mongosteen posted:go out into public irl especially anywhere where people have to wait for 10+ seconds for some reason and everybody is on their smartphone, even if they're with other people. i'm not just being a bitter old cunt about this, this is a major change in our social relations and smartphones have only been around for like 5 years
Agreed and i'm in two minds about it because
a) it's sad to watch such atomization
but
b) the internet is more interesting than most people
Ironicwarcriminal posted:mongosteen posted:go out into public irl especially anywhere where people have to wait for 10+ seconds for some reason and everybody is on their smartphone, even if they're with other people. i'm not just being a bitter old cunt about this, this is a major change in our social relations and smartphones have only been around for like 5 years
Agreed and i'm in two minds about it because
a) it's sad to watch such atomization
but
b) the internet is more interesting than most people
SAME
google glass is going to be $1500 and you have to write google an essay why you deserve to get one lol
Crow posted:River Cruising
discipline posted:yess I'm writing a book about that, and sociopathy of cyberpunk. it all aligns perfectly
send me a copy
mongosteen posted:google glass is going to be $1500 and you have to write google an essay why you deserve to get one lol
Whoa, can't wait to show AssMan1964, and the CIA, the intimate moments I share with my family. This Orwellian future is looking so bright I'm going to have to wear shades 
tpaine posted:mongosteen posted:dude smartphones are really not that expensive.
oh yeah? *gets all up in your face*
discipline posted:I've had a grand total of three friends "reach out" and email me, asking why I deleted facebook. to all the other 200 friends, I'm just fading from their periphery whadda world
i wondered why i dont get any cool links on there now, mystery solved
discipline posted:what's amazing is that nobody really cares. very few care. but you fashion your life around thinking they care, that you are the center of their universe, because that's what the product leads you to believe, that you are the center of the universe.
well, it derives from the alienation of the individual and the object tiny 'aye desire to feel relevant while suspended in the void that is nihilistic pomo capitalism. the subject understands full well no one else cares, however, it is inconsequential as the true intended audience is the Other
tpaine posted:
mongosteen posted:cyberpunk was actually a pretty progressive movement in scifi, relative to the fact that so much of the genre was fascist
on the one hand, you've got the conscious acknowledgement of the nature of life under late capital, leading to an aesthetic that hovers between "gloomy" and "sick badass dystopic struggle, with gadgets", and that could maybe be construed as criticism. There's even the occasional possible criticism of globalization (Bruce Sterling's Lekhi Starlitz stuff, whatever), although I think of most of this as being fawning adoration.
on the other hand, when the chips came down, there was this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zenith_Angle
one of the most loathsome novels i can think of in recent memory.
"Derek "Van" Vandeveer is a young, well respected, computer scientist who we find enjoying breakfast in his new home with his wife and young son. He is rich with stock options and heady with his own success when his whole world is suddenly and forever changed as the planes begin crashing into the World Trade Center. Within months his fortune is gone to an Enron-like scandal, and his wife and son have moved west to work on a new telescope being developed by a billionaire entrepreneur.
Van is recruited into a nascent wing of the government working on the outside of the main bureaucracy to vastly improve the security of government systems. His ingenious design gains him even more respect from his peers, but as the project continues Van goes through personality changes, becoming more paranoid and simultaneously more patriotic. Without the psychological aid of the money and nice house of his former company, he even begins to question whether he really is a computer scientist or just an over-glorified technician.
The novel comes to head as Van is asked to look into the reason a multi-billion dollar pork project spy satellite is failing in space. The bureaucracy, thinking that he will fail in this endeavor, hopes to use it to discredit his boss and him and put an end to their power climb in Washington. Van discovers the problem and through a covert military-like attack on the source, puts an end to it."
palafox posted:mongosteen posted:cyberpunk was actually a pretty progressive movement in scifi, relative to the fact that so much of the genre was fascist
on the one hand, you've got the conscious acknowledgement of the nature of life under late capital, leading to an aesthetic that hovers between "gloomy" and "sick badass dystopic struggle, with gadgets", and that could maybe be construed as criticism. There's even the occasional possible criticism of globalization (Bruce Sterling's Lekhi Starlitz stuff, whatever), although I think of most of this as being fawning adoration.
on the other hand, when the chips came down, there was this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zenith_Angle
one of the most loathsome novels i can think of in recent memory.
"Derek "Van" Vandeveer is a young, well respected, computer scientist who we find enjoying breakfast in his new home with his wife and young son. He is rich with stock options and heady with his own success when his whole world is suddenly and forever changed as the planes begin crashing into the World Trade Center. Within months his fortune is gone to an Enron-like scandal, and his wife and son have moved west to work on a new telescope being developed by a billionaire entrepreneur.
Van is recruited into a nascent wing of the government working on the outside of the main bureaucracy to vastly improve the security of government systems. His ingenious design gains him even more respect from his peers, but as the project continues Van goes through personality changes, becoming more paranoid and simultaneously more patriotic. Without the psychological aid of the money and nice house of his former company, he even begins to question whether he really is a computer scientist or just an over-glorified technician.
The novel comes to head as Van is asked to look into the reason a multi-billion dollar pork project spy satellite is failing in space. The bureaucracy, thinking that he will fail in this endeavor, hopes to use it to discredit his boss and him and put an end to their power climb in Washington. Van discovers the problem and through a covert military-like attack on the source, puts an end to it."
that sounds like a tom clancy thriller, not cyberpunk
As Tzu-Gung was traveling through the regions north of the river
Han, he saw an old man working in his vegetable garden. He
had dug an irrigation ditch. The man would descend into a well,
fetch up a vessel of water in his arms and pour it out into the
ditch. While his efforts were tremendous the results appeared to
be very meager.
Tzu-Gung said, "There is a way whereby you can irrigate a
hundred ditches in one day, and whereby you can do much with
little effort. Would you not like to hear of it?"
Then the gardener stood up, looked at him and said, "And what
would that be?"
Tsu-Gung replied, "You take a wooden lever, weighted at the
back and light in front. In this way you can bring up water so
quickly that it just gushes out. This is called a draw-well."
Then anger rose up in the old man's face, and he said, "I have
heard my teacher say that whoever uses machines does all his work like a machine. He who does his work like a machine
grows a heart like a machine, and he who carries the heart of a
machine in his breast loses his simplicity. He who has lost his
simplicity becomes unsure in the strivings of his soul.
Uncertainty in the strivings of the soul is something which does
not agree with honest sense. It is not that I do not know of such
things; I am ashamed to use them."
but replace draw-well with iphone and irrigating a ditch with making friends
Human beings have developed a new problem since the advent of the iPhone and the following mobile revolution: no one is paying attention to anything they’re actually doing. Everyone seems to be looking down at something or through something. Those perfect moments watching your favorite band play or your kid’s recital are either being captured via the lens of a device that sits between you and the actual experience, or being interrupted by constant notifications. Pings from the outside world, breaking into what used to be whole, personal moments.
Steve goes on. "We wondered, what if we brought technology closer to your senses? Would that allow you to more quickly get information and connect with other people but do so in a way — with a design — that gets out of your way when you’re not interacting with technology? That’s sort of what led us to Glass." I can’t stop looking at the lens above his right eye. "It’s a new wearable technology. It’s a very ambitious way to tackle this problem, but that’s really sort of the underpinning of why we worked on Glass."
problem: people are too easily distracted by stuff on the internet
solution: put this distraction in front of their face all the time
marketing
also cyberpunk was cool in that it accurately predicted the current moment and was actually unpopular for that reason.
Impper posted:idk what cyberpunk is but it sounds really gaey
It's when ashton kutcher plays a prank on you on the internet.
YOU'VE BEEN CYBERPUNK'D BITCH