3 ms·

I'd imagine looking back, a lot of Neuromancer and pre-ubiquitous web Cyberpunk reads weirdly because it was written in an information-scarce world. Versus the

by ethbr0 5y ago

I'd imagine looking back, a lot of Neuromancer and pre-ubiquitous web Cyberpunk reads weirdly because it was written in an information-scarce world. Versus the information-excess world we now live in. In the former, I remember concepts being so much bigger and more concrete. E.g. the "War on Drugs" or "Reaganomics". These were things that existed because powerful people said they did. And there was debating, but ideas were still clearly defined. So even though CP authors were imagining our future, it was a pretty fundamental shift to go from books-at-libraries to everything-anywhere-all-of-the-time. Now, every concept seems to have much fuzzier conceptual edges. Because there are a million opinions about it circulating publicly and loudly.

pmoriarty 5y ago
"I'd imagine looking back, a lot of Neuromancer and pre-ubiquitous web Cyberpunk reads weirdly because it was written in an information-scarce world." There's just as much scarcity of valuable information today... it's just that now it's buried under a mountain of garbage which is more accessible than ever before.
- rektide 5y ago
  That information glut, if it does so exist, leads more towards dis-belief imo & skepticism, especially in the main. Yeah there's a lot of meme-viruses, num shrubs, other ways to go wrong or really wrong. Radicalization happens. Before we didnt used to be connected enough to see this shit, and the asymetric nature of the loud & shitty versus the peaceful/coherent/quiet/skeptical mainstream means the delusional & extremists have outsized visibility. The disbelief keeps growing. We dont need Adbusters as much because the thin transparency of the world, of being sold garbage mounds of low-grade content is well known, we understand how shallow things are. And disbelief keeps rising. In contrast to the higher trust, respected mainstream media, the limited availability of information which came before. Which gel'ed the world into place, which created shared beliefs & allowed agendas to be driven. Where-as now the all-defector anti-agenda is the default mode for many.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    I'd never thought about info virality (aka memeticness) that way, but it's a good perspective about the phase change that seemed to happen between past and present. I.e. That info memes have some inherent max to their virality, which has stayed constant throughout time. But the cost of transporting information from one person to another has plummeted (measured by time, money, and pretty much every conceivable metric). Consequently, things that would not have spread virally in previous eras are now easily able to do so, and do. It's really the ease of transport that's enabled this, not any fundamental shift in the info memes themselves. But I'm sure the same thought occurred to everyone when newspapers and radio were popularized as well.

by ethbr0 5y ago

pmoriarty 5y ago

"I'd imagine looking back, a lot of Neuromancer and pre-ubiquitous web Cyberpunk reads weirdly because it was written in an information-scarce world." There's just as much scarcity of valuable information today... it's just that now it's buried under a mountain of garbage which is more accessible than ever before.

rektide 5y ago
That information glut, if it does so exist, leads more towards dis-belief imo & skepticism, especially in the main. Yeah there's a lot of meme-viruses, num shrubs, other ways to go wrong or really wrong. Radicalization happens. Before we didnt used to be connected enough to see this shit, and the asymetric nature of the loud & shitty versus the peaceful/coherent/quiet/skeptical mainstream means the delusional & extremists have outsized visibility. The disbelief keeps growing. We dont need Adbusters as much because the thin transparency of the world, of being sold garbage mounds of low-grade content is well known, we understand how shallow things are. And disbelief keeps rising. In contrast to the higher trust, respected mainstream media, the limited availability of information which came before. Which gel'ed the world into place, which created shared beliefs & allowed agendas to be driven. Where-as now the all-defector anti-agenda is the default mode for many.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  I'd never thought about info virality (aka memeticness) that way, but it's a good perspective about the phase change that seemed to happen between past and present. I.e. That info memes have some inherent max to their virality, which has stayed constant throughout time. But the cost of transporting information from one person to another has plummeted (measured by time, money, and pretty much every conceivable metric). Consequently, things that would not have spread virally in previous eras are now easily able to do so, and do. It's really the ease of transport that's enabled this, not any fundamental shift in the info memes themselves. But I'm sure the same thought occurred to everyone when newspapers and radio were popularized as well.