From: mmaxwell@ucsd.edu
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Waiting for the flames...(was Re: REQUIRED READING: B. Sterling)
Followup-To: alt.cyberpunk
Date: 2 Oct 1992 22:03:09 GMT
Organization: University of Calif., San Diego
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: irpsws80.ucsd.edu
Keywords: cyberhippies???

This whole article is hereby marked as "mostly sarcastic", put
the sarcasm indicators where you think they belong.

In article <BvIH8u.26s@cda.mrs.umn.edu> After ingesting too much 24  
carlsoje@cda.mrs.umn.edu (Joel E. Carlson 1625773) writes:
>
> "Start your own revolution and cut out the middle man!"
>				Billy Bragg
>				_Waiting for a Great Leap Forward_
>
>That's the whole point of the cyberpunk revolution is the fact its not a
>revolution in any traditional sense.  You don't need fucking leaders,
>leadership is outmoded tech.

Is there even a cyberpunk 'revolution' in the first place?  
Agreed that if there is one, it is most definitely _not_ 
'traditional'.  (Heh, "traditional revolution", an oxymoron
if i ever heard one.)  The question that i have to ask:
is there even a 'cyberpunk revolution'?  In literature,
sure there was, starting about ten years ago, but having roots that
reached farther back than that.  In culture?  Well...There's
hackers, right?  They're cyberpunks.  
Nope.  Sorry.  There's raves.  That's a cultural revolution,
right?  Nope.  Y'see, there were these people called hippies,
you might have heard of them.  They had these big things called
'love-ins' where everybody (as long as they were a hippie) danced
and grooved to the tunes, did some chemicals and were unified
by their mutual love. They did this sort of thing twenty years
ago.  Look where they are now.  Their 'revolution' was co-opted
by fashion and culture, rendering it powerless.

And yes, the same thing is happening to raves, to be sure.

>What is needed here is a global village
>where everybody enjoyes the personification of tech.  

Question.  'The personification of tech'?  I'm a little confused
on what you mean here.  If you mean everyone who wants to should
have Net access, sure, great.   

But i must quibble with the 'global
village' thing.  I thought that whole idea was thrown out,
along with the majority of MacLuhann's other ideas, some
time ago.  You can't have it both ways, technical and primitive,
global and local.  Villages work because they're the only
game in town, so to speak.  A village has cohesiveness and
a group identity because of its isolation.  The more exposure
to external signals, the more likely that village is to
lose its group identity.  Look at the example of the Russian
overthrow in 1991, and the collapse of communism in eastern
Europe.  Those were 'villages' of a sort (albeit ones that were
already not in great shape) whose decay was accelerated by
signals from outside (ie, western television/radio).

>Tech used to
>Entertain, Enlighten, and Educate.  

No argument here.  These are the some of the best things that we
can hope our technology will enable us to do.

>The revolutionary mind set of the
>cyberpunk movement is that all information should be free, and the
>individual supreme.  

All information should be free?  Well, there goes my profession
(of writer/ranter).  There goes software design, since you shouldn't
be allowed recompense for your work.  If this is what the
'cyberpunk revolution' proposes, then things are going to go a 
lot further than most of us (including myself) can conceive of.

>No god, no country, no king, just a bunch of freaks
>linked up in love!

Okay.  Sure.  'Linked up in love?'  And if everyone is a freak,
then how do you propose to define 'freakiness' (since is it
usually defined by being 'abnormal', but if abnormality
is normal, then what?)

None of this is intended as flamage, please do not regard it
as such (especially you, Joel).  Simply an attempt to generate 
discussion.
-------------------
Matt Maxwell
mmaxwell@ucsd.edu

"He took personality tests
 and stapled them to his lower lip" -- Stan Ridgway