tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041624883246722973.post23867356683522713..comments2022-11-11T04:13:56.292-08:00Comments on In a Strange Land: Living in Gibson's Future? Close Enough to Be Scary.Iggy Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10834075825456226770noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041624883246722973.post-76489385408589841232011-02-03T01:21:07.560-08:002011-02-03T01:21:07.560-08:00Yes, amazing isn't it? I saw people inside bur...Yes, amazing isn't it? I saw people inside burning buildings where chunks of the ceiling were falling down,trying on shoes to make sure they were stealing the right size... A cliche rich-blonde-girl-from-UC back her Cherokee Jeep into a display window on Melrose Ave. to loot 900USD dresses... people stealing foam wig holders...<br /><br /><br />I remember thinking one night, out in curfew with the smell of burning and sirens and flickering flamelight everywhere, "Wow; now when I read "riot" in a paper or book, I will totally understand what that environment means."Miso Susanowahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14628657533849686313noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041624883246722973.post-19907950435745405732011-01-31T08:03:57.718-08:002011-01-31T08:03:57.718-08:00"I was speaking to east coast peeps who were ..."I was speaking to east coast peeps who were watching CNN and what they were seeing was an orchestrated television show."<br /><br />Thank you for sharing what really happened. I figured we were getting an edited version, if only to stop flare-ups here.<br /><br />It's just beneath the surface. After Hurricane Isabel hit, we had 11 days without power. The second night, it got crazy on the main drag near us. You could hear wild racing by bikers and lots of gunshots. I was glad the lights <em>were</em> out.<br /><br />May it never happen again. The students I teach, and me too, live and work in such an arcology on this campus. Chaos is never, however, further away than the next hurricane-strike.Iggy Ohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10834075825456226770noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041624883246722973.post-31750638836296376912011-01-30T21:54:17.083-08:002011-01-30T21:54:17.083-08:00mmmm I wasn't advocating anarchy; I have lived...mmmm I wasn't advocating anarchy; I have lived that too many times :D where I see Molly and her type is a counterweight to the zaibatsu's hirelings.<br /><br />I agree on the general shape of what's coming, and would add to it something I think will far outdo the oil problems: the water wars, coming soon to a state and province near you...<br /><br /><br />and erm yes, I do understand that people outside LA saw a television show about the riots, but it was 6 days of complete lawlessness and anarchy, which also triggered several days of it in other major cities. LA was a war zone and even when the Guard got there, they <i> announced on television that they had no ammo for their weapons and no orders</i>. It was a complete facade for at least 2 more days.<br /><br />I have home video of shotgun battles on the corner of Vermont and Hollywood, cops watching looting at the Circuit City, etc etc. Guns and fire everywhere. I shot 5 rolls of film and recorded +70 hours of video from the local news before the White House told them to stop showing those live feeds. <br /><br />I was speaking to east coast peeps who were watching CNN and what they were seeing was an orchestrated television show.<br /><br />Definitely a Panther Modern scene :DMiso Susanowahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14628657533849686313noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041624883246722973.post-70307478558846689822011-01-30T07:19:31.667-08:002011-01-30T07:19:31.667-08:00Miso, you make some really good counter-claims. I ...Miso, you make some really good counter-claims. I was thinking of the LA Riots as a one-city event (and a tragic one). In '68 a bunch of cities went up in a way that never happened in '92. I was a punk kid in Richmond in '68, listening to the breaking glass. I'm glad it got no worse for my family in those days of rage.<br /><br />As for bank and corporate hacking, however, it seems to be the provenance of teams with an agenda, at least from what I'm reading. Case and The Dixie Flatline hired out, but they made their runs solo.<br /><br />But I'm happy these hackers are out there. I fear banks playing with crazy financial instruments and then throwing people out of homes more than I do our hackers. <br /><br />Assange got slapped with criminal charges as soon as Wikileaks went after Bank of America...<br /><br />As for Molly, she does have a code and a tragic past, but I don't want mercs of any gender hiring out. I want rule of law by governments. That's my 20th-Century-geezer perspective, perhaps. Anarchy is not as appealing to me as it was in my 20s...and corporatism and plutocracy, which are the form of governance we have, still retain the possibility of reform. It happened in Teddy Roosevelt's era, and it could happen again, even though Wall Street and the military-industrial complex seem to own both parties in the US now.<br /><br />Read my Peak Oil work (haven't run much here lately) to see where I think we'll head, technologically. I wanted the column to be about Gibson's prognostications, not mine, but I suspect that soon we'll see the terminus for how rich an online environment we'll get: bandwidth limits and increasing economic disruption as the easy oil vanishes forever and climate change begins to work its evil magic on our systems and food supply. These hard realities will limit our cyber-dreams, just as lack of public monies and the limits of chemical rocketry stifled human migration into space. <br /><br />Any future online paradises will be like those hinted at in Butler's <em>Parable of the Sower</em>, rare and beyond the reach of the struggling billions. Using cell-phones and Facebook in Eqypt is a long way from jacking into the Matrix to fight the Man. Perhaps I'm wrong and we'll get something like sim stim over wireless, but our hardware is evolving faster than the bandwidth to carry the code: otherwise, SL would not lag and it would fly by as fast as the consensual hallucination of Gibson's book.<br /><br />Personally, I foress a future of "meat" and making things, again, a dieselpunk culture of making do, making it yourself, or doing without: 1930 in 2030. A future where the wealthiest will have Gibson-style medical miracles and the rest of us will have doc-in-a-box and die in our 60s, as our ancestors did.<br /><br />We don't have the fossil fuels or money to make AIs or go to L5 and beyond. We'll be lucky, in the States at least, to keep paving the highways and set up a bus system when gas hits $5+ per gallon and state governments go bankrupt.<br /><br />This is a scarier future than Gibson's. I don't want it to happen, and educating kids to be critical thinkers is one way to arm them to change the system so it serves the populace rather than preying upon it.Iggy Ohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10834075825456226770noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041624883246722973.post-20758702615397229082011-01-29T23:31:03.380-08:002011-01-29T23:31:03.380-08:00"Except for the turbulence of 1968, America h..."Except for the turbulence of 1968, America has never had Egyptian-style chaos in the streets"<br /><br /> - I fully experienced the Los Angeles Riots in 1992 and watched the chaos catch in other cites, so I can't agree with this.<br /><br /><br />"On the mind front, the lone cyber-cowboys of Gibson's world have not emerged."<br /><br /> - They HAVE emerged; where do you think all the bank and corporation hacking is coming from? How about the cyberattacks on Estonia, the 2007 breach of many high-level military systems and the loss of terabytes of "eyes only" material, Moonlight Maze, Titan Rain, the attacks on Russia, South Ossetia, Georgia and Azerbaijan in 2008, GhostNet, the attacks on North Korea traced to the UK, Operation Aurora (Google)...Cowboys, selling their services to the highest bidder: PakHaxors, TeaMp0isoN, UrduHack & ZCompany Hacking Crew, GhostNet... straight out of the Sprawl.<br /><br /><br />Mercenaries... agreed and applauded; let's call these things what they are.<br /><br />I'd be HAPPY to have Molly walking the streets; she had some integrity and a code at least. And she was as fair as could be; anyone could hire her with the right credits.<br /><br /><br />Your "image source: unknown" looks to be a frame from the 1995 film Hackers: it's an interior shot of the Gibson mainframe.<br /><br /><br />I think a lot of people don't get that in cyberpunk, as in most modern science fiction, the focus is what happens to society given the implications of technology. Sure, Gibson got what we'd call "details" wrong, but his extropolation of society based not only on the tech of computers but on the performance and stated aims of the companies who rushed in to exploit the net in 1995 was, and still is, spot-on as to their ultimate headspace and aim. In this I still think we have yet to see how low things will sink and how close to Gibson's prognostications we will come.Miso Susanowahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14628657533849686313noreply@blogger.com