Bruce Sterling on Mon, 4 Mar 2019 17:54:51 +0100 (CET)


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<nettime> Cyberpunks who were right about everything, but so what



Keith Hart <keith@thememorybank.co.uk>
Re: <nettime> 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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