Steve Shaviro reviews Tomorrow Now by Bruce Sterling, a book that (for an eminent cyberpunk novelist) is perhaps too sane and sensible.
(Source: EBR)
Joseph Tabbi reviews the essay collection Simulacrum America.
About a year ago in a TLS review, the English novelist Lawrence Norfolk praised the emerging generation of U.S. writers for resisting the allure of the mediated culture and providing readers with “news of a rare and real America” (“Closing time in the fun-house”). Norfolk is thinking of William T. Vollmann’s red light districts (mostly cleaned up now and Hilton-ed over), Jonathan Franzen’s inner city (newly gentrified), Richard Powers’s intelligentsia (last seen working online), and David Foster Wallace’s mid-priced cruise ships, halfway houses, and rural state fairs (now mostly funded by corporations). Norfolk would probably oppose this America to the more globally familiar prospect of “total operationality, hyperreality, total control” and total interchangeability of sign and referent that Jean Baudrillard finds here, along with technology’s “mortal deconstruction of the body” (“Simulacra,” cited in Simulacrum America).
Observer is a survival horror video game played from a first-person perspective. It is set in 2084 Poland following a "digital plague" that cost the lives of thousands, resulting in war and rampant drug use. The player controls Daniel Lazarski, a Cracovian detective of the Observers police unit tasked with hacking their targets' memories and fears with a device known as the Dream Eater. Equipped with augmented vision split into Electromagnetic Vision—which scans for electronic devices—and Bio Vision—which scans for biological evidence—he is able to analyse and highlight certain objects in his environment, which in a hacked brain is subject to active change. Objects can be interacted with and examined. A conversation tree is used for dialogue.
Joseph Tabbi reviews the essay collection Simulacrum America.
About a year ago in a TLS review, the English novelist Lawrence Norfolk praised the emerging generation of U.S. writers for resisting the allure of the mediated culture and providing readers with “news of a rare and real America” (“Closing time in the fun-house”). Norfolk is thinking of William T. Vollmann’s red light districts (mostly cleaned up now and Hilton-ed over), Jonathan Franzen’s inner city (newly gentrified), Richard Powers’s intelligentsia (last seen working online), and David Foster Wallace’s mid-priced cruise ships, halfway houses, and rural state fairs (now mostly funded by corporations). Norfolk would probably oppose this America to the more globally familiar prospect of “total operationality, hyperreality, total control” and total interchangeability of sign and referent that Jean Baudrillard finds here, along with technology’s “mortal deconstruction of the body” (“Simulacra,” cited in Simulacrum America).
........A beautiful, “excessively feminine” woman walks into an elevator; she is watched by her mobster boyfriend but she herself initiates eye contact with a stranger, a butch woman whom the boyfriend barely notices. Reading this scene as an audience member, the viewer for whom the entire incident has been staged, Cortiel notes the tension between hetero “scenarios of voyeurism” normalized by Hollywood and “the lesbian look” that we, as knowing observers, are (at least momentarily) encouraged to adopt.
An overview of the genre and the history of cyberpunk.
In fact, the evolution of digital culture is so tied to the history of cyberpunk that it is no exaggeration to claim that the digital humanities as a discipline would not exist in its current form without this peculiar science fiction subgenre.
Chaos & Cyber Culture brings together a series of articles written by Timothy in from the 70s to the 90s, including the title article, published in 1994, covering his reflections and predictions about the digital universe and its communications network. It is impossible to map the rich source of Leary’s ideas, some of which I shall try to summarize here, without using the creative terminology with which he expounds the exuberance and turbulence of his imagination.
Chaos & Cyber Culture reúne uma série de artigos que Timothy escreveu nas décadas de 70 a 90, entre os quais aquele que dá nome ao volume, publicado em 1994, abrangendo suas reflexões e previsões sobre o universo digital e sua rede intercomunicativa. Impossível mapear o rico manancial das idéias de Leary, algumas das quais tento aqui resumir, sem recorrer à terminologia criativa com que ele as expõe com a exuberância e a turbulência de sua imaginação.
Em um desses artigos, “Como Eu me Tornei Anfíbio”, Timothy Leary descreve o processo de metamorfose cultural por que passou a sua percepção, como a de milhões de outros seres humanos, nos últimos anos, sob o impacto das novas mídias. Por volta de 1980 – afirma Timothy – ele começou a se sentir em estado de mutação, ao se ver gastando cerca de quatro horas por dia a produzir, escrever e dirigir imagens na sua tela pessoal. Foi quando aprendeu a arquivar, processar, organizar, armazenar, recuperar e transmitir seus pensamentos digitais sob a forma de palavras e ícones. Esses exercícios de traduzir pensamentos em códigos digitais e imagens de tela o ajudaram a entender como seu cérebro funcionava, como o universo atua em termos de algoritmos de informação e, finalmente, a compreender como evitar a ditadura da televisão e democratizar a política “telecibernética” do futuro. Passara a sentir-se tão confortável em Cibéria, Tubolândia, no outro lado de sua janela para a realidade eletrônica, como ao operar no fechado Terrarium do mundo material.
Chaos & Cyber Culture brings together a series of articles written by Timothy in from the 70s to the 90s, including the title article, published in 1994, covering his reflections and predictions about the digital universe and its communications network. It is impossible to map the rich source of Leary’s ideas, some of which I shall try to summarize here, without using the creative terminology with which he expounds the exuberance and turbulence of his imagination.
Chaos & Cyber Culture reúne uma série de artigos que Timothy escreveu nas décadas de 70 a 90, entre os quais aquele que dá nome ao volume, publicado em 1994, abrangendo suas reflexões e previsões sobre o universo digital e sua rede intercomunicativa. Impossível mapear o rico manancial das idéias de Leary, algumas das quais tento aqui resumir, sem recorrer à terminologia criativa com que ele as expõe com a exuberância e a turbulência de sua imaginação.
As potencialidades da linguagem digital cresceram extraordinariamente, em ritmo vertiginoso, com “hardwares” e “softwares” cada vez mais aperfeiçoados e disponibilizados, reavivando no mundo dos signos a pertinência antecipadora das propostas da vanguarda, fulcradas em conceitos como a materialidade do texto e a sua projeção pluridimensional, visual e sonora (“verbivocovisual”), a interpenetração do verbal e do não-verbal, a montagem, a colagem, a interdisciplinaridade, a simultaneidade, e, por fim, a interatividade, em substituição aos modelos convencionais do discurso ortodoxo e fechado. Cabe aos artistas e poetas explorar o território novo que nos oferece a engenharia computacional, libertá-la prometeicamente, ainda que de forma simbólica, como parábola exemplar, das práticas meramente institucionais e comérciocomunicativas e humanizá-la com o sopro transfigurador de suas criações.
A collection of interlinked materials for studying digital culture assembled primarily from George P. Landow's courses on Hypertext and Literary Theory and Cyberspace, Virtual Reality, and Critical Theory at Brown University. Course syllabi are available, and because the majority of materials collected there were created students in these courses visitors can glean ideas about how to design and/or participate in long-running courses, led by a permanent faculty member, in which students play an active and essential role in developing effective course materials updated each time the class is offered.