Topic Nine: Cyberpunk

Lecture

Our main focus for the lecture was the different aspects of cyberpunk, from its foundations and clear definitions of the topic. There is a subsequent importance of the cyberpunk writer William Gibson. He was a writer who drew influences from other writers such as Phillip K Dick. There are common themes throughout these works such as hackers vs corporations (big business), artificial intelligence, cities out of control and and post-industrial dystopias. Cyberpunk themes can be grouped together into headings like 'Technology and Mythology', the difference between a Utopia and Dystopia, seeing Cities as Machines, Technological change in a society, and the difference from Modernism to Postmodernism. The cyberpunk tries to evaluate who has control or controls the switches in society. Is it corporations, the government or is it all self regulated by societal pressures.

After the discussion on cyberpunk, we watched the French New Wave film, La Jette. If followed the story of a man, who happened to be a prison inmate, who is sent back in time as an experiment. While in this time he falls in love, but in his heart of hearts realises that he cannot be with the woman because he it is not a natural state of being. The film consists of still images linked together with the aid of voiceover to form a narrative. There is only one frame that does have movement, which is when the female character looks lingeringly into the camera. This was a vital part of the film, where we the audience are made to feel what the male character is feeling in regards to the female character, his love and adoration of her.

Tutorial

We spent most of the tutorial discussing our assignment topics and how I was going to tackle the arguments I have chosen to delve into. My assignment will focus on why individuals chose to play a game such as 'Second Life'. I will include an introduction, that wont be too boring for those already familiar to the game. I'll talk about who made it and why, how the avatars in the game represent the users of the game, and in turn talk about why people chose to represent themselves in particular ways (i.e adding more hair, having bigger breasts, being trim and tall etc.) and why people can become addicted to playing the game and how it turns from playing the game to living the game. I'll sum up by commenting why people chose the game and how that affects their lives.

Readings

The first reading this week was the allegory of the cave by Plato. The main point that Plato addresses is that the majority of humankind can 'think, and speak, etc., without (so far as they acknowledge) any awareness of his realm of Forms'. In basic terms, humanity in the form of the general public, has an awareness of a 'reality', but only has the tools to identify it, but doesn't have the tools to step back to see whether reality actually exists or is just their interpretation of events that happen to them. In the allegory, the shadows on the wall represent the prisoners 'reality' and their reaction to that reality. The second reading was The Burning Chrome, which consisted of ten short stories by author William Gibson. This is the first book to coin the phrase "cyberspace", and would cement his name as the 'father' of Cyberpunk. This book and Gibson's other popular book Neuromancer persuaded me to delve into the Cyberpunk topic for my assignment, instead of the topic listed above. I put a fair bit of effort into the Second Life topic, but would rather focus on Cyberpunk and Cinema. Personally i love the connection of Cyberpunk literature and Cyberpunk cinema, or cinema that has been influenced by Cyberpunk, but doesn't necessarily fit exactly into that genre.