Re: Cyberpunks who were right about everything, but so what

[Morlock Elloi]

Not to sound skeptical, but is there another way of viewing it?

The new Pretorian Guard, a guild tending the computing machinery for the 
pedestrian cause of concentrating control tools of the capital, needed 
its mythology, and cyberpunk was born. Historically speaking, there is 
no evidence of spontaneity in the recent cultural, ehm, movements:


https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP86S00588R000300380001-5.PDF

https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/finks-by-joel-whitney/




*As a cyberpunk ideologue, I’m touched that this subject would come up on 
nettime.  As it happens, I know where all the cyberpunks are.  At the moment, 
they’re in London, San Francisco, Vancouver, Providence, Austin, Raleigh, Los 
Gatos, Seattle, and the village of Nottingham, New Hampshire.



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Re: Cyberpunks who were right about everything, but so what

[Keith Hart]

On Mon, Mar 4, 2019 at 5:52 PM Bruce Sterling  wrote:

>
> The worst we suffer is guys on nettime imagining that we disappeared
> culturally, just because we’re old.
>
> *Because we ARE old.  It’s 2019 and us cyberpunks are white-haired people
> in our sixties and seventies.
>


> *Or read some CHINESE science fiction writers, who are of severe
> tactical-media interest because they’ve got blockbuster Chinese sci-fi
> novels and blockbuster Chinese FX movie spectacles, not to mention Huawei,
> Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent.



> If you don’t know where I am on 2019, it’s because I don’t WANT you to
> know.
>
> BruceS
>


Dear Bruce,

No disrespect intended. I know where you are, at least in cyberspace and
sometimes on terra firma because you write about it. I read avidly
everything by you I come across. But you know what it's like on nettime --
hard to stick to an argument.

I wrote in to yet another beef about Facebook. There was a time when
banging on about Zuck was a public service and, although I have wondered
about the energy he has put into it, I would say that Gert has been
vindicated in doing that. I wrote to him at the weekend to say so. But the
project was always rather specialized and I came to think of it (and the
founders of nettime) as part of a cohort who flourished before the
millennium and have been sidelined since.

My friend Patrice, whose contributions here are usually at least in part
whimsical, replied by disputing the form the coming war will take and
appeared to draw solace from the fact that "our side" (implicitly you and
friends) was right all along. I have no time for nostalgia in politics and
let him have it in abbreviated form. The sub-clause that would have
exempted you from over-classification had no room there.Sorry.

What's this about being old? I can give you more than a decade and I think
there is still life in the old dog. Us rich old farts -- I was born in the
war and came of age in the year of the Beatles US tour -- have more freedom
to tell the truth than most. I have a sixteen year old daughter and have
more hope in her generation that she has in our world. There's still a lot
to do, even if it isn't always in public.

I agree with you about Chinese sci-fi. I am off to Shanghai in  May. I have
been working on a science fiction murder mystery since 2005. I love the
genre and your work. I was not consigning you and your ilk to oblivion, but
wondering what new might be coming out of your fertile mind that I may have
missed.

Keith

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Re: Cyberpunks who were right about everything, but so what

[Jon Lebkowsky]

I've been here for a long time, too, and oddly silent because my attention
span fell to ~0, infected by Internet worms. FringeWare is less than a
shadow of a memory for those who were ever aware of it, and the new kids on
the blockchain don't know it existed. boing boing is no longer the most
popular blog on the Internet; the whole concept of blog was colonized by
big media/big publishing as the Internet mainstreamed over the years. The
Internet Revolution had no Zapata, no consistent ideology, no real
idealism. It wasn't a revolution at all, just a bunch of over-privileged
white guys with idealistic streaks that were quick to evaporate when there
was Real Money to be made.

On Mon, Mar 4, 2019 at 10:51 AM Bruce Sterling  wrote:

>
>
> Keith Hart 
> Re:  Facebook’s “toxic” global lobbying
>
> (…)
>
> Since 1914-18, there has only been one political question. Which form will
> rule the world. By analogy, do you think the Roman empire would allow a
> civil war in Italy? Americans are so parochial. It suits their rulers for
> them to be so.
>
> It is pointless to predict the forms of violence, but the prize is to rule
> the world with minimal opposition. It is true that the cyberpunk writers
> were right long ago. But timing is everything in life and where are they
> now?
>
> ***
>
> *As a cyberpunk ideologue, I’m touched that this subject would come up on
> nettime.  As it happens, I know where all the cyberpunks are.  At the
> moment, they’re in London, San Francisco, Vancouver, Providence, Austin,
> Raleigh, Los Gatos, Seattle, and the village of Nottingham, New Hampshire.
>
> *Now, I don’t want to boast about the revolutionary political insights of
> us subgeneric science fiction writers. Far be that from me.  However, I
> would point out that not a single one of us cyberpunks is dead.  “Gone,”
> sort of, yes, but dead, not even.  Not one single homicide, suicide, drug
> overdose, extralegal police execution — and you’ll have to admit that, for
> a group of creative writers, that’s pretty amazing.
>
> *Compare that to other gangs of writers that we cyberpunks are so
> frequently compared to: Beatniks and Situationists.  The body count among
> them?  Unbelievable.  Us cyberpunk futurists?  Still here!  All of us! In
> the future!  The worst we suffer is guys on nettime imagining that we
> disappeared culturally, just because we’re old.
>
> *Because we ARE old.  It’s 2019 and us cyberpunks are white-haired people
> in our sixties and seventies.  It’s entirely proper that we should be
> petting fireside cats and tending garden roses instead of pitching bricks
> in the tear gas.  If you want to read some with-it contemporary science
> fiction writer with a cyber tinge, you might try to read, say, Annalee
> Newitz. Good luck with that.
>
> *Or read some CHINESE science fiction writers, who are of severe
> tactical-media interest because they’ve got blockbuster Chinese sci-fi
> novels and blockbuster Chinese FX movie spectacles, not to mention Huawei,
> Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent.  I’m waiting for the day when nettime catches
> on that computation is happening outside the aged, wrinkled
> California-ideology.  I’m sure that will happen one of these days.  I have
> faith, because I was the VERY FIRST AMERICAN GUY EVER ON NETTIME, that’s
> how long I’ve been around here.  If you don’t know where I am on 2019, it’s
> because I don’t WANT you to know.
>
> BruceS
>
>
>
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-- 
Jon Lebkowsky (@jonl)
CEO, Polycot Associates 
CoFounder, EFF-Austin 
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Cyberpunks who were right about everything, but so what

[Bruce Sterling]

Keith Hart 
Re:  Facebook’s “toxic” global lobbying

(…)

Since 1914-18, there has only been one political question. Which form will rule 
the world. By analogy, do you think the Roman empire would allow a civil war in 
Italy? Americans are so parochial. It suits their rulers for them to be so.

It is pointless to predict the forms of violence, but the prize is to rule the 
world with minimal opposition. It is true that the cyberpunk writers were right 
long ago. But timing is everything in life and where are they now?

***

*As a cyberpunk ideologue, I’m touched that this subject would come up on 
nettime.  As it happens, I know where all the cyberpunks are.  At the moment, 
they’re in London, San Francisco, Vancouver, Providence, Austin, Raleigh, Los 
Gatos, Seattle, and the village of Nottingham, New Hampshire.

*Now, I don’t want to boast about the revolutionary political insights of us 
subgeneric science fiction writers. Far be that from me.  However, I would 
point out that not a single one of us cyberpunks is dead.  “Gone,” sort of, 
yes, but dead, not even.  Not one single homicide, suicide, drug overdose, 
extralegal police execution — and you’ll have to admit that, for a group of 
creative writers, that’s pretty amazing.  

*Compare that to other gangs of writers that we cyberpunks are so frequently 
compared to: Beatniks and Situationists.  The body count among them?  
Unbelievable.  Us cyberpunk futurists?  Still here!  All of us! In the future!  
The worst we suffer is guys on nettime imagining that we disappeared 
culturally, just because we’re old.

*Because we ARE old.  It’s 2019 and us cyberpunks are white-haired people in 
our sixties and seventies.  It’s entirely proper that we should be petting 
fireside cats and tending garden roses instead of pitching bricks in the tear 
gas.  If you want to read some with-it contemporary science fiction writer with 
a cyber tinge, you might try to read, say, Annalee Newitz. Good luck with that.

*Or read some CHINESE science fiction writers, who are of severe tactical-media 
interest because they’ve got blockbuster Chinese sci-fi novels and blockbuster 
Chinese FX movie spectacles, not to mention Huawei, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. 
 I’m waiting for the day when nettime catches on that computation is happening 
outside the aged, wrinkled California-ideology.  I’m sure that will happen one 
of these days.  I have faith, because I was the VERY FIRST AMERICAN GUY EVER ON 
NETTIME, that’s how long I’ve been around here.  If you don’t know where I am 
on 2019, it’s because I don’t WANT you to know.

BruceS



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Re: Facebook’s “toxic” global lobbying

[Brian Holmes]

Hello John, so good to hear from you!

It's fantastic what the ZAD has achieved - not just stopping the airport,
not just staying on the site, but inventing lives in the present that can
imagine a viable future. I guess everyone knows that's not so easy to do.

and meanwhile on the zad we are busy thinking how a new cosmology might
> feel, one whose compass points towards a future where nature and culture is
> never separate … check out our latest ritual, here in our monthly journal -
> https://zadibao.net/2019/03/01/17-janvier-sera-jour-ferie/
>
> What I have found so encouraging is the way you are able to open your
struggles and inventions to others, not just in the space of a moment but
also in a longer time. This kind of ritual could be practiced anywhere.
It's different from the norm, yet it's also familar (feast days, carnival,
vague cultural memories of paganism). It looks backward in time, but also
forward, with a language of regenerative cells that includes and transforms
modern biology. The norm today is a cosmology of space travel and nuclear
power. This has been overarching all politics since WWII. It's time to
change. If life on earth feels fundamentally different, then different
decisions can be taken. I went through such a change in the way that I feel
existence in the world. It matters.

love, Brian
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