What's Your Fave Cyberpunk Utopia?
vag...@circuit-riders.net
Mine's Mr Lee's Greater Hong Kong.
--
(__) Sourcerer
/(<>)\ O|O|O|O||O||O
\../ |OO|||O|||O|| Mirroring the shadows of futurity
|| OO|||OO||O||O since 1993
Curious Gene
> Mine's Mr Lee's Greater Hong Kong.
There aren't many of those to choose from, although I suppose
it depends in some way on your view of what the perfect society
is. The Raft is probably pretty nice if you're well armed and
have a big boat.
I'd say the island of Stateless, but that's stepping into more
run-of-the-mill Sci-Fi. Maybe the Gernsback Continuum. Does it
count if it doesn't even exist in-story?
--
Gene Sullivan :: curio...@gmail.com :: http://curiousgene.com
Until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore, you
will not know the terror of being forever lost at sea.
Sourcerer
> vag...@circuit-riders.net wrote:
>
>> Mine's Mr Lee's Greater Hong Kong.
>
> There aren't many of those to choose from, although I suppose
> it depends in some way on your view of what the perfect society
> is. The Raft is probably pretty nice if you're well armed and
> have a big boat.
I agree that whether something is dystopic or not is a matter of one's
perspective. While rooting around for stuff to put on the website, I
came across an early critique of SC. The author, being pomo-enabled,
found it dystopic. The author refers to "the dystopian logic of
cyberpunk", which, apparently, is self-evident because he doesn't
elaborate the idea. Just plunks it down on the page.
I can't consider the non-existence of a centralized global totally
managed state a sign of dystopia. Throw in Mr Lee's Greater Hong Kong,
and other FOQNEs, and I'd say progress has been made towards making
living life pleasant -- or, "the world of the burbclaves and the
shattered mosaic of (dis)enfranchised society", as the author finds
it, no doubt troubled by the absence of a totalizing state, and by NS
not providing a vision of a future full of enthusiasm and positivity.
The Raft is plagued by L. Bob and his scheme to create dystopia (at
least from my perspective it's dystopic), but I can see the utopic
possibilities. Might have made a nice sequel.
All to say at the end of a long day's travel, I'd rather pull into Mr
Lee's Greater Hong Kong than a Holiday Inn.
> I'd say the island of Stateless, but that's stepping into more
> run-of-the-mill Sci-Fi. Maybe the Gernsback Continuum. Does it
> count if it doesn't even exist in-story?
>
Whatever floats your raft 8-)
m...@model-reality.com
wrote:
>vag...@circuit-riders.net wrote:
>
>> Mine's Mr Lee's Greater Hong Kong.
>
>There aren't many of those to choose from, although I suppose
>it depends in some way on your view of what the perfect society
>is. The Raft is probably pretty nice if you're well armed and
>have a big boat.
>
>I'd say the island of Stateless, but that's stepping into more
>run-of-the-mill Sci-Fi. Maybe the Gernsback Continuum. Does it
>count if it doesn't even exist in-story?
<rancho>
.mpa waves, "Howdy" across the table at Gene.
</rancho>
Okay. I've been thinking about this now for far too long but the
answer is now obvious:
The final (engineer-inspired) world of PKD's "Eye in the Sky."
.mpa
(relying on PKD being grandfathered into CP otherwise I'm hopping over
to Heinlein-utopia-world and chucking rocks at the Earth from Luna.)
Wy
easy to have a favourite which, in the end, consists of you and your
compatriots with an edge against the world. We've all got our
compounds and enclaves. But how do you bring a utopia to the masses?
That's what counts more than just a place for you and your's.
Wy
Sourcerer
I don't know. I think it can't be done. The "masses" are 7 billion or
so. That's a lot of people to bring to a satisfying life. Even if it
were possible, it would not look that way due to the necessity of
social continuity. So, hardly anyone would be on the same page at the
same time. Because of that, if such a program were implemented with that
goal, it would probably appear to be like every other political or
social ideology.
So, maybe sharing the concept of the "enclave" is the way to go. Not my
enclave or yours, but the concept.
Wy
> I don't know. I think it can't be done. The "masses" are 7 billion or
> so. That's a lot of people to bring to a satisfying life. Even if it
> were possible, it would not look that way due to the necessity of
> social continuity. So, hardly anyone would be on the same page at the
> same time. Because of that, if such a program were implemented with that
> goal, it would probably appear to be like every other political or
> social ideology.
It would be a lot of people, true. But I'd say it'd have to be more of
a meta-utopia than a utopia, a space where many different utopian
definitions could exist together.
> So, maybe sharing the concept of the "enclave" is the way to go. Not my
> enclave or yours, but the concept.
Maybe. I'm disturbed, actually, at the displacement of the cohesive
group by the individual, and the promotion of such in western
cultures. The classical utopia in many cultures is the clan or cluster
of families, cooperating towards a common shared goal of prosperity.
In the west, we glorify the individual, and mock those who choose to
collectivize our resources for a common good.
In our postmodern dystopias, our enclaves and shelters should really
concentrate on finding others of similar mind, grouping because of
shared memes and ideals, into cooperative clusters, evolving rules to
govern the same, recognizing these structures as entities in their own
right. It's the Corporation, really. But as more than just a foe to be
served as a master, then quickly fled from once your contracted hours
are over. It's a shareholder owned corporation of most common assets,
a commune with strong bindings from willing choice and agreed upon
common structures.
Sourcerer
> On Dec 25, 10:41ï¿œpm, Sourcerer <vag...@inanna.eanna.net> wrote:
<rm>
>
>> So, maybe sharing the concept of the "enclave" is the way to go. Not my
>> enclave or yours, but the concept.
>
> Maybe. I'm disturbed, actually, at the displacement of the cohesive
> group by the individual, and the promotion of such in western
> cultures. The classical utopia in many cultures is the clan or cluster
> of families, cooperating towards a common shared goal of prosperity.
> In the west, we glorify the individual, and mock those who choose to
> collectivize our resources for a common good.
The concept of the individual is valid; with luck, societies generate
individuals. What we have today is the individual as niche market.
It is not particularly western anymore, and less a matter of culture
than it is of a particular economic system tethered to an enabling
technology, and rather than "enclaves" we have web forums whose purpose
is to propagate commodities. Such things are basically focus-groups
sampling commodities, including ideologies.
Or, consider Facebook. Despite having 350 million members, its owners
now realize their business plan is fatally flawed. Currency on the
web is data, and in terms of commerce, data that is not public might as
well not exist -- what good is data that cannot be exchanged, and what
good are individuals who cannot be converted into data? So, economically
speaking, for Facebook's owners, privacy is 'tired' because it is not
'wired'. I'm am sure it is all to the benefit of the members. Information
wants to be free, it was often said. It is especially the desire of
governments, police, and marketeers. Soon enough each of us will be
hagridden by personalized hacks, if we are not careful about our
data-selves.
> In our postmodern dystopias, our enclaves and shelters should really
> concentrate on finding others of similar mind, grouping because of
> shared memes and ideals, into cooperative clusters, evolving rules to
> govern the same, recognizing these structures as entities in their own
> right. It's the Corporation, really. But as more than just a foe to be
> served as a master, then quickly fled from once your contracted hours
> are over. It's a shareholder owned corporation of most common assets,
> a commune with strong bindings from willing choice and agreed upon
> common structures.
An issue is this corporation has to conform to the common structures of
the system it is embedded in, and not only a few haven't understood that
in the several such efforts I'm familiar with. First recruit a business
lawyer and an accountant, and everyone read the fine print.
Getting from discussion group of the like-minded to a social entity that
can persist over time -- reproduce itself -- is an interesting problem.
Wy
> > concentrate on finding others of similar mind, grouping because of
> > shared memes and ideals, into cooperative clusters, evolving rules to
> > govern the same, recognizing these structures as entities in their own
> > right. It's the Corporation, really. But as more than just a foe to be
> > served as a master, then quickly fled from once your contracted hours
> > are over. It's a shareholder owned corporation of most common assets,
> > a commune with strong bindings from willing choice and agreed upon
> > common structures.
>
> An issue is this corporation has to conform to the common structures of
> the system it is embedded in, and not only a few haven't understood that
> in the several such efforts I'm familiar with. First recruit a business
> lawyer and an accountant, and everyone read the fine print.
>
> Getting from discussion group of the like-minded to a social entity that
> can persist over time -- reproduce itself -- is an interesting problem.
That it is. The clan-family-group is the traditional method of group
survival. The family LLC and group LLC the new. Amazing, really. From
punk and rebellion, to law and structures. But one enables the other,
I suppose.
From here's it's interesting to watch how things like 'L3C's (http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L3C) are changing those structures to
incorporate more than just profit into the underlying structure of
corporate governance. Perhaps our alternate structures will work much
the same way.
Eugene Mosburg
<m...@model-reality.com> wrote:
>>vag...@circuit-riders.net wrote:
>>
>>> Mine's Mr Lee's Greater Hong Kong.
>>
>>There aren't many of those to choose from, although I suppose
>>it depends in some way on your view of what the perfect society
>>is. The Raft is probably pretty nice if you're well armed and
>>have a big boat.
>>
>>I'd say the island of Stateless, but that's stepping into more
>>run-of-the-mill Sci-Fi. Maybe the Gernsback Continuum. Does it
>>count if it doesn't even exist in-story?
>
><rancho>
>.mpa waves, "Howdy" across the table at Gene.
></rancho>
>
>
>Okay. I've been thinking about this now for far too long but the
>answer is now obvious:
>
>The final (engineer-inspired) world of PKD's "Eye in the Sky."
>
>
>.mpa
>
<rancho>
It's great to see ya, .mpa! Let's ride around eating pizza again
one day, and reflect upon why "Pablo Picasso never got called an
a-$#!*&()!!"
</rancho>
My favorite cyberpunk Utopia is the one you take with you inside
your head, irrespective of meatspace coordinates. I especially
enjoyed Abelard Lindsay's trajectory through the chapters of
"Schismatrix", as he experiments with exile, confidence schemes,
piracy, true love, family ties, alien RealPolitik, revenge, loss,
and transformation.
He's sorta who I want to be when I grow up.
Gene
/*
"It was a pornography of death. A perversion of the human
genius in abject whoredom to racial suicide."
-- Schismatrix
*/