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Thursday, 22 September 2005
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Mark Frauenfelder:
In 1990, my friends Gareth Branwyn and Peter Sugarman conceived of of a
hypercard stack exploring near future developments in art,
entertainment, media, science, literature, technology, music, etc. I
drew a bunch of illustrations and drew a promotional comic book for the
stack, and Jim Leftwich designed many of the interface elements. It was
called Beyond Cyberpunk! and was a critical success.
The stack was ported to the Web, and Gareth unveiled it today. From his introdcutory essay, written in 1991:
 "CYBERPUNK."
Is it a literary genre? Is it marketing hype? Is it the latest style in
the culture industry? Is it the apotheosis of post-modernism? As
Dieter, the German nihilo-art snob on Saturday Night Live would say:
"Your questions have become tiresome." Regardless of what it is or
isn't, Cyberpunk (also called "Techno-culture" or "New Edge" culture)
has become a cultural phenomenon which bears looking into.
For a multiplicity of reasons, it has, in hardy memetic fashion,
taken on a life of its own. This stack is an attempt at holding up, for
further examination, some of the more interesting strains of this
curious cultural mutation.
As we move deeper into the 1990's, Techno-culture has become
"important." In the tunnels of the underground, in the halls of
academe, and in pop culture, people are talking about C-punk, taking it
seriously. What these people are talking about has little to do with
Cyberpunk as a literary movement. Those SF-ers who proclaim that
"Cyberpunk is dead," are probably right. As far as literature goes. To
the current generation of users, Cyberpunk is synonymous with the
hacker underground, non-Luddite forms of anarchy, and the strategy
(borrowed from C-punk lit) of extrapolating "20 minutes into the
future." Cyberpunk has come to mean simply the grafting of
high-technology onto underground, street, and avant pop culture.
Here's a review of the print version of Boing Boing from Beyond Cyberpunk.
Link
This is a classic interactive piece from the early days of multimedia - about when I was an early practitioner.
[Boing Boing]
11:56:19 PM 
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Cory Doctorow:
David Mery is a London geek who was going down into the tube one night
in July when he was arrested on suspicion of terrorism. He was held,
his flat was searched, his computers and phones were confiscated, his
data was copied, and his photo, DNA and fingerprints were taken. He was
denied access to counsel.
He was released the next day, but his computers were not returned, nor was his record expunged.
Mery's "crime" was carrying a "bulky" backpack (e.g., a laptop
bag), wearing an "unseasonably warm" coat (it was one of the coldest
July days on record), and "avoiding the police" (he was looking at an
SMS on his phone when he went through the turnstiles and so didn't make
eye-contact with the officers there).
There is not one single piece of evidence to suggest that Mery
is a terrorist, and yet the tools of his livelihood and all his
personal data are now squirreled away in a police evidence locker --
the police haven't even given him an inventory or receipt for all the
goods they stole.
This isn't an anti-terror investigation, it's a mugging. And it could
happen to you. Hell, if it happened to me, I'd probably just be
deported, since I'm only an immigrant, and not a citizen.
If you don't want to get mugged by the coppers whose salary you pay, write to your MP and city councillors about David's plight. I just sent a note with much of this post and some additional text to mine:
This is institutionalised theft masquerading as anti-terror
investigation. It makes Londoners less safe because it deprives us of
the certainty that the police are taking sensible measures to protect
us against terrorism, and because it instills the fear that the copper
in the tube is a mugger in waiting, who might at any moment swoop in
and confiscate thousands of pounds' worth of kit and insert us into the
criminal justice system.
Link
(Thanks, Ewan!) [Boing Boing]
11:21:03 PM
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On the way back to work from my
lunchtime walk, down a narrow space between a building and a fence, I
had to walk through a group of four or five 13 or 14 year olds,
in which a dominant female was asserting herself, or showing off to her
friends of both sexes, with raucous banter.
As I headed towards them, she called out to me, "Don't eat too much will you!" I was eating nuts from a bag at the time.
I ignored her, and her friends.
She called out another remark, meant to be personal.
I remained stone faced.
I was drawing closer, and she called out another.
I remained impassive.
Then she got me.
"I find you sexually attractive".
At that, I just had to laugh.
11:15:43 PM
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© Copyright 2005 Peter Nixon.
Last update: 2/10/05; 8:13:37 AM.
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