Lit 80, Fall 2013

Tag: cyberspace

The Difference Engine-A Novel Response

In the early 1900’s, complex electric circuits came into being and boomed with the help of inventions such as the Edison’s tinfoil dictation machine, light bulb, and Bell’s telephone. Half a century later, the late twentieth century ushered a new information era with the inventions of the computer, internet and advances  in telecommunication and digital data transfer systems. Although it is irrefutably clear about the technological significance and the rich potential legacy the first emerging computer has left mankind, what would happen if a more primitive computer had been invented in the 1800’s, more than a century earlier? Would it change the information age as we see it now?

In their novel The Difference Engine , William Gibson and Bruce Sterling attempt to introduce us to exactly that kind of alternate history, specifically, a Great Britain in its Victorian age where Babbage actually manages to successfully invent the difference engine (computer). Gibson and Sterling, in the book’s settings, not only draw parallels to current technology and real people, such as surveillance systems, credit cards, Charles Darwin and “clackers” (hackers), but also delve into the imaginary aspects to give us a newer glimpse of other “more weird” inventions, such as the use of “punch cards” to program computing engines.

It is interesting to note that Gibson included many symbols and references that occur both in The Difference Engine and in Neuromancer , another novel where he defines the cyberpunk/cyberspace genre. Both books depict a society in which masses of people completely support and rely on fast emerging technology to live their daily lives. For example, in Neuromancer, almost all people can and do transfer between the real physical world and a digital cyberspace, whereas most people support a dominating Industrial Radical Party for rapid technology boom in The Difference Engine. There are, however, clear differences between these two as well. Neuromancer provides us with two domains, the real and the digital, which are bases on the 1980’s (when Gibson wrote his novel), whereas as The Difference Engine focuses more into historical aspects and educational guesses of an alternate piece of history that had not happened in real time.

Another aspect Gibson and Sterling delineate in The Difference Engine is that rapidly emerging new technologies causes intense industrial competition between countries. Those countries that cannot keep up with the fast pace of the information era will be eventually made obsolete. The novel implies this fact by exploiting on Japan’s rapid industrial rise in the twentieth century in real history. In the books settings, Britain aids Japan, who is desperate to boom to the point of even doing anything in return for the British, to become a leading nation in information technology and computer engines.

The Difference Engine, in a nutshell, gives us a comprehensive view into alternate history of early digital technological boom and its potential widespread effects on the industry and the society.

 

Sources:

Gibson, William, Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine.

Neuromancer-Novel Response

Computers and digital media as we see them nowadays were uncommon during the early 1980s. Many people struggled at concepts such as the personal computer (PC), the internet, networking etc. Thus it was not odd at all that William Gibson’s science fiction novel “Neuromancer” was met with huge fanfare and gave people the opportunity to glimpse into the world of digital technology they have never experienced before.

When Neuromancer first came out, it was undeniably the avant-garde in the digital science fiction genre. Although novelists before Gibson’s time were talking about similar thoughts in their writings, their ideas were bound by factors such as politics and economic depressions. For instance, although the book “1984”, written in 1932, does talk about possible technological advances in its future, its general atmosphere is majorly shrouded in political oppression and people’s fear of democratic socialism. Neuromancer is a true science fiction novel in that readers can genuinely appreciate the high-tech world and all of its consequences (if not aftermaths) without being limited by the social and political context as is in the real world.

Furthermore, the book also introduced brand new terminology that we now seem to be especially familiar with. One of Gibson’s breakthroughs with Neuromancer was the introduction of the word “cyberspace”. In fact, the word would have a long-lasting impact on the entertainment industry around the globe even decades after it was introduced. Movies series such as “The Matrix”, “The Terminator” etc. not only heavily relied on “cyberspace” as a world surrounded by artificial intelligence (AI), but also extended the boundaries of the word into virtual reality etc.

The cyberpunk genre seeks to combine “high tech and low life” [1], a phenomenon which was prevalent in the 1980s. Neuromancer itself, with a lucid story, provokes questions that people eventually had to answer as more and more technological advancements at that time period came into being. Will people eventually misuse the advancements of science? (i.e. Case, despite having implanted organs that stop him from metabolizing drugs, uses new organs to get back into his drug life.) Will people get punished in unusual ways in the future? (Case gets his CNS damaged after stealing from his employer.) Do AI’s ultimately become much smarter than mankind? (The superconsciousness as a result of the merge between WIntermute and Neuromancer.) Can AI’s possibly overpower people? (Wintermute kills Armitage/Corto.) Though it seems that the book is answering yes to all these questions, the author’s main intention is to lead the reader into reflecting how life in the 1980s can coexist with emerging new technologies, and how this coexistence can develop in a positive way.

In a nutshell, Neuromancer was a stunning novel, “an archetypal cyberpunk work” [2] that not only includes an entertaining plot, but also reflects upon its time of new technological inventions.

Sources

[1] Anonymous. (2009). What is cyberpunk? Cyberpunked: Journal of Science, Technology, & Society. Retrieved from http:\\www.cyberpunked.org/cyberpunk

[2] Seed, David (2005). Publishing. Blackwell. p. 220.

Neuromancer Novel Response

Today, majority of the major operations that occur daily whether in the stock market, newsroom, hospital room, and even the classroom, are being aided or often run by technology and computers. Just as Donna Haraway predicted in her “Cyborg Manifesto,” technology has wedged itself into almost all daily activities in today’s society and has led to the formation of what I believe are two kinds of Cyborgs: people physically connected to machines and technology and those mentally attached to their devices.

The novel Neuromancer by William Gibson delves into this topic of “cyborgism” along with the harmony and often dissonance between man and machine. It poses many theoretical questions that are becoming more and more pertinent today, as the gap between human and machine grows smaller. It poses questions like: what defines something or someone is human? Or regarding how the body and mind is split, especially when technology is engrained directly into the body. One of the biggest questions that has arisen from this novel is whether a new being can be created, whether human, cyborg, or something else and the implications of this. In the novel, this can be seen everywhere and in everyone. A prime example can be seen with Molly, who through extensive surgeries has acquired prosthetics, fingernail implants, and mental switches that render her a ‘super-ninja’ assassin. Is Molly classified as a human? A cyborg? Another character, Julius, also has extensive surgeries done to him, which switch out his DNA and allow him to continue living way past the age of 150. The same can be seen, in a less obvious manner, with Case who through surgeries has obtained new drug resistant organs, along with the ability to zap into cyberspace and a virtual matrix.

All of these technological enhancements or changes to the human body is part of a societal stigma Gibson predicted, in which people would become ‘technologically addicted’ and continue to transform and alter their bodies with technology. Although it may seem crazy for someone to undergo some of the surgeries found in the novel, delving deeper into today’s society elucidates that Gibson may not have been to far off in his prediction. Today, mentally people have become more and more engrained with technology, with micro computers (smartphones) at their side at all times. It may not be a full out addiction, but there are noticeable mental effects that occur from being away from technology that can often be seen as symptomatic for an addiction. Gibson’s theory of completely altering the human body with technology also holds true today with the advent of 3-D printing, especially in the medical field. Today, and definitely in the next decade, scientists will be able to print out fully functional human organs and transplant them into people, just as Case had pancreas and liver transplants. With this advent, along with the computer mapping of the human brain, who is to say a new breed of human, cyborg, or new species can’t be created. The implications of this have very serious consequences on society in all aspects from politics to ethics. Maybe Gibson’s dystopian society wasn’t that far off after all.

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