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Cyberpunk 2.0: Fiction and Contemporary (2Nd Edition, Reviewed, Translated to English and Updated)

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i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i Herlander Elias Cyberpunk 2.0 Fiction and Contemporary LabCom Books 2009 i i i i i i i i CREDITS Publishing House: LabCom Books Covilhã, Portugal, 2009 www.livroslabcom.ubi.pt Communication Studies Series Director: António Fidalgo Cover Design: Herlander Elias (3D Figure) & Catherine Hshin (Layout) Translation: Catherine Hshin & Herlander Elias Desktop Publishing: Marco Oliveira Legal Deposit number: 296387/09 ISBN: 978-989-654-021-0 Title: Cyberpunk 2.0: Fiction and Contemporary (2nd Edition, reviewed, translated to english and updated) Copyright c Herlander Elias, Author, 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Herlander Elias. Original First Edition (portuguese version): Title: Cyberpunk: Ficção e Contemporaneidade Distribution: Sodilivros, Lisbon, Portugal First published in 1999 by Herlander Elias Copyright c Herlander Elias, Author and Editor, 1999 i i i i i i i i In memoriam, Ana Maria Elias My Mother iii i i i i i i i i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Vera Lameiras, Pedro Fernandes de Almeida, Jonathan Beach, Perry, Miguel Belo, Muxima Lopo, Marcos Sá Rodrigues, Emanuel Ferreira, Luís Futre, Maria de Lurdes de Melo, Alberto de Alvim-Costa, Catarina Campino, Luís Aguiar, Franz Poelstra, Orlando Godinho, Teresa Támen, Centro Nacional de Cultura, José Pinto, Jorge Martins Rosa, António Fernando Cascais, Manuel Valente Alves, Fernando Poeiras, Rita Benamor, João Xavier, Nuno Rodrigues, Marco Silva, Kristy H. Kang, David Burns, Kate Southworth, Catherine Hsin, Scott Hessels, Luis Nogueira, David Gorjão Silva, Tãnia Melusina, Mathias Fuchs, Sónia Alves, Rui Aguadeiro, Marisa Elias, Jasmeen, Gunalan Nadara- jan, Índia Mara Martins, Eduardo Camilo, Anabela Gradim, Martha Gabriel, Rachel Zuanon, Tito Cardoso e Cunha, Kris Lee, Swee Leng Teo, ISEA, UBI, Labcom, António Fidalgo, Alejandro Jaimes-Larrarte, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Takahiro Hayakawa, Zhui Hui, Tan Meng Yoe, Jenny Huldschiner and Marco Oliveira. iv i i i i i i i i Contents INTRODUCTION: THE MATRIX RELOADING (update) 1 FOREWORD: WHAT DOES THE FUTURE RESERVES TO SUCH A PRESENT? (update) 7 I INTRODUCING THE CYBERPUNK IMAGINARY 11 CYBERPUNK – BETWEEN PUNKS AND CYBORGS...... 11 WHY CYBER?............................ 25 AND WHY PUNK?.......................... 27 THE RELEVANCY OF CYBERPUNK............... 35 ABOUT CYBERSPACE AND THE MATRIX............ 41 THE CYBERPUNK VISUAL ARTIFACTS............. 45 THE CYBERPUNK PREMISES................... 53 II FAMOUS CYBERPUNK ICONS 57 BLADE RUNNER: RIDLEY SCOTT’S 1982 MOVIE....... 57 NEUROMANCER: WILLIAM GIBSON’S 1984 NOVEL..... 61 v i i i i i i i i III OTHER CYBERPUNK FICTION 67 COMICS 67 AKIRA................................ 67 DARK MINDS (update)....................... 68 GHOST IN THE SHELL....................... 69 MOVIES 73 DARK ANGEL (update)....................... 73 ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK.................... 76 GHOST IN THE SHELL 2: INNOCENCE (update)......... 77 JOHNNY MNEMONIC....................... 77 MAX HEADROOM......................... 79 STRANGE DAYS........................... 81 TERMINATOR 2 3-D: BATTLE ACROSS TIME (update)..... 87 TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES (update) 89 THE MATRIX TRILOGY (update).................. 91 THE TERMINATOR......................... 96 TOTAL RECALL........................... 97 UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD................ 100 SONGS 103 NEUROMANCER (BILLY IDOL, 1993).............. 103 SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM (BILLY IDOL, 1993).......... 105 VIDEOGAMES 107 ANOTHER WORLD......................... 107 BENEATH A STEEL SKY...................... 109 BLADE RUNNER.......................... 110 CYBERSPACE............................ 112 DELTA V............................... 114 ENTER THE MATRIX (update)................... 115 GHOST IN THE SHELL....................... 116 INTERPHASE............................ 117 MIRROR’S EDGE (update)..................... 117 vi i i i i i i i i SKYNET (update).......................... 124 SYNDICATE/SYNDICATE WARS................. 124 THE MATRIX: ONLINE (update).................. 125 THE MATRIX: PATH OF NEO (update)............... 126 THE TERMINATOR: FUTURE SHOCK (update).......... 127 IV CONTEMPORARY CYBERPUNK FIGURES 131 ROMANTIC CYBORGS....................... 131 FUTURE SHOCK: NO FUTURE VERSUS NEW FUTURE.... 141 THE END OR GENERALIZING CYBERPUNK?......... 147 GRAFFITER: THE INTERTEXTUALITY HIP-HOPPER..... 153 RHACKER: WHEN ROCKER AND HACKER ARE CYBORGED 167 RAVER: THE ACID POLYRHYTHM SURFER.......... 183 FASHION PUNKS IN MATRIX STYLE (update).......... 193 BANKSY: POSTCOMPUTER GRAFFITI (update)......... 203 TETSOO: MOTION DESIGN SHOCKWAVES (update)...... 211 CULTURE JAMMING: REDESIGN CORPORATE LOGOS (update)217 TECKTONIK: BRANDING DANCE CULTURE (update)..... 227 V THE ACOUSTIC CYBERSPACES OF PRESENT DAY’S ELECTROCULTURE 233 SOUNDSCAPES: THE SONIC LANDSCAPES.......... 233 TECHNO: THE CYBERDELIC MUSIC............... 251 RAVES: THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS OF THE 90’s..... 259 AFTERWORD: SCANNING THE FUTURE (update) 269 REFERENCES 275 BOOKS................................ 275 ONLINE DOCUMENTS (update).................. 287 vii i i i i i i i i MUSIC (update)............................ 292 FILMOGRAPHY........................... 295 VIDEOGRAPHY (update)...................... 302 GLOSSARY (update)......................... 308 viii i i i i i i i i INTRODUCTION THE MATRIX RELOADING decade ago cyberculture was growing in its overwhelming wave of novelties. The early nineties, the Web-boom years with multime- A dia technologies and cable TV shows were feeding every domestic spots. At present time, after the digital culture has become our culture, de- manding a technical literacy and still compressing immense amounts of data into small tiny bits, a lot of things happened. When I first published the orig- inal portuguese version of this essay of mine – Cyberpunk: Fiction And Con- temporary – I still remember most folks thought that the Internet was only for computer freaks and when I first mentioned that home computers such as the Commodore Amiga rendered images in high resolution with 4096 colors, ev- erybody, who heard about my statement, laughed at me. Then Virtual Reality came for domestic purposes and gaming consoles. The nineties were undoubt- edly the cyberhype years, so they established the pavement for all cyberculture development blossoming till now. Some said that besides virtual architecture, the Internet and Videogames were for kids, not much to look into. They were wrong. It was a mistake to misregard the science-fiction narratives, like those of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, and mostly Philip K. Dick’s remark- able achievement in the future forecast among a Western world of glossy and plastic media byproducts. Now after cyberspace gone massified, with digital portable devices all around us, fashion images pumping dance music on every LCD screen in any mall near us, definitely show something that has changed. Peer to peer soft- ware, infinitely downloadable contents, Web streaming video, High-Definition 1 i i i i i i i i 2 Cyberpunk 2.0: Fiction and Contemporary 1080p videobroadcast, Blu-Ray Discs available and GPS enhanced services across mobile networks have change the previous decade media panorama. Steven Spielberg is about to release his version of Ghost In The Shell, a cyberpunk anime icon; Jonathan Mostow will release in 2010 a new version of John Carpenter’s Escape From New York, a remake with new CGI footage, and James Cameron’s upcoming Avatar will surely be a blockbuster in cyberpunk motion picture genre. Two decades back in time and cyberpunk resembled much more like hype than a science-fiction narrative breakthrough, but now we understand why films such as Blade Runner were forced to celebrate its 25th anniversary. After all, the future looks like a promise retrieved from Sci-Fi dystopias. Global crisis, ecological breakdown, oil resources turning scarce, technology available almost to everyone, more efficient software and hardware, are the new background of all of us. In the meanwhile Honda’s Asimo keeps evolving and besides talking it can also run at slow speed and climb stairs. Also Honda’s hydrogen automobiles will soon be a reality just like Toyota Prius and Honda Civic Hybrid keep making the transition into new cleaner ways of transportation with no drastic changes that will affect consumers. Another father of cyberpunk fiction, in this case in the anime Japanese animation genre, was of course Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira, though a new full renderized version in 3D CGI will be released in 2010. So if we look back through the time frame, again it seems that there was a time when fashion was different from media, much like movies were distinct from videogames, and animation was the little, yet precursor, child of cinematography. Right now all rules got inverted. Any content, media and format flows in the same network direction towards a new kind of mobile media society. Screens don’t demand our attention and physical presence at the same time, TV shows can be paused, recorded and watched later by pay-per-view viewers and The Matrix trilogy films nearly opened a new path for entertainment and made science-fiction re- emerge onto the mainstream. Films are transformed into games, some games resemble films, and it keeps hard to separate how much we need to keep labels in different folders, while media keep making “mash-ups” upon every
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