Just watched the video, loved the animation. a few things i picked up on:
When the old guy said about how we control our own screens: sure, bias is expected in the media today, but consider 50 or 100 years ago when the local newspaper was the only media the public had access to. These days, googling news will give you 2,670,000,000 pages. Sure, these days the corporate media is more powerful, but people have access to so much more opinion and information.
The idea that the more computerised a system is, the more powerful it is, and, in a way, the more vulnerable it is. Consider the credit system: 100 years ago, it was owed between people within a town/city. There was no way to borrow money from someone on the other side of the country; let alone world. These days, computers enable these transactions, and, in a way, make the whole system vulnerable to a simultaneous assault (as in Fight Club). This could apply in the same way to police records: when stations stored their own analogue records, it would have been extremely difficult to destroy all these records at once. A "punk rock anarchist" by the name of Neil Roberts attempted to bomb the New Zealand Police's central database in wanganui in 1992, which, if successful, would have meant the loss of all the records.
In terms of the "other" proposed towards the end of the clip: those disaffected and unable to connect and fulfill social needs in reality, find substitute in the online world, virtual reality, etc etc find an escape in which they are able to create their own reality and essentially be anyone. Regardless of whether or not this is a good or bad thing, i can only see it furthering the gap between the luddite and the cyberpunk, in the most general use of the term. the future gap between rich and poor will probably not be monetary, rather, be a technological one between "enhanced" and "human". This comes back to those first points about connection and computerisation, who will be the most powerful? and who will be the most vulnerable?
I'm trying to read Neuromancer at the moment but it is a very intense novel that I would probably have to read again to get the whole picture.
The author is very descriptive and is very creative about how the world will work in the future and about the technology. Some parts are really creepy like this quote about growing body parts, "Case turned his head to look up into Wage's face. It was a tanned and forgettable mask. The eyes were vatgrown sea-green Nikon transplants...He was flanked by his joeboys, nearly identical young men, their arms and shoulders bulging with grafted muscle." It sounds like in the future you can artificially design and improve your appearance and in typical human fashion we go over the top trying to be exotic, big and beautiful but instead come off as deformed and freaks of nature.
Here is another quote on the modification of the character Molly's body, "He realised that the glasses were surgically inset, sealing her sockets. The silver lenses seemed to grow from smooth pale skin above her cheekbones...the fingers curled around the fletcher were slender, white and tipped with polished burgundy. The nails looked artificial...she held out her hands, palms up, the white fingers slightly spread, and with a barely audible click, ten double-edged, four-centimeter scalpel blades slid from their housings beneath the burgundy nails."
I keep imagining what Molly has hidden behind her surgically inset glasses and it isn't a pretty picture such as maybe she has no eyelids or cameras for eyes or mutilated eyes.
Just watched the video, loved the animation. a few things i picked up on:
ReplyDeleteWhen the old guy said about how we control our own screens: sure, bias is expected in the media today, but consider 50 or 100 years ago when the local newspaper was the only media the public had access to. These days, googling news will give you 2,670,000,000 pages. Sure, these days the corporate media is more powerful, but people have access to so much more opinion and information.
The idea that the more computerised a system is, the more powerful it is, and, in a way, the more vulnerable it is. Consider the credit system: 100 years ago, it was owed between people within a town/city. There was no way to borrow money from someone on the other side of the country; let alone world. These days, computers enable these transactions, and, in a way, make the whole system vulnerable to a simultaneous assault (as in Fight Club). This could apply in the same way to police records: when stations stored their own analogue records, it would have been extremely difficult to destroy all these records at once. A "punk rock anarchist" by the name of Neil Roberts attempted to bomb the New Zealand Police's central database in wanganui in 1992, which, if successful, would have meant the loss of all the records.
In terms of the "other" proposed towards the end of the clip: those disaffected and unable to connect and fulfill social needs in reality, find substitute in the online world, virtual reality, etc etc find an escape in which they are able to create their own reality and essentially be anyone. Regardless of whether or not this is a good or bad thing, i can only see it furthering the gap between the luddite and the cyberpunk, in the most general use of the term. the future gap between rich and poor will probably not be monetary, rather, be a technological one between "enhanced" and "human". This comes back to those first points about connection and computerisation, who will be the most powerful? and who will be the most vulnerable?
I'm trying to read Neuromancer at the moment but it is a very intense novel that I would probably have to read again to get the whole picture.
ReplyDeleteThe author is very descriptive and is very creative about how the world will work in the future and about the technology. Some parts are really creepy like this quote about growing body parts, "Case turned his head to look up into Wage's face. It was a tanned and forgettable mask. The eyes were vatgrown sea-green Nikon transplants...He was flanked by his joeboys, nearly identical young men, their arms and shoulders bulging with grafted muscle." It sounds like in the future you can artificially design and improve your appearance and in typical human fashion we go over the top trying to be exotic, big and beautiful but instead come off as deformed and freaks of nature.
Here is another quote on the modification of the character Molly's body, "He realised that the glasses were surgically inset, sealing her sockets. The silver lenses seemed to grow from smooth pale skin above her cheekbones...the fingers curled around the fletcher were slender, white and tipped with polished burgundy. The nails looked artificial...she held out her hands, palms up, the white fingers slightly spread, and with a barely audible click, ten double-edged, four-centimeter scalpel blades slid from their housings beneath the burgundy nails."
I keep imagining what Molly has hidden behind her surgically inset glasses and it isn't a pretty picture such as maybe she has no eyelids or cameras for eyes or mutilated eyes.
sorry i didn't comment sooner both brad and pittenweem. excellent observations!
ReplyDelete