encanta_anima

It's actually that I am playing a Cybergeneration game, but I know my character aspires to become a Netrunner eventually, so I thought I'd check it out. Wouldn't want her to get ahead of me, now, would I?

*nod* for netrunners.

Though time always seems not to last when you want it to... Even when it's there in abundance I mean...

I was planning to do a massive attempt to clear of my three-year upper secondary education in only two years. shouldn't take too much effort (not with swedish schools at least).

AND I hope I'll be ambitious enough to learn programming. Think of all the fun one could have with it ^.^;;

So we've looked at some ways in which cyberpunk may be a new counterculture, and some ways in which it may not be. As with any movement, the question always remains: will they sell out? Will they be co-opted? Capitalism has, as usual, found various ways to cash in on the trend, with cyberpunk novels, clothes, video games, gadgets, and so on, completing the process that Herbert Marcuse describes so well. The fact that many ex-hackers are now going to work for computer security firms suggests (not unsurprisingly) that, like the hippies of the 60s, these folks are willing to cash it all in for a cushy job and a corporate jet.

Are the cyberpunks a more serious challenge to the System than their predecessors? As suggested above, they definitely have the potential to be a greater challenge. Imagine the dismay of the Hagen Daz corporate exec when he finds out that 20,000 cases have been accidentally routed to the north pole. Imagine the frustration of the government bureaucrat who finds out that all his files on 'troublemakers' have been scrambled. Imagine the anger of the Pentagon general who finds that his drone-piloted planes are actually bombing the Atlantic Ocean instead of Saddam Hussein. Or the media monopoly executive who finds that his satellite network now seems to be only carrying "Ren N Stimpy." But for these same reasons, cyberpunks may be a greater danger to society as a whole, not just to "the Powers That Be."

Instead of just "dropping out" of society, or just parasitically feeding off of its information monopolies, cyberpunks have the potential to change it. But to do so they'll have to learn those weary lessons of Movement history. You know what they are. Study up. Think globally, act locally. And most importantly, don't mourn, organize . Just think what cyberpunks could accomplish if they actually learned to cooperate with, talk to, and trust each other. If instead of pulling pranks on the Man, they actually started to try and take away some of his power. If instead of sabotaging grassroots bulletin-board systems, they jammed the signal of propaganda engines like Voice of America. Then we could say that maybe, at long last, the New Counterculture has come of age...

//Steve Mizrach (aka Seeker1) http://www.ecn.org/settorecyb/txt/cyberpunk_as_counterculture.html

These were the visions of cyberpunk back then... Perhaps there is still time for it to reach its full potential

Though the American military has a huge budget one cannot help but ponder over the fact that it is probably used for the finding of new biochemical weapons, or even the rigorous control of foreigners passing through that it currently under use in American airports.

I believe that the money is spent more on paranoia than on development, but then again that might be just me with my seething anti-americanism, may Bush smite me for being so unholy.

/me stays by the computer. we are tight buddies me and 'at... reading quite a bit too (recommended: Japansese Jisei's, they're often very emotional and pretty)

Classical Japanese Poetry: Jisei and Jisei Haiku's are two neat sites that do farely well in introducing the term.

hm, undoubtfully it would be practical with some sort of communcation device implanted directly into the skull. at least it would perchance remove all those nasty call signals that disturb you wherever you turn your head. >.<

anyway, the thought of technology being developed because people need it out of necessity, not warfare, made my day a bit brighter. thanks^_^

there were undoubtly a few point i had neglected to consider there.

I thought I'd popo in with another newbie question then...

Are there any specific player's manuals for net runners?

What qualities/abilities are the best to have when you're starting a new game?

What should be the top priority cybernetic implants to get?

ok, that was three, but I do humbly hope no one will think me too ignorant and blissfully unknowing of what matters are about.

That was a nasty thing to say about the greatest poet of all times, I think. o.ô

commercial factors will never have that kind of use for cybernetics.

Why would they?

Of course the market can induce a certain amount of productivity, but we certainly wont see it any time soon. The reason being, with slow product development there's a bigger chance that people will buy a lot of the old one for a longer period of time.

Fact is, even market has higher demands on security systems after 091101 than they had before. The US market for home security systems went up by quite a bit, and new devices are constantly installed at airport in the Big Brother Country in the west ever since. And that was, technically, a military action which induced further development of security measures.

Go-go Sweden!!

then again, the shooting sequences are probably the best part of the series, not counting the music which is brilliant..

the rest of it is quite dull and too much stressed on "flickers of the past" that are seemingly pointless and too many and too long >.<

you think you could manage to get this into a .pdf file? (i find it easier to read that way)

i like writing stories, thought I have as yet not quite grasped the cyberpunk literature genre well enough to explore it in composition.

please, tell me; how do you put up the background work? what model do you work from? what are the important background information facts to cover before you start making a story out of it?

It's too late! I've already seen Ghost in the Shell, though mostly because my "oh-so-gothic" friend recommended it to me. Can't say I thought it was all that splendid. Mostly I just detected all those things that should be physically possible due to natural laws.

Thanks for all the recommendations btw.

so, this is like .hack//sign or it's real?

though mecha might be impressive, i daresay suits are more likely as they are physically possible (for one) and more moveable also...

btw did anyone ever think about how the evangelions are constructed with their weight wrongly placed? with the centre of gravity that high up (shoulder/head) they would tip over before they straightened themselves up...

such things annoy me... The animators should have realised this when they were designing the mecha.

It's all very nice that people have ambitions and ideas about how the future is going to turn out, but the fact still remains that we need a counterpart to the US to get some technological development. We can't get chipped in until the military needs to make such devices to be ahead of the Great Enemy in espionage, no matter who the developer or the one exposed to the development might be...

It is a sad thing to think that humans need war to make progress isn't it?

agreeing with what's already been said; if they lowered their wages on things summat there wouldn't be such a high rate of piracy.

I can't see it as an immoral thing to do, because often people do it because they simply can't afford the cost of it (whatever they're dling) should they have to buy 'em things (me being one of them). Lack of money shouldn't have to determine the access to certain things even if our society was originally constructed to work that way.

werl, a person who's discriminating against some races is indeed racist

so a person who's discriminating against some technology should be a technologist?

I just wanted to get the general opinion of what books should be read within the Cyberpunk genre.

so far I've covered The Diamond Age and Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson and an Anthology.

many books that are as long as Quicksilver couldn't be expected to have less than a boring first third. Think instead of how pointless the rest of the book would be if those words weren't there..

Authors that you do not believe are thinking when they're writing usually have some sort of meaning to every word (excluding Robert Jordan who just writes mumbojumbo) and all of them are important for how you are going to view the rest of the story.

Why, thx

May the New Year be prosperous for all