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Book reviews |
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CAN YOU GROK CYBERIA?Neuromancer, by William Gibson;and Cyberia: life in the trenches of cyberspace, by Douglas Rushkoff
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Reviews |
READING Douglas Rushkoff's 'Cyberia' and William Gibson's 'Neuromancer' one after the other in the space of a few days gave me a huge buzz. Like Verne, Wells, Huxley and Orwell before him, William Gibson presents a bold futuristic fantasy, much of which has since come to pass. When I was a kid in the 1950s, computers were largely - like space travel - in the realm of SciFi. In 1969, when my brother became a computer programmer, one of the new technocrats, I never imagined that I would ever have any use or liking for computers. In 1983, while copywriting for an ad agency, we picked up a micro-computer account for a Japanese company, which has since bowed out of the computer business, and my art director and I began reading computer mags as we tried to get to grips with this new realm. If only I had been able to read William Gibson's 'Neuromancer', I might have realised the implications of what were then expensive gadgets whose only credible household uses were as glorified typewriters, accounting budget keepers, and primitive games machines. Remember your first game of Pong or Space Invaders? Compare that with Marathon or even the humble PegLeg. In the intervening 12 years, I have really got to grips with the magic, muscle and madness of personal computers. It's all happened so fast - In 1986, I learned about desk-top publishing hands-on: producing a full-colour tabloid newspaper with a truly primitive early version of Microsoft Word on two Apple Macs (512K) and a Laser printer. 1984 was the year that the first Apple Mac hit the market, making it simple enough for even techno-idiots like me to actually use a computer productively after just a couple of hours. In fact, 'Neuromancer' was only published in 1984 - a truly Orwellian irony. What is incredible about 'Neuromancer', which I have only read it this year, is that William Gibson, the perhaps unwilling prophet of the Cyberpunk movement, claims to have 'known nothing about computers' when he wrote it - 'If I'd actually know anything about computers, I doubt if I'd been able to do it.' He was inspired by watching kids in video arcades: 'I could see in the physical intensity of their postures how rapt these kids were. It was like one of those closed systems out of a Pynchon novel: you had this feedback loop, with photons coming off the screen into the kids' eyes, the neurons moving through their bodies, electrons moving through the computer. And these kids clearly believed in the space these games projected. Everyone who works with computers seems to develop an intuitive faith that there's some kind of actual space behind the screen.' (interview in 'Mississippi Review' Vol 16) These were the first intimations of the 'reality' of Cyberspace, or the Matrix, which Gibson's hero Case explores in search of truth and revenge. Gibson describes it thus: 'Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding...' Gibson was perhaps the first cyberwriter to see the full potential of this human-made alternative - and virtual - reality. He was also the first - as far as I know - to articulate the notion that data would become the future currency, the only thing with real value. Especially when this data can encapsulate whole lives - like the construct, a ROM package which contains everything known about an individual. Case taps into a construct of Dixie, an old buddy who can help him in his quest. But for the construct, this virtual R(ead) O(nly) M(emory) existence is terribly frustrating, and he asks Case: 'This scam of yours, when it's over, you erase this goddam thing.' Who needs digital ROM eternity? Like William Burroughs, who has explored the consequences of control-oriented societies and forces - and the reactive anarchistic counterforces, as in 'Nova Express', 'The Wild Boys' and 'Cities of the Red Night' - Gibson also foresaw that the most crucial question regarding Cyberspace was the conflict between freedom and control. Who controls the Matrix, the Internet, the source codes, the operating systems? Will Bill Gates, Conrad Black, Kerry Packer, Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch please stand and take the oath of allegiance to the principle of freedom of electronic expression and the right to intellectual property... Gibson's also raises the question of the perceived need to limit artificial intelligence - it is illegal for anybody in the cyberfuture to allow AI devices to increase their intelligence. While we are still a long way from the realisation of much of what Gibson devised, the implications of some of these concepts in the very near future is becoming increasingly worthy of study and debate. Most commentators on late 20th century technology and culture ponder the economic, social, political and psychological implications of rapid change, but few ponder the philosophical implications. Not just what is happening, but why it is happening, what does that mean in terms of our personal and collective reality? Many of the promoters of the Information Superhighway are simply looking to make billions of bucks out of entertainment and consumerism. For many opportunistic pollies, no doubt, it'll be just another form of bread - the cash variety - and circuses. Douglas Rushkoff's 'Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace' is an eclectic and fascinating rollercoaster foray through the evolving virtual universe of Cyberia, inhabited by hackers, crackers, hypesters, digital fundamentalists, born- again techno-hippies, neo-pagan deconstructionists, radical greens and visionary fractal milleniaists. Rushkoff's articles have appeared in mags such as 'GQ', 'Vibe' and 'The Wall Street Journal', and he has written 'Media Virus: Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture' and 'The GenX Reader'. In 'Cyberia', he tackles the largely uncharted nether regions of electro-pop culture with a deep suss of the method behind much of the seeming madness. This isn't just a tabloid-shock-horror taxi ride through a strange neighbourhood - Rushkoff fraternises with the natives, and the natives are, mostly, friendly. He understands and empathises with them, he shares some of their vices and visions, but he also adds his own humorous asides to lend perspective to some of the wilder Cyberfreaks. The Cyberian suss on what is happening and why is rendered thus by Rushkoff: '(They) interpret the development of the datasphere as the hardwiring of a global brain. This is to be the final stage in the development of "Gaia", the living being that is the Earth, for which humans serve as the neurons. As computer programmers and psychedelic warriors together realise that "all is one", a common belief emerges that the evolution of humanity has been a wilful progression towards the construction of the next dimensional home for consciousness. We need a new word to express this boundless territory. The kids in this book call it Cyberia." This ain't just a freak show, the implications are serious - for better or worse. At stake is control of reality, and the freedom to control our own reality. Rushkoff writes: 'The battle for your reality begins on the fields of digital interaction. Our growing dependence on computers and electronic media for information, money, and communications has made us easy targets, if unwilling subjects, in one of the most bizarre social experiments of the century... It is a boundless universe in which people can interact regardless of time and location.' And in this datasphere, like any new frontier culture, there are the pioneers, the missionaries, the would-be settlers and colonisers, the pimps and hookers, the adventurers and the bandits. It's not always easy to recognise who is who. Down among the hackers and crackers, Rushkoff learns some of the ploys of the Cyberian terrorists and tricksters but he is also told about hitherto unreported spectres in the Cybersphere, such as the company, responsible for setting up security for the US Government - including airports and aerospace systems - 'They have back doors into everything they've ever worked on. They can assume control over anything they want to. They're big. They're bad. And they've got more power than they should have, which is why we are after them.' Rushkoff discovers that many of the philosophical threads that run through the beliefs of the various tribes, clans, cults and one-of-a-kind mavericks of Cyberia are traceable back to their roots in '60s - that heady mixture of sex, drugs, rock 'n roll, mysticism, anti-capitalism, pacifism, non-racsim, anti-sexism and environmental consciousness. He notes the reciprocal impact that the psychedelic community made on the mathematics and computing communities. The freaks got turned on to the digital Matrix, a reality as virtual and strange as the best acid trip - 'Man, dig those weird pulsing, regularly irregular Paisley shapes!' The proto-Cyberians replied: 'Yeah, we call them fractals - they kind of indicate the random order of chaos.' Rushkoff makes it clear why fractals - a 'visual representation of a discontinuous kind of math equation (which has) become the emblem of Cyberia' - are so important to an understanding of the Cyberian ethos. He writes: 'Fractals were discovered in the 1960s by Benoit Mandelbrot, who was searching for ways to help us cope, mathematical, with a reality that is not as smooth and predictable as our textbooks describe it... Mandelbrot's main insight was to recognise that chaos has an order to it. If you look at a natural coastline from an aeroplane, you will notice certain kinds of mile-long nooks and crannies. If you land on the beach, you will see these same shapes reflected in the rock formations, on the surface of the rocks themselves, and even in the particles making up the rocks. This self-similarity is what brings a sense of order into an otherwise randomly rough and strange terrain. Fractals are equations that model the irregular but stunningly self-similar world in which we have found ourselves.' (If you have a Mac and want to check out the extraordinary beauty of animated fractal patterns, try to find The Bone Factory's MandelAcid.) Perhaps the reason why techno-hippiedom, the maths freaks and the early computer hackers found they had so much in common, is their fractalised fantasies somehow matched. Dan Kottke, a former Apple engineer who is now a computer graphics designer, is a good example of the crossover - he used to talk about Buddhist philosophy and Dylan with Apple pioneer Steve Jobbs, and now he provides graphic devices for the Grateful Dead. Kottke fervently believes that some of counter-cultural 'psychedelic spirituality' that shaped the creation of the Apple gang radically transformed computer culture. By redefining how people interacted with computers - hitherto the tools of scientists, engineers, accountants and professional number crunchers - by turning them into user- friendly windows onto overlapping realities such as games, graphics and communication, they unleashed a fractalising effect that is still operative. One of the most important aspects of Cyberia came into being when computers began talking to each over phone line. One of the greatest benefits of the Internet is the instant communication between people logged in to chat groups and conferences. This is real-time confabbing between parties who never see each other and often don't know the real identity of the person with whom they may be discussing chaos maths, sexual politics, or sports results. This process is changing how we relate to others and how NetHeads see themselves. Rushkoff writes: 'One develops a Cyber personality unencumbered by his looks and background and defined entirely by his entries and topics. The references he makes to literature, the media, religion, his friends, his lifestyle and his priorities create who he is in Cyberspace.' In fact, one could easily have multiple personalities - one for each kind of discussion. However, Rushkoff also points out: 'The danger of participation is that there are hundreds or even thousands of potentially critical eyes watching every entry. A faulty fact will be challenged, a lie will be uncovered, plagiarism will be discovered. Cyberspace is a truth serum. Violations of Cyber morality or village ethics are immediately brought to light and passed through the circuits of the entire datasphere at lightning speed.' He cites the case of a molester called Stink, who harasses women on the WELL bulletin board. When he is banished, fellow WELLians debate about whether this is justified - ' "How," someone asks, "can we call ourselves an open, virtual community if we lock out those who don't communicate the way we like?" ' Finally Stink's identity is discovered, he admits his anti-social activities and that he had used his brother's account to vent his alter ego - 'Free of his regular identity, he could be whoever he wanted and act however he dared with no personal repercussions. What had begun as a kind of thought experiment or acting exercise had got out of hand. The alter ego went out of control. Bennet, it turns out, was a mild-mannered member of conferences like Christianity... he has a wife and children, a job, a religion, a social conscience, and a fairly quiet disposition.' Truly a kind of Cyber Jekyll and Hyde. If you surf the more obscure reaches of the Net, you'll be aware that in Cyberia, as Ed Sanders put it, 'Weirdness Is!' Rushkoff introduces us to some of the stranger protagonists, such as Genesis P. Orridge, of the 'industrial band Throbbing Gristle and TOPY (Temple Ov Psychick Youth), a technopagan 'web of majick practitioners and datasphere enthusiasts'; R.U. Sirius, of 'Mondo 2000' magazine; cyberdelic proselytiser Mark Heley; and former LSD prophet Timothy Leary, who is now heavily into virtual reality - 'In ten years most of our daily operations, occupational, educational, and reactional, will transpire in Cyberia.' Rushkoff makes it clear that virtual reality devices promise much but are still fairly limited in the degree of 'reality' they presently deliver. Further down the infobahn he imagines possibilities such as a virtual classroom in which teacher and students - each at home in places scattered around the globe - gather and then embark on a virtual field trip to ancient Rome to check out the Colosseum. Virtual reality devices could take us to places and spaces hitherto unimaginable - inside the human body, into sub-molecular structures, dancing with the quarks to a rock beat. A recently suggested use was to make a VR record of the ancient rock paintings found recently in a cave in France - this would make these unique artworks available to people all over the world, without endangering the originals. The same applies for other significant buildings and art works. And, of course, there is speculation on virtual sex - ' "Every command you give the computer as a movement of your body is translated onto her suit as a touch, or whatever, then back to your suit for the way her body feels the way she reacts, and so on." "But she can make her skin feel like whatever she wants to. She can program in fur, and that's what she feels like to you." My head is spinning. The possibilities are endless in a sexual designer reality... But then I begin to worry about those possibilities. And - could there be such a thing as virtual rape? Or virtual muggings or murder through tapped phone lines?' Rushkoff is too sussed and cynical to embrace some of the more extreme proselytisers - 'But have psychedelics and virtual reality come to us as a philosopher's stone, or is it simply that our philosopher's stoned?' Among the Cyberians there is a strong political/philosophical belief that rampant consumerism will consume the world as we know it. Chris Carlsson, editor of 'Processed World' believes we are living in a 'socially constructed perversion', a society 'addicted to consumption, and this addiction leads us to do things and support systems that benefit only the dollar, not the individual... For this final phase in the era of credit and GNP expansion, there can never be enough stuff - if there were, the corporations would go out of business. The motivation is to sell; the standard of living, the environment, cultural growth, and the meaning of life do not enter into the equation.' There are those who interpret the rush of developments in expanding technology and consciousness as a necessary counter to the looming ecological apocalypse we face as a result of the shift from political and military power to financial power, gross materialism and so-called economic rationalism. Some of them are believers in Gaia, who see the world as a single organism that may protect itself by changes in its atmosphere and the consciousness of those who inhabit it. Since the multinational media - rapidly becoming purveyors of entertainment and diversion rather than truth, education and necessary information - are a necessary tool of consumerism, the new electronic underground of Cyberia is the ideal multi- media, multi-dimensional force through which to spread the reactive cultural viruses created by the Cyberians. Many of those who were involved in the counter-culture in the '60s are prophets and clan leaders in Cyberia. Nina Graboi, author of 'One Foot in the Future' believes that 'what psychedelics do to an individual, LSD did for society, breaking us free of cause-and-effect logic into an optimistic creativity'. She says: 'Materialism really was at its densest and darkest before the sixties and it did not allow us to see anything else existed. Then acid came along just at the right time... After the whole LSD craze, all of a sudden, the skies opened up and books came pouring down and wisdom came. And something started happening. I think by now there are enough of us to have created a morphogenic field of awareness, that are open to more than the materialists believe.' However, while observing some of the Cyberian Riders of the Purple Haze exploring pharmacological virtual realities with DMT, LSD and Ecstasy, Rushkoff muses: 'It was hard to know if these people are touching the next reality or simply frying their brains.' The concept of morphic resonance is very big in Cyberia. If morphic resonance works for crystal structures created in laboratories, and mice learning to negotiate a maze, it might also operate in terms of human thought, explaining the generational change in awareness and consciousness. Rushkoff writes: '(Cambridge biologist Rupert) Sheldrake's picture of reality is a vast fractal of resonating fields. Everything, no matter how small, is constantly affecting everything else. If the tiniest detail in a fractal pattern echoes the overall design of the entire fractal, then a change to (or the experience of) this remote piece changes the overall picture (through the principal of feedback and iteration).' Some Cyberians also link the principle of morphic resonance to the consciousness of Gaia. And there is optimism. James Lovelock, inventor of the Gaia hypothesis believes: 'In the end we may achieve a sensible and economic technology and be more in harmony with the rest of Gaia. There can be no voluntary resignation from technology. We are so inextricably part of the technosphere that giving it up is as unrealistic as jumping off a ship in mid-Atlantic to swim the rest of the journey in glorious independence.' Armed with computers, modems, VR devices, drugs, 'mind- expanding' House music, and video cameras to record an alternative version of events that differs radically from the Rupert Murdoch, Kerry Packer, Ted Turner, Conrad Black 'reality' - the optimistic Cyberians believe they are spreading the cultural viruses of altered consciousness and perception which can counter the mega-corporate agenda of control and consumption. Rushkoff quotes Author Michael Hutchinson's observation : 'George Bush once said, "The only enemy we have is unpredictability." Authoritarian systems depend on their citizens to act with predictability. But anything that enhances states of consciousness is going to increase unpredictability. These machines lead people to new, unpredictable information about themselves. The behaviour that results is unpredictable, and, in that sense, these tools are dangerous. Big Brother is threatened when people take the tools of intelligence into their own hands.' Already the Republican-led US Senate is considering ways to control obscenity on the Internet. So, if you plan to exercise your creative unpredictability in Cyberia do so quickly before the Thought Police go on patrol and random urine testing becomes compulsory before you connect to the Matrix. by Giles Hugo
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