From: mattb@ctron.com (Matt Brown)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: The Cyberpunk Aesthetic
Date: 16 Oct 92 16:15:58 GMT
Reply-To: mattb@olympus.ctron.com (Matt Brown)
Organization: Cabletron Systems INc.

mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson) writes:
>Tonight on ABC's _Nightline_ (10/15) they showed excerpts from the
>presidential debate with real-time statistics superimposed.  The statistics
>came from a room of people holding boxes with knobs on them who were
>supposed to dial in their approval level in response to what was being
>said.  A computer averaged out the data and presented a real-time graphical
>display.
. . .
>What bothers me about this is the emerging cyberpunk aesthetic.  Video
>just doesn't seem to be high-bandwidth enough unless we add all this
>digital filigree.
. . .
>What I enjoyed as a parody of the future however now bothers me when
>I see it in real life.  It's a sort of future shock, seeing the future
>expressed in _Blade_Runner_ becoming true.  It's as though there's an
>developing aesthetic in which unenhanced video is somehow less real, less
>accurate.  It seems like Americans prefer to view reality through computers,
>satellites, and the nose cameras of cruise missiles.

Several interesting points you've made. I seems to me we are heading into
an age of technical "clutter" if we haven't getten there already. There was
so much information on the screen that it was impossible to follow all of
it. That, as well as the fact that it was presented with little or no
explanation, made it seem as if it was put there just for the Hi-Tech, this-
must-be-true-because-the-computer-says-so effect. I have no reason to 
suspect falsification or distortion, but who knows what those displays were
connected to or how they were filtered? How did the digital readouts along
the bottom relate to the undulating bar chart on the right? 

I was waiting for them to draw a little box and zoom in on Bush's wrist-
watch when he looked at it in the background, and let us watch the second-
hand as it ticked away his presidency. As if this would be an event of 
great import. Oh well, maybe in '96.

I am also anticipating the day when my children tell jokes about my technical
feebleness the way Jay Leno jokes today about his parents' inability to
comprehend their VCR.

I was also amused by the user control panels that looked like something off
a 1950's electric range or a Lionel train set. They probably used these so
that the older folks in the audience wouldn't freak out. Give 'em a Nintendo
pad with multiple controls, and there goes any possibility of valid data.

Maybe this is our first taste of network news as a heads-up display. Now if
we could just have virtual fire-and-forget missiles to shoot down lousy
sitcoms. Now that would be a real ratings war!

More seriously, this doesn't bother me exept that it is mostly window
dressing rather than real functionality. If I was controlling the 
equivalent of a fighter plane or a nuclear power plant, the video-ding-bobs
wouldn't be a problem, they'd be a tool. However, when this stuff is draped
onto the screen just for glitz, it is a distraction. Instead of analyzing,
they are just dumping raw or mysteriously massaged data on me. I can't see
how this helps the election process, to use the current example.

In the end, I would still call it pre-cyberpunk. If it was real cyberpunk,
those people doing the rating would have been rounded up involuntarily off
the street, strapped to their chairs, and wired for stimuli reaction.
Their visceral response would be measured, and only the conforming would
be released. The rest would be shuffled off to "assist" bio-medical 
researchers.

Matt
zap! wince.  Zap! twitch. ZAP! thud.
3 strikes, yer out.