>I saw a little of Chunking Express
>< http://us.imdb.com/Title?0109424 >
>but I never saw the POMO angle
>there.
Really?
Have you seen it all yet?
Its fantastic, as is the followup, "Fallen Angels".
I have yet to see his new film, but its supposed to be immense.
I think its called "In the mood for love" :)
> Why not rather look for Post-Pomo? Someone claimed to have
>found it in the Onion, my bet is that it is in Dark City.
Post pomo?
Scary thought.
Ok, modernism is (among other things) about rejection of classical form,
and moves toward "freeform" and "expressionist" traditions.
Post modernism is about (among other things) cynicism, and constant
criticism of everything! Its a bit of a backlash. Pomo stuff tends to
move toward minimalist or deconstructuralist goals, but only because its
so busy rejecting stuff.
So what's post pomo? Is it when there is nothing left, all definitions
have been generalised and relativised so much that they are inherently
meaningless and we start again by reconstructing form?
Ah, well...
Kevin Calder ((-+tpass), (The Passenger))
"trecking down the information superhighway (internet), i realize..........
i am lost in cyberspace.............yikes!!!!!!!!!!!" - Dick@aol
Schwann
> >> What is Cyberpunk exactly?
> >
> >Normally the answer is something like "High tech, low life"
this is probably the most used description, yes..
> Actually, you missed out ol' dick from your list, and he was a feature
> character for a while. And smaug, and schwann...
i am still sometimes here...it gets harder as you get older - :;
> Strange things, newsgroups...
the global brain works in strange ways....
Using the same tech as the holo/astrogator, but using an Earth
backdrop, schwann says something on the vid like; "Greetings
Sentients, this will stimulate your adrenocorticotropical gland which
is probably illegal but we don't give a shit because rumour has it
that we may soon see the arrival of two opposing invasion fleets in
our Solar System and our multiverse may be at stake, so if you wish to
survive vote here for Earth's Unification Party, or the invasion of
Terra will end in Domination of mankind and and we will be prisoners
of Earth forever. We will have no starpath our soulmates will be torn
from us, our cultures as they'd never existed. Get new webtrance movie
www.webtrance.co.za/Media/webtrance256k.wmv
dowload b4 viewing...this is a tachyon transfer
Recommendation...transition through hyperspace
Now take a deep breath and log off..:)
best,
schwann
www.webtrance.co.za
Morbid Curiosity
news:3458eabe.01081...@posting.google.com...
> Using the same tech as the holo/astrogator, but using an Earth
> backdrop, schwann says something on the vid like; "Greetings
> Sentients, this will stimulate your adrenocorticotropical gland which
> is probably illegal but we don't give a shit because rumour has it
Er, didn't they get eaten by a small dog..?
I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle.
Morbid (mmm, corticotrophin)
Dan Argent
"Morbid Curiosity" <morbid.does...@gothik.org> wrote in message
news:3b7a00ca$1...@clear.net.nz...
"... and then of course I've got this terrible pain in all the
diodes down my left hand side ..."
ghost
<d...@NOSPAMPLEASEcs.man.ac.uk> wrote:
who the hell let Marvin in? oh hell, it must be Thursday.
g/f
--
Cyberpunk is a Hello Kitty Claymore Mine. -C.M.
www.bitstreamnet.com
digiboy | marcus
> Now that we are post "Crouching, Hidden", what about Michelle Yeoh?
>
> http://us.imdb.com/Name?Yeoh,+Michelle
>
> I think she'd make a great Mol, she has tons of presence, and she deals
> out some mean whoop-ass!
She's also far to old for a cyberpunk character... if you want to stick with Crouching Tiger actors then better pick Zhang Ziyi.
> Really?
>
> Have you seen it all yet?
> Its fantastic, as is the followup, "Fallen Angels".
>
> I have yet to see his new film, but its supposed to be immense.
> I think its called "In the mood for love" :)
Ahhh, Wong Kar Wai. One of my favourite directors - and I've seen all but two of the movies he's directed . He's working on a cyberpunk movie of sorts at the
moment in fact, with a Chinese all-star cast... "2046".
I'd recommend anyone to see his entire back catalogue. "Chungking Express" would be my favourite, very closely followed by "In the Mood for Love", then "Fallen
Angels", then "Ashes of Time" and finally "Days of Being Wild"... and that's all I've seen. ;)
Oh, and "The Follow" on bmwfilms.com, but that doesn't really count.
Morbid Curiosity
news:trminlx-1508...@user-33qtpju.dialup.mindspring.com...
> In article <dhqe7.21483$js3.46898@NewsReader>, "Dan Argent"
> <d...@NOSPAMPLEASEcs.man.ac.uk> wrote:
> > "Morbid Curiosity" <morbid.does...@gothik.org> wrote in message
> > news:3b7a00ca$1...@clear.net.nz...
> > >
> > > I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle.
> >
> > diodes down my left hand side ..."
>
> who the hell let Marvin in? oh hell, it must be Thursday.
[looks at the system time] 'Tis, over in this time zone, at least.
I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Morbid
alie...@hotmail.com
> Maybe I should have replied to this sooner ;)
It is never too late. For variouis reasons it will take me a while
to make a thorough reply so I'll add a life sign from myself and
also add/update a few links...
> From: alie...@my-deja.com (alie...@my-deja.com)
> Subject: Re: The Passengers Updatory Ramble (Was RE: Neuro Film)
> Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
> View complete thread (8 articles)
> Date: 2000/03/09
[snip]
> Seriously man, I *am* asking you a question about something you posted
> more than a year ago :)
Sure, I'll just take it as a compliment you find it worthwile to
actually keep a reply from me around that long.
> <snip>
>
> >I'd say the Matrix has upped the visual demands of the next high
> >tech themed movies to be made. for instance I would not be
> >surprised if Mission Impossible 2 now was being retrofitted with
> >more vinyl clothing for the women, enormous coats for the guys
> >and cools shades for everyone.
> Didn't this actually happen?
Not sure; I never saw Mission Impossible 2.
> Wow, you prophet, you...
It was just a small extrapolation. In fact I do not even know
how close my guess was.
[big snip]
> >I can like the art movie idea so why not then use an art movie
> >actress? Closest description of Molly I can remember was that
> >she was shaped like a dancer. I got these links some time ago:
> >< http://www.sirenent.com.au/images/irmavep.jpg >
> >< http://us.imdb.com/Name?Cheung,+Maggie >
The links above still work. Additionally I suggest this page for
some action samples:
< http://underworld.fortunecity.com/hangar/755/html/video02.htm >
Note: you have to save file first and then rename suffix
from jpg to mpg before playing.
Particularly the clip from Irma Vep is good (number 13, 4.8 MB).
> >should provide looks, high speed action and high art.
> If i'd bothered to read this a year ago she would have been my next
> choice! I really think Mol should be asian, kinda freshen's up the
> whole razor girl thing.
WmG's visual inspiartion for Molly comes from a (album cover?) picture
of Chrissy Hynde.
> I find it hard not read american, female leads in "Blockbuster" mode.
> The saturation of the AFL archetype has ruined a lot of good films,
> IMHO.
>
> I think Mol deserves a total redesign. She was conceived about 20 years
> ago, and we are far more de-sensitised and cynical than we were then.
> She'd find it hard to have any impact on a prospective film audience of
> today.
>
> She needs to stop being a male fantasy figure.
> She should have her breasts removed, her muscle structure re-arranged,
> and her hair removed. This makes her *scary*! She doesn't seduce
> people first and *then* kill them, she isn't the female James Bond. She
> is all about function, and she doesn't need to be sexy. She is perfect
> in other ways, ways that are more useful to her.
These days even Lara Croft is returning to more probable anatomy. In
her previous incarnations I suspected her obligatory rucksack of being
filled with depleted uranium to enable her to walk upright.
> Having inset mirror shades and a funny hat isn't enough for her to be
> classed as an "exotic" these days.
>
> I don't think her fight sequences should be stylised either, I think
> they should be harrowing. She fights quick n' dirty, and shows now
> mercy, just cold professionalism.
>
> I just can't think of any american actresses that could look
> convincingly mean.
You could check out some previous dicussions of what I called
a Cyberpunk Micromovie in these threads:
< http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&safe=off&th=ce2b5a4378f09130,3&seekm=8q59oe%24hcn%241%40nnrp1.deja.com#p
>
< http://groups.google.com/groups?q=author:alienthe%40hotmail.com&start=10&hl=en&safe=off&rnum=12&selm=fe70cd21.0107120247.2f4ab7cb%40posting.google.com
>
More coming later.
==<)
Schwann
says...
--
Schwann /}
@#####{ ]::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::?
\}
Subject: Re: What is cyberpunk? WAS: Where is Everyone
From: Schwann <sch...@webtrance.co.za>
In article <3b7a00ca$1...@clear.net.nz>, you say...
--
Schwann /}
@#####{ ]::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::?
\}
I'm still struggling to catch up without access to offworld quick-teach
inculcation equipment, or our locally produced version of the teach
drug, Catechomine Beta-Lipotropin 4753, but I'm working on it. Anybody
out there?
schwann
Alienthe
>
> In article <fe70cd21.01081...@posting.google.com>,
> alie...@hotmail.com writes
> >Kevin Calder <kca...@cableinet.co.uk> wrote in message news:<8q2YGLAAwhd7EwoM@c
> >ableinet.co.uk>...
> >> Alienthe (alie...@hotmail.com) writed:
> >> What is Cyberpunk exactly?
> >
> >Normally the answer is something like "High tech, low life" or
> >"The most frequently asked question around here" but this time
> >I think the right answer is "Nice try".
> Pah! The day that Bill Gates implemented troll detection in OE as
> standard was "The Day He Ruined Everything"... Shit, uh, maybe that was
> some other day.
I heard MS is officially dropping Usenet News support from its
products but that might be wishful thinking. Then again it could
be argued their support was questionable anyway.
> I might not be quite as skilled as the infamous dick@aol, but I'll get
> you one of these days! Anyway, as we all know, dick was just omar in
> disguise, in the huff ;)
I had started thinking about dick@aol more as a title than a human.
Some things are better forgotten.
> Actually, you missed out ol' dick from your list, and he was a feature
> character for a while. And smaug, and schwann...
Smaug I had forgotten but Schwann has made numerous appearances
here, ocationally invoking a folowup from Otis T Beard (sp??).
> Strange things, newsgroups...
True, and this is one of the stranger, a virtual community of
strangers.
==<)
Alienthe
Kevin Calder wrote:
>
> Maybe I should have replied to this sooner ;)
Oh but it is never too late.
I am glad you asked this question; it gives me an opportunity to
saddle up one of my hobby hourses: that of artists and communication.
Art is defined in numerous ways, the one I prefer is that art is the
creative part of culture. Effective art has to take communications
into consideration, particularly
- the idea
- the message/medium
- the audience
The problem is that a new/complex/revolutionary/alien idea is hard
to bring across, sometimes a bit of subterfuge is required to slip
the concept in under the radars/censors/prejudices and let the idea
become a meme that works its way like a seed into the mind of the
target audience. One amusing example (just to prove I am not being
a pseudointellectual quasi cultured poseur) is the acrosticon used
to critisize oppressive autorities like a small mind bomb with a
particularly long fuse (1).
To communicate you have to chose your means with care. This is
where some are quick to exclaim that the medium is the message. I
disagree somewhat. Various levels of symbolisms are used:
- plain language: relying on oratorical skills it is hard to
achieve any kind of stealth. This can easily fail unless you
have reached the maturity of the idea when the more observant
realise they can apply the force of an idea whose time has come
which is consideable.
- common symbolism: evoking some resonance in the minds of your
audience which means you also have to actually know what kind
of people they are. Levels and reliance on symbols varies across
time and cultures. Today we have symbols like small pictures of
disks, folders, envelopes and more. We even call them icons.
In medieval Europe the majority knew who you indicated by
depicting a character carrying an olive twig or a scroll and so
on. This leads to another problem, that symbols change meaning
or even lose meaning in the general population. How many know
what it means by depicting an officer on a horse whose front
legs are in the air? Picasso's picture Guernica is perhaps a
good, famous and still effective example of painting as a
medium for a powerful message.
- deeper symbolisms: using fundamental human symbology such as
Freudian or Jungian symbols requires knowledge of the human
mind and can still be hit and miss. Hitting jackpot means you
will be a long time winner on level with Shakespeare and Homer.
- private symbolism: the crypto approach to communications where
your receiver has no idea what you are on about. Yes, this is
surreal but one example, installation art, can also be surreal.
Thankfully some artistic groups write manifestos where they
state what they stand for and what they will do about it. In
a way this is the artistic equivalent of a plain text attack.
On this (excessively long) background I feel any artist should take
their audience into consideration when crafting a message. WmG has
said he does not wish to be didactic but also that he wishes to
portray society ten inches in front of the wind shield (paraphrased).
Times change and so do we so some updates are required if he still
wishes to show us his view of society. It is a bit disconcerting that
it is only very minor adjustments, see the parallel thread on the
world being back into the 80's. Technology moves ahead but underneath
that there is very little evidence of cultural progress since
prehistorical times.
> Seriously man, I *am* asking you a question about something you posted
> more than a year ago :)
Sure. Hope you don't mind me going around ina few wide circles around
this topic then.
> <snip>
>
> >I'd say the Matrix has upped the visual demands of the next high
> >tech themed movies to be made. for instance I would not be
> >surprised if Mission Impossible 2 now was being retrofitted with
> >more vinyl clothing for the women, enormous coats for the guys
> >and cools shades for everyone.
> Didn't this actually happen?
Do tell, I never saw it.
> Wow, you prophet, you...
It is scary to be concidered a prophed by predicting no change...
> >> Oh yeah, and the philosophical sophistication of a stoned 15yr old. :)
> >
> >Which, the Wachowski brothers or William Gibson?
> W. Bro's...
Ah.
> Do you think Gibson presents his work with any kind of philosophical
> stand-point? His work seems a pretty neutral depiction to me.
At the continuing risk of overanalysis; I feel he works on a number
of levels and does so rather well too:
- literature renewal: he was enormously successful in reviving the
unicorn infested science fiction literature. Doing it by applying
the pulp renewal of crime litterature of the 30's to the science
fiction of the 80's does perhaps require some premeditated
philosophising. Transferring the noir femme fatale into a high
tech razorgirl in the shape of Molly was a stroke of genius, no
wonder she is still the most discussed and anticipated of his
characters.
- society depiction: stating that the culture of the future is
the same as that of the 30's with added glitz is in my view a
fundamental philosophical standpoint that still is not fully
grasped. As an experiment: ask someone you know if we have
advanced culturally the last 50 years. Most I have probed say
yes but when asked 'how' you can literally see the cogwheels of
their minds slipping into a totally new gear and realisation
comes with hesitation.
So yes, it looks neutral to me too but looking deeper I see another
picture. Then again I might have had some deeper symbolisms out of
balance. I'd be interested in your take on this.
> >> I don't want NM to be anything like the matrix really...
> >> Tho I suppose thats what a lot of people will be comparing it to...
> >
> >More importantly, the produces will look at the Matrix for what
> >passes for inspiration. I heard the producers got blamed for the
> >way Johnny Mnemonic turned out. Anyone here seen the Japanese cut?
I should have added back then that JMn was one of the more commercially
successful films for Sony that year so the producers probably never got
criticism internally. That means a new Sony production is quite likely
to be treated in the same way as JMn, 'adjusted' for the 'Gibsonally
challenged' as one put it.
> Yeah, *has* anyone seen the jap cut?
>
> C'mon, guys, you've had a year to think about it!
I haven't seen it but I have an idea where to ask...
> I watched NM on t.v. the other night, and I must say I disliked it less
> than usual. I found that if you pretend it was an anime that they made
> a live action film of then you make allowances for exactly the things
> that are wrong with it! Ingenious!
> >
> >> I don't really think that NM should have any of the gratuitous loud
> >> music action scenes (nice tho they were) that the matrix had. In NM
> >> when Case is getting chased by molly he doesn't run up walls while
> >> firing two machine guns or start doing ultra-fast-kung-foo. He turns
> >> tail and runs like fuck... I think that the combat should be played
This is not unlike Deckard in Blade Runner; he is certainly not
heroic, he is just in the middle of the action, one of the reasons
Harrison Ford disliked the movie.
You could still strike a compromise by having Case doing an ultra
fast high tech virtual battle in cyberspace which will be an obvious
opportunity to define what this should look like. I remember reading
somewhere it was the computer effects guys who suggested to WmG what
cyberspace (or Internet 2021) should look like. Sadly they had watched
TRON one time too many.
> >> down in NM, over fast and brutally realistic. I think NM was work
> >best
> >> as a low-key art flick, instead of a high-budget, sooper-trendy
> >special
> >> effects fest. I think that the emphasis should be taken off the tech
> >> and the sci-fi stuff and should instead by placed on mood and
> >> character, like bladerunner, or to a lesser extent Strange Days. I
> >did
> >> like the stuff in SD where Nero(?) is getting beaten up by the
> >> bouncers, and even though he's taking a pounding he is still trying to
> >> bribe them :)
Sounds a bit like A Future We'd Like to See 1.4 - The Common Sense.
> >If you remove too much of the tech angle you are left with a 30's
> >Dashiell Hammet story in the future, pulling that off without
> >burning your audience is quite the challenge.
>
> Do what Gibson does best, imply. Just don't linger on the tech, don't
> masturbate with it.
>
> Actually, that's probably good advice even if yr *not* making the NM
> film.
Well, I would imagine he would want to attract some audience to see
his movie and a time reset might not cut the mustard. In a way
Dark City pulled it off but repeating the stunt might not work too
well. The biggest problem might be the enormous expectations. Just
upping the level of latex tightness of Molly would not be sufficient;
that didn't pull the audience for Irma Vep.
> >You would still need messily gritty scenes where Molly disposes of
> >various other low life in her particular style. I think the book
> >used the phrase "died with a wet sound" or something similar. And
> >here I would guess you can fit in a lot of loud music.
>
> Good for the 'wet sound' club scene. I wouldn't want overdub music in
> *my* NM film :)
>
> ASIDE (I just finished a new album of funky tunes. It has one track
> called "Goodnight Sweet Polly", and one called "js4smaug", so it must be
> cyberpunk. Maybe *my* NM film will use *my* music. Howdya-likea-that?)
Perhaps NM is best made on a shoe string budget by unknowns to avoid
excessive expectations. What I would very much like to see, however,
are cameos of everyone from the Movement. While I am fantasising, why
not get all the regulars in alt.cyberpunk.* as extras in the Chatsubo?
> >> Personally I think that the chick who played Lola in 'Run Lola Run'
> >> (german flick, best film I saw last year, go see it!) shouldn't play
> >> Molly. I don't think she speaks english tho...nevertheless lots of
> >> presence. Maybe they should make Molly foriegn... Leastways she
> >> shouldn't be like the matrix chick, she didn't come over as being
> >> tough, just uppity. Difference = Molly doesn't need to try...
> >
> >Unlike Stephenson who gives you the genetic makeup of his main
> >characters, WG's style is to hint in ways that make people use
> >their imagination.
>
> Its a sneaky trick, but a good one. If you are describing faces, there
> are certain vague triggers you can use that prompt people to
> unconsciously 'fill in the blanks'. The end result is that they get a
> clear picture in their mind (of a face they made up themselves) and
> attribute the clarity to your marvellous descriptive skill!
I think that method accounts for much of the demographics of this
newsgroup: people with or without the tech or arts but nearly always
with imagination. Or am I stretching it again?
> > Everyone has different views on the Sprawl
> >universe in general and Molly in particular. Seems to me that
> >people who saw JM
> >< http://us.imdb.com/Title?0113481 >
> >before reading the book liked it better than
> >those who had already read the book, having made up their idea
> >of what it looked like, which ties in with my first guess.
>
> I suppose we are disappointed. JM is a lovely little set piece on
> paper. Its all pretty simple really, so it should have been hard to
> mess up. Its a shame that someone on the production team thought it
> would be a good idea to mess around with the details of the story so
> much. Where was the killing floor? What the fuck happened to the
> LoTeks? They looked pretty HiTek to me! Why could you see the mono
> filament wire? Why was the one, mild mannered, little japanese assasin
> replaced by a team of machine gun toting goon? Why on earth did they re-
> write ralphie's death? What the fuck was dolph lundgren doing? Did he
> just wander onto the set and start doing stupid stuff??!?!
I wondered if this was the result of WmG testing the waters in
Hollywood beyond his experiences as a writer. Purposely or not, I am
fairly sure he will keep those experiences in mind for the next movie
with a new gained level of cynicism.
> Anyways...
>
> Now that we are post "Crouching, Hidden", what about Michelle Yeoh?
>
> http://us.imdb.com/Name?Yeoh,+Michelle
>
> I think she'd make a great Mol, she has tons of presence, and she deals
> out some mean whoop-ass!
Mmmm, perhaps?
> >I can like the art movie idea so why not then use an art movie
> >actress? Closest description of Molly I can remember was that
> >she was shaped like a dancer. I got these links some time ago:
> >< http://www.sirenent.com.au/images/irmavep.jpg >
> >< http://us.imdb.com/Name?Cheung,+Maggie >
> >should provide looks, high speed action and high art.
> If i'd bothered to read this a year ago she would have been my next
> choice! I really think Mol should be asian, kinda freshen's up the
> whole razor girl thing.
>
> I find it hard not read american, female leads in "Blockbuster" mode.
> The saturation of the AFL archetype has ruined a lot of good films,
> IMHO.
The problem is that with certain kind of characters people and
perhaps particularly producers, make certain predetermined and
stereotypical decisions. Thankfully the American heroine has
stopped spraining her ancle while with the good guy and on the
run from the bad guys. There is still some way to go.
> I think Mol deserves a total redesign. She was conceived about 20 years
> ago, and we are far more de-sensitised and cynical than we were then.
> She'd find it hard to have any impact on a prospective film audience of
> today.
Choose a totally alien ethnicity and an American producer might be
less inclined to apply standard typecasts. I saw an ad some time ago
with an actress that looked Tuareg which gave me the idea.
> She needs to stop being a male fantasy figure.
> She should have her breasts removed, her muscle structure re-arranged,
> and her hair removed. This makes her *scary*! She doesn't seduce
> people first and *then* kill them, she isn't the female James Bond. She
> is all about function, and she doesn't need to be sexy. She is perfect
> in other ways, ways that are more useful to her.
A Hollywood production without a sex scene is unthinkable, especially
as the is such a scene early on and descriptions of her career as a
meat puppet. (2) Molly is described as having the body of a dancer,
not Dolly Parton. As even Lara Croft is returning to plausible
anatomy I hope we don't have to worry about this.
> Having inset mirror shades and a funny hat isn't enough for her to be
> classed as an "exotic" these days.
Umm, more latex then? Anyway you could present strange body mods
as an everyday thing of no interest, if only just to move the
viewpoint of the audience around a bit.
> I don't think her fight sequences should be stylised either, I think
> they should be harrowing. She fights quick n' dirty, and shows now
> mercy, just cold professionalism.
>
> I just can't think of any american actresses that could look
> convincingly mean.
Agreed.
> >> Yeah, and the dialoge&plot in NM need to be totally gutted, because
> >> quite frankly, they suck. Don't get me wrong, I really like NM, but
> >> anyone who has ever studied literature (and I think WG would be the
> >> first to agree) can see that technically NM is a bad book. Hrm...is
> >> Raymond Chandler dead? I think so, shame...
> >
> >Noir is a big part of WG's writing, it will be hard to gut the
> >text and retain the style.
>
> True, I mostly meant the crappy eighties overdone dialogue.
> Everything anyone sez in JM is kinda 'deep' and 'meaningful', and loaded
> with rhetoric. Its so melodramatic it just makes me cringe. I wouldn't
> want NM to be the same. Not that this damn film is ever going to get
> made anyway!
In Hollywood the alternative to deep meaningfulness is hip and cool
one-liners...
> >> A while back I had some ideas (see: thread 'Dead Horse Rides Again')
> >> for re-styling cyberpunk by stripping out the clichés that have
> >> softened its once aggressive edge. The project was to involve a few
> >> written pieces on the stylings and components of CP and screenplay and
> >> short story which would act as exemplar to our findings. While the
I'll have to reread it again. Do you have a website with your
collected writings?
> >> other collaborators and I were working through it we came to the
> >> conclusion that CP was pretty routed in the eighties and couldn't
> >> really be re-created now. So the project was abandoned as far as the
I see it somewhat differently. For a starter there are the renewal
and settings/style. Once again SF looks like settling down into well
worn tracks, perhaps time for a re-renewal? As to style it is my
opinion the rebel high tech low life aspects can be seen in the old
TV series The Prisoner, which was made in the late 60's. It too has
its own ever active newsgroup and FAQ:
< news:alt.fan.prisoner >
Not sure how many agrees with me on that part though.
> >> collaboration was concerned. I have been messing around with the
> >> screenplay idea, just for something to do, and am working on something
> >> that is kind of half screen play and half continuos prose... Anyway
> >> it’s basically a rehash of some old (like 8 years ago) cp stories that
> >> I wrote. I’m not really hoping for any originality points because
> >> there aren't many themes in CP that haven't already been well treaded
> >> (trod?) but I think that y'll be impressed by my non-cliched
> >> (hopefully) updates on some popular CP elements...
> >
> >Why not go back to the first principles? Rather than go back to the
> >style and topic of yesteryear, why not rather look at what brought
> >it all about?
> I did :)
>
> Check out Dead Horse Rides Again, on alt.cp.
Will do.
> > From what I can see and have heard it was a lot about
> >revival of SF as literature and viewing that today of the 80's in
> >their of centered projections.
> Pretty much the conclusions of the thread :)
>
> <snip>
>
> >I'll be posting a link to a site with some other work Ive
> >been
> >> doing recently, but I’m not sure it’ll be to everyone’s tastes. Its
> >> not really CP, but is post-modern noir (ala chunking express) stuff
> >> dealing with sexual politics and surrealism...
> >
> >I saw a little of Chunking Express
> >< http://us.imdb.com/Title?0109424 >
> >but I never saw the POMO angle
> >there.
> Really?
>
> Have you seen it all yet?
> Its fantastic, as is the followup, "Fallen Angels".
Sorry, not seen either fully yet.
> I have yet to see his new film, but its supposed to be immense.
> I think its called "In the mood for love" :)
>
> > Why not rather look for Post-Pomo? Someone claimed to have
> >found it in the Onion, my bet is that it is in Dark City.
> Post pomo?
>
> Scary thought.
The time is ripe for change, yes? POMO was prematurely declared dead
in a (spoof) article in the Onion, quoted widely on the net,
including on NetTime. Apparently Bruce Sterling, who figured in the
article, was amused. I cannot find a copy of the article anymore, does
anyone here still have it?
> Ok, modernism is (among other things) about rejection of classical form,
> and moves toward "freeform" and "expressionist" traditions.
>
> Post modernism is about (among other things) cynicism, and constant
> criticism of everything! Its a bit of a backlash. Pomo stuff tends to
> move toward minimalist or deconstructuralist goals, but only because its
> so busy rejecting stuff.
In the end it looks like overanalysing the text, extrapolating too
far and ending up reading strange subtexts into the original works.
John Shirley and other authors have criticised this practice.
Another trend is to mix old concepts across old borders, even to
the point of elements of various religions with each other. Could
this be the early stages of Post-POMO? This newsgroup has often
discussed the Edge, strange Post-POMO has not been discussed more.
> So what's post pomo? Is it when there is nothing left, all definitions
> have been generalised and relativised so much that they are inherently
> meaningless and we start again by reconstructing form?
Perhaps Post-POMO comes about when POMO deconstructs and rejects
itself. We could start with Alan Sokal's pseudo-POMO article. People
are still laughing.
> Ah, well...
> Kevin Calder ((-+tpass), (The Passenger))
> "trecking down the information superhighway (internet), i realize..........
> i am lost in cyberspace.............yikes!!!!!!!!!!!" - Dick@aol
Ah yes, dick@aol. It is rare that a username turns into a title.
==<)
(1) Acrosticon (from Greek, ultimate, verse/line) is where the
first (sometimes and/or the last) character of each verse line
makes up a word or a sentence.
I wonder if acrosticon is the first form of steganography.
(2) Another tangent: Iku, one of the latest (possibly) cyberpunk
movies is fairly pornographic.
sicarius
wrote:
[snip]
>
>Perhaps NM is best made on a shoe string budget by unknowns to avoid
>excessive expectations. What I would very much like to see, however,
>are cameos of everyone from the Movement. While I am fantasising, why
>not get all the regulars in alt.cyberpunk.* as extras in the Chatsubo?
the virtual chatsubo meets the virtual meets the virtual...
[snip]
>I think that method accounts for much of the demographics of this
>newsgroup: people with or without the tech or arts but nearly always
>with imagination. Or am I stretching it again?
or with a nose for the "lastest trendy stuff" ... yet there are some
originals here and next door.
>The problem is that with certain kind of characters people and
>perhaps particularly producers, make certain predetermined and
>stereotypical decisions.
They generally want to make money which is what their corporate
backers expect. It is rare indeed that a film / series / record does
not pander to a ratings chart.
>Thankfully the American heroine has
>stopped spraining her ancle while with the good guy and on the
>run from the bad guys. There is still some way to go.
But another "dangerous" trend is the hijacking of Campbell's "The Hero
With a Thousand Faces" and turning it into a plot generator.
[snip]
>Choose a totally alien ethnicity and an American producer might be
>less inclined to apply standard typecasts. I saw an ad some time ago
>with an actress that looked Tuareg which gave me the idea.
see sterling's Zeitgeist... the punchline for the next swindle is just
that...
>> I just can't think of any american actresses that could look
>> convincingly mean.
>
>Agreed.
Oh the one that threatened to blown Neo's brains out did a fairly nice
job... until she found out was going to do "The Matrix, Unplugged" and
then she began wimpering...
[snip]
>In Hollywood the alternative to deep meaningfulness is hip and cool
>one-liners...
and lots of cool trendy stuff the marketing guys can sell...
>(1) Acrosticon (from Greek, ultimate, verse/line) is where the
>first (sometimes and/or the last) character of each verse line
>makes up a word or a sentence.
>
>I wonder if acrosticon is the first form of steganography.
Charles Dodgeson [Lewis Carroll] was fond of writing these
sicarius
John Doe
This is a partial reply, open questions, thinking out loud after
reading the excellent What is Cyberpunk? Where is Everyone? Threads,
which are the first articles that have made me want to post something
and think out loud. Sicarius, Kevin and Alienthe, thanks for the food
for thought.
I've read alt.cyberpunk off and on for a long time, since 1994. I read
a few messages, then mostly I sign off and go back to see what's
happening a year later. And at the risk of sounding like an old fogy,
I'm 29 and I remember when all of this was first starting.
I was on the Well and Mindvox, both of which were hubs of cyberpunk
and future thinking people. They had the artists, the hackers, the
writers, they were all going to take part in creating this great new
future.
The Well had John Perry Barlow just starting the EFF with Mitch Kapor,
it had hackers acting out all over the place, it was alive and
interesting. Mindvox was just over the edge, it was the Well with
claws and teeth and what started there was just amazing. Some of the
few things I remember clearly are they're the ones who released
Agrippa, Patrick Kroupa wrote Agr1ppa, 10 people who you read books
by, would be online at any given time, Bruce Sterling was there, the
only person who I think never showed up was William Gibson, but they
had a tape of him where he's giving permission to Kroupa and Fancher
to keep the cracked Agrippa online. Andy Hawkes who started the
alt.cyberpunk FAQ and for all I know this group (I think that isn't
true, but he is certainly the person who gave it tremendous attention,
he was all over Mindvox, Mondo 2000, Wired, Utne Reader, he was
another rising star in the scene).
Everything was alive, Gibson, Sterling, then Neal Stephenson came into
the picture. Everything was on the verge of this incredible thing that
was going to happen and that thing was cyberpunk.
10 years later………. The Well is stagnant and boring and some property
of Salon.com they are trying to get rid of. The Well has slowly faded
out into being irrelevant.
Mindvox took the opposite route, it turned into a 40 car pile up and
went down in flames at the height of everything and turned into a nose
dive of drug addiction where everyone involved completely fell apart.
As for if not the founder, then certainly the first major guiding
force for alt.cyberpunk who set this entire group into motion, Andy
Hawkes, he is another one who appears completely MIA. Not just that he
hasn't said anything in 5 years, he doesn't even appear to be on the
net or have an email address, is he another drug casuality or just
dead or completely lost interest?
10 years later………. I pick up a book by William Gibson or Bruce
Sterling and I'm bored to tears within 2 chapters. No, that isn't
true, they are both excellent craftsmen, but I am bored all the same,
all that comes up for me is, haven't I already read this same story 25
times? What next? The dangerous and exciting future of cyberpunk is a
near as the closest Sharper Image store at the mall.
Kroupa who started the entire Mindvox movement going with his Mindvox
Overture essay………. I still see that thing reprinted everywhere on
hacking boards, people pass it around at Defcon. I re read it and it's
a seminal piece of writing that does a excellent job of describing a
entire time in history. Re read that last sentence, it's a great first
person historical journey. It's not the future.
You know where I see Mindvox Overture displayed now? At Coffee and
Classics dot com, along with Tom Sawyer, Shakespeare and Poe, along
with the Cyberpunk as subculture article, Crime and Puzzlement, the
Crypto Anarchist Manifesto……….. All these works have become completely
mainstream and are collected together for the mainstream.
The day "the new edge" is sitting right next to Tom and Huck at a site
catering to the Starbucks and pseudointelligencia crowd, is the day
it's no longer dangerous, no longer the edge and I'm almost afraid to
say, no longer relevant.
BTW, I'm not exaggerating, although I wish I was,
http://www.coffee-n-classics.com/library.html
Before anyone follows up and tells me what a negative jerk I am,
please let me continue and understand I am not attacking cyberpunk I
am thinking out loud or even communicating, which is one of the
reasons people write their thoughts for others to read and comment on.
After 5 years of transmitting nothing, when the Mindvox web site first
came online 4 or 5 months ago, I admit I was excited. It looks like
they only sold their clients to RCN and kept their brands and domains
and at least all of them were still alive. But……………
But…… On a bad day Kroupa is a good writer, on a good day he's
excellent. But he doesn't act like he has major interest in being a
science fiction writer, not that he needs to be, his life story would
make a better book then most fiction. But……….. he looks like he is
distancing himself away from cyberpunk as fast as possible, he pokes
fun at it in different places and he looks like in addition to being a
drug addict, drug dealer and become a neurologist, he is one of the
psychedelics proponents and ibogaine cure for everything people. He
was one of the defining people in the entire movement, Bruce Sterling
used him as a example of real life becoming what he was writing, in
Details he spent paragraphs explaining how Kroupa was all that.
Without carrying on which I've done already, a person who was a
hacker, has a web site which is completely filled with articles and
stories about the FBI and Secret service waging war on Mindvox, the
Legion of Doom, etc, he is almost entirely focused on drugs and
neurology and away from cyberpunk. Bruce Fancher, another LOD person
looks to have spent his post-Mindvox time running stock, real estate
and anonymous transaction companies, the bright future of cyberpunk
gave way to dollar signs and he became a real businessman and software
developer. And last, from the information that occasionally comes out
of the mindvox dev lists, their latest official addiction is Drew
Ross.
Drew Ross is a artist who draws underground comics and did the
Interverse sites, who looks most famous for being sued by Disney for
inserting his Wacky Crackhead characters into the middle of Toy Story
when Disney didn't give him $140,000 fast enough. A hardcore drug
addict artist, not a cyberpunk artist.
I was excited that Mindvox rising from the dead might revitalize
things, because it is a magnet for interesting people. What they
appear to be distancing themselves from cyber anything as fast as
possible and recreating themselves in a completely different way.
This opinion might be wrong, but I don't think so, the next few months
will tell.
Which goes back to the original question in the title of this thread,
where is everybody? And is there any future to a movement that has
been so coopted by the mainstream that anyone who had anything to do
with it, is either writing the same things, MIA, or re-inventing
themselves as something completely different.
And if this is what's happening, what is the point of calling
something "cyberpunk" when the term has lost all meaning. Even these
groups…………. It's like a ghost town in comparison to what it used to
be.
What I'm asking opinions on is, what's the point to "the cyberpunk
movement" at this late stage of the game, where that term looks like
it means nothing at all. Who is doing anything innovative or new and
actually applying the cyberpunk label to themselves.
Maybe my point of view is limited, but the answer to that looks like,
almost nobody. Cyberpunk "the new edge literary movement" is
interesting to what looks like a very small sampling of college
students who discovered it through some course in school.
What happened to everybody? I don't know, some of the answers have
surfaced this very year, one of the MIA I wonder about is Andy Hawkes,
where did he go? As for the future, I think we're living in it, that
doesn't make for very interesting science fiction.
Where did all the cyberpunk shining stars go? I think you'd be amazed
at how many of them you'd find in the psychedelics subculture, there
and at Fucked Company, flaming each other over who bailed out with
more millions and who just got fucked.
If Andy Hawkes is one of them, I just hope he made some money, he was
a interesting guy and a good writer.
synergy
ghost
syn...@whoever.com (John Doe) wrote:
> If Andy Hawkes is one of them, I just hope he made some money, he was
> a interesting guy and a good writer.
>
> synergy
I'm going to have to agree... I wasn't there when 'it all started'. Not
even close really.. I didn't find Neuromancer until about 93 or 94.. and
then I just picked it up at random and had an afternoon to kill - I read
the book that same day and was impressed and liked it and looked for that
future. that style. that whatever.. I spent the next few years wandering
around BBSes and stealing 'net access where I could (HS, This friend who
knew a guy in College who could get me an account that would last like 4
months or something..) For me that was it. Right there, all I needed.
Around 96 I started lurking in here and next door in ACC as I had my own
access through college then, maybe even posting some in 97-98 only to
discover...
It wasn't there. What I had found in Gibson's book, and then Sterling and
Rucker and so on and on.. wasn't here in 98. So I left for a couple years.
Lived in various places and burned away time. And now I'm back and posting
with more force than I ever did before...
And it's still not here. Maybe I don't know exactly what I'm looking for
but that 'edge' is not in here. We live the future they have in those
books. Interconnected at light speed. The games I played 8-10 years ago
only imagined some of the stuff I do on a daily basis to earn a wage...
And what's left to imagine, really. Lots probably. But I don't really see
it fitting this genre anymore. I haven't read all the books yet.. still
missing some Sterling.. and lots of the other stuff that's always
mentioned here... I haven't stopped reading.. I just found more
elsewhere...
And I think that's what killed the whole thing, killed almost everything..
there are no clique's anymore.. Everyone wants to belong to everything so
much they diversify until they don't have anything... Or they don't care
at all and just grab what they personally like..
Look at how you listen to music.. My guess is almost no one who reads this
group will listen to one genre of music, or even just a small closely
related set of genres and subgenres.. I bet everyone has a very eclectic
collection going all over the spectrum...
Because the future hit like a tidal wave and spread everything everywhere
to everyone at once. almost, but that's hashing hairs.
Really, cyberpunk as an idea or genre or whatever is probably dead, but so
is just about everything else - so I'm not worried.
Oh well... I'm not complaining really.. I'll just keep on doing what I'm
doing until I find something else to do - isn't that all we ever really do
in life?
You know what just occured to me right as I was about to hit the post button..
If they ever make a Neuromancer movie I don't think I'd be very interested
in seeing it.. the idea has already been done to many times. It's not new
and exciting anymore. It's not even old an exciting. It'd just be paying
homage to the defining classic of the genre from the lit side, and
probably wouldn't do a good job at it anyway. Another touch chick, another
cool guy, a super AI and a giant world controlling corporation set in the
nearish future to a driving backbeat with some gritty city street scenes
and an orbital platform. Nice formulsa but it's almost cliche now. It
probably is cliche now. It's nearly a 20 yr old story now.. no genre
should expect to last that long and still be fresh.
sicarius
>And at the risk of sounding like an old fogy,
>I'm 29 and I remember when all of this was first starting.
Gee, then that makes me *REALLY* old-- I'm the same age as Gibson. My
first programming class used punch cards... I dropped out and didn't
go back to programming until the advent of the True Blue IBM 5 slot PC
and self taught TurboPascal 1.0.
[snip]
> Everything was on the verge of this incredible thing that
>was going to happen and that thing was cyberpunk.
[snip]
>10 years later……… The Well has slowly faded
>out into being irrelevant.
>
>Mindvox took the opposite route,
Sounds like a return to the '70's
[snip]
>
>10 years later………. I pick up a book by William Gibson or Bruce
>Sterling and I'm bored to tears within 2 chapters. No, that isn't
>true, they are both excellent craftsmen, but I am bored all the same,
>all that comes up for me is, haven't I already read this same story 25
>times? What next? The dangerous and exciting future of cyberpunk is a
>near as the closest Sharper Image store at the mall.
Imagine my dismay at having been a reader of science fiction since the
late '60s... the "masters" have died or gone to seed or, as a recent
perusal of Norman Spinrad's web site has shown, have become
"unpublishible" in america but ar alive and well in Europe. I've taken
up reading ancient history and mythology.
>it's a great first
>person historical journey. It's not the future.
We project ourselves *now* into the future. some futures more
desirable than others, some more enlightening / inspiring to others.
Heinlein and Asimov and others put forward many ideas which became the
foundation of today's consumer culture. Others such as Pohl and
Kornbluth, Spinrad, and Dick poked holes in the wonderful world of the
future -- which was their present. Guess what? Nobody listened to
them. In fact Dick's stories got used for megabuck flicks...
Recently over next door in the Chatsubo I tried to ask what the
writers there thought the next hundred years held in store in light of
some sociological/historical work i'd discovered five or six years
ago:
"Hegemony and Bifurcation Points in World History*"
Terry Boswell, Department of Sociology
Emory University
as published in:
_Journal of World-Systems Research_, 1995, Volume 1, Number 15
ISSN 1076-156X
http://csf.colorado.edu/jwsr/archive/vol1/v1_nf.htm
Most of the respondents seemed to think it was "hogwash" and that they
and their future were exempt from the forces of history. Yet the
patterns discussed in that paper have been more or less on target for
the last 400 years! Which leads us to:
>All these works have become completely
>mainstream and are collected together for the mainstream.
[snip]
>Which goes back to the original question in the title of this thread,
>where is everybody? And is there any future to a movement that has
>been so coopted by the mainstream that anyone who had anything to do
>with it, is either writing the same things, MIA, or re-inventing
>themselves as something completely different[?]
it is very rare that "the bohemians" get co-opted by the very thing
they are disparaging. It did not happen to Ginsburg and the Beats, but
it did happen to Dick, Gibson et al. It is a rare thing indeed
now-a-days for there to be even the slightest bit of integrity when
money is waved in your face. Hell, if someone wants 20 million for all
my work, they can have it and i'll gladly retire to the south of
France.
I mentioned in another post Sterling's _Zeitgeist_ which just came out
in paperback. I did not bother to read it-- other than the last
chapter-- it gives the secret of where all of the go-getters are:
looking for the next big scam to sell.
By nature / temperment i am a bohemian but i had the disadvantage of
being born to white, southern conservative, middle class parents...
having sopme how survived and gained middle age, i have settled into
what one of the chatsubo regulars calls "stealth punk". I manage a
small accounting corp's network by day and am dying of boredom -- but
my bills are paid and i sometimes have enough money to buy techoToys
(tm) for my artistic rage...
I used to write gut wrenching folksy ballads. I gave up. no one
listened. no market for it.
An excerpt from "Good-bye to Childhood" written in 1976:
"They say i am crazy
so they locked me behind these walls
and sometimes i can hear them
as they walk down the halls
maybe they know the reast
why i did what i had to do
for when you destroy a man's dreams
you destroy his reason too."
I write tekNoise now. No one listens to it either but at least I have
the chance to get out the strange quirks in my head and my rage
against the Consumer Machine.
twenty five years later---
an excerpt from "Cerulean Shapethrower" written in 2001 at the
instigation of one of the other a.c.c. regulars:
"Cerulean eyes,
Cerulean lies,
meaningless words
for emotional ties.
genetic storm,
in defective form,
no reason here for,
a biomorphic norm.
genetic sighting,
chromosome fighting,
viral plague,
of molecular writing.
power code,
illiterate mode,
chaotic sequence,
in a social node.
unalive chain,
controlling brain,
stepwise progression,
for maximum pain.
Cerulean eyes,
Cerulean lies,
meaningless words
for emotional ties."
definitely not commercial material.
one of my friends from the seventies went from writing the same kind
of stuff i used to write to writing the music to the five "new songs"
in "Aladin and the King of Thieves" for Disney.
>And if this is what's happening, what is the point of calling
>something "cyberpunk" when the term has lost all meaning.
The point the original CP cabal has been trying to make for 10 years
and no one has listened.
> Even these
>groups…………. It's like a ghost town in comparison to what it used to
>be.
forgive me if i share my personal experiences:
I've only been on the 'Net since early '94. I've stumbled in and out
of the a.c.* groups several times since then, i left mostly because of
the rabble... a year ago i settled down in a.c.c. and began writing
again and posting some of the stuff i've written over the years and
opened my horizons to begin creating and publishing my tekNoize
collages-- music written about stories read in a.cp.c. or things
discussed there or even my personal demons.
I've run into personal disagreements in that NG [who has not had
disagreements in NGs?]. it seems that some over there have come to
believe i am the resident hypocrite as they can't understand the
subtle Swiftian nature of the satire of CP nor why an "ol' hippie" [as
they prefer to see me-- i am not and never have been a hippie] would
be enamoured of a "genre of violence".
They fail to see that CP is a genre of the edgerunner, the deviant,
and the outcast. their criticism of my views has not stopped the
creative flow and so i *am* thankful for having come to roost in
a.cp.* after so many years of creative drought.
my only sadness that it has come this late...
I've begun posting here in a.cp because of a few of the very
insightful comments i have read from some of the folks here-- Compared
to some of those minds i am a mousy, conformist.
>What I'm asking opinions on is, what's the point to "the cyberpunk
>movement" at this late stage of the game, where that term looks like
>it means nothing at all. Who is doing anything innovative or new and
>actually applying the cyberpunk label to themselves.
go back and read that "Cyberpunk in the '90s" piece by Sterling. Take
it to heart. Forgive me, if i seem to get a bit mystical here [ol' age
does that to you]: The movement died and is "reborn" within the
bohemian souls who understand what it means to stand "outside" of
convention and the norm. The identity of who you are and what you
believe cannot come from outside: a nation, a flag, a movement are
shadows of the truth you hold in your own beliefs. If you have no
beliefs then you are a consumer and the perfect marketing target for
"the next big thing".
If one is to believe Jean Bottero's [a French Assyriologist] essay
"Free love and Its Disadvantages" [in _Mesopotamia: Writing,
Reasoning, and the Gods"_ University Chicago Press, 1992], the
"Bohemians" have been contributing to society for at least 5000 years
and been kicked and conscripted for the same amount of time.
an aside: What would a world run by bohemians be like?
>Maybe my point of view is limited, but the answer to that looks like,
>almost nobody. Cyberpunk "the new edge literary movement" is
[snip't]
dead... tired of the bs and the bonfires of the not.coms? ask your
self "what things are annoying the hell outta me?" then twist the
knife a bit and invent something new.
>interesting to what looks like a very small sampling of college
>students who discovered it through some course in school.
i discovered it in my long reading career in the '80's when i was busy
building rocket engines at a large Mil-Industrial Aerospace Corp and
burning my life up trying to conform.
>Where did all the cyberpunk shining stars go?
[snip't]
where everybody else goes-- on down the yellow brick road. follow them
if you wish. it remains to be seen whether or not you will end up
where you wanted to be.
frankly, i hack art, music and writing. Some of it is fair. some of it
is bad. sometimes i create a gem-- but i wouldn't know post-modern
from an modern post and could not discuss it inteligently to save my
life-- to my poorly educated mind anybody that spends most of their
time on the critical aesthetics of an art does not understand it-- and
never will.
i've had a terrible time trying to classify the stuff i'm doing now...
i gave up and followed the suggestion that someone made here a while
ago and call it "noise"-- but i still don't "get" the labels. [Notice
that Gibson hated labels too.] i was dismayed when i discovered that
Madonna was considered "electronic" music at mp3.com... but then again
maybe this is just the fact that i lost 20 years resisting my bohemian
leanings losing contact with the world along the way.
consider that for a moment. 20 years of trying to buy into a society
that does not really want me, does not understand me, and won't buy
what i create. so i've made do with what i have and made terrible
mistakes along the way for which i am still paying...
CP is gone but the edge-- the fringe remains... the power, the fear,
the adrenalin, the desperation. they all still exist. go read or
write or paint or hack something new. no one says you can't.
just be aware of the price to be paid and what little rewards that
there might be. go next door to a.c.c. and annoy them to create
something risky or buy their anthology when it comes out [another six
months maybe before it hits iUniverse]
in case you are interested in noise: http://www.mp3.com/dvusmedia
listen or not... the only claim i make is: "music to make you think"
whether that's true or not is only to be found in the mind of the
listener. I don't do it for the money and don't promote it for the
most part except to announce new tracks-- it's a break even
proposition [some times] that almost keeps me sane. ;) but my intent
is to make the listener think - emote - create... but for the most
part nobody is buying... which of itself says where we are...
it is a trend that seems to be evolving: a world of consumers of
content and the creators of that content [oh... and those that own the
indentured creators]. most of where the money flows is where most of
the consumers are buying. The content owners create more of same. cash
flow ensues. more dreck created... and so on...
look at what has happened: I walk into the market late at night and
hear an *orchestra* playing Pete Townsend & The Who's "won't get
fooled again" a tune all about revolution and its ironic outcome --
yikes! a band that were [in their day] the badboys of rock, played by
some awful string thing because the boomers have money and have hit
the "strings age" [they lost their hearing listening to the original
stuff]. It is the ultimate in irony...
Johnnie Mnemonic gets dumbed down for the Gibson clueless, 107 sat
channels of nothing but "mindless candy"... mp3.com declares an audio
revolution and then gets bought by the company that demonized them the
most... This kind co-opting is what [to my mind] killed Cobain-- he
felt he was betraying his audience by playing what the corps sold
them. i am sure you can think of other similar co-opting...
this is what the digital revolution means to a corporation.
forgive me for being long winded and talking about my own endeavors.
my intent was not to advertise or even proselize... it was only to
hold up mirrorshades to the questions you have asked that can, in
truth, only be answered by your own thoughts and feelings.
sicarius
---
Only in an abrasive stream
can you find polished stones.
- The Book of Reminders
David Geelan
> If they ever make a Neuromancer movie I don't think I'd be very interested
> in seeing it.. the idea has already been done to many times. It's not new
> and exciting anymore. It's not even old an exciting. It'd just be paying
> homage to the defining classic of the genre from the lit side, and
> probably wouldn't do a good job at it anyway. Another touch chick, another
> cool guy, a super AI and a giant world controlling corporation set in the
> nearish future to a driving backbeat with some gritty city street scenes
> and an orbital platform. Nice formulsa but it's almost cliche now. It
> probably is cliche now. It's nearly a 20 yr old story now.. no genre
> should expect to last that long and still be fresh.
You might be right - but in part that would also be because I can't see how they
would manage to include what I'll call, for want of a better term, the 'spiritual'
side of Neuromancer (and even more so of the other two Sprawl books. Gibson leaves
wide open (IMO) the connections between the AIs and the 'god-like' way they
present in cyberspace - are they real gods who co-opted the AIs, or are they AIs
who think they are gods, or... Any too-tech rendition that misses that will miss a
lot of what makes Gibson a great writer, and the books great books...
Bravus
"It's too early in the morning for epistemology, and I have no coffee." - Morbid
Curiosity in alt.cyberpunk
Bill The Dead Cat
> 10 years later???. The Well is stagnant and boring and some property
> of Salon.com they are trying to get rid of. The Well has slowly faded
> out into being irrelevant.
>
> Mindvox took the opposite route, it turned into a 40 car pile up and
> went down in flames at the height of everything and turned into a nose
> dive of drug addiction where everyone involved completely fell apart.
> As for if not the founder, then certainly the first major guiding
> force for alt.cyberpunk who set this entire group into motion, Andy
> Hawkes, he is another one who appears completely MIA. Not just that he
> hasn't said anything in 5 years, he doesn't even appear to be on the
> net or have an email address, is he another drug casuality or just
> dead or completely lost interest?
>
What's the diff here and every other movement or moment in history.
That's as old as it's better to burn out then fade away. What are you
observing that hasn't been seen 100,000 times.
> Kroupa who started the entire Mindvox movement going with his Mindvox
> Overture essay???. I still see that thing reprinted everywhere on
> hacking boards, people pass it around at Defcon. I re read it and it's
> a seminal piece of writing that does a excellent job of describing a
> entire time in history. Re read that last sentence, it's a great first
> person historical journey. It's not the future.
>
> You know where I see Mindvox Overture displayed now? At Coffee and
> Classics dot com, along with Tom Sawyer, Shakespeare and Poe, along
> with the Cyberpunk as subculture article, Crime and Puzzlement, the
> Crypto Anarchist Manifesto???.. All these works have become completely
> mainstream and are collected together for the mainstream.
>
> The day "the new edge" is sitting right next to Tom and Huck at a site
> catering to the Starbucks and pseudointelligencia crowd, is the day
> it's no longer dangerous, no longer the edge and I'm almost afraid to
> say, no longer relevant.
>
> BTW, I'm not exaggerating, although I wish I was,
>
> http://www.coffee-n-classics.com/library.html
>
This is hysterical :-) Welcome to the new edge, would you like a
double expresso with that?
> But?? On a bad day Kroupa is a good writer, on a good day he's
> excellent. But he doesn't act like he has major interest in being a
> science fiction writer, not that he needs to be, his life story would
> make a better book then most fiction. But???.. he looks like he is
> distancing himself away from cyberpunk as fast as possible, he pokes
> fun at it in different places and he looks like in addition to being a
> drug addict, drug dealer and become a neurologist, he is one of the
> psychedelics proponents and ibogaine cure for everything people. He
> was one of the defining people in the entire movement, Bruce Sterling
> used him as a example of real life becoming what he was writing, in
> Details he spent paragraphs explaining how Kroupa was all that.
>
You're mixing together science fiction writers and hackers or arists
and on some level they blend together, but on another the writers are
making a living writing stories, the 'shining examples' are living
humans who are trying to make it through their lives maybe. They're
not characters in books.
> Without carrying on which I've done already, a person who was a
> hacker, has a web site which is completely filled with articles and
> stories about the FBI and Secret service waging war on Mindvox, the
> Legion of Doom, etc, he is almost entirely focused on drugs and
> neurology and away from cyberpunk. Bruce Fancher, another LOD person
> looks to have spent his post-Mindvox time running stock, real estate
> and anonymous transaction companies, the bright future of cyberpunk
> gave way to dollar signs and he became a real businessman and software
> developer. And last, from the information that occasionally comes out
> of the mindvox dev lists, their latest official addiction is Drew
> Ross.
Typo, joke or freudian slip? :-)
>
> Drew Ross is a artist who draws underground comics and did the
> Interverse sites, who looks most famous for being sued by Disney for
> inserting his Wacky Crackhead characters into the middle of Toy Story
> when Disney didn't give him $140,000 fast enough. A hardcore drug
> addict artist, not a cyberpunk artist.
>
>
> What I'm asking opinions on is, what's the point to "the cyberpunk
> movement" at this late stage of the game, where that term looks like
> it means nothing at all. Who is doing anything innovative or new and
> actually applying the cyberpunk label to themselves.
> Where did all the cyberpunk shining stars go? I think you'd be amazed
> at how many of them you'd find in the psychedelics subculture, there
> and at Fucked Company, flaming each other over who bailed out with
> more millions and who just got fucked.
>
You answered your own question. if CP is played out, find something
new to play. Kroupa isn't dead because he's no longer saying cyberpunk
every 5 paragraphs, he was just on a NBC special report on drug
addiction and ibogaine about 3 weeks ago. John Perry Barlow isn't
dead, he's on many psychedelic sites as you said, including the board
for alchemind.
And you answered your own question, you want to find where a lot of
them went to, go read Fucked Company. Making millions appears to be of
more interest to many people then sitting in front of a computer and
emitting angst in mirrorshades.
> If Andy Hawkes is one of them, I just hope he made some money, he was
> a interesting guy and a good writer.
Haven't seen his name in a long time. Was that his real name? Dead
maybe, in a mental hospital, running a televangelist show on cable TV?
Any one of those is possible or even probable, people land in strange
places. As that guy who splintered the thread into a discussion about
his poetry said, 'I didn't actually read Bruce Sterling's new book,
just the end. Where have the cyberpunks gone? They've moved on to the
next big scam.'
What'd you expect, a sudden arrival from MIAs flooding alt.cp? That
would be very un-cp :-)
ghost
Edge.. the only reason you'll ever know you're at The Edge is a vague gut
feeling of doing something not done before..
By the time you have the label and the genre defined you've lost the edge
almost entirely and you personally just keep going on that line leaving
behind everyone - in this case, everyone in mirrorshades with a copy of
the R.Talsorian game on their shelf waiting for implants to be available
in the local mall.
Really, You can't expect anything to last and you definately can't expect
the ideals, ideas and actions of a few people to define an entire future
generation based off of what might be a cool place to live. To change an
infrastructure you have to join that same structure and work from the
inside - otherwise you're nothing more than someone on the outside with a
wreckingball doing some damage.
A whole bunch of names were mentioned with the 'where are they now'
question and some answers.. the MindVox people all grew up, got jobs and
you know what, maybe changed outward appearance to get further inside so
they can do all those things they proffessed a desire to do so long ago..
or maybe the didn't.
You'll never know until after it takes place because while it's happening
you're to caught up in the moment to even think about labeling it or even
taking notes. You just do and then look back and go 'hey, something's
different, I did that, I was a part of that, that has me in it.' and you
look forward and you keep moving.
That's the whole point isn't it? That's what Cyberpunk was? Moving onto
that edge of awareness that was something different, looking for the next
score, the next big thing, the next hack, the next whatever... always the
Next and not the Now. What you're doing Now is what gets you to what you
do Next, and what you did Then has an effect on what you're doing Now.
Think about it - did you really want to be stuck in 1988? or even 1998? or
do you want to get stuck in 2008?
no.
you don't.
Keep Moving. Keep Doing. it's almost impossible to see the whole picture
of something you'r stuck deep into the middle of.
Wintermute
> In article <4ece1cd6.01082...@posting.google.com>,
> syn...@whoever.com (John Doe) wrote:
>
> > If Andy Hawkes is one of them, I just hope he made some money, he was
> > a interesting guy and a good writer.
> >
> > synergy
>
> I'm going to have to agree... I wasn't there when 'it all started'. Not
> even close really.. I didn't find Neuromancer until about 93 or 94.. and
> then I just picked it up at random and had an afternoon to kill - I read
> the book that same day and was impressed and liked it and looked for that
> future. that style. that whatever.. I spent the next few years wandering
> around BBSes and stealing 'net access where I could (HS, This friend who
> knew a guy in College who could get me an account that would last like 4
> months or something..) For me that was it. Right there, all I needed.
> Around 96 I started lurking in here and next door in ACC as I had my own
> access through college then, maybe even posting some in 97-98 only to
> discover...
>
> It wasn't there. What I had found in Gibson's book, and then Sterling and
> Rucker and so on and on.. wasn't here in 98. So I left for a couple years.
> Lived in various places and burned away time. And now I'm back and posting
> with more force than I ever did before...
>
Ditto, same experience. Wow, this all looks so amazing and cool and
I've read about it all. What, it's over? That sucks. I didn't miss all
of it completely, but I sure missed the late 80's and very early 90's
when it was all so alive and happening.
FWIW I think Drew Ross is a awesome artist. A crazy drug addict artist
maybe, but I love his material. If Mindvox picked right up where they
left off, I think it'd be boring and just cashing in. The people who
run it have gone through total changes, it would be fake to act like
none of it happened and yeah, cyberpunk yeah, whatever. I'm so sure
they care. What's there is totally cool, but like the previous guy
said, totally not cyberpunk.
I have the same what's the right word, apathy I think about
neuromancer, as ghost. It'll get made, will it be as interesting as
Matrix II and III or even I was? And what does that say about a movie
when that's what it's compared to.
Game over, thanks for playing.
-wm
Vector 6
again.
trm...@bitstreamnet.com (ghost) wrote in message news:<trminlx-2708...@user-33qto60.dialup.mindspring.com>...
I didn't cut any of Ghost's message because I agreed with so much of
it. I also don't type these 800 line messages like some of you, but
some shorter observations.
I gotta go with Ghost here, a lot of the 'new edge' cyberpunks seem to
be drowning in nostalgia here and wanting to go back to 1988 instead
of 2008 or 2018.
The people saying Mindvox has changed is like a oxymoron. It isn't
even open yet, for that matter have you actually read any of the site?
http://www.mindvox.com/MindVox/Places/Texts/Texts.htm
This is rockin.
No it's not cyberpunk, but that goes back to what defines cyberpunk
and all of you dissing Kroupa changing and getting new and John Perry
Barlow with the psychedelics shit. What're you kidding, what follows
is reprinted from the Philip K. Dick list, which was reprinted from
somewhere else.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/philipkdick/message/828
I don't know what anyone else gets, but what I'm not is put to sleep,
which is exactly what I am by story number 10,000 about another AI,
cool guy and tough girl. Did you ever consider that maybe some of them
have kept moving and there's another new edge which is way past the
computer games bs? What some of them are talking about and when I say
some, I'm going directly back to Kroupa and Barlow (in Tripping) is
hacking reality and finding god. Not in a science fiction story
either, for real.
And this blows 'cyberpunk' right off the net.
.:vector:.
----Forwarded Message----
From: dig...@mindvox.com <Patrick K. Kroupa>
Subject: Re: [IBOGAINE] Re: [IBOGAINE] Re: [IBOGAINE] ibogaine
Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2001 22:34:45 -0400 (EDT)
[Beth Monteglione] has written:
| But what did you do though to get somewhere? You say pieces in HT
and here,
| I think I understand some of mindvox but when I start to get it it
becomes
| imcomprehensible it's brilliant or crazy. I know your having a book
| published or something but the only thing online that's even close
is
| http://www.mindvox.com/MindVox/Places/Texts/CrackPipe.html and it
looks like
| you cut pieces of different times from all over and threw them
together.
|
| What do you do??? Really, not just the recovery talk you give
people.
Nothing, anything, everything. It's as simple or complex as you wanna
make it; change paradigms.
Usually what I do is get horny, wander around in sex for a while,
which is
okay, but, if love doesn't get mixed into the picture I wind up with
the
armies of the universe inside my head; which is kinda like, oh fuck
me, I
was having a great time and now there is all this shit, it's violence,
brutality, destruction, and every single one of the energies taking
part,
is all me, so I'm killing and being killed by myself; which is sick,
painful and kinda cool, all at the same time. Getting outta red and
into
green is sorta a bitch because green keeps refusing to let go, usually
I
spin around in all this for a while and eventually manage to hit gold,
but
that's rough for me -- though, it's getting easier -- I kinda hafta
slide
in sideways off of compassion and empathy to hit love. The rest is
easy,
blue is intellect, that's just online, and all of this is just a
journey
on the road to the Purple Shit.
Eventually it feels sorta like blowing a load up your spine, which
probably isn't happening, I mean, intellectually I know erection,
orgasm,
ejaculation, are separate systems, but mahn, it sure feels like it.
The
whirlpools spin and resolve into eyes, which blow open,
hyperventilating
increases the opacity of the eyes, kinda like adjusting the alpha
channel
or sumthin', taking really slow, deep breaths, or stopping breathing
for a
while, makes them expand in number and radius and blow outwards, until
it
feels like you're football stadium sized, and you're at the Purple
Shit
(TM).
The Purple Shit is everywhere, in everything, it's energy, but alive,
sentient, and it loves you. It feels something like everything you
are,
is a receiver/transmitter for channeling the Purple Shit (which ya can
call God, cosmic consciousness, whatever makes you happy).
After a while you don't need any substances to do this anymore. It's
like
re-remembering something you forgot a long time ago, and just falling
back
into it. Being in touch with this on a semi-regular basis seems to
fix
90% of what's wrong, most of the time. Though, various PieceS and
tHINGs
still come raining down, because I'm not perfect.
So, mostly, on a day-to-day basis, what holds me together is blue and
green. Intellect reinforced by will. If I counted on love, positive
energy, and being happy, to consistently prevent me from bangin' up
dope,
I'd last half a day at most.
My main Unresolved Issue are The Colours. The chakras get painted
with
green at the heart chakra, gold as will. I don't see them this way,
they're reversed. Is my energy system color blind, is everyone else
wrong, am I just that fucked up... dunno <shrug> one day I'll prolly
resolve it.
Uhm, woops, wait no, that's wrong.
What I meant to say was; my "recovery" hinges upon an excellent
relationship with my psychiatrist, strict adherence to a regimen of
medication, and a solid foundation built on the 12-steps. Yeah baby!
- - - - - - - -
-
People who have said stuff which has a lotta resonance for me are
Muktananda and lately -- thanks to Nick -- Rajneesh/Osho; Sai Baba
rocks
out.
A lot of books contain pieces of truth, the single greatest collection
of
truth I have ever found in one place is in two books:
The Solaris System Admin Guide, by Sun Microsystems, and Machiavelli's
cool little epic, The Prince. Though, to be honest, the religion of
BSD
calls strongly to me, and I really like Mach running the BSD 4.4
kernel.
No, wait, that's wrong too, I meant:
One's by Alex Grey, which doesn't have a lot of words, it's called
Sacred
Mirrors. And this was like pivotal in my life. When a lotta this
first
happened, I wasn't in an environment where it was... okay or accepted,
and
as cool as it was, I thought I was losing my mind until I saw this
magazine -- which was a druggie mag, not High Times, maybe Magical
Blend
or sumthin' -- which had Grey's painting called "Dying." At the time
I
didn't know that, I thought it was Awakening, and it wuz like, holy
shit,
this guy I know nothing about is painting exactly what I'm looking at.
He
sees it too, I'm not crazy.
The other book is called Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot, and
it's
utterly beautiful and links together such a disparate and wide-ranging
series of topics and phenomena that it's amazing. Read this if ya
read
nothing else, even maybe a few paragraphs at a time.
- - - - - - - -
-
Just believe. If you believe with enough focus, a Rift in Time and
Space
may open right in the middle of the Mars bar, and green ibogaine
sludge
mixed with DMSO might Hurtle Downwards upon the Patrons -- kinda like
Cthulhu meets the Iceman Cometh, with strands of Philip K. Dick woven
in
-- and a great WAVE of hEALINg will SWEEP the land, "oh my fucking
god...
I've been drunk and strung-out for 49 years, what the hell is all this
crap I'm seeing, is this reality? Man do I need a drink."
That concludes this evening's sermon. Donation box is over on the
left on
your way out, thank you veddy much.
In conclusion, go to a meeting and share, you'll feel better about
things.
You're right where you need to be, it's all part of God's .plan for
you.
Just take things one day at a time, you have a horrible disease.
And if you listen very hard, the tune will come to you at last, when
all
are one and one is all.
Patrick
sicarius
[snip't]
timothy leary's dead... long live timothy leary.
sorry wrong edge for me.
while hacking your cerebral chemicals seems like a cool idea... today
it is on a par with the alchemy of the 1500s in terms of tangible
results... at this stage of the game there is no salvation-- there is
no god to be found in the primitive blood music of chemical
manipulations.
in that life there is no truth. no joy. only the hang over and the
coming down and the bills unpaid. the loved ones you left hanging out
to dry and the children of your mind and heart [and maybe even of your
body] you spawned and abandoned...
for some it is easier to seek artificial nirvana than it is to face
the world they inherited.
the "truth" of the words you passed on in the forwarded message is to
me [to steal a line from Gibson] nothing more than a mind the "color
of television, tuned to a dead channel": roiling in masses of chaos
and binary white noise. regurgitating memes and aesthetics which
describe nothing meaningful.
this seems to me that this is just a step backwards into 1969. what
happened to all those darling, daring psychodelic psychonauts of that
by-gone era? which one assended into heaven? which returned with the
secret of life everlasting? do tell...
I can almost hear someone say, "but this is different?"
How so?
you want the edge? do it yourself. do it consciously without drugs.
do it with a straight razor, slowly... shear away your personal
reality and peel back the skin. it is simple. mystics have been doing
it for millennia... so have the "mentally ill".
Do mental illness for a while... change your own blood chemistry with
paranoia and pain and dispair and self-destructive desire... allow
yourself to be subjected to the physical and mental abuse of those
around you... add lack of sleep, no proper food, medical care, or a
safe, warm place to sleep...
finally, look through eyes which are yours but which you realize you
do not possess... come awake in a world you no longer control. a world
you no longer lord over as master. a world that is not the rosy, first
world of the priviledged child. a world of terror and pain. of
disadvantage. of powerlessness. a world of the petty and pointless
wake to realize: you are but a mote in a biospheric machine which does
not require you to live and does not care if you die. here there is no
YHVH or yesuaha ben joseph. no mercy. no forgiveness. no bands of
angels. only a strange twilight. and a strange forboding presence.
the deity which lurks in this place is unhuman and knows not human
values-- all it sees are statistically redundant motes of life-- motes
of itself... interchangible. indistinguishable. unimportant. feel its
eyes look down upon you. feel its indifference. your life and your
death are unimportant to it. it only requires you serve your redundant
purpose... if you fail to do so, so what? there are others that will.
a fool might belive that this is the legendary demiurge, Iaobaoth...
but it is not. it is nearer to shiva... it dances that it may live and
you may die... it cares not for you, only the dance...
lay down and die in grief and oblivion... only to wake a morning three
days later and realize you are still alive. someone "saved" your life.
The pain in your heart and mind is just enough to let you know you are
alive... but only just. you don't give thanks for the "favor" they did
you. you remember to breathe in. breathe out. moment by moment. feel
your heart beat. feel the pain of living. again. and wonder: why?
i have travelled that road.
don't want to visit it again. there are other things that are more fun
and creative. more true to the self i have created since that time.
that deity has no further need of my biomorphic functions but at least
it does not care if i play until the statistical reaper comes for
me... or i decide i've had enough of the pain which tells me i am
still alive and jump over the edge and never return.
human conceit is the source of all illusion.
the truth: a biomorph is the way a strand of DNA makes another strand
of DNA-- your here to create more DNA. anything else you do is just
icing on the cake... or cyanide in the kool-aide. statistically it
does not make a difference.
so why not choose to make a real kind of difference? why not create a
world where art and beauty meets life and love and human kindness? the
dancer in your genetic code does not care what you do as long as you
give it what it wants.
forgive me if i seem uninterested in your pet madman... i seem to have
seen his ilk before in RL and on usenet. in none of those instances
have i seen them wake from their self induced illusion [conceit] and
return with one wit of wisdom, truth, or understanding.
and if this is intended as an *engineering* project with reproducible
results, then he is going about it the wrong way and will probably end
up someplace he did not intend.
then again maybe he will find heaven... statistically it is
possible...
yet somehow i doubt it.
sicarius
---
Language is a formalism used to convey meaning. Words of themselves
convey nothing. Only when properly sequenced do they present the
intimation of the meaning which they conceal. Of all of the languages,
the language of the Heart is the most readily available but least
understood.
ghost
So why are we still here? Why do we still try and take part in a dead genre?
Same reason we came here in the first place, to try and take part in
something new. We're just keeping the name I have a feeling.
Just because we're in a group called alt.cyberpunk doesn't mean we have to
stick to the traditional shit.. that's the whole point of cyberpunk - go
out, get something new. Find that new edge. Find that new something. Like
Leggy Starlitz from Sterlings stories - he's always moving around and
doing something new and different. From smuggling birth control to
managing a Japanese Girl Pop Punk Band...
And we all hand out here because we're all into trying something new and
opening up and being something else to do something else.... and what
better way than to find a place, settle down with some near like-minded
people and see what happens.
Look at the origins of alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo - it start in alt.callahans,
move here and then formed it's own space.
Start Somewhere. Move Elsewhere.
So we started in this place, maybe in five years when we've all changed
direction as a whole we'll start a new place because this place had lost
so much magic it was either full of old crusty people going on about the
Good Old Days or newbies asking what kind of fucking clothes I wear only a
weekly basis (er, that's starting already....)
And then what? I dunno, but all I can say is I'm sticking around to see
where the ride takes me.
There you have it, the old is gone the new on it's way and then we'll just
do it. think it. feel it. be it. talk it. shape it.
Maybe what we need now is instead of everytime someone suggests a new book
we don't preface it with "This might not be cyberpunk but.." Fuck that
noise. Who cares what falls into the genre anymore. When you feel the need
to tell us about something new just tell us what it is and why you think
it's cool.
on that note.. Anyone got any opnions on Apocalypse Now - Redux? I thought
it was awesome with all the added footage, long for sure though - but much
more intense, a slow ride into madness.
and that brings me to my next thought... it's like music, a band does this
one sound for so long and you know the sound and you have the album but
you've changed over time and the sound hasn't and you lose interest... but
if the band is doing something different so each album isn't the same
you're more likely to stick with it to see what new shit comes next.. Do
you want the same album over and over with different words and a new
guitar riff or do you want something new that was tried to wrap your mind
around? I know what my choice is. Sometimes the new fails, sometimes it
works - but I always respect a band or author or whatever who's just
trying something they haven't yet versus one who sticks to the same
formula over and over and over.
John Doe
> > I'm gonna change directions slightly but keep to the same arena..
> >
> > Edge.. the only reason you'll ever know you're at The Edge is a vague gut
> > feeling of doing something not done before..
> >
> > By the time you have the label and the genre defined you've lost the edge
> > almost entirely and you personally just keep going on that line leaving
> > behind everyone - in this case, everyone in mirrorshades with a copy of
> > the R.Talsorian game on their shelf waiting for implants to be available
> > in the local mall.
> >
> > Really, You can't expect anything to last and you definately can't expect
> > the ideals, ideas and actions of a few people to define an entire future
> > generation based off of what might be a cool place to live.
True. It's only disillusioning to see how many of those who are
credited as being defining influences of a entire genre are gone and
those who are back from the dead have turned their backs on it
altogether.
The point that Sicarius made is true as well, I don't think that
everyone is gone and there are people in the "movement" who have
existed in near complete obscurity and might continue that way
forever. But there isn't anyone who's paying that much attention.
Norman Spinrad is a decent science fiction writer who's gone from some
acceptance, to near complete obscurity. Philip Dick is a writer who's
gone from near complete obscurity to great acceptance after his death
by people who go see Schwartenegger movies and probably have no idea
who Phil Dick was or where the story they are seeing came from.
The number of people who see Blade Runner and understand who Philip K.
Dick was, are small. This doesn't take anything away from Dick's
ability, but that's Phil Dick, not the genre of cyberpunk.
>
> I gotta go with Ghost here, a lot of the 'new edge' cyberpunks seem to
> be drowning in nostalgia here and wanting to go back to 1988 instead
> of 2008 or 2018.
>
> The people saying Mindvox has changed is like a oxymoron. It isn't
> even open yet, for that matter have you actually read any of the site?
>
> http://www.mindvox.com/MindVox/Places/Texts/Texts.htm
>
> This is rockin.
Yes it is. It's two different genres if you can call them that,
neither one of which is science fiction. The war on drugs article is a
edited version of a longer and toned down article that lindesmith or
the libertarians published of Kroupa's in May or June and Crackpipe is
what looks like a random series of edits out of his book.
They both fall into the genre of autobiography. Neither falls into
cyberpunk.
>
> No it's not cyberpunk, but that goes back to what defines cyberpunk
> and all of you dissing Kroupa changing and getting new and John Perry
> Barlow with the psychedelics shit. What're you kidding, what follows
> is reprinted from the Philip K. Dick list, which was reprinted from
> somewhere else.
>
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/philipkdick/message/828
>
> I don't know what anyone else gets, but what I'm not is put to sleep,
> which is exactly what I am by story number 10,000 about another AI,
> cool guy and tough girl. Did you ever consider that maybe some of them
> have kept moving and there's another new edge which is way past the
> computer games bs? What some of them are talking about and when I say
> some, I'm going directly back to Kroupa and Barlow (in Tripping) is
> hacking reality and finding god. Not in a science fiction story
> either, for real.
>
> And this blows 'cyberpunk' right off the net.
It blows almost everything off the net. I've seen that reprinted
before, Kroupa wrote that to some drug list, not the Philip Dick one
and it was in the middle of a series of messages. Yes it's great, it's
interesting, it's reality hacking. But is it cyberpunk?
If it is, then you have to start adding the entire psychedelic
collections into cyberpunk, since the psychedelic collections are most
of all focused on two things, god and drugs, then does that mean
religious books are also cyberpunk and that goes right back to my
point: what does cyberpunk mean anymore.
Looks to be the answer is almost nothing. Or almost everything.
synergy
sicarius
> Yes it's great, it's
>interesting, it's reality hacking. But is it cyberpunk?
>
>If it is, then you have to start adding the entire psychedelic
>collections into cyberpunk, since the psychedelic collections are most
>of all focused on two things, god and drugs, then does that mean
>religious books are also cyberpunk and that goes right back to my
>point: what does cyberpunk mean anymore.
>
>Looks to be the answer is almost nothing. Or almost everything.
>
>synergy
go back to basics.
reducto ad absurdum.
look again at what it was. not the accretions of the "me too" writers.
ask yourself why this felt "right"
i remember the way all of my hair stood on end the first time i
completed "simulacron-3" [made 30 years later into an awful move "the
13th floor"] but i was young and impressionable then.
i remember the resonance NM caused in its burnt out anti-hero and the
imprisoned AI who would do anything to escape.
the twist of a future story which cut to the bone-- *now*.
i agree with g/f about the change factor. [and i guess that means i
get to work harder on future music projects, eh, g/f? getting boring?]
evolve or die.
rewire or remain stock circuitry?
the question becomes: are you a meme user or a meme dealer?
if a user, then it boils down to finding a new fix. got no
suggestions. depends on how your mind is wired.
if a dealer it is clear you have to find a new way to give your old
memes a new twist.
in this regard mindvox is not new... the "compass rose" on its pages
is in fact the chief sigil of "chaos magick" and the eight fold
flavors there of...
chaos magick dates to the 1970's and is a "modernized" extrapolation
by Peter Carroll [and others] of Aleister Crowley's "Thelema" crossed
with the Sigil Magic of A.O. Spare... Crowley in his time was infamous
for his cocaine addiction and his "lewd and lacivious" behavior.
the words written upon those pages are perfect fodder for work in
chaos magick. if you are interested in that, go search google.
no mindvox is not new... its just the meme users seem to have stumbled
on new ways to twist their own neurons with old ideas.
i am reminded of the wizard of oz sailing off into the skies while
dorothy cries, "come back! come back!" to which the wizard replies, "I
can't! I don't know how it works!"
i am sure somebody with think of something...
sicarius
---
In a Dragon's Lair there is great wealth...
but remember friend...
there is also a Dragon.
- The Book Of Reminders
John Doe
> On 27 Aug 2001 19:02:59 -0700, vec...@space.com (Vector 6) wrote:
>
> [snip't]
>
> timothy leary's dead... long live timothy leary.
>
> sorry wrong edge for me.
>
> while hacking your cerebral chemicals seems like a cool idea... today
> it is on a par with the alchemy of the 1500s in terms of tangible
> results... at this stage of the game there is no salvation-- there is
> no god to be found in the primitive blood music of chemical
> manipulations.
Don't think I agree with that, but it wasn't my point.
>
> in that life there is no truth. no joy. only the hang over and the
> coming down and the bills unpaid. the loved ones you left hanging out
> to dry and the children of your mind and heart [and maybe even of your
> body] you spawned and abandoned...
>
> for some it is easier to seek artificial nirvana than it is to face
> the world they inherited.
That's an opinion, not saying it's right or wrong, just that it's an
opinion.
> you want the edge? do it yourself. do it consciously without drugs.
> do it with a straight razor, slowly... shear away your personal
> reality and peel back the skin. it is simple. mystics have been doing
> it for millennia... so have the "mentally ill".
>
> Do mental illness for a while... change your own blood chemistry with
> paranoia and pain and dispair and self-destructive desire... allow
> yourself to be subjected to the physical and mental abuse of those
> around you... add lack of sleep, no proper food, medical care, or a
> safe, warm place to sleep...
>
> finally, look through eyes which are yours but which you realize you
> do not possess... come awake in a world you no longer control. a world
> you no longer lord over as master. a world that is not the rosy, first
> world of the priviledged child. a world of terror and pain. of
> disadvantage. of powerlessness. a world of the petty and pointless
>
You're describing mental illness and drug addiction. Nothing new there
either, just picking what does it for you and what you find
interesting or enpowering.
> so why not choose to make a real kind of difference? why not create a
> world where art and beauty meets life and love and human kindness? the
> dancer in your genetic code does not care what you do as long as you
> give it what it wants.
I think Mindvox did that for a lot of people from what I've read, I
think a lot of things do that for many people.
>
> and if this is intended as an *engineering* project with reproducible
> results, then he is going about it the wrong way and will probably end
> up someplace he did not intend.
>
> then again maybe he will find heaven... statistically it is
> possible...
>
Anything is possible, what's impossible is to say whether he's going
about it the right or wrong way if you know nothing about what he's
doing and respond to some message someone reposted from a list. I
think he already ended up in places he didn't intend, unless his
intent was to travel the world with a $1,000 a day heroin habit. All
of this is after that though and coming from someone who was living
cyberpunk since before it was called that, went through what you
described and is now a neurologist which looks like someone interested
in finding different answers to their questions.
None of this or what Vector? brought up was what I started this thread
with, I'm not that interested if Kroupa is right or wrong, what does
that even mean? He's charismatic, interesting and starting something
new. I can't answer if any of the psychedelic people ascended to
heaven or found true answers, they haven't shared that with me. From
the outside looking in and reading what they did, if nothing else they
had a very interesting ride through life. I understand this isn't your
thing, you like Gibson or I think you do since you quote him
constantly, compare your birthdate and birthplace with his and his
work means something to you. Has Gibson ascended to heaven or is he a
wealthy writer now who has grown out of touch with the motivations for
where he started? I don't know either. What I do know is his work has
become repetitive and covering the same ground all over again. It's
not the "edge" anymore.
My point was, it's not only Kroupa or Barlow, but others who have gone
further over into this line of exploration which as you began your
message with "is not your edge" so is that cyberpunk or not and what
does that mean.
And that goes back to where it started and what Ghost had to say
cyberpunk is dead, long live cyberpunk.
I do wonder what happened to Andy Hawkes and if he'll come back from
the dead someday.
synergy
Vector 6
[snip't]
That's all very interesting. And you know there are a lot of very good
medications that can help you with all that without all the side
effects of the old ones.
Everything you said is ok, whatever. Good luck with all that. But why
do you keep breaking off the threads? You've split the same topic 4 or
5 times now, it's still the same topic with all the same people
posting to it. That is so annoying.
.:vector:.
ghost
> If it is, then you have to start adding the entire psychedelic
> collections into cyberpunk, since the psychedelic collections are most
> of all focused on two things, god and drugs, then does that mean
> religious books are also cyberpunk and that goes right back to my
> point: what does cyberpunk mean anymore.
>
> Looks to be the answer is almost nothing. Or almost everything.
It doesn't matter what Cyberpunk means anymore, or what is or isn't
cyberpunk. It's just a word used at one point to describe something new.
And now the genre is all but dead, the literary side is all but dead, the
movie side always was only half alive and the people in the underground
never cared what they were.
That's my whole point. We're here because we can congregate on similar
ground and kick around ideas and maybe do stuff... it doesn't matter that
we're in alt.cyberpunk anymore - it's not what we call it, it's what we
do.
Is it cyberpunk? fuck if I care. At one point yes I did, I wanted to be
part of the great cyberpunk thing - I had no idea what that thing was. I
still don't. But I do know that it doesn't matter.
We're in here because we started on similar ground and then some of us
moved on, some of us stayed the same, some of may have even regressed.
there are a lot of things that I used to do that I don't anymore, I used
to phreak, a lot. I did it to figure out something I didn't know about, I
also did it because everyone said (everyone being authority) it was wrong
and bad and you shouldn't need to know that. Whatever. I don't do it
anymore but what I learned there helps me everyday in my wage-slave job
because I know how something works that most people don't. I can go one
for one with the technicians in the field and get results faster because I
know (more or less) what they're doing out there. Isn't that what it's all
about - finding out how something works so you know more than before
instead of just breaking stuff? I pay for every single phone call I make
now (well, except for the fact that QWest doesn't seem to want to charge
me long distance.. which I find very amusing.).
Maybe we need a manifesto.. yeah - all cool movements have them.
Ok, we've already seen "I am a hacker this is my.."
let's try....
"I am a person, this is my manifesto. I do not like your society. I do not
like what you have to sell me. But I must live in it. So I will appear to
conform. I will have a steady job with a decent paycheck. I will pay rent
on time. I will buy a car - a cheap reliable car. I will buy my software
and music. I will pay my bills, on time. I will reject you where it hurts
the most however. I will not wear logos on my clothes, I will not shop in
a mall if I can find an alternative. I will not watch television. I will
not pledge $100 to keep you on the air. I will not listen to your ads. I
will do everything to change what I see, if I alter only one persons
perspective this month I have done my job. When I find a source for
information I will cross check it and not swallow wholesale the next
soundbyte shoved in my direction. I will have an opinion that I will share
- and it will probably not be your opinion. I will recycle because it just
makes sense, we live with finite resources. Oil may not run out for a
thousand years - that is not an excuse to go rampant with my gas mileage
now. I will actually listen to other people and maybe change my views if
they have something useful to say. I do not need to upgrade my computer
every 10 months. I will work with what I have."
hmmm...
everything beyond "I am a person" sounds stupid, but it's more or less how
I live my life. Is it cyberpunk? I don't know.
but it is something. Non comformity is not new. I won't even pretend to
believe it's new. Appearing to conform while not conforming is not new
either. I don't know if it's been done on a mass scale yet - but we can
always try.
buy what you need, use what you buy, don't go around as a walkig billboard.
Arthmelow
<trminlx-2808...@user-33qtqdf.dialup.mindspring.com> ,
trm...@bitstreamnet.com (ghost) wrote:
> In article <4ece1cd6.01082...@posting.google.com>,
> syn...@whoever.com (John Doe) wrote:
>
>
>> If it is, then you have to start adding the entire psychedelic
>> collections into cyberpunk, since the psychedelic collections are most
>> of all focused on two things, god and drugs, then does that mean
>> religious books are also cyberpunk and that goes right back to my
>> point: what does cyberpunk mean anymore.
>>
>> Looks to be the answer is almost nothing. Or almost everything.
>
> It doesn't matter what Cyberpunk means anymore, or what is or isn't
> cyberpunk. It's just a word used at one point to describe something new.
It became popularised, so its lost it. :-) Also like many music
genres, like garage, a lot of stuff is just labeled "garage" to sell.
Cyberpunk as a word is meaningless, but the ideas may or may not live
on, depending on whether they become cult, or become mainstream
"philosophies", that people discuss in soulless Starbucks while on a
lunch break. It sucks.
Its a shame because of my age ( was born in 1984 ) I couldn't see
anything I love buzzing in its prime, I always got there too late.
Same with cyberpunk. I rely on archives, on websites last updated in
1996 and the like. And what people say here. I don't say much, but I
suck it all in. Its rather like in "A child Garden" by Ryman where all
the crazes are from the past. Here, in the uk, cyberpunk became
popularised by the word was almost never used, just hi-teck or modern
etc etc.
> And now the genre is all but dead, the literary side is all but dead, the
> movie side always was only half alive and the people in the underground
> never cared what they were.
The fashion aspect is still slightly here in the uk... shades,
although most have gone onto the indian look.
> That's my whole point. We're here because we can congregate on similar
> ground and kick around ideas and maybe do stuff... it doesn't matter that
> we're in alt.cyberpunk anymore - it's not what we call it, it's what we
> do.
true, true. The majority of people in alt.geek aren't geeks, they just
play on the newsgroup.
> Is it cyberpunk? fuck if I care. At one point yes I did, I wanted to be
> part of the great cyberpunk thing - I had no idea what that thing was. I
> still don't. But I do know that it doesn't matter.
>
> We're in here because we started on similar ground and then some of us
> moved on, some of us stayed the same, some of may have even regressed.
I'm trying to find out about something I missed. I've read Gibson,
sterling and others... the one thing that gets me is the imagery. Most
cyberpunk novels seem to get beautiful imagery, combined with amazing
speed, its almost like you're in a time tunnel. Most other novels I
have read don't have that speed, or the beauty of an entire world, it
just focuses on just one or two relationships ( one man and world, one
mand and woman etc etc ) and plays them out slowly.
<snippity-snip>
> Maybe we need a manifesto.. yeah - all cool movements have them.
>
> Ok, we've already seen "I am a hacker this is my.."
>
> let's try....
>
<snip manifesto>
The lyrics from "fitter happier" by Radiohead come to mind. But then,
as some have already said, work inside the system then try to change.
The UK and the US need Upside-Down thinking. Why are doctors paid for
unhealthy people and not healthy? isn't that the point of doctors?
Why is welfare from the government have a stigma? Why don't we gove it
to everyone and then pay it back gradually as one earns? Why are the
words employment and unemployment STILL used when work is now defined
as an activity which may or may not be paid for?
Most of this stolen from Charles Handy's book, the Age of unreason,
which is amazing.
> hmmm...
>
> everything beyond "I am a person" sounds stupid, but it's more or less how
> I live my life. Is it cyberpunk? I don't know.
its normal really. Most people are like you, or at least claim to be
like you. If you examine everyone then most of time you'll get very
reasonable people. If you stick everyone together, thats where we get
pedophile rioters attacking a pediatrician, people unwillingly
contributing to the worst safety abbatoir records in the world, the
lowest paid workers in the world, extinction of cattle and chicken
ranchers and more.
> but it is something. Non comformity is not new. I won't even pretend to
> believe it's new. Appearing to conform while not conforming is not new
> either. I don't know if it's been done on a mass scale yet - but we can
> always try.
Most things are controlled by labelling. Once a revolutionary book is
labelled under cult, its treated as a non-mass opinion and people
don't see whats under their own nose. Why is something called a table?
Why are all these types of tables called tables and not something
else?
there's also so-called rebellion, which a lot of teenagers get into.
Hence my motto: Nec cupias, nec metuas. Means neither desire or fear,
which means I'm not with the commercial desire of the trendies, nor am
I with the institutionalised rebellion phase that many go through at
my age.
> buy what you need, use what you buy, don't go around as a walkig billboard.
What my own father has tried to teach me.
--
Arthmelow at excite dot com
Nec cupias nec metuas
ICQ: 46257364
sicarius
>sicarius <d...@null.com> wrote in message news:<ll0mot4bvn2tsrpdv...@4ax.com>...
[snip't]
>> there is
>> no god to be found in the primitive blood music of chemical
>> manipulations.
>
>Don't think I agree with that, but it wasn't my point.
last i heard no one had claimed to have found one... nor has [to my
knowledge] has there been any serious understanding /research of what
"cerebral hacking" does or does not do. on the one side it is "just
say no." on the other side it is "like, oh, wow."
so far i haven't heard of any one that actually was looking at it
objectively with real engineering perspective.
[snip't]
>> for some it is easier to seek artificial nirvana than it is to face
>> the world they inherited.
>
>That's an opinion, not saying it's right or wrong, just that it's an
>opinion.
>
it is at that...
[snip't]
>
>You're describing mental illness and drug addiction. Nothing new there
>either, just picking what does it for you and what you find
>interesting or enpowering.
ah... but looked at from a different perspective-- anything that does
not follow the "social norm" or "socially acceptable" at any one given
time may be perceived as "mental illness"... Altered awareness via
chemical ingestion gives the same results and consciousness
alterations as the "organic" or "socially" mental illness...
Meditation / yoga, and other similar "mystical" methods can and do get
similar results of altering awareness.
given a social context any of these things may fall under "mental
illness" and therefore socially unacceptable.
[snip't]
>
>I think Mindvox did that for a lot of people from what I've read, I
>think a lot of things do that for many people.
so does bible thumping, singing hare krishna, or walking in a natural
setting away from "civilization". if it is intended as a "technology"
then put it on a technology basis. if it is a cross between tim leary
and carlos castenada... thats ok too-- but it is not tech it is
anthropology...
[snip't]
>
>Anything is possible, what's impossible is to say whether he's going
>about it the right or wrong way if you know nothing about what he's
>doing and respond to some message someone reposted from a list.
if what was posted was intended to be a "technological" description of
what he is doing then his technique is about the same as a party i
"rushed" through in 1971 on mescaline cut with speed.
>I
>think he already ended up in places he didn't intend, unless his
>intent was to travel the world with a $1,000 a day heroin habit. All
>of this is after that though and coming from someone who was living
>cyberpunk since before it was called that, went through what you
>described and is now a neurologist which looks like someone interested
>in finding different answers to their questions.
forgive me my ignorance... i can't say any thing i read at the links
posted gives me any basis for believing that this is technology and
not just "tripping" for the sake of tripping.
>None of this or what Vector? brought up was what I started this thread
>with, I'm not that interested if Kroupa is right or wrong, what does
>that even mean? He's charismatic, interesting and starting something
>new. I can't answer if any of the psychedelic people ascended to
>heaven or found true answers, they haven't shared that with me.
[nor are they likely to...]
> From
>the outside looking in and reading what they did, if nothing else they
>had a very interesting ride through life. I understand this isn't your
>thing,
about the age of 21 i stopped cold. i found i liked it way too much.
instead i tried to conform. it ended up breaking me.
>you like Gibson or I think you do since you quote him
>constantly, compare your birthdate and birthplace with his and his
>work means something to you. Has Gibson ascended to heaven or is he a
>wealthy writer now who has grown out of touch with the motivations for
>where he started?
he was also born in the same state as i was... I respect the fact that
he put together some thing "new" -- something which turned a few heads
and planted the seeds which soon bore fruit both in technology and
socially
his writing then was not great [but no where near as bad as some of
the stephen king works i have read] and Gibson has gotten better as a
writer since that time-- even if his newer work is not as well liked.
even if it is "not the golden age stuff".
the question becomes what new thing lurks on the edge of technology
and society that reflects the "now" of our experience.
>I don't know either. What I do know is his work has
>become repetitive and covering the same ground all over again. It's
>not the "edge" anymore.
maybe there is a message there that we are not seeing? dunno. too much
of what he has written about has "popped up" into conscious social
awareness... is it predictive? i think he'd answer no but some how i
think he is under rating his gut awareness of social/tech trends.
>My point was, it's not only Kroupa or Barlow, but others who have gone
>further over into this line of exploration which as you began your
>message with "is not your edge" so is that cyberpunk or not and what
>does that mean.
look at the basic definition: high tech -- low life.
where is the *tech* in what the brain hackers have done? the CIA did
more in the 1950's with their LSD experiments than most of the
psychonauts have at least in the way the CIA objectively documented
their experiments of "induced mental illness".
The psychonaut's work plays with the wiring but does not "interface"
to anything except themselves. the worlds they "discover" do not
interface or translate to this one. what use has the street found for
it 'cept "lets get high"? NM looked at it that way. drugs weren't
technology-- they were recreation.
mental illness is not my edge either but i learned a lot about myself
from crashing and burning. is it technology? no. could i teach you to
see the dancer? no. i described it but do you understand the gut
wrenching nature of my experience? somehow i doubt i have conveyed it.
does it make any difference? no. does it interface to this reality and
can the street use it? no.
using that definition of high tech / low life + the street foinds its
own uses for technology as the razor you might find a few more things
which fall into the CP milieu...
>And that goes back to where it started and what Ghost had to say
>cyberpunk is dead, long live cyberpunk.
find your edge or create it... but don't expect that WG et al are
going to come back to that place that cave you chills and the rush. CP
pointed the way to hack your future but indoing so planted the seeds
of its own conscription into the mainstream.
for give me if i have sounded negative about the "brain hacking" but
some how if i can't apply the tech the same way i apply other kinds of
tech then i question its usefulness.
thanks for the questions... it got me thinking...
sicarius
---
"A Strong house is built upon a strong foundation.
What are your beliefs built upon?"
sicarius
>sicarius <d...@null.com> wrote in message
>
>[snip't]
>
>That's all very interesting. And you know there are a lot of very good
>medications that can help you with all that without all the side
>effects of the old ones.
why bother with medications? they don't give the same special effects
as applying one's will and own brain chemicals.
>But why
>do you keep breaking off the threads? You've split the same topic 4 or
>5 times now, it's still the same topic with all the same people
>posting to it.
not really... psycho-punk is not cyberpunk. ;) ...or maybe i am just
into breaking things... dunno.
>That is so annoying.
>
>.:vector:.
forgive me... it was not intended to annoy. rather it was intended to
point out a shift in the "focus" of the original topic.
sorry
sicarius
---
We each serve what we deserve.
John Doe
> On 28 Aug 2001 09:48:09 -0700, syn...@whoever.com (John Doe) wrote:
>
> >sicarius <d...@null.com> wrote in message news:<ll0mot4bvn2tsrpdv...@4ax.com>...
>
> [snip't]
> >> there is
> >> no god to be found in the primitive blood music of chemical
> >> manipulations.
> >
> >Don't think I agree with that, but it wasn't my point.
>
> last i heard no one had claimed to have found one... nor has [to my
> knowledge] has there been any serious understanding /research of what
> "cerebral hacking" does or does not do. on the one side it is "just
> say no." on the other side it is "like, oh, wow."
Terrence Mkenna made some systematic efforts to quantify and describe
his experience. He missed a lot of the time, but he did get past "like
oh wow" But mostly I agree with you.
>
> so far i haven't heard of any one that actually was looking at it
> objectively with real engineering perspective.
Many started that way, Tim Leary and John Lilly were "establishment
science" all the way. But once massive quantities of psychedelics were
introduced, you know the results. It all flew out the window and went
full circle to "like oh wow" again.
> >You're describing mental illness and drug addiction. Nothing new there
> >either, just picking what does it for you and what you find
> >interesting or enpowering.
>
> ah... but looked at from a different perspective-- anything that does
> not follow the "social norm" or "socially acceptable" at any one given
> time may be perceived as "mental illness"... Altered awareness via
> chemical ingestion gives the same results and consciousness
> alterations as the "organic" or "socially" mental illness...
> Meditation / yoga, and other similar "mystical" methods can and do get
> similar results of altering awareness.
>
Agreed. I dont know enough about mystical experience or even
psychedelics to argue or validate what you said, but if any of the
mystics from india or other countries displayed those qualities and
acted that way in our current society, instead of being venerated they
would be locked up in a mental hospital.
> [snip't]
> >
> >Anything is possible, what's impossible is to say whether he's going
> >about it the right or wrong way if you know nothing about what he's
> >doing and respond to some message someone reposted from a list.
>
> if what was posted was intended to be a "technological" description of
> what he is doing then his technique is about the same as a party i
> "rushed" through in 1971 on mescaline cut with speed.
>
I don't know exactly where that came from but it was a ibogaine
discussion. Ibogaine is a psychedelic that in addition to tripping
looks like it somehow rewires the brain. Their specific goal in taking
it appears to be resetting brain chemistry from changes that happen
with long term addiction to heroin and crack. Which is appears to do.
They don't understand how yet but they are studying it. This is
kroupa's other site
http://www.ibogaine-research.org
Look in the science section, I think its "abstracts" its a psychedelic
site, but its way beyond "oh wow man".
> >think he already ended up in places he didn't intend, unless his
> >intent was to travel the world with a $1,000 a day heroin habit. All
> >of this is after that though and coming from someone who was living
> >cyberpunk since before it was called that, went through what you
> >described and is now a neurologist which looks like someone interested
> >in finding different answers to their questions.
>
> forgive me my ignorance... i can't say any thing i read at the links
> posted gives me any basis for believing that this is technology and
> not just "tripping" for the sake of tripping.
I think Mindvox is in some early pre beta stage and its mostly stream
of consciousness and having fun. It's not the serious site, which I
posted up a few lines ago. I don't pretend to understand ibogaine and
I didn't see kroupa on NBC where he's interviewed about it. But its
definitely not a "be in" 2001 version, its a entire research project
about addiction.
> >you like Gibson or I think you do since you quote him
> >constantly, compare your birthdate and birthplace with his and his
> >work means something to you. Has Gibson ascended to heaven or is he a
> >wealthy writer now who has grown out of touch with the motivations for
> >where he started?
>
> he was also born in the same state as i was... I respect the fact that
> he put together some thing "new" -- something which turned a few heads
> and planted the seeds which soon bore fruit both in technology and
> socially
True. I agree.
> >My point was, it's not only Kroupa or Barlow, but others who have gone
> >further over into this line of exploration which as you began your
> >message with "is not your edge" so is that cyberpunk or not and what
> >does that mean.
>
> look at the basic definition: high tech -- low life.
>
> where is the *tech* in what the brain hackers have done? the CIA did
> more in the 1950's with their LSD experiments than most of the
> psychonauts have at least in the way the CIA objectively documented
> their experiments of "induced mental illness".
>
> The psychonaut's work plays with the wiring but does not "interface"
> to anything except themselves. the worlds they "discover" do not
> interface or translate to this one. what use has the street found for
> it 'cept "lets get high"? NM looked at it that way. drugs weren't
> technology-- they were recreation.
The uses the street is finding for ibogaine is to get people off the
street who are stuck there and can't stop doing heroin or crack :-)
Long trip from african rainforest to cyberpunks who are junkies and
want to reset their wiring using some tribe's sacrement :-)
>
> thanks for the questions... it got me thinking...
Likewise.
synergy
Johnny Fusion =11811=
Subject: Re: What future?
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
References: <1103_997878246@oemcomputer> <4ece1cd6.01082...@posting.google.com> <hvqjotoa93li8q8tj...@4ax.com> <trminlx-2708...@user-33qto60.dialup.mindspring.com> <5ecb2bec.01082...@posting.google.com> <4ece1cd6.01082...@posting.google.com> <trminlx-2808...@user-33qtqdf.dialup.mindspring.com>
Organization:
ghost <trm...@bitstreamnet.com> wrote:
: It doesn't matter what Cyberpunk means anymore, or what is or isn't
: cyberpunk. It's just a word used at one point to describe something new.
: And now the genre is all but dead, the literary side is all but dead, the
: movie side always was only half alive and the people in the underground
: never cared what they were.
I always contended that Cyberpunk was leading to something else...
now that CP is seemingly in its death-throes what was our offshoot? Did it
happen, are we left behind?
: That's my whole point. We're here because we can congregate on similar
: ground and kick around ideas and maybe do stuff... it doesn't matter that
: we're in alt.cyberpunk anymore - it's not what we call it, it's what we
: do.
If we are busy *doing* stuff, we wouldn't be posting here. :)
: Is it cyberpunk? fuck if I care. At one point yes I did, I wanted to be
: part of the great cyberpunk thing - I had no idea what that thing was. I
: still don't. But I do know that it doesn't matter.
Ah the sign of a TRUE CYBERPUNK (tm). COngratulations you made it. Feel
free to print out your own Cyberpunk membership card.
: We're in here because we started on similar ground and then some of us
: moved on, some of us stayed the same, some of may have even regressed.
Moved on, but still checking in from time to time...
: Maybe we need a manifesto.. yeah - all cool movements have them.
Sure! Manifesti (what *is* the plural of 'manifesto'?) are neccessary for
a movement's continued appearance of relevance.
-- Johnny
--
/// /// ///\\\ /// /// Johnny Fusion
*** || || \\\/// || || *** =11811=
*** || || ///\\\ || || *** <jfu...@xs4all.nl>
#### #### \\\/// #### #### http://www.xs4all.nl/~jfusion
Johnny Fusion =11811=
: What'd you expect, a sudden arrival from MIAs flooding alt.cp? That
: would be very un-cp :-)
-- Or howabout just a trickle? Not that anyone remembers me. The only
familiar face I've seen is Source...
ghost
<jfu...@xs3.xs4all.nl> wrote:
> From: Johnny Fusion =11811= <jfu...@xs3.xs4all.nl>
> Subject: Re: What future?
> Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
> References: <1103_997878246@oemcomputer>
<4ece1cd6.01082...@posting.google.com>
<hvqjotoa93li8q8tj...@4ax.com>
<trminlx-2708...@user-33qto60.dialup.mindspring.com>
<5ecb2bec.01082...@posting.google.com>
<4ece1cd6.01082...@posting.google.com>
<trminlx-2808...@user-33qtqdf.dialup.mindspring.com>
> Organization:
>
> ghost <trm...@bitstreamnet.com> wrote:
>
> : It doesn't matter what Cyberpunk means anymore, or what is or isn't
> : cyberpunk. It's just a word used at one point to describe something new.
>
> : And now the genre is all but dead, the literary side is all but dead, the
> : movie side always was only half alive and the people in the underground
> : never cared what they were.
>
> I always contended that Cyberpunk was leading to something else...
> now that CP is seemingly in its death-throes what was our offshoot? Did it
> happen, are we left behind?
don't know... lost track somewhere back in 97 of most of reality.
> : That's my whole point. We're here because we can congregate on similar
> : ground and kick around ideas and maybe do stuff... it doesn't matter that
> : we're in alt.cyberpunk anymore - it's not what we call it, it's what we
> : do.
>
> If we are busy *doing* stuff, we wouldn't be posting here. :)
This is doing stuff.. it's just more passive than other stuff.. going out
costs money - I spent all that on the giant stack of CDs in the other
room. I'm glad I don't smoke or have a drug habit.. I'd never get a hit
after the weekly visit to the music store.
> : Is it cyberpunk? fuck if I care. At one point yes I did, I wanted to be
> : part of the great cyberpunk thing - I had no idea what that thing was. I
> : still don't. But I do know that it doesn't matter.
>
> Ah the sign of a TRUE CYBERPUNK (tm). COngratulations you made it. Feel
> free to print out your own Cyberpunk membership card.
is there a secret handshake? I'm not joinging if there isn't one you know.
All cool clubs have them....
> : We're in here because we started on similar ground and then some of us
> : moved on, some of us stayed the same, some of may have even regressed.
>
> Moved on, but still checking in from time to time...
>
> : Maybe we need a manifesto.. yeah - all cool movements have them.
>
> Sure! Manifesti (what *is* the plural of 'manifesto'?) are neccessary for
> a movement's continued appearance of relevance.
I was joking - but you probably knew that.. see this is what I get for
posting after being awake for 34 hours and spending 23 of that at work.
Manifesto's
Manifesti
Manifestes
oh who knows.. I'm all confused now.
Eugene Mosburg
>Subject: Re: What future?
>Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
>References: <1103_997878246@oemcomputer> <4ece1cd6.01082...@posting.google.com> <hvqjotoa93li8q8tj...@4ax.com> <trminlx-2708...@user-33qto60.dialup.mindspring.com> <5ecb2bec.01082...@posting.google.com> <4ece1cd6.01082...@posting.google.com> <trminlx-2808...@user-33qtqdf.dialup.mindspring.com>
>Organization:
>
>ghost <trm...@bitstreamnet.com> wrote:
>: Is it cyberpunk? fuck if I care. At one point yes I did, I wanted to be
>: part of the great cyberpunk thing - I had no idea what that thing was. I
>: still don't. But I do know that it doesn't matter.
>
>Ah the sign of a TRUE CYBERPUNK (tm). COngratulations you made it. Feel
>free to print out your own Cyberpunk membership card.
We're caught in a dilemma if we're in the for the literature instead of
the "movement" thang ... because the characters who caught our attention
most were not "movement" types ... pull your favorite titles off the
shelf when the mood hits, and you'll have spent your time better than
wondering if your insights conformed to a much-debated ideology.
Visionary intensity and imagination attract and fascinate: by the time
we start calling something a movement ... it has begun to calcify.
Bill The Dead Cat
> sicarius <d...@null.com> wrote in message news:<0bkoot8vudviqfk3q...@4ax.com>...
> > On 28 Aug 2001 09:48:09 -0700, syn...@whoever.com (John Doe) wrote:
> >
> > >sicarius <d...@null.com> wrote in message news:<ll0mot4bvn2tsrpdv...@4ax.com>...
> >
> > [snip't]
This is all really interesting, without being sarcastic, it really is.
The main points I get out of all of it is. It takes a lot of money to
be afford a $1,000 a day drug habit. Out of all the things all these
people did, Kroupa, Fancher, etc, the one thing they did was get paid.
Mindvox was never this secret hacker thing, it was best described as a
atomic bomb of marketing, starting with Overture, which was press
release worked up to the level of art and has turned into literature.
Neat trick and not so easy to do.
Mindvox media kit scrolls forever. Where has Mindvox appeared since
the website relaunched, on coolsites, macromedia and the Core Stalking
the New Economy listing, where it breaks down the highest hitting
URLs, what's hit like crazy? Fucked Company, Urban Expose and Mindvox.
Kroupa is seriously talented, he's also the god of pr, Fancher runs
companies that make cash like crazy and Drew Ross is yet another
nutcase with talent but none of them work for free. The fact that they
can work up that level of interest from a site that isn't open, where
the only content is Kroupa stringing together stream of consciousness
rants, would tell me that wherever they're going, destination
mainstream. No subculture where a few hundred people like what they're
doing is going to pay the bills on what they're starting.
'Will all this revitalize cyberpunk' I'd think is somewhere at the
bottom of their list of interests.
My .02 cents. And not meant to detract from the convo you guys had
going here. Timothy Leary's dead, long live the New Timothy Leary
isn't so wrong IMHO.
ghost
you got a point there.. they still gotta pays the bills and when your
bills include '$20000 for snacks this month' you gotta have a monster
job... and to get a monster job you gotta have talent.. so whatever
they're doing they WANT to go mainstream to hit the big market to afford
that snack bar.
It's the people with no addictions, no expenses and come pre-fucking in
the head that can run an underground concept without funding.
I don't put them down for that, you can't really, it's ingenious. Start
something, make something of it and move onto the something that gets you
the cash - always has been the business plan through the ages.
that and look at this way... for a subcultures ideals to infect and affect
an entire society that subculture will at some point in it's life have to
become mainstream and common knowledge - which is where it is most
vulnerable to the shifting of it's ideals, which is what those in the
culture probably tried to avoid in the first place. But if even a few of
the hardcore ideals made it into society you succeeded to a degree - what
do you want total domination or something?
Vector 6
> In article <93b2f56.01090...@posting.google.com>,
> derez2...@yahoo.com (Bill The Dead Cat) wrote:
>
> > syn...@whoever.com (John Doe) wrote in message
> news:<4ece1cd6.01082...@posting.google.com>...
> > > sicarius <d...@null.com> wrote in message
> news:<0bkoot8vudviqfk3q...@4ax.com>...
> > > > On 28 Aug 2001 09:48:09 -0700, syn...@whoever.com (John Doe) wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >sicarius <d...@null.com> wrote in message
> news:<ll0mot4bvn2tsrpdv...@4ax.com>...
> > > >
> > > > [snip't]
> >
> >
> > This is all really interesting, without being sarcastic, it really is.
> >
> > The main points I get out of all of it is. It takes a lot of money to
> > be afford a $1,000 a day drug habit. Out of all the things all these
> > people did, Kroupa, Fancher, etc, the one thing they did was get paid.
> > Mindvox was never this secret hacker thing, it was best described as a
> > atomic bomb of marketing, starting with Overture, which was press
> > release worked up to the level of art and has turned into literature.
> > Neat trick and not so easy to do.
No doubt.
> >
> > Mindvox media kit scrolls forever. Where has Mindvox appeared since
> > the website relaunched, on coolsites, macromedia and the Core Stalking
> > the New Economy listing, where it breaks down the highest hitting
> > URLs, what's hit like crazy? Fucked Company, Urban Expose and Mindvox.
> >
BTW, looking for MIAs? You I think posted fuckedco as a good place to
start, no shit. Ex Legion of Doom members, Mindvox and security firms.
Know who runs Urban Expose? John Lee from MOD, aka Corrupt aka netw1z.
Another movement posterboy, Wired cover posterboy too.
Want to know what happened to a lot of the players from Law and
Disorder on the Electronic Frontier, check that exactly, Fuckedco,
Mindvox, Urban Expose.
> what do you want total domination or something?
>
> g/f
Why not?
.:vector:.
ghost
vec...@space.com (Vector 6) wrote:
> > what do you want total domination or something?
> >
> > g/f
>
> Why not?
sounds too much like work to me... what do you do when you've got it? the
Administration's gotta be a bitch to deal with. Not for me. I just like
hiding in the shadows where you can't see me.
Morbid Curiosity
news:trminlx-3108...@user-33qtpco.dialup.mindspring.com...
Work is the mind-killer. Work is the death that brings total obliteration.
I must face my work. Buggrit.
> Manifesto's
> Manifesti
> Manifestes
> oh who knows.. I'm all confused now.
(d) None of the above: "manifestos" or "manifestoes".
Yay for the wacky English language :-)
Morbid
ghost
<morbid.does...@gothik.org> wrote:
yeah. I love this language. it's a wonder we haven't killed each other all
off through misunderstandings alone.
alie...@hotmail.com
> seems the general concensus is "Yep, it's dead."
>
> So why are we still here? Why do we still try and take part in a dead genre?
>
> Same reason we came here in the first place, to try and take part in
> something new. We're just keeping the name I have a feeling.
I agree; the name remains but none of the newsgroups I have visited has
ever had the same spread in topics and interests, all while being on topic.
Time change and so do we. The underlying interests, such as te Edge, Arts
meeting Tech etc, remains in my view the real foundation here.
> Just because we're in a group called alt.cyberpunk doesn't mean we have to
> stick to the traditional shit.. that's the whole point of cyberpunk - go
> out, get something new. Find that new edge. Find that new something. Like
> Leggy Starlitz from Sterlings stories - he's always moving around and
> doing something new and different. From smuggling birth control to
> managing a Japanese Girl Pop Punk Band...
I had the impression that Leggy Starlitz was the personification of the
zeitgeist. I haven't read those books but I hear there are some odd
features about that character, something about it being impossible to
take a picture of him. Did I get that right?
> And we all hand out here because we're all into trying something new and
> opening up and being something else to do something else.... and what
> better way than to find a place, settle down with some near like-minded
> people and see what happens.
The people is a big part of the attraction to any newsgroup and this one
is as varied as anything I have come across. Some leave but many reappear.
Just for fun I read a few old cyberpunk ezines (Linenoiz etc) and some
old pulp stories (The Shadow) and is continuously reminded how little we
have progressed fundamentally, as opposed to superficially.
That is one of the reasons I guess anomie is the next big one. Funny thing
is, that is not new either, just check out some of Asimov's Foundation
stories.
==<)
Monkey Doctor
wrote:
>And it's still not here. Maybe I don't know exactly what I'm looking for
>but that 'edge' is not in here. We live the future they have in those
>books. Interconnected at light speed. The games I played 8-10 years ago
>only imagined some of the stuff I do on a daily basis to earn a wage...
Call me a cynic but I think there is no "edge" *anywhere* at the
moment. The last time I experienced something that was even vaguely
rebellious or threatening to mainstream society was the emergence of
rave culture in the UK in the late 80's early 90's.
Music is always a good indicator of social rebellion - and the 50's
through to the 90's had bursts - Punk, Flower Power, Rock'n'Roll. You
name me something new that has any ideals behind it. Punk has been
remarketed; Nu-Metal could have been something but the execs cleaned
it up too quick...
It looks like rebellion has been co-opted and market-reseached. The
only hope I see is in the emergent counter-media springing up on the
web, that are showing things that the powers that be want to conceal.
Cyberpunk is now; thats why there's no edge here. It's like talking
about the weather.
MD
--
Seek and Destroy; Smile and Obey.
--
MD Hub page: www.beresfordj.freeserve.co.uk
Follow the #ACC link for stories and the #ACC Character Database
ghost
alie...@hotmail.com wrote:
> trm...@bitstreamnet.com (ghost) wrote in message
news:<trminlx-2808...@user-33qtopp.dialup.mindspring.com>...
> > seems the general concensus is "Yep, it's dead."
> >
> > So why are we still here? Why do we still try and take part in a dead genre?
> >
> > Same reason we came here in the first place, to try and take part in
> > something new. We're just keeping the name I have a feeling.
>
> I agree; the name remains but none of the newsgroups I have visited has
> ever had the same spread in topics and interests, all while being on topic.
> Time change and so do we. The underlying interests, such as te Edge, Arts
> meeting Tech etc, remains in my view the real foundation here.
>
> > Just because we're in a group called alt.cyberpunk doesn't mean we have to
> > stick to the traditional shit.. that's the whole point of cyberpunk - go
> > out, get something new. Find that new edge. Find that new something. Like
> > Leggy Starlitz from Sterlings stories - he's always moving around and
> > doing something new and different. From smuggling birth control to
> > managing a Japanese Girl Pop Punk Band...
>
> I had the impression that Leggy Starlitz was the personification of the
> zeitgeist. I haven't read those books but I hear there are some odd
> features about that character, something about it being impossible to
> take a picture of him. Did I get that right?
yeah. cameras sort of fail when they point at him.. picture goes fuzzy,
film ruined, feed interupted, somehow no tape was in the machine..
> > And we all hand out here because we're all into trying something new and
> > opening up and being something else to do something else.... and what
> > better way than to find a place, settle down with some near like-minded
> > people and see what happens.
>
> The people is a big part of the attraction to any newsgroup and this one
> is as varied as anything I have come across. Some leave but many reappear.
> Just for fun I read a few old cyberpunk ezines (Linenoiz etc) and some
> old pulp stories (The Shadow) and is continuously reminded how little we
> have progressed fundamentally, as opposed to superficially.
>
> That is one of the reasons I guess anomie is the next big one. Funny thing
> is, that is not new either, just check out some of Asimov's Foundation
> stories.
I'll have to break them out again.. damn, been like a decade since I even
cracked the cover on them..
and to MD:
Hip-Hop almost made it as the next culture pounding music scene but was
incorporated into that 'gangsta-rap' scene even faster than Nu-Metal was
toned down bu the Mega's...
I agree Alias, we do have on of the widest topic scales I've ever seen
because out topic seems to be 'Modern and Near Future Society' which takes
in just about everything you can imagine.
One of the things about the people in here is that we all tend to track,
search and look through large amounts of information from tech, modern war
and political scene, ecomic, medical and on down the line and looks for
connections. A lost of groups and organizations will focus on one specific
area and limit themselves to how that field is advancing or changing while
those in here are more interested in how any changes will start effecting
things. How will an invention in this place affect the situation there
under these conditions brought out by the economy in that other area...
We're taking an interest at a global scale, finding our own use for what
we see, hear and buy.
Nitrous Oxide
> vec...@space.com (Vector 6) wrote:
>
>
> > > what do you want total domination or something?
> > >
> > > g/f
> >
> > Why not?
>
> sounds too much like work to me... what do you do when you've got it? the
> Administration's gotta be a bitch to deal with. Not for me. I just like
> hiding in the shadows where you can't see me.
>
> g/f
Hrmmmmm... just finished all the mindvox, mia, ibogaine, old school cp
threads.
Couple of thoughts from somebody who's much more into the drugs trip
then cyberpunk, I like computers I use them but like someone said in
one of the threads it's not my edge it's just computers and I have a
hard time getting worked up about them.
I refound Mindvox through the drugs groups that someone else dissed
out, through ibogaine research and he's the one running it which made
me re hit phantom.com after 5 years. It's all major eye candy, love
the cyberpunk psychedelic look and feel but I don't care much about
what it does for drug addiction, I'm not doing any drugs I want to
stop :^) I'd love to trip on ibo but the hcl is so hard to find it's
not funny and the shit sold over the internet I've had no good reports
on.
People looking for some edge good luck, it keeps changing and moving.
Kroupa writes some awesome shit but most of the ibo stuff to me is
whatever, he's got a agenda and they all want to go to war to legalize
it and I get that, if ibogaine gave me back my life I'd like it too.
The coolest shit I've seen on ibogaine was in Wastelands which came
out last month and has the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse interviews
and Kroupa's was some hysterical shit, because he got real instead of
the ibogaine hype material, about drugs, the rise and fall of mindvox,
cyberpunk, the future. FWIW in that interview he lists his fave
writers as Bukowski, Nelson Algren and Sam Shepard. Two of those three
I never heard of until I looked them up. The one book by Charles
Bukowski I read I didn't like for that matter.
Whatever they do if people are interesting they get heard, if you ever
look up kroupa and fancher at the NIC, you get a list of domains that
goes sideways into more domains and aliases and you have over 100
registered to them, most of them not drug or hacking oriented. With
the exceptions of mindvox and ibogaine research I think none of them
drug or hacking oriented in fact.
Urban Expose is some funny shit too. John Lee started the whole LOD
vs. MOD war because he claimed erikb dissed out blacks. Urban Expose
was on every black hitlist for almost a year as this site run by
prejudiced whites who hate blacks and want to make fun of them. Which
is all UE does, it dishes dirt on black celebs, sports figures,
rappers. The irony of course is that Corrupt is black and made his
prior claim to fame by claiming he was being dissed out for that.
All this is recorded in Phrack, a underground hacker mag with an ISBN
# and available at the Library of Congress before Wired existed.
Everything changes, everything is the same. There are people who make
shit happen, people who watch shit happen and people who wonder what
happened. If you're interesting, you get heard, if you're not you can
have long convos about the purity of a "subculture" on usenet 8^)
Peace out
Bill The Dead Cat
> > In article <5ecb2bec.01090...@posting.google.com>,
> > vec...@space.com (Vector 6) wrote:
> >
> >
> > > > what do you want total domination or something?
> > > >
> > > > g/f
> > >
> > > Why not?
> >
> > sounds too much like work to me... what do you do when you've got it? the
> > Administration's gotta be a bitch to deal with. Not for me. I just like
> > hiding in the shadows where you can't see me.
> >
> > g/f
>
> Kroupa writes some awesome shit but most of the ibo stuff to me is
> whatever, he's got a agenda and they all want to go to war to legalize
> it and I get that, if ibogaine gave me back my life I'd like it too.
> The coolest shit I've seen on ibogaine was in Wastelands which came
> out last month and has the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse interviews
> and Kroupa's was some hysterical shit, because he got real instead of
> the ibogaine hype material, about drugs, the rise and fall of mindvox,
> cyberpunk, the future. FWIW in that interview he lists his fave
> writers as Bukowski, Nelson Algren and Sam Shepard. Two of those three
> I never heard of until I looked them up. The one book by Charles
> Bukowski I read I didn't like for that matter.
Bukowski is one of the worst writers in the history of the world.
Algren one of the best, never heard of Sam Shepard though google says
he's a playwright.
I've never seen the wasteland issue, it's a magazine I know that I've
seen it at record stores but what is it's web site, wasteland comes up
on a S&M porn site.
> Whatever they do if people are interesting they get heard, if you ever
> look up kroupa and fancher at the NIC, you get a list of domains that
> goes sideways into more domains and aliases and you have over 100
> registered to them, most of them not drug or hacking oriented. With
> the exceptions of mindvox and ibogaine research I think none of them
> drug or hacking oriented in fact.
It's all about the benjamins baby.
> Urban Expose is some funny shit too. John Lee started the whole LOD
> vs. MOD war because he claimed erikb dissed out blacks. Urban Expose
> was on every black hitlist for almost a year as this site run by
> prejudiced whites who hate blacks and want to make fun of them. Which
> is all UE does, it dishes dirt on black celebs, sports figures,
> rappers. The irony of course is that Corrupt is black and made his
> prior claim to fame by claiming he was being dissed out for that.
Well at least you can never say he lied to you, his handle isn't
I'mAniceGuy, what did you expect from somebody who names themselves
Corrupt? At least he's living up to his ideals.
> Everything changes, everything is the same. There are people who make
> shit happen, people who watch shit happen and people who wonder what
> happened. If you're interesting, you get heard, if you're not you can
> have long convos about the purity of a "subculture" on usenet 8^)
And that's why we're all here. :-)
Alienthe
> Bill The Dead Cat <derez2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> : What'd you expect, a sudden arrival from MIAs flooding alt.cp? That
> : would be very un-cp :-)
>
> -- Or howabout just a trickle? Not that anyone remembers me. The only
> familiar face I've seen is Source...
It has been quite a rush actually and funnily enough it started
when Omar was asking where everyone was. Not su funny, Omar said
he was working in NYC, has anyone heard or seen him since?
BTW I rememebr you, but I used to lurk until recently so you
probably haven't seen post from me before.
==<)
Kevin Calder
<alie...@hotmail.com> writes
>Finally, got the time to reply in depth...
(me,2)
>Kevin Calder wrote:
I sure did.
>>
>> >In article <8a0pu4$129$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
>> > The Passenger <kca...@computing.dundee.ac.uk> wrote:
>> >> In article <38C2ADF1...@planetoftheapes.freeserve.co.uk>,
>> >> Tom Knight <kni...@planetoftheapes.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > kca...@computing.dundee.ac.uk wrote:
>> Seems all too true, do you think then that Gibson (and others) should
>> take this into account when picking material for their new novels? Or
>> should the concentrate on their artistry?
>I am glad you asked this question; it gives me an opportunity to
>saddle up one of my hobby hourses: that of artists and communication.
>Art is defined in numerous ways, the one I prefer is that art is the
>creative part of culture. Effective art has to take communications
>into consideration, particularly
> - the idea
> - the message/medium
> - the audience
Very pragmatic.
I agree most wholeheartedly.
>The problem is that a new/complex/revolutionary/alien idea is hard
>to bring across, sometimes a bit of subterfuge is required to slip
>the concept in under the radars/censors/prejudices
>To communicate you have to chose your means with care. This is
>where some are quick to exclaim that the medium is the message.
Well, it *can* be the message.
It doesn't have to be though.
>disagree somewhat. Various levels of symbolisms are used:
>
> - plain language:
Just tell them.
> - common symbolism:
Tell them using "Friends" analogy's.
> - deeper symbolisms:
Seek out the deep structures that unite the language of your concepts
and replicate them in other language for seemingly subliminal effect.
> - private symbolism:
Lie still, sleep becalmed,
Hide the mouth in the throat.
Or we shall obey,
and ride with you through the drowned.
>On this (excessively long) background I feel any artist should take
>their audience into consideration when crafting a message.
I presume that the reason you would recommend that artists take their
audience into consideration is avoid making bad art.
It is impossible to escape the fact that art is a form of communication.
But:
Must a work which shows awareness of this fact be superior to a similar
work which does not? It might be more durable, but does that
necessarily mean that it is superior to other similar, though less
durable works?
I don't think we can field arguments that justify hierarchies of
artistic worth, but, I believe we must specify them. If we don't
specify them we lose the use of objective, universal criticism. And I
think that objective, universal criticism is useful.
>> Seriously man, I *am* asking you a question about something you posted
>> more than a year ago :)
>Sure. Hope you don't mind me going around ina few wide circles around
>this topic then.
So long as you don't mind me doing likeywise.
>> <snip>
>> >I'd say the Matrix has upped the visual demands of the next high
>> >tech themed movies to be made. for instance I would not be
>> >surprised if Mission Impossible 2 now was being retrofitted with
>> >more vinyl clothing for the women, enormous coats for the guys
>> >and cools shades for everyone.
>> Didn't this actually happen?
>Do tell, I never saw it.
Didn't see it either.
I think you were right though :)
>> Wow, you prophet, you...
>It is scary to be concidered a prophed by predicting no change...
Don't barometers have a field marked "No Change"?
>> Do you think Gibson presents his work with any kind of philosophical
>> stand-point? His work seems a pretty neutral depiction to me.
>At the continuing risk of overanalysis;
The risk, my friend, is in underanalysis alone.
> I feel he works on a number
>of levels and does so rather well too:
> - literature renewal: he was enormously successful in reviving the
> unicorn infested science fiction literature.
It worked, but he used some pretty cheap tricks.
The sprawl books make for a pretty dated read these days.
They don't seem to abstract well from the 80's.
>Doing it by applying
> the pulp renewal of crime litterature of the 30's to the science
> fiction of the 80's does perhaps require some premeditated
> philosophising. Transferring the noir femme fatale into a high
> tech razorgirl in the shape of Molly was a stroke of genius, no
> wonder she is still the most discussed and anticipated of his
> characters.
True, but if that were all he did then I don't think we'd still be
discussing him. You mustn't forget that WG demonstrates that the beat
era never really died, it just stole a power-suit.
> - society depiction: stating that the culture of the future is
> the same as that of the 30's with added glitz is in my view a
> fundamental philosophical standpoint that still is not fully
> grasped. As an experiment: ask someone you know if we have
> advanced culturally the last 50 years. Most I have probed say
> yes but when asked 'how' you can literally see the cogwheels of
> their minds slipping into a totally new gear and realisation
> comes with hesitation.
Yah, very true.
There's that barometer reading again...
>> >> I don't really think that NM should have any of the gratuitous loud
>> >> music action scenes (nice tho they were) that the matrix had. In NM
>> >> when Case is getting chased by molly he doesn't run up walls while
>> >> firing two machine guns or start doing ultra-fast-kung-foo. He turns
>> >> tail and runs like fuck... I think that the combat should be played
>This is not unlike Deckard in Blade Runner; he is certainly not
>heroic, he is just in the middle of the action,
True, and as it turns out, Case is not unlike Deckard, so it seems
fitting that Case should perform no wall running or super fast kung-foo.
>I remember reading
>somewhere it was the computer effects guys who suggested to WmG what
>cyberspace (or Internet 2021) should look like. Sadly they had watched
>TRON one time too many.
Sadly?
Man, in my head the internet will *always* look like tron.
Are there still benefits of 3d representations (of the internet) and
doing things in real-time? Could Case beat the UberHaXXor's 3l33t
script?
>> >If you remove too much of the tech angle you are left with a 30's
>> >Dashiell Hammet story in the future, pulling that off without
>> >burning your audience is quite the challenge.
>> Do what Gibson does best, imply. Just don't linger on the tech, don't
>> masturbate with it.
>Well, I would imagine he would want to attract some audience to see
>his movie and a time reset might not cut the mustard.
?
Sorry? Time reset? :)
>> >You would still need messily gritty scenes where Molly disposes of
>> >various other low life in her particular style. I think the book
>> >used the phrase "died with a wet sound" or something similar. And
>> >here I would guess you can fit in a lot of loud music.
>> Good for the 'wet sound' club scene. I wouldn't want overdub music in
>> *my* NM film :)
>> ASIDE (I just finished a new album of funky tunes. It has one track
>> called "Goodnight Sweet Polly", and one called "js4smaug", so it must be
>> cyberpunk. Maybe *my* NM film will use *my* music. Howdya-likea-that?)
Sorry, "Goodnight Sweet Polly" got renamed to "Final Approach".
>Perhaps NM is best made on a shoe string budget by unknowns to avoid
>excessive expectations. What I would very much like to see, however,
>are cameos of everyone from the Movement. While I am fantasising, why
>not get all the regulars in alt.cyberpunk.* as extras in the Chatsubo?
Sounds like a recipe for disaster, but I'm game :)
Maybe there should be a whole number of independently made Neuromancers,
brought together on a DVD release. We could each do our own.
I'll go first.
I'll call when I'm done.
>> >Unlike Stephenson who gives you the genetic makeup of his main
>> >characters, WG's style is to hint in ways that make people use
>> >their imagination.
>> Its a sneaky trick, but a good one. If you are describing faces, there
>> are certain vague triggers you can use that prompt people to
>> unconsciously 'fill in the blanks'. The end result is that they get a
>> clear picture in their mind (of a face they made up themselves) and
>> attribute the clarity to your marvellous descriptive skill!
>I think that method accounts for much of the demographics of this
>newsgroup: people with or without the tech or arts but nearly always
>with imagination. Or am I stretching it again?
I was thinking about this recently, and got to thinking that maybe the
denizens of this group were the prototype for the new generation. The
general public are getting more and more like us! Look at them
strutting around with their cynical, secular technoliterate opinions!
They think they're us!
Well, maybe not.
<snip stuff about casting mol, which I agree with>
You realise its all this consensus which is killing this group :)
>A Hollywood production without a sex scene is unthinkable, especially
>as the is such a scene early on and descriptions of her career as a
>meat puppet.
Sex is pretty cp isn't it?
We can have lots of sex, but it doesn't have to be sexy.
Anyone seen Romance yet?
It has some pretty unsexy-sex in it.
Its rubbish though.
>(2)
>Another tangent: Iku, one of the latest (possibly) cyberpunk
>movies is fairly pornographic.
Looks interesting, might try to track down a DVD copy.
People are pretty pornographic too, y'know.
>> Having inset mirror shades and a funny hat isn't enough for her to be
>> classed as an "exotic" these days.
>Umm, more latex then? Anyway you could present strange body mods
>as an everyday thing of no interest, if only just to move the
>viewpoint of the audience around a bit.
Bloody audiences.
>> I don't think her fight sequences should be stylised either, I think
>> they should be harrowing. She fights quick n' dirty, and shows now
>> mercy, just cold professionalism.
>> I just can't think of any american actresses that could look
>> convincingly mean.
>Agreed.
Damn. This is going to be one boring response :)
>> True, I mostly meant the crappy eighties overdone dialogue.
>> Everything anyone sez in JM is kinda 'deep' and 'meaningful', and loaded
>> with rhetoric. Its so melodramatic it just makes me cringe. I wouldn't
>> want NM to be the same. Not that this damn film is ever going to get
>> made anyway!
>In Hollywood the alternative to deep meaningfulness is hip and cool
>one-liners...
Yah, or pretentiously intelligent, semi-formal dawson's creek\kevin
smith imitations.
I suppose we have to chose whether or not we are trying to represent (a
possible) reality or not. I watched "Fa talai jone " today.
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0269217
Its a surreal thai spagetti western.
No, really.
Not a word of realist dialogue in it, but all very fitting with the
style of the piece.
Do you think NM would survive a conceptual production?
Could we stylise all the dialogue using raymond chandler or Jack
Kerouac?
I think we better just do realistic dialogue.
(OMG: What am I talking about?)
>> >> clichés
Yah.
>> >> softened its once aggressive edge. The project was to involve a few
>> >> written pieces on the stylings and components of CP and screenplay and
>> >> short story which would act as exemplar to our findings. While the
>I'll have to reread it again. Do you have a website with your
>collected writings?
Nope, but I have all my failed projects on file somewhere.
Along with the doomed neurmancer faq :)
I'll do some digging and throw up some html some time soon.
It can be a page that timelines the many and various multi-collaborator
projects I've driven into the ground :)
>> >> other collaborators and I were working through it we came to the
>> >> conclusion that CP was pretty routed in the eighties and couldn't
>> >> really be re-created now. So the project was abandoned as far as the
>I see it somewhat differently. For a starter there are the renewal
>and settings/style.
I see the incorporation of the elements we discussed as devices that the
cp's used to communicate a message that was fundamentally tied to the
concerns of the 80's. I imagine that one of their "goals" was that they
set out to renew the genre, but as you say, the medium isn't the
message.
>Once again SF looks like settling down into well
>worn tracks, perhaps time for a re-renewal?
Well, a few weeks ago I would have probably said that I thought the west
was too apathetic to need to find a 'new way' to express its concerns,
but I think they may have woken up now.
>> > Why not rather look for Post-Pomo? Someone claimed to have
>> >found it in the Onion, my bet is that it is in Dark City.
How so?
Sorry, missed that one first time round? :)
>The time is ripe for change, yes? POMO was prematurely declared dead
>in a (spoof) article in the Onion, quoted widely on the net,
>including on NetTime. Apparently Bruce Sterling, who figured in the
>article, was amused. I cannot find a copy of the article anymore, does
>anyone here still have it?
>
>> Ok, modernism is (among other things) about rejection of classical form,
>> and moves toward "freeform" and "expressionist" traditions.
Well... I should also mention that it was the process whereby the
intellectual elite pulled the arts back from the hands of the masses and
returned them to the scholarly realm.
>> Post modernism is about (among other things) cynicism, and constant
>> criticism of everything! Its a bit of a backlash. Pomo stuff tends to
>> move toward minimalist or deconstructuralist goals, but only because its
>> so busy rejecting stuff.
>In the end it looks like overanalysing the text, extrapolating too
>far and ending up reading strange subtexts into the original works.
>John Shirley and other authors have criticised this practice.
It can get pretty contrived, and I often wonder what purpose it actually
serves.
>Another trend is to mix old concepts across old borders, even to
>the point of elements of various religions with each other.
Have you read Salmon Rushdie?
He does some fairly surreal (well, magic-realist really) things with
religion, mythology and the scar left on the east by Imperial Britian.
> Could
>this be the early stages of Post-POMO? This newsgroup has often
>discussed the Edge, strange Post-POMO has not been discussed more.
Maybe post-pomo is like getting to the edge and realising you imagined
the entire journey.
>> So what's post pomo? Is it when there is nothing left, all definitions
>> have been generalised and relativised so much that they are inherently
>> meaningless and we start again by reconstructing form?
>
>Perhaps Post-POMO comes about when POMO deconstructs and rejects
>itself.
> We could start with Alan Sokal's pseudo-POMO article. People
>are still laughing.
I have to agree with Sokal's intent.
I'm not to keen on the contrivances of post-modernism.
ah, weel...
--
Kevin Calder ((-+tpass), (The Passenger))
"trecking down the information superhighway (internet), i realize..........
i am lost in cyberspace.............yikes!!!!!!!!!!!" - Dick@aol
Kevin Calder
<james@no_spam_it_tastes_funny_beresfordj.freeserve.co.uk> writes
>On Mon, 27 Aug 2001 00:58:36 -0600, trm...@bitstreamnet.com (ghost)
>wrote:
>
>>And it's still not here. Maybe I don't know exactly what I'm looking for
>>but that 'edge' is not in here. We live the future they have in those
>>books. Interconnected at light speed. The games I played 8-10 years ago
>>only imagined some of the stuff I do on a daily basis to earn a wage...
>
>Call me a cynic but I think there is no "edge" *anywhere* at the
>moment.
Call me a cynic, but I think there is no "edge", full stop.
The Avante Garde is a peculiar myth that haunts those who devote
themselves to pursuing vague, imprecise meritorial systems. Your fringe
might well be my well trodden cliche. And throwing around nebulous big
concept words like "edge" only makes things worse. The "What is
Cyberpunk" debate killed the word. If you can't define the words you
are using then you clearly can't know what you are saying.
BTW: When I say "you" and "your", I'm not referring to you MD. I'm
just thinking out aloud.
hf,
Alienthe
This thread is getting epic. At this rate we will need a
zine ("Expensive Lies", eh?) a movement and a few books
and we'll be on a roll...
>>The problem is that a new/complex/revolutionary/alien idea is hard
>>to bring across, sometimes a bit of subterfuge is required to slip
>>the concept in under the radars/censors/prejudices
>>
>
>>To communicate you have to chose your means with care. This is
>>where some are quick to exclaim that the medium is the message.
>>
>
> Well, it *can* be the message.
> It doesn't have to be though.
Exactly. Nevertheless it seems to me many do equate meduim and
message. I wonder if they ever got a nicely wrapped up Christmas
gift, lots of nice paper and ribbons...and nothing inside.
>>disagree somewhat. Various levels of symbolisms are used:
>>
>>- plain language:
>>
>
> Just tell them.
>
>
>>- common symbolism:
>>
>
> Tell them using "Friends" analogy's.
>
>
>>- deeper symbolisms:
>>
>
> Seek out the deep structures that unite the language of your concepts
> and replicate them in other language for seemingly subliminal effect.
>
>
>>- private symbolism:
>>
>
> Lie still, sleep becalmed,
> Hide the mouth in the throat.
> Or we shall obey,
> and ride with you through the drowned.
>
>
>>On this (excessively long) background I feel any artist should take
>>their audience into consideration when crafting a message.
>>
>
> I presume that the reason you would recommend that artists take their
> audience into consideration is avoid making bad art.
I think it is more complicated than that, in my view the "goodness"
or art, or a work of art, is orthogonal to the communicative
qualities, the ability to bring the idea across. THis might be the
reason why some artists are only discovered long after their death.
> It is impossible to escape the fact that art is a form of communication.
Very true.
> But:
>
> Must a work which shows awareness of this fact be superior to a similar
> work which does not? It might be more durable, but does that
> necessarily mean that it is superior to other similar, though less
> durable works?
Such awareness makes the art have an immediate effect. Still, artists
are often uncompromisisng, and might very well refuse to pander to the
lowest common denominator (which is mighty low too) and rather let the
works await a more deserving audience. Therefore I wouldn't say
communicative awareness makes it superior, rather it is a separate
aspect of it.
> I don't think we can field arguments that justify hierarchies of
> artistic worth, but, I believe we must specify them. If we don't
> specify them we lose the use of objective, universal criticism. And I
> think that objective, universal criticism is useful.
Taxonomy or artistic quality is hairy, especially as concepts change
and new ones appear. Recently I heard that the concept of "Nature"
didn't exist 100 years ago. Instead forests, rivers and so on were
viewed as untapped natural resources awaiting someone sufficiently
enterprising. Other ideas are also new and more will likely appear.
>>>Seriously man, I *am* asking you a question about something you posted
>>>more than a year ago :)
>
>>Sure. Hope you don't mind me going around ina few wide circles around
>>this topic then.
>
> So long as you don't mind me doing likeywise.
No problems. In fact it is better to build on old threads than
just restarting old ones from scratch.
>>><snip>
>>>
>>>>I'd say the Matrix has upped the visual demands of the next high
>>>>tech themed movies to be made. for instance I would not be
>>>>surprised if Mission Impossible 2 now was being retrofitted with
>>>>more vinyl clothing for the women, enormous coats for the guys
>>>>and cools shades for everyone.
>>>>
>>>Didn't this actually happen?
>
>>Do tell, I never saw it.
>
> Didn't see it either.
> I think you were right though :)
Noone else in this newsgroup has commented either so I guess it
didn't appeal to this audience.
>>>Wow, you prophet, you...
>
>>It is scary to be concidered a prophed by predicting no change...
>
> Don't barometers have a field marked "No Change"?
Mine says "Change" but I guess I'll "upgrade" it now...
>>>Do you think Gibson presents his work with any kind of philosophical
>>>stand-point? His work seems a pretty neutral depiction to me.
>
>>At the continuing risk of overanalysis;
>
> The risk, my friend, is in underanalysis alone.
>
>
>>I feel he works on a number
>>of levels and does so rather well too:
>>- literature renewal: he was enormously successful in reviving the
>> unicorn infested science fiction literature.
>>
>
> It worked, but he used some pretty cheap tricks.
> The sprawl books make for a pretty dated read these days.
> They don't seem to abstract well from the 80's.
Few things date quicker than science fiction. Still, as the stated
goal was to change the science fiction genre of the day they could
afford to become dated. After all Sterling hoped a new generation
would take over cyberpunk for the 90's. I am not sure he has made
any conclusions on the 90's or even hopes about this decade.
Meanwhile, over on John Shirley's message board he feels that
the world is returning to his visions 20 years ago. Clearly
even the future is dated by the time it appears.
>>Doing it by applying
>> the pulp renewal of crime litterature of the 30's to the science
>> fiction of the 80's does perhaps require some premeditated
>> philosophising. Transferring the noir femme fatale into a high
>> tech razorgirl in the shape of Molly was a stroke of genius, no
>> wonder she is still the most discussed and anticipated of his
>> characters.
>
> True, but if that were all he did then I don't think we'd still be
> discussing him. You mustn't forget that WG demonstrates that the beat
> era never really died, it just stole a power-suit.
The pulp style prose of adjective/adverbial abuse in shades of
purple is also faithfully reproduces so pulp didn't die either.
Just for fun I have been reading a few Shadow pulp stories from
the 30's and they are as readable today as they were 70 years
ago.
>>- society depiction: stating that the culture of the future is
>> the same as that of the 30's with added glitz is in my view a
>> fundamental philosophical standpoint that still is not fully
>> grasped. As an experiment: ask someone you know if we have
>> advanced culturally the last 50 years. Most I have probed say
>> yes but when asked 'how' you can literally see the cogwheels of
>> their minds slipping into a totally new gear and realisation
>> comes with hesitation.
>
> Yah, very true.
> There's that barometer reading again...
>
>
>>>>>I don't really think that NM should have any of the gratuitous loud
>>>>>music action scenes (nice tho they were) that the matrix had. In NM
>>>>>when Case is getting chased by molly he doesn't run up walls while
>>>>>firing two machine guns or start doing ultra-fast-kung-foo. He turns
>>>>>tail and runs like fuck... I think that the combat should be played
>>>>>
>
>>This is not unlike Deckard in Blade Runner; he is certainly not
>>heroic, he is just in the middle of the action,
>
> True, and as it turns out, Case is not unlike Deckard, so it seems
> fitting that Case should perform no wall running or super fast kung-foo.
Case pulling off a few ultrafast stunts in the virtual world would
be acceptable, WmG even makes a point of the accellerated timeframe
when flatlined. Case doing matrix-fu in real world would not be good.
Rather he would run for it and still need help.
>>I remember reading
>>somewhere it was the computer effects guys who suggested to WmG what
>>cyberspace (or Internet 2021) should look like. Sadly they had watched
>>TRON one time too many.
>
> Sadly?
> Man, in my head the internet will *always* look like tron.
This is a natural effect of WmG's prose: everyone has a different idea
what it looks like. To me it would be more wireframes and abstract
symbols in 3D and less full colour gouraud shaded objects. If VR were
to be ultrarealistic you would be able to lose important notes in a
virtual drawer and so on. VR is to me about functionality. Then again
I prefer trn and grep for reading news, especially now that my
Netscape browser blew up the database, kindly informing me I have
about -5 unread messages.
> Are there still benefits of 3d representations (of the internet) and
> doing things in real-time? Could Case beat the UberHaXXor's 3l33t
> script?
There are just a few I could think of, mostly when visualising
large numbers of interconnections such as networks or document
interrelationships, applications where interconnections are
numerous.
>>>>If you remove too much of the tech angle you are left with a 30's
>>>>Dashiell Hammet story in the future, pulling that off without
>>>>burning your audience is quite the challenge.
>>>>
>
>>>Do what Gibson does best, imply. Just don't linger on the tech, don't
>>>masturbate with it.
>>>
>
>>Well, I would imagine he would want to attract some audience to see
>>his movie and a time reset might not cut the mustard.
>>
>
> ?
>
> Sorry? Time reset? :)
Resetting time to 1930's with a sprinkle of tech might work with
the readers in this groups but would probably be a box office
disasters. The produces wery helpfully catered to the Gibsonally
impaired (yuck!) and will no doubt prevent this. Stephenson
writing about a Victorian future would probably also get some
"help" in the scriptwriting process.
>>>>You would still need messily gritty scenes where Molly disposes of
>>>>various other low life in her particular style. I think the book
>>>>used the phrase "died with a wet sound" or something similar. And
>>>>here I would guess you can fit in a lot of loud music.
>
>>>Good for the 'wet sound' club scene. I wouldn't want overdub music in
>>>*my* NM film :)
>
>>>ASIDE (I just finished a new album of funky tunes. It has one track
>>>called "Goodnight Sweet Polly", and one called "js4smaug", so it must be
>>>cyberpunk. Maybe *my* NM film will use *my* music. Howdya-likea-that?)
>
> Sorry, "Goodnight Sweet Polly" got renamed to "Final Approach".
Is it online?
>>Perhaps NM is best made on a shoe string budget by unknowns to avoid
>>excessive expectations. What I would very much like to see, however,
>>are cameos of everyone from the Movement. While I am fantasising, why
>>not get all the regulars in alt.cyberpunk.* as extras in the Chatsubo?
>>
>
> Sounds like a recipe for disaster, but I'm game :)
When heading for disaster one should always travel first class.
> Maybe there should be a whole number of independently made Neuromancers,
> brought together on a DVD release. We could each do our own.
>
> I'll go first.
>
> I'll call when I'm done.
We will also need a manifesto...
>>>>Unlike Stephenson who gives you the genetic makeup of his main
>>>>characters, WG's style is to hint in ways that make people use
>>>>their imagination.
>>>>
>>>Its a sneaky trick, but a good one. If you are describing faces, there
>>>are certain vague triggers you can use that prompt people to
>>>unconsciously 'fill in the blanks'. The end result is that they get a
>>>clear picture in their mind (of a face they made up themselves) and
>>>attribute the clarity to your marvellous descriptive skill!
>
>>I think that method accounts for much of the demographics of this
>>newsgroup: people with or without the tech or arts but nearly always
>>with imagination. Or am I stretching it again?
>
> I was thinking about this recently, and got to thinking that maybe the
> denizens of this group were the prototype for the new generation. The
> general public are getting more and more like us! Look at them
> strutting around with their cynical, secular technoliterate opinions!
> They think they're us!
>
> Well, maybe not.
Not everyone can be in the Elite ("Right on", commanders!)
> <snip stuff about casting mol, which I agree with>
> You realise its all this consensus which is killing this group :)
Absolutely. In fact you just smoked my agree-o-meter.
>>A Hollywood production without a sex scene is unthinkable, especially
>>as the is such a scene early on and descriptions of her career as a
>>meat puppet.
>
> Sex is pretty cp isn't it?
I am barely resisting commenting on virtuality here...
Come to think of it Lawnmover Man tried some cybersex. It
didn't work.
> We can have lots of sex, but it doesn't have to be sexy.
> Anyone seen Romance yet?
I haven't.
> It has some pretty unsexy-sex in it.
> Its rubbish though.
>
>
>>(2)
>>Another tangent: Iku, one of the latest (possibly) cyberpunk
>>movies is fairly pornographic.
>
> Looks interesting, might try to track down a DVD copy.
> People are pretty pornographic too, y'know.
True. Social pornography is rampant too.
>>>Having inset mirror shades and a funny hat isn't enough for her to be
>>>classed as an "exotic" these days.
>>>
>
>>Umm, more latex then? Anyway you could present strange body mods
>>as an everyday thing of no interest, if only just to move the
>>viewpoint of the audience around a bit.
>
> Bloody audiences.
It might make a fashion statement too. This extends to more than
just clothing. I was told that after "Basic Instinct" they sold
unexpectedly many silk handkerchieves, presumably for tie up their
partner in bed with. Hopefully ice picks were not equally popular.
>>>I don't think her fight sequences should be stylised either, I think
>>>they should be harrowing. She fights quick n' dirty, and shows now
>>>mercy, just cold professionalism.
>>>I just can't think of any american actresses that could look
>>>convincingly mean.
>
>>Agreed.
>
> Damn. This is going to be one boring response :)
In terms of probability this thread passed SF a long time ago
and is now in the realm of fantasy. I think we are setting a
new record in this newsgroup.
>>>True, I mostly meant the crappy eighties overdone dialogue.
>>>Everything anyone sez in JM is kinda 'deep' and 'meaningful', and loaded
>>>with rhetoric. Its so melodramatic it just makes me cringe. I wouldn't
>>>want NM to be the same. Not that this damn film is ever going to get
>>>made anyway!
>
>>In Hollywood the alternative to deep meaningfulness is hip and cool
>>one-liners...
>
> Yah, or pretentiously intelligent, semi-formal dawson's creek\kevin
> smith imitations.
> I suppose we have to chose whether or not we are trying to represent (a
> possible) reality or not. I watched "Fa talai jone " today.
>
> http://us.imdb.com/Title?0269217
>
> Its a surreal thai spagetti western.
> No, really.
Another one I haven't seen.
> Not a word of realist dialogue in it, but all very fitting with the
> style of the piece.
>
> Do you think NM would survive a conceptual production?
> Could we stylise all the dialogue using raymond chandler or Jack
> Kerouac?
If you want to be true to the origins I guess pulp/Chandler is
the ticket. If you want an update, which I would like, I guess
anomie/beat/Kerouac is a better starting point but that would
be a major rewiring job.
> I think we better just do realistic dialogue.
>
> (OMG: What am I talking about?)
Realism? Hmmm, probably not good.
>>>>>clichés
>>>>>
> Yah.
>
>
>>>>>softened its once aggressive edge. The project was to involve a few
>>>>>written pieces on the stylings and components of CP and screenplay and
>>>>>short story which would act as exemplar to our findings. While the
>>>>>
>
>>I'll have to reread it again. Do you have a website with your
>>collected writings?
>
> Nope, but I have all my failed projects on file somewhere.
>
> Along with the doomed neurmancer faq :)
>
> I'll do some digging and throw up some html some time soon.
> It can be a page that timelines the many and various multi-collaborator
> projects I've driven into the ground :)
I have a huge backlog too and have barely had time for my irregular
schedule of Technical Musings. Less pressure at work soon and now
that broadband has appeared in this neck of the woods I'll try to
set up that cyberpunk server. I probabaly have to do some serious
firewalling too.
>>>>>other collaborators and I were working through it we came to the
>>>>>conclusion that CP was pretty routed in the eighties and couldn't
>>>>>really be re-created now. So the project was abandoned as far as the
>
>>I see it somewhat differently. For a starter there are the renewal
>>and settings/style.
>
> I see the incorporation of the elements we discussed as devices that the
> cp's used to communicate a message that was fundamentally tied to the
> concerns of the 80's. I imagine that one of their "goals" was that they
> set out to renew the genre, but as you say, the medium isn't the
> message.
>
>
>>Once again SF looks like settling down into well
>>worn tracks, perhaps time for a re-renewal?
>
> Well, a few weeks ago I would have probably said that I thought the west
> was too apathetic to need to find a 'new way' to express its concerns,
> but I think they may have woken up now.
Recent events might give more momentum to the Niven/Pournelle
style which is hardly progress.
>>>>Why not rather look for Post-Pomo? Someone claimed to have
>>>>found it in the Onion, my bet is that it is in Dark City.
>
> How so?
> Sorry, missed that one first time round? :)
I haven't looked it up but I guess the thread is still in the
groups.google.com archives. My hazy recollection is that Sourcerer
quoted a spoof article in The Onion that declared Pomo a steaming
pile of gunk and that now it was dead. Not everyone were aware of
the nature of The Onion so the thread quickly turned surreal, in
fact I am not even sure who swallowed it whole and who hammed it
up. I guess some are still smarting from that one.
>>The time is ripe for change, yes? POMO was prematurely declared dead
>>in a (spoof) article in the Onion, quoted widely on the net,
>>including on NetTime. Apparently Bruce Sterling, who figured in the
>>article, was amused. I cannot find a copy of the article anymore, does
>>anyone here still have it?
>>
>>
>>>Ok, modernism is (among other things) about rejection of classical form,
>>>and moves toward "freeform" and "expressionist" traditions.
>>>
>
> Well... I should also mention that it was the process whereby the
> intellectual elite pulled the arts back from the hands of the masses and
> returned them to the scholarly realm.
But isn't this group elitist too? After all people here are expected
at the very least to be able to read as well as to write...
>>>Post modernism is about (among other things) cynicism, and constant
>>>criticism of everything! Its a bit of a backlash. Pomo stuff tends to
>>>move toward minimalist or deconstructuralist goals, but only because its
>>>so busy rejecting stuff.
>
>>In the end it looks like overanalysing the text, extrapolating too
>>far and ending up reading strange subtexts into the original works.
>>John Shirley and other authors have criticised this practice.
>
> It can get pretty contrived, and I often wonder what purpose it actually
> serves.
"When everything is possible, nothing is interesting", seems like
a relevant quote. People pick and mix, be it fashion, religion or
opinion, turning it all into a grey mush rather than a colourful
collage. This seems to me to be the nature of Pomo.
>>Another trend is to mix old concepts across old borders, even to
>>the point of elements of various religions with each other.
>
> Have you read Salmon Rushdie?
> He does some fairly surreal (well, magic-realist really) things with
> religion, mythology and the scar left on the east by Imperial Britian.
Another author on my ever growing list of people to read.
>>Could
>>this be the early stages of Post-POMO? This newsgroup has often
>>discussed the Edge, strange Post-POMO has not been discussed more.
>
> Maybe post-pomo is like getting to the edge and realising you imagined
> the entire journey.
A good imagination would still be a journey, a virtual one. Quite
in line with the state of affairs even odyssey as a concept is
well over 2000 years old.
>>>So what's post pomo? Is it when there is nothing left, all definitions
>>>have been generalised and relativised so much that they are inherently
>>>meaningless and we start again by reconstructing form?
>>>
>>Perhaps Post-POMO comes about when POMO deconstructs and rejects
>>itself.
>>We could start with Alan Sokal's pseudo-POMO article. People
>>are still laughing.
>>
>
> I have to agree with Sokal's intent.
> I'm not to keen on the contrivances of post-modernism.
>
> ah, weel...
We are well on our way to a complete manifesto now.
The Post-POMO Manifesto, how about that?
==<)
Kevin Calder
<alie...@hotmail.com> writes
I'll respond proper when I have the temporal luxury, but in the
meantime:
>>>>>Why not rather look for Post-Pomo? Someone claimed to have
>>>>>found it in the Onion, my bet is that it is in Dark City.
>>
>> How so?
>> Sorry, missed that one first time round? :)
>
>
>I haven't looked it up but I guess the thread is still in the
>groups.google.com archives. My hazy recollection is that Sourcerer
>quoted a spoof article in The Onion that declared Pomo a steaming
>pile of gunk and that now it was dead. Not everyone were aware of
>the nature of The Onion so the thread quickly turned surreal, in
>fact I am not even sure who swallowed it whole and who hammed it
>up. I guess some are still smarting from that one.
Sorry, I meant to ask about how dark city is post-pomo.
I for one thought 'the onion' article was vfunny.
alie...@hotmail.com
> In article <3BBB820E...@hotmail.com>, Alienthe
> <alie...@hotmail.com> writes
>
> I'll respond proper when I have the temporal luxury, but in the
> meantime:
>
> >>>>>Why not rather look for Post-Pomo? Someone claimed to have
> >>>>>found it in the Onion, my bet is that it is in Dark City.
> >>
> >> How so?
> >> Sorry, missed that one first time round? :)
> >I haven't looked it up but I guess the thread is still in the
> >groups.google.com archives. My hazy recollection is that Sourcerer
> >quoted a spoof article in The Onion that declared Pomo a steaming
> >pile of gunk and that now it was dead. Not everyone were aware of
> >the nature of The Onion so the thread quickly turned surreal, in
> >fact I am not even sure who swallowed it whole and who hammed it
> >up. I guess some are still smarting from that one.
>
> Sorry, I meant to ask about how dark city is post-pomo.
Well, since Post-POMO doesn't seem dell defined (yet)
< http://www.google.com/search?q=post-POMO >
I seized the opportunity with both hands and made a wild extrapolation
from what I believe is a current trend: disiterested ingorance and
apathy. I expanded on that in the thread "Classic CP movie":
< http://groups.google.com/groups?q=g:thl2614941001d&hl=en&rnum=8&selm=3BACE17C.1080401%40hotmail.com
>
To me, Dark City is Post-POMO in the sense people do not realise or
even care something is amiss, such as daylight for instance. The
search for Shell Beach starts with asking and pople "know" where it
is yet cannot answer when pushed for details. Even when faced with
monstrous discrepancies in "reality" noone cares. A bit like our
times, yes?
> I for one thought 'the onion' article was vfunny.
Agreed, I am a regular reader.
==<)
Monkey Doctor
wrote:
>Taxonomy or artistic quality is hairy, especially as concepts change
>and new ones appear. Recently I heard that the concept of "Nature"
>didn't exist 100 years ago. Instead forests, rivers and so on were
>viewed as untapped natural resources awaiting someone sufficiently
>enterprising. Other ideas are also new and more will likely appear.
Better to say the concept of "Nature" did not exist in Western
cultural thinking. I'm pretty sure the Aboriginal peoples of Australia
and the US had something approximating to it.
>>>Perhaps NM is best made on a shoe string budget by unknowns to avoid
>>>excessive expectations. What I would very much like to see, however,
>>>are cameos of everyone from the Movement. While I am fantasising, why
>>>not get all the regulars in alt.cyberpunk.* as extras in the Chatsubo?
>>
>> Sounds like a recipe for disaster, but I'm game :)
>
>When heading for disaster one should always travel first class.
Oh yeah.. with ACC it's always with style and panache.... and mind
bending penguins :)
>Recent events might give more momentum to the Niven/Pournelle
>style which is hardly progress.
Yeah, but good news for people like myself who (coincidentally) have
just finished a novel based in a future post corporate backed
terrorist nuking of major capitals. :)
alias
james@no_spam_it_tastes_funny_beresfordj.freeserve.co.uk says...
u know.. anyone responsible would think to read the entire thread before
jumping into the middle of it.. but uh.. well u got me instead.
> On Wed, 03 Oct 2001 23:24:30 +0200, Alienthe <alie...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >Taxonomy or artistic quality is hairy, especially as concepts change
> >and new ones appear. Recently I heard that the concept of "Nature"
> >didn't exist 100 years ago. Instead forests, rivers and so on were
> >viewed as untapped natural resources awaiting someone sufficiently
> >enterprising. Other ideas are also new and more will likely appear.
>
> Better to say the concept of "Nature" did not exist in Western
> cultural thinking. I'm pretty sure the Aboriginal peoples of Australia
> and the US had something approximating to it.
not sure about that.. if u think about it.. we have a concept of
"Nature" because we can see the division between the artificial world
(ie, the one contstructed by humans.. our habitat) and the natural one.
Native Americans (or any other group living on the same level) would not
need such a concept nor would it occur to them to create one, as to
them, the natural world would be the *only* world. thier lifestyle
didn't have enough impact on the environment (not alot of Skyscrapers on
the reservations..) to force the distinction.
>
> >>>Perhaps NM is best made on a shoe string budget by unknowns to avoid
> >>>excessive expectations. What I would very much like to see, however,
> >>>are cameos of everyone from the Movement. While I am fantasising, why
> >>>not get all the regulars in alt.cyberpunk.* as extras in the Chatsubo?
> >>
> >> Sounds like a recipe for disaster, but I'm game :)
> >
> >When heading for disaster one should always travel first class.
>
> Oh yeah.. with ACC it's always with style and panache.... and mind
> bending penguins :)
slide.
--
|alias| if life makes u scared and bitter,
at least its not for very long.
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