Week 8- Virtual Philosophy and Cyberpunk: William Gibson

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Cyberpunk.. what is it? How is it used? When is it used?

Cyberpunk cannot actually be defined as one certain thing, instead it is spoken about common styles themes and ideas, such as corporote control, mutation, negative behaviour behaviour and technology.



These ideas are combined in science-fiction to raise awareness of certain issues or you simply get you thinking. Cyberpunk movies include The Terminator, Alien, 12 monkeys, Robocop, Irobot, The Matrix, Total Recall & most recently AVATAR.

William Gibson is one of the most well known and respected scence fiction writers. He is often labelled the king of the cyberpunk genre of science-fiction and is credited with predicting the rise of reality television.

Who is William Gibson you might ask? Gibson was born an American- Canadian writer who has been called 'noir propher'of the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction. Gibson began writing sci-fi novels in the 70's, however the cyberpunk movement emerged in the 80's. Gibson's success let to his first book, called "Neuromancer"which hit cult status and created the genre of cyberpunk.

Cyberpunk:

Fusion of man and machine- examples: Robots, cyborgs, such as 'The Terminator'.

Corporate control over society- examples: Large corporation, removal of civil liberties

Story focuses on the underground- examples: underground society, anti- hero, such as 'Avatar'.

Ubiquitous access to information- examples: Hackers, internet, viruses


Cyberpunk style- examples: Hyper-realistic, neon colour schemes.

Source: http://www.cyberpunkreview.com/what-is-cyberpunk/

ALTERED NEWS STORY!

ROBOTS TAKING OVER WORLD WAR III

June 15th, 2035

The nanobots are now the U.S military's strongest force in the war. In the air, robotics is pretty well advanced. Drone planes being used in Afghanistan are using technology which has been around since the mid-1990s. They were initially designed for surveillance but are now armed with potent missile and bomb systems to annihilate al-Qaeda.

They don’t get tired, they don’t get bored and thousands of significant terrorist leaders have been killed by them. The nanobots were originally developed as a bomb disposal robot for IEDs (roadside bombs). But the US subsidiary of the company has now weaponised it, either with an M16 or a grenade launcher, to make the first real ground-based robot soldier.

This generation of robots have much more autonomy. Once you introduce real autonomy the machine itself, with highly sophisticated computers is, in a very real sense, making its own decisions. These robots are so sophisticated they can identify the enemy before opening fire, they can also analyze a persons biological age from 200m away. There are designed not to fire upon anyone under the age of sixteen.

The US plans to have 80 % of its military aircraft unmanned. It has trained almost all incoming pilots to never leave the ground. This war has become a war fought by electronic counter-warfare and hacking into satellite links and communications.

References:William (Ford) Gibson Biography

http://biography.jrank.org/pages/4355/Gibson-William-Ford.html

http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/williamgibson.html

http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/

Robert K. J. Killheffer, an Interview with William Gibson in Publishers
Weekly, Vol. 240, No. 36, September 6, 1993, pp. 70 1. online: http://www.library.spscc.ctc.edu/electronicreserve/swanson/InterviewwithWilliamGibsonFall2002.pdf

http://www.cyberpunkreview.com/what-is-cyberpunk