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Out of Pod Experience

 
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Strangest Blog Post I've Ran Across
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Azriel Geist
Pure Victory
#1 - 2012-03-13 03:31:23 UTC
So... I've been really enjoying this one musical artist lately, Oneohtrix Point Never. And I listened to an awesome piano version of his song that had the lyric "Internet... is a self atomising machine."

The first thing I do when I hear a lyric that piques my interest, I hit up Google and found this blog post: http://nomadicutopianism.wordpress.com/2011/04/02/self-atomising-machines-hypnagogic-cyberpunk-reality-and-utopia/.

I'm not exactly quite sure what to make of it, but I've always been into cyberpunk (a lot of the reason I enjoy Eve...) and I've had this idea of starting a musical project that embodies the ideas and themes I was so attracted to in discovering books like Neuromancer a few years ago... so strange that I would somehow come full circle by listening to a song and doing a simple Google search.

My e-brain is blown.
Merin Ryskin
Peregrine Industries
#2 - 2012-03-13 03:45:34 UTC
Quote:
2. Drugs. Drugs drugs drugs. You’ll notice Timothy Leary (of LSD fame) in a picture towards the top of the post. He’s a pretty big fan of Gibson, and drugs play a pretty important part in Neuromancer- at the same time crippling Case and allowing him to go beyond the present, to transcend his own being. Their role in utopian/dystopian fiction isn’t minimal, either- they’re used both to control (Soma in Brave New World) and expand the mind (mescaline in Island). And I’d take a reasoned guess that some of our beloved hypnagogues have had the odd flirtation along the way, too (is it me, or is talking about drugs now completely passé in music criticism?).


This says it all, really.
Telegram Sam
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#3 - 2012-03-14 13:34:13 UTC
Interesting blog, kind of all over the place. Cyberpunk visions evolving into utopia or dystopia? I might say neither. Somewhat utopian maybe, in terms of the ideas of a brilliant virtual/cyber reality. But ultimately dystopian, in terms of the view on where society is headed and people's feeling of well-being in it. But that's talking about cyberpunk fiction. Haven't heard the music yet.

I suppose cyberpunkish music was inevitable. The internet has been widespread in homes for about 17 years now. You could say we're already in a kind of cyberpunk world. RL society and online society are intertwined. Do we spend more time with our RL friends or with our online friends? Don't know about you, but I probably spend much more time with EVE corp mates than with RL friends. Because my RL friends are scattered all over town or all over the continent. My corp friends are just an EVE login away). Are EVE corps and the EVE world actually bizarre online societies, with people having purposeful, goal-driven interactions with each other, within the framework of some ficitional cyber world? Then you have the complaints about meta-gaming, with societies from outside the specific game's world entering as a bloc, instead of developing from within. Sounds kind of proto-cyberpunk to me-- RL and cyber world merged and the boundaries between them hard to distinguish .
Jhagiti Tyran
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#4 - 2012-03-14 23:34:50 UTC
Some interesting points on there. Many futurists are near the mark, look at us in the western world. We could almost be considered cyborgs already. We are completely reliant on technology for everything, if all the computers in the west broke down at once our civilisation would collapse in days. No one would get water, food delivery would stop, power would be off. The limited attempts by governments wouldn't be enough.

Then there is the way that many of us in the west are never more than a few feet from the internet. We all carry tablets, smartphones and laptops. Even TVs are internet connected. The internet has totally replaced existing social structures and finished what GSM phones with SMS started. Social networking has took over, so much so that the idea of everyone's conciousness linked by computers doesn't seem so far fetched. How cool would it be to ditch the phones and tablets and send complicated messages with images and video with a thought? People would lap it up as long as it was priced well and didn't involve surgery, or any creepy chip in the brain idea.

Scientists are already researching control of computers by brain waves, given time maybe a simple, unobtrusive device could be worn that used that technology.