scenario: high tech; virtual reality (style: cyberpunk, anti-romance): "Johnny Mnemonic" (BC);  "Burning Chrome" (BC 168-191); "The Logical Legend of Heliopause and Cyberfiddle" (VN 159-180).

Midterms and other business

Monday office hours start late, till 10pm

Thanks for midterms, taking input seriously

better at meeting assignment, developing examples

pre-midterm guidance + Web Highlights

revision / rewriting (+ guidance) key to good writing (when you revise, you teach yourself, esp. by thinking about how a reader will or won't process)

guided revision involves teacher, + hopefully motivated student

if you can just make your kids write, they'll get at least a little smarter through the exercise alone

hardest part to impart: criticism is essential to improving (though it's natural that we all just want praise and to be told how smart we already are)

revision / rewriting:

therefore our class's extension of Essay 1 from pre-midterm to midterm, Part 2 Research Repoft from midterm to final

+ 2 tries at simple Web Highlights essay

midterms returned by Friday

Welcome to reply, ask questions, esp. re research report (which continues on final exam)

most consistent criticism: more definition of terms for apocalypse, evolution, alt futures

+ literary appeals (to audiences)

> final exam essay

push of class's first half

somewhat simpler final exam

4 scenarios

cf. utopia / dystopia

apocalypse / evolution

literary or intellectual terms often turn into each other--don't be frustrated, just keep up with the changes--language and thought keep evolving

High Tech  "Johnny Mnemonic" 7.1-2

cyber (high tech) + punk (low tech)

Fuller domes

https://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/buckminster-fuller-architecture

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/82397

https://inhabitat.com/50-year-old-buckminster-fuller-project-in-ohio-gets-a-7-million-upgrade/

check your email before next Monday, welcome to reply then . . .

or confer in person, by phone or email anytime before final exam

check Model Assignments

metaphor

metaphors for alternative futures

227 history like a tree, another branch of history

230 shuffling the deck of history [alt. Image]

metaphors make the unknown familiar by comparing the unknown to the known

science is always changing as knowledge advances but becomes familiar itself through metaphors (sometimes called "models")

How is metaphor both instructional and entertaining?

Discussion Questions: 1. What like / dislike about cyberpunk style and why? ("Cyber" = cybernetics or artificial intelligence; "punk" = 70s-80s countercultural street style or attitude)

2. Gibson is admired as one of sf's finest stylists, but his writing often leaves students cold.

What strengths? (e.g. imagery, metaphor, range of reference or allusion)

What weaknesses? (e.g. thin characterization, plot-turns on subtles shifts in human or machine relations)

What metaphors for computers, their users, and their realities does his style create?

What human-machine interfaces that we've seen elsewhere in course? (e.g., bionic implants, human penetration of machines)

Gender stylings? (stereotypical background: sf for geeky white guys > implications for women's identities?) (recall "Stone Lives")

3. What attraction-repulsion of high-tech future? Consider organic / non-organic; actual / virtual reality.

1. What like / dislike about cyberpunk style and why? ("Cyber" = cybernetics or artificial intelligence; "punk" = 70s-80s countercultural street style or attitude)

Cyber + punk

High-tech + street life, crime, shadiness

[19] BC 171 [cyberpunk] a defective hologram . . . over a display of dead flies wearing fur coats of gray dust [metaphor]

virtual reality 

"Cyberfiddle" 165 But Teacher, why is cybereality so much better?

165 an inevitable progression from the concrete to the abstract, from the material to the ethereal, from the mechanical to the conceptual, from the gross to the nano. . . . Now we eschew materials entirely. . . . pure concept. . . . free at last

compare “face time”; Realtime

[11] BC 169 The matrix is an abstract representation of the relationships between data systems.

[7.27] JM 16 we're an information economy . . . teach in school

[7.27] JM 17 traces, bits, fragments of personal info

[7.31] JM 17 surface mail

[12] BC 170 Towers and fields of it ranged in the colorless non-space of the simulation matrix, the electronic consensus-hallucination that facilitates the handling and exchange of massive quantities of data. Legitimate programmers never see the walls of ice they work behind . . .

[67] BC 178 remind myself that this place and the gulfs beyond are only representations, that we aren’t “in” Chrome’s computer, but interfaced with it, while the matrix simulator in Bobby’s loft generates this illusion

[71] BC 178 simstim stars

[113] BC 183 Simulated stimuli: the world—all the interesting parts, anyway—as perceived by Tally Isham.

2. Gibson is admired as one of sf's finest stylists, but his writing often leaves students cold.

What strengths? (e.g. imagery, metaphor, range of reference or allusion)

Allusion, range of reference JM 4.3 (Dante), BC96 prayer rug > mandala,

[157] BC 187 At the heart of darkness, the still center, the glitch systems shred the dark with whirlwinds of light, translucent razors spinning away from us; we hang in the center of a silent slow-motion explosion . . .

Treats characters gently; never purely bad guys, or if so, compassion

Damaged, intelligent characters

Broken but surprising or touching world with glimpses of nature and human nature

Visuals, media sensations transferred to human relations

BC 6, 174, 191

JM 7.52 dance

[7.52] And Molly seemed to let something go, something inside, and that was the real start of her mad-dog dance. She jumped, twisting, lunging sideways, landing with both feet on an alloy engine block wired directly to one of the coil springs. I cupped my hands over my ears and knelt in a vertigo of sound, thinking Floor and benches were on their way down, down to Nighttown, and I saw us tearing through the shanties, the wet wash, exploding on the tiles like rotten fruit. But the cables held, and the Killing Floor rose and fell like a crazy metal sea. And Molly danced on it.

[12] BC 170 Towers and fields of it ranged in the colorless non-space of the simulation matrix, the electronic consensus-hallucination that facilitates the handling and exchange of massive quantities of data. Legitimate programmers never see the walls of ice they work behind . . .

[67] BC 178 remind myself that this place and the gulfs beyond are only representations, that we aren’t “in” Chrome’s computer, but interfaced with it, while the matrix simulator in Bobby’s loft generates this illusion

Knowledge of language and signs

JM 5.10 "Good with symbols, see, but the code’s restricted.

computer as consciousness

[13] BC 170 a burglar, casing mankind’s extended electronic nervous system [extended metaphor]

[16] BC 171 totally wired

[52] BC 175 the tricky wiring on the underside of things [cf. 18c world as clock]

[180] BC 189 just a segment of that mass organism, just one more drifting chip of consciousness under the geodesics

[6.11] Transition to idiot / savant mode is always less abrupt than I expect it to be. The pirate broadcaster’s front was a failing travel agency in a pastel cube that boasted a desk, three chairs, and a faded poster of a Swiss orbital spa. A pair of toy birds with blown-glass bodies and tin legs were sipping monotonously from a Styrofoam cup of water on a ledge beside Molly’s shoulder. As I phased into mode, they accelerated gradually until their Day-Glo-feathered crowns became solid arcs of color. The LEDs that told seconds on the plastic wall clock had become meaningless pulsing grids, and Molly and the Mao-faced boy grew hazy, their arms blurring occasionally in insect-quick ghosts of gesture. And then it all faded to cool gray static and an endless tone poem in an artificial language.

What weaknesses? (e.g. thin characterization, plot-turns on subtles shifts in human or machine relations)

Less strong on . . .

Plot

Depth

Characterization, esp. of flesh-and-blood women; female stereotypes like Molly Millions--but what kind of stereotype?

Male characters tend to be rather dry, superficial, marked only by wounds

[43] BC 174 I see her somewhere out on the edge of all this sprawl of cities and smoke, and it’s like she’s a hologram stuck behind my eyes . . . I see her wave goodbye [establishes refrain for conclusion]

[197] BC 191 I see her far out on the edge of all this sprawl of night and cities, and then she waves goodbye.

To degree WG is literary, not futuristic

anti-romance

[17] BC 171 this thing for girls [all male computer scene; cf. All male sf scene]

What metaphors for computers, their users, and their realities does his style create?

Computer metaphors > psychological, social relations

Cf. Evolution and Social Darwinism [Survival of Fittest < Herbert Spencer]

[16] BC 171 totally wired

[17] BC 171 scanning those faces

[15] BC 170 He was twenty-eight, Bobby, and that’s old for a console cowboy.

[13] BC 170 a burglar, casing mankind’s extended electronic nervous system [extended metaphor]

[16] BC 171 totally wired

[52] BC 175 the tricky wiring on the underside of things [cf. 18c world as clock]

[180] BC 189 just a segment of that mass organism, just one more drifting chip of consciousness under the geodesics

analogies

[21] BC 171 servos . . . whining like overworked mosquitoes

[3] BC 168 leaning forward to drive the Russian program into its slot with the heel of his hand. He did it with the tight grace of a kid slamming change into an arcade game, sure of winning and ready to pull down a string of free games.

(extended metaphor)

[13] BC 170 monochrome nonspace where the only stars are dense concentrations of information . . . corporate galaxies and the cold spiral arms of military systems

different literary traditions

[4.3] JM 9 Lo Teks = gargoyles

Pleasure in unknown

[63] BC 177 she touched me, touched the half-inch border of taut pink scar that the arm doesn’t cover. Anybody else ever touched me there, they went on to the shoulder, the neck

[64] BC 177 Her nails . . . tapered oblongs, the lacquer only a shade darker than the carbon-fiber laminate that sheathes my arm. And her hand went down the arm, black nails tracing a weld in the laminate . . . her hand soft-knuckled as a child’s . . . her palm against the perforated Duralumin.

            Her other palm came up to brush across the feedback pads, and it rained all afternoon . . .

Delicacy, ornamentation

[68] BC 178 nursery blues and pinks

pleasure of inhabiting a greater intelligence with writers like James, Hawthorne, Dickinson

What human-machine interfaces that we've seen elsewhere in course? (e.g., bionic implants, human penetration of machines)

Prosthetics, body invasion, bionics

[3.5] JM 8 finger nails / blades

[7.8] JM 14 tooth-bud transplants from Dobermans; immunosuprressants

[38] BC 173 my arm off and the little waldo jacked straight into the stump

[117] BC 183 [Tiger] had the kind of uniform good looks you get after your seventh trip to the surgical boutique.

 The mob!

[4.2] JM 8 Yakuza a true multinat (ITT, Ono-Sendai)

+ Triads, Mafia, Union Corse

Virtual reality as entertainment

[71] BC 178 simstim stars

[113] BC 183 Simulated stimuli: the world—all the interesting parts, anyway—as perceived by Tally Isham.

Biotech, prostheses

Sense of invasion, but compare contacts, tooth implants

[1.7] JM 2 superstructures of muscle graft

[1.20] JM 4 neural disruptor

[3.3] JM 8 he's fast, nervous system jacked up . . . top dollar, state of the art

[3.5] JM 8 finger nails / blades

[5.1] JM 10 more than a dolphin--a cyborg

[5.21] JM 12 how does a cybernetic dolphin get wired to smack?

The war--Navy gets to work

[7.8] JM 14 tooth-bud transplants from Dobermans; immunosuprressants

[38] BC 173 my arm off and the little waldo jacked straight into the stump

[117] BC 183 [Tiger] had the kind of uniform good looks you get after your seventh trip to the surgical boutique.

Familiar features

Rich-poor, up-down

[6.11] JM 13 Swiss orbital spa

JM 14 [homeless]

[7.11] JM 15 water vendor

[7.20] JM 15 plywood shanties

International, global, Post-National,

[corporations buying towns in Parable]

Gender stylings? (stereotypical background: sf for geeky white guys > implications for women's identities?) (recall "Stone Lives")

Gibson's downsides:

He's still a geek!

Does he really like girls? (Remember Dialta Downes in "Gernsback Continuum?")

[3.4] JM 8 mostly grown in a vat in Chiba City

Cyberfiddle 172 biotank

[cf. Frankenstein]

+- race?

Girl does fighting, hero watches (x-competent man)

Just watching (also in Gernsback) as cocooning, TV

3. What attraction-repulsion of high-tech future? Consider organic / non-organic; actual / virtual reality.

Inverted millennialism—recall end of Gernsback Continuum

[7.47] JM 19 sound . . . like a world ending

[7.54] JM 21 she'd killed him with culture shock

[63] BC 177 Half the skylight was shadowed by a dome they’d never finished, and the other half showed sky, black and blue with clouds.

[6.9] "Christian White," she recited, "and his Aryan Reggae Band."

BC 32 castle of ice

BC 109 black ice

Attitude toward subjects: good creator loves what it creates

BC 192 love?

Punk as black market

Cyber + punk

Why Cyberfiddle's bad

Dumb puns using worn out cultural info, forced cleverness

160 Stellar Kowalski

Carmen Miranda: "camp"

Pop culture; Junk on junk

Wrong word usage

176 pours over