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Nemickol ([email protected]) wrote:
> In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] (Omar Haneef '96) writes:
> |>
> |> I'm pleased that these responses came out to fascinating and personal BUT
> |> this goes to show that y'all read interesting lives. Why are these
> |> Cyberpunk? What makes them cyberpunk? I, and many of my friends have been
> |> involved in near fatal road accidents,
> Did you *try* to get into the accident? Thats important.
No.
> |> kicked out a landlord (very
> |> patiently, and without force; but its the best I could do), um... "done"
> "Get the fuck out of my house, you know damn well I know
> these laws better than you, and yes I *can* point this
> gun in your face!"
> |> computer animation and I bet there other people who do this sort of thing.
> Yeah, theres all sorts of bozos with their +$60,000 SGI's
> but they make shit, there's a lack of sould in a lot of their
> work. Not everybody, granted, but I've seen it happen. They
> get into making $ to pay off the loan for their machines,
> and they cater to fools.
I was 14 at the time and I was doing it on a second hand 8088 with CGA and 2
different paint programs (one with primitive morphing). It was full of
humour and bad puns; but was it ART?
> |> But that isn't, in itself, cyberpunk, right? (I mean I'm asking: is it?) And
> Its the ammount of uneccessary force and hyperactivity
> you put into everything you do.
> |> furthermore, what is diy?
> |> -Omar Haneef
> "Do It Yourself" Very punk in its origon. Keep it punk in its practice.
Clearly the senses of cyberpunk being articualted here are quite different.
(1) Sourceror: Do it yourself
(2) Nightfly and Nemickol - the closest in spirit - a general recklesness
(3) Sweet Polly: Goth sensibility and drugs
(4) Amy: Internet mysticism and poetry
These are just tokens to demonstrate how different the responses are. I am
still unsure what makes any of these "cyberpunk?" And clearly these are very
different notions of different things. A lot of these are simply interesting
glimpses of lifestyles but I don't understand how that lifestyle is
cyberpunk. Even Nemickol and Nightfly disagree when it comes to breaking the
law (it seems).
Sourceror seems to think that there is some notion of a counterculture
involved but I don't really see that in the responses. Polly insists that
the reason I am getting flamed ("if I want to call it that") is because I
fail to recognize the importance of cyberpunk to its "practitioners" - and I
think Sourceror said something similar. But I don't see what a cyberpunk is,
or how you guys think you are doing the same thing, or how this is important
to you or even what "this" is!
I can sort of hash out the literary genre and see what sort of things are
cyberpunk. Hence Johnny Mnemonic and ShadowRun are instantly recognizable as
cyberpunk (and so an especially interesting Centurions episode "Zone
Dancer") but this subculture is beyond recognition.
But, more closely, where is the cyber? Other than Amy, nobody mentioned the
relevance of technology. And if there is no cyber, why not just be punks?
-OH
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