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long argument. you have to state what the punk element is first, which requires an anti-heroism. then, just like how comedy doesn't age well because it's the d

long argument. you have to state what the punk element is first, which requires an anti-heroism. then, just like how comedy doesn't age well because it's the dissonance of a cultural moment, cyberpunk was a response to a fin de siecle period just before the tension and uncertainty about computers resolved into our present experience of tech. what's changed is (cyber)punk was a set of symbols and representations, where DIY (doing it yourself) meant adopting constraints to moralize your quest- a heroic journey with the self-imposed handicaps of dumb haircuts, bicycle transport, and tattoos, but we can simulate or undo almost all of those now, so they aren't the honest signals of heroism or anything else they once were. the cultural moment where these constraints were dissonant and created tension has passed. to be punk today you'd have to choose to be an amputee or some other irreversible disfigurement. ritual suicide and terrorism are maybe the other replacement constraints people choose to moralize their journeys. it played on an underlying instinct from nature about colourful plumage, where nothing that stupid and wasteful can survive- so surely it must have a power we can't see... I think now that people who grew up with tech and social media have adapted a hyperawareness to symbols and representations and can't fall for that. there are no edges or ambiguities in their brands and narratives and they compete on that. the ideal is to become the perfect representation of something, a brand where an inner life is basically off brand drama. cyberpunk was predicated on the idea of not only edges and seams, but an elsewhere and an other that can't exist now in the social. Where previously cyberpunk had some literary sci-fi cred because it provided new insights and metaphors for understanding an unevenly distributed future, by now it's probably a set of tropes that form a fantasy genre.

amarcheschi 2y ago
Well, we do have examples of modern day cyberpunk tho, mr robot, watch dogs 2, mirror's edge. just the first i could think of. black mirror too. perhaps black mirror is more dystopic than cyberpunk. Anyway. They're all grounded on a very near future, they have characters who are against the status quo established by some corpos, but i do agree with you on something. The world's different. We've grown affictionated to brands, unions memberships sank (although i guess it is slowly coming back up), we've grown to be more lonely and individualistic people than before. In this context, an old cyberpunk could be seen as "people vs corpos", but all the examples i brought you manage to adapt to the new world and are "people vs corpos AND other people"
glenstein 2y ago
>you have to state what the punk element is first I think they get to that in the first third of the essay. >just like how comedy doesn't age well because it's the dissonance of a cultural moment, cyberpunk was a response to a fin de siecle period just before the tension and uncertainty about computers resolved into our present experience of tech. I don't know, I think the consensus is that ours is in fact the realization of many critical themes of cyberpunk, so it is now at its apex of relevance to our present moment, as it is effectively an anticipation of and criticism of it. And it turned out to be interestingly predictive, and that opens a million interesting conversations about why it was predictive. >what's changed is (cyber)punk was a set of symbols and representations[...] I don't know that I've ever encountered such a roller coaster of a paragraph. Cyberpunk was a "set of symbols and representations"? I mean, maybe, maybe not, but we just read a whole essay about it, and it doesn't talk that way and in fact identifies entirely different things, so what happened to those, and it's not clear what you mean, and you're not necessarily wrong but there are other equally true things to say of it. In short: ...wha??? You contrast cyberpunk to DIY which is never a contrast I've encountered before, and seems like a crossing of dissimilar categories, like comparing mice to nostalgia. I can't follow the thing about self-imposed constraints or how those were "honest" (huh?) signals of heroism or needing to be an amputee to be a punk? Replacement constraint? Plumage? We're not even on Mars at this point, we're the Voyager I. >by now it's probably a set of tropes that form a fantasy genre. And somehow the plane lands on a coherent point, that amazingly, I find myself agreeing with. It really is at essence a style or a group of tropes at this point equivalent to fantasy genre tropes.

amarcheschi 2y ago

Well, we do have examples of modern day cyberpunk tho, mr robot, watch dogs 2, mirror's edge. just the first i could think of. black mirror too. perhaps black mirror is more dystopic than cyberpunk. Anyway. They're all grounded on a very near future, they have characters who are against the status quo established by some corpos, but i do agree with you on something. The world's different. We've grown affictionated to brands, unions memberships sank (although i guess it is slowly coming back up), we've grown to be more lonely and individualistic people than before. In this context, an old cyberpunk could be seen as "people vs corpos", but all the examples i brought you manage to adapt to the new world and are "people vs corpos AND other people"

glenstein 2y ago

>you have to state what the punk element is first I think they get to that in the first third of the essay. >just like how comedy doesn't age well because it's the dissonance of a cultural moment, cyberpunk was a response to a fin de siecle period just before the tension and uncertainty about computers resolved into our present experience of tech. I don't know, I think the consensus is that ours is in fact the realization of many critical themes of cyberpunk, so it is now at its apex of relevance to our present moment, as it is effectively an anticipation of and criticism of it. And it turned out to be interestingly predictive, and that opens a million interesting conversations about why it was predictive. >what's changed is (cyber)punk was a set of symbols and representations[...] I don't know that I've ever encountered such a roller coaster of a paragraph. Cyberpunk was a "set of symbols and representations"? I mean, maybe, maybe not, but we just read a whole essay about it, and it doesn't talk that way and in fact identifies entirely different things, so what happened to those, and it's not clear what you mean, and you're not necessarily wrong but there are other equally true things to say of it. In short: ...wha??? You contrast cyberpunk to DIY which is never a contrast I've encountered before, and seems like a crossing of dissimilar categories, like comparing mice to nostalgia. I can't follow the thing about self-imposed constraints or how those were "honest" (huh?) signals of heroism or needing to be an amputee to be a punk? Replacement constraint? Plumage? We're not even on Mars at this point, we're the Voyager I. >by now it's probably a set of tropes that form a fantasy genre. And somehow the plane lands on a coherent point, that amazingly, I find myself agreeing with. It really is at essence a style or a group of tropes at this point equivalent to fantasy genre tropes.