Notes on The Diamond Age

I hope that 3d printers will soon be as ubiquitous in our society as Matter Compilers are in The Diamond Age.


The Drummers underground is very similar to the function of the human neural system, which is an interesting contrast: it functions in a similar dynamic with similar structures but on a larger scale, yet most of the rest of the technology in the novel is on a nanotechnological scale.

Nell's ascent into into her position in high society is the reverse parallel of Hackworth's loss of societal status throughout the story.

The scene where Nell visits Harv who is living in government run treatment center for ill people was poignant because it seems very true to the current status of technological development for ill people.

The last scene where Nell saves Miranda, her “virtual” mother, is a stark contrast between the behavior of her real mother.

Much of the nanotechnology in this novel could be realized as soon as 50 years from now.

The concept of phyles reminds me of the ancient Greek nation-state.

The "independent" and unsigned Nanomites inhabiting the blood streams of people are like a material version of "spam"

It seems like nanotechnology has been used more for cultural reasons than humanitarian reasons in many situations.

Virtual World: Puzzle Pirates

For my virtual world experience, I chose Three Rings: YoHoHo! Puzzle Pirates. To begin, I was directed to the following interface:



From here, I was prompted to choose a name, gender, and various physical attributes for my pirate. I chose a black haired female sea wench, dressed in a well worn bodice and skirt who is named ieatbugs.



Once my pirate was created, I was placed on a ship whose captain was a non-player character. He directed me to a station to begin my first on board duty, the game of Bilge. While being instructed in this game, the goal of which is to align 3 pieces of the same type together in order to lower the "bilge" water which builds up on the bottom of the ship, my "mission" was listed as: Learn Bilge.



During the sea journey, there are various "checkpoints" which are labeled on the map. When ships reach the location of a checkpoint, the status of all crew members, their stations and performance (which can range from "Good" to "Poor") are displayed to all members aboard a ship. Throughout the day there are a variety of "Navy" ships, which are run by NPCs, for any character without a crew to join for a pillage. During a pillage, the ship Captain will be on the lookout for other ships to engage in a sea battle.



During a sea battle, the Captain must manoeuvre the vessel among rocks and winds to a position where they can fire their cannon upon the opposing vessel. This may sound like a fairly simple task, but given a time limit and being required to plan out each move without knowing the move the opposing ship will take first presents quite a challenge.

Once a vessel has been attacked and successfully grappled by an opposing ship, they may then be boarded. A swordfighting puzzle ensues, where each member of the ship plays a game with an objective somewhat similar to tetris.



If the opposing vessel is defeated, partial contents of the ship's cargo hold will be transferred to the victors. This may take the form of PoE (Pieces of Eight, the game's currency), commodities such as hemp oil, rum, or madder root, or the elusive Kraken's blood, which is required for all black dye but can only be pillaged from high level brigands, granting it a very high worth in game. When the destination is reached, the pillage is complete and PoE is split amongst the players. Commodities are generally sold to restock the ship with necessary supplies (a ship is not able to pillage if it lacks enough Rum for each pirate to consume).




Upon disembarking from a ship, the user is greeted with the scene of a sea-side town which meets them at the dock. This presents them with an entire world of opportunities to explore, a mission board to help find crews looking for jobbers, shops seeking laborers, as well as more NPC training demos for all of the other in game puzzles.




Images from http://www.mmmorpg.com and YPPedia.



(note: I was unable to play SecondLife on my computer due to hardware constraints.)

1985; 1988

1985


- DNA is first used in a criminal case
- ATI Technologies is founded.
- NeXT is founded by Steve Jobs after resigning from Apple Computer.
- Solarquest, space age real estate game, first published by Golden.
- Buckyballs discovered by Harold Kroto, Robert Curl and Richard Smalley. One of the first nanomaterial discoveries.
- GNU Manifesto first written by Richard Stallman.


February 19 - William J. Schroeder becomes the first artificial heart patient to leave the hospital.
March 25 - The 57th Academy Awards are held at in Los Angeles, California with Amadeus winning Best Picture.
June 24 - STS-51-G Space Shuttle Discovery completed its mission, best remembered for having Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the first Arab and first Muslim in space, as a Payload Specialist.
June - Tetris released
July 13 - Live Aid pop concerts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and London raise over £50 million for famine relief in Ethiopia.
July 19 - U.S. Vice President George H.W. Bush announces that New Hampshire teacher Christa McAuliffe will become the first schoolteacher to ride aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger.
July 24 - Commodore launches the Amiga personal computer at the Lincoln Center in New York.
August 7 - Takao Doi, Mamoru Mohri and Chiaki Mukai are chosen to be Japan's first astronauts.
September 22 - Plaza Accord was signed by five nations.
October 4 - The Free Software Foundation is founded in Massachusetts, USA.
October 18 - The Nintendo Entertainment System is released in US stores.
November - QuantumLink, predecessor to AOL, launches
November 20 - Microsoft Corporation releases the first version of Windows, Windows 1.0.
December - Movie "Brazil" released - in an Orwellian vision of the future, the populace are completely controlled by the state, but technology remains almost as it was in the 1970's.


1988

TAT-8, the first transatlantic telephone cable to use optical fibers, is completed.
In England, Max Dowhham's "Cyberpunk: the Final Solution" published in Vague
Bruce Sterling's Islands in the Net published
Mississippi Review entire issue published devoted to cyberpunk; academic colonization of the Movement begins in earnest
Shatter graphic novel published
Saibapanku Amerika [Cyberpunk America] by Tatsumi Takayuki published in Japan
Going GaGa begins publication
bOING bOING begins publication
Wetware published (Apr)
May 16 - California v. Greenwood: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that police officers do not need a search warrant to search through discarded garbage.
June 11 - The name of the General Public License (GPL) is mentioned for the first time.
July 6 - The first reported medical waste on beaches in the Greater New York area (including hypodermic needles and syringes possibly infected with the AIDS virus) washes ashore on Long Island. Subsequent medical waste discoveries on beaches in Coney Island and in Monmouth County, New Jersey force the closure of numerous New York-area beaches in the middle of one of the hottest summers in the American Northeast on record.
September 29 - STS-26: NASA resumes space shuttle flights, grounded after the Challenger disaster, with Space Shuttle Discovery.
The Internet worm strikes (Nov)
Interplay releases the Neuromancer Game; a computer role-playing game for the Apple II, Commodore C64, and Amiga
William Gibson's Mona Lisa Overdrive published (Nov)

1989

Mondo 2000 begins publication
"Fiction 2000" conference held in Leeds (June)
Wetware wins the Philip K. Dick Award
Neuromancer: The Graphic Novel published
The Cuckoo's Egg published
Semiotext(e):SF published
Cherry comix special cyberpunk issue published
Crystal Express published
Tetsuo:The Iron Man released
Shadowrun computer game released
Mattel introduces the PowerGlove, a Virtual Reality input device
Timothy Leary interviews William Gibson
Satellite television service Sky Television plc is launched in Europe.

Blade Runner vs. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Blade Runner is a film based on one of the foremost plot lines in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? However, despite the fact that several significant aspects of the original story are omitted in the cinematic interpretation, meaning is not lost. Instead, there is an additional dimension of meaning as the viewer begins to empathize with Rick Deckard, who is to be revealed as a replicant himself before the end of the film.

In Philip K. Dick’s text, androids play the role of a plot device. They are the motivation for fear and apprehension, symbolic of technology created by humans that has come to tire of its role as a slave to its creators. The need for Blade Runners arises from situations in which rogue androids kill their masters and take their place. However, in the film Blade Runner by Ridley Scott, these inhuman creations are orchestrated in such a manner that we begin to respond to them with sympathy and compassion (Galagher 70). Our inability to differentiate between biological humans and androids does not interfere with our yearning to empathize with them (Galagher 70).

One of the ways in which the director elicits sympathy from viewers for robots by juxtapositioning their behavior against the behavior of “humans.” Roy Batty, in one scene, expresses concern and dismay that his android lover may be nearing the end of her lifespan. “Pris hasn’t got long to live,” he says, expressing the sense that replicants are truly self-conscious beings (Armstrong 120). This type of behavior strongly contrasts against the scene in which Deckard retires the android Zhora, where he appears to be chasing after a seemingly innocent woman and shooting in the back in public.

Assigning behavior considered to be human may have farther-reaching consequences than to question the true identity of the characters. Varun Begley, in his paper “Blade Runner and the Postmodern,” suggests that this may be evidence for the interpretation of the film as postmodern cinema. “The film frustrates our attempts to formulate correspondences or construct interpretations (190).” Further evidence to support this interpretation of the film is one of Deckard’s own statements about Rachael, who is revealed to be a replicant as well. “How can it not know what it is?” he asks Tyrell, of Rachael’s lack of awareness of herself being a replicant (Slade 13). Clearly Rachael’s belief that she is, in fact, a human contradicts the self-awareness of Pris and Roy Batty, who identify themselves as replicants.

Other visual metaphors are more clearly expressed in the film instead of in print. During one of the final scenes when Deckard is hunting for Pris, she hides by posing herself among a group of animated toy figures, which are owned by Sebastian, who he considers to be his “friends.” This illustration of android among dolls brings to light the ways in which Pris is similar and dissimilar from the other animated creatures, as well as humans (Lev 34). Although she may appear visually similar to humans, she also fills the role of mechanically functional to that of the dolls she surrounds. Yet some of her behavior is considered human as well. The replicants are suggested to be surreptitiously human and non human.


This dimension of humanity that Ridley Scott applies to the androids in Blade Runner seems contradictory and somewhat paradoxical. This contributes to the viewing and interpretation of Blade Runner as a postmodern work of film. However, the same aspects that suggest it to be a postmodern film also insert a new depth of meaning to the story, which was begot by Do Androids Dream of Elecctric Sheep?

Works Cited

Armstrong, Richard. "SIGNS OF LIFE: SOUL AND CINEPHILIA IN 'BLADE RUNNER'." Screen Education (June 2006): 117-122. Communication & Mass Media Complete. EBSCO. 1 Oct. 2008.

Begley, Varun. "Blade Runner and the Postmodern: A Reconsideration." Literature Film Quarterly 32.3 (July 2004): 186-192. Communication & Mass Media Complete. EBSCO. 1 Oct. 2008.

Galagher, Nola. "BLEAK VISIONS: RIDLEY SCOTT'S BLADE RUNNER, DIRECTOR'S CUT." Australian Screen Education (Winter2002 2002): 169. Communication & Mass Media Complete. EBSCO. 1 Oct. 2008.

Lev, Peter. "Whose Future? "Star Wars," " Alien," and "Blade Runner."." Literature Film Quarterly 26.1 (Jan. 1998): 30. Communication & Mass Media Complete. EBSCO. 1 Oct. 2008.

Slade, Joseph W. "Romanticizing cybernetics in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner." Literature Film Quarterly 18.1 (Jan. 1990): 11. Communication & Mass Media Complete. EBSCO. 1 Oct. 2008.
Vancouver/ICMJE

The Scope of Cyberpunk in "Red Star, Winter Orbit"

Bruce Sterling, in his introduction to Mirrorshades, illustrates multidimensional literary, cultural and technological concepts assigned to the word “cyberpunk.” He terms the genre “a new kind of integration,” “the realm of high tech, and the modern pop underground” (Sterling xi). Unique in their perspective, the cyberpunks are the first generation of science fiction writers to grow up with the reality of a “truly science-fictional world,” where technological literacy is described as being an aid to daily life. Common themes of the body and mind being invaded by technology illustrate how, to cyberpunks, “technology is visceral” (Sterling xiii). Presented in a visage inspired by Eighties counter-culture, the movement “is considered by some to be fashion conscious to a fault.” The aesthetic, however, is truly reflective of the integration and hybridized influences that were so common in the 1980's (Sterling xiv). Having noted these concepts, one can begin to explore the Cyberpunk themes delivered in “Red Star, Winter Orbit” by William Gibson.

"Red Star, Winter Orbit" takes place in a Soviet space station named Kosmograd. It is implied that the Soviets have won the “space race” and the cold war, when during a newscast an American disarmament group is mentioned. While currently this would be considered an alternate history, when it was written in the early 1980's it was a work of very near science fiction. According to Tatiani G. Rapatzikou, “The writers make use of solid factual information in order to reinforce the literal concept behind the story and the plausibility of the real-life experiences described.” (65) To reinforce the idea of the relative unimportance of America, Gibson includes a short anecdote where American entertainment is smuggled onto Kosmograd for viewing by the cosmonauts. This suggests that the identity of America, as a country, is mainly a source of entertainment to the world, rather than a super power or threat to be taken seriously.

As the story begins, Colonel Korolev's damaged physical condition is explained in great detail. His body has been irreparably damaged from an accident, in addition to extreme bone loss from an environment without gravity. The Soviet Government has decided to abandon the Kosmograd station, their last presence in outer space. The physical dilapidation of the Colonel, as well as the abandonment of the space program can be viewed as an example of the influence of the outside world being exerted on individual reality (Rapatzikou 66). In contrast to the original vision of the development of outer space being an optimistic enterprise, its reality is a bleak and damaged piece of technology run by a traumatized and disabled man.

After a failed attempt at a coup, Korolev submits himself to the entropy of Kosmograd. Shortly after he has accepted death to be his ultimate fate, the station is found by a group of hopeful and idealistic Americans. Despite the fact that he has come in contact with other human life forms, the Colonel is not comforted. Instead, he finds their sunny dispositions and optimism to be be disconcerting. He is left feeling more alone and segregated in the company of others (Rapatzikou 69), despite once being a celebrated Military hero. His experience is a juxtaposition to that of the American squatters, who have come from hopelessness (“They said we'd never make it, living in balloons.”) to find even a decaying Kosmograd to be a beacon of hope, while the Colonel is crippled, unable to return to earth, and is given up on by the Soviets along with the space station.

The possibility of the Americans losing the cold war is certainly considered dystopian to an audience of Americans. However, Gibson shows us in "Red Star, Winter Orbit" that the success that comes with the advent of technology is truly what one (or one's government) chooses to make of it. From the perspective of a disenfranchised squatter, Kosmograd appears to be a wasted opportunity. Through the eyes of an impotent Soviet Colonel, the space station is representative of an inescapable entropy which is only exacerbated by the implementation of advanced technology.

Works Cited

Rapatzikou, Tatiani G. Gothic Motifs in the Fiction of William Gibson. Postmodern studies, 36. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004.

Sterling, Bruce. Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology. New York: Arbor House, 1986.

What is a Cyborg?

The word “Cyborg” lends itself to a rather straightforward definition: it is a melding of the terms cybernetic and organism. The idea of melding man with machine is an ancient one. Norbert Weiner, in his book Cybernetics (1948), cites the source of the word as “kybernetes,” a Greek term which means helmsman or pilot. One of the earliest examples of man and machine coming together is the myth of Icarus. The myth of Icarus is a very fitting metaphor for the plight of cyborgs, because it illustrates not only man’s desire to take control and “steer” his own destiny, but also the hamartia which we as humans encounter in doing so – the belief that we are infallible.
Icarus was the son of a great inventor named Daedalus, who was imprisoned in a tower in Crete. In order to escape, he fabricated a set of wings for himself and his son out of feathers and wax. Despite the warning he had given his son not to fly too close to the sun, lest his wings melt, his son was so invigorated with the experience of flying that he chose to soar higher and higher. Icarus then fell to his demise, plunging into the sea.
Daedalus’ invention of wings to save himself from the fate of imprisonment is a more noble example of cyborgian innovation than the androids in Philip K. Dick’s novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? In Dick’s future dystopia, one of the main functions of androids are to serve humans. This selfish motivation for the creation of cyborgs is perhaps the reason why this novel has such a bleak outlook for the future of society, where earth is contaminated to a nearly unlivable degree by nuclear fallout and a much of the population suffers from genetic damage. It is, in a way, telling us not to use technology to enable ourselves to be continually lazy, lest our wings melt and we, too, fall to the depths of the ocean.
While the pursuit of technology is surely the answer to many of the problems that plague humanity, man must not let his hubris lead to his ultimate demise. The perspective that one can “do no wrong” can be a very damning and lead to a variety of mistakes and problems being overlooked out of simple arrogance. This is an especially unacceptable mistake for humans to make, because as the saying goes “To err is human.” Although this concept has been fetishized in much of the cyberpunk genre, an early illustration of similar thought is found in the Bible. In the book of Genesis, while Sodom and Gomorrah are being destroyed, the wife of Lot is told not to look back at the burning cities or else she will be turned into a pillar of salt. She ultimately looks, as did Orpheus for Eurydice, and thusly becomes a pillar of salt. This example illustrates human emotion and the feeling of nostalgia overwhelming the ability to use logic and reason. The wife of Lot chooses to gaze upon the city to which she feels a strong connection rather than continue existing, being unable to experience the pain of seeing her home destroyed. Even though pain is a negative emotion, it is more desirable to her than none at all.
Ultimately, fusing human entities with computers will lead to the end of suffering for many who have biological dysfunction or illness. To upload one’s consciousness may be a way to eliminate the suffering of many. I personally look forward to being liberated from my corporeal body and fusing my consciousness with a machine linked to the Internet. When I log on it, let it be forever.


Works Cited
http://www.asc-cybernetics.org/foundations/definitions.htm