Joost Raessens (by way of AndreasBroeckmann) on Mon, 31 May 1999 14:07:14 +0200 (CEST) |
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nettime-nl: Lezing cyberpunk 1 juni |
LEZING Georganiseerd door de specialisatie Nieuwe media en digitale cultuur Instituut Media en Re/presentatie, Universiteit Utrecht DINSDAG 1 JUNI TRANS 10, ZAAL 2.04, 17.00-19.00 UUR Change for the machines - uncontrolled technology in cyberpunk Pavel Frelik Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin, Poland In her "Manifesto for Cyborgs" Donna Haraway writes of the postmodern and post-industrial reality in which "late twentieth-century machines have made thoroughly ambiguous the difference between natural and artificial, mind and body, self-developing and externally designed, and many other distinctions that used to apply to organisms and machines. Our machines are frighteningly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert." Science fiction has traditionally been a mode of writing devoted to presenting, among others, the interaction between man and machine. It is, however, science fiction's latest development, cyberpunk, which really succeeds in showing the full implications of such a relationship and envisioning Haraway's statement. Varied and diverse as they are, most cyberpunk narratives share the sense of uncontrolled and uncontrollable technology. During my talk, I first want to characterize briefly the ways in which cyberpunk is different from other SF forms. The main discussion will cover four distinct ways in which cyberpunk writers envision technology as operating in cyberpunk narratives and transcending human control: by blurring once clear divisions between the organic and the mechanical and replacing nature as man's natural environment; by invading human body and becoming an active agent in the process of dehumanization; by achieving sentience and liberating itself in the form of artificial intelligences; and finally, by making the human life obsolete as nanotechnology does in selected narratives. I will also try to account for the reasons of such a consistent vision, which most of cyberpunk narratives present. The writers discussed will include William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Greg Bear, Walter Jon Williams, Michael Swanwick, and others. Pavel Frelik is junior lecturer in Department of American Literature and Culture at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, Poland. He is currently writing on technophobia in postmodern science fiction. Pavel Frelik is an author of a number of articles on postmodern American fiction and science fiction. He has also translated several pieces of what he academically preaches into Polish. Last year, he was a fellow in Summer Institute for American Literature at UC at Santa Barbara. Joost Raessens Nieuwe media en digitale cultuur Universiteit Utrecht Faculteit der Letteren Instituut Media en Re/presentatie Kromme Nieuwegracht 29 3512 HD Utrecht E-mail: Joost.Raessens@let.uu.nl Tel. 030-2536270/6125 Piersonstraat 73 6511 GK Nijmegen Tel. 024-3606198 -- * Verspreid via nettime-nl. Commercieel gebruik niet toegestaan zonder * toestemming. <nettime-nl> is een gesloten en gemodereerde mailinglist * over net-kritiek. Meer info: list@dds.nl met 'info nettime-nl' in de * tekst v/d email. Archief: http://www.factory.org/nettime-nl. Contact: * nettime-nl-owner@dds.nl. Int. editie: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime.