I'm not sure how the mystical elements of cyberpunk can annoy you when they serve as a vital foundation for the narratives. The classic mistake of poor writers is to mistake their setting for their subject matter, and in the case of the Neuromancer trilogy itself, the core subject matter is rooted in mysticism. If you strip away the subject matter and only concentrate on the setting then you're left with a pulp novel which has flashy props but no guts.

If you look at Neuromancer, and strip it back to its basic premise, then you're left with the line delivered by the Turing Police: "For centuries men have dreamed of pacts with demons, only now is it possible" (sorry for bad paraphrasing). That line is the very essence of the novel Neuromancer; the one line premise of the entire trilogy is encapsulated in the mystical notion of mortals dealing with spirits. If you're annoyed by the mystical elements of Neuromancer then you've missed the whole point. Count Zero takes this to another level - the classic fairy tale of promising your first born in exchange for favours.

If the Neuromancer trilogy had all the mysical elements removed then it would be an empty, vacuous read coloured by impressive descriptions of technology. Films that fall into this trap (all setting no subject) inevitably fail - special effects couldn't save "Godzilla".

Although it's not Cyberpunk, the novel "Contact" by Carl Sagan is another example of mysicism as a central premise. The parrallel's which Sagan draws between religious faith and Ellie's journey are what make the novel so powerful and poignant - it's something to keep you thinking for years. Take that away and it's just another alien movie.

Some guy once said "There's a God shaped hole in our lives" - maybe these days the hole isn't just God shaped, but it's definitely there. Mysical elements in novels tap into that.

-Christopher

My frog has piles

The mysticism makes sense. Delillo's White Noise is a good example of non-CP that's all about a society steeped in technology that it doesn't understand (i.e. only a small subset of the population actually understands the mathematics, physics, comp sci, etc. that run our tech, the rest is completely out of touch), hence our mental relationship to tech, especially as it advances, becomes primarily faith-based. CP is the perfect place to explore this relationship.

Methinks I'm just repeating what others have said.

Virtual Reverie: Videogames as VR.

Someone mentioned Tolkein in respect to cyberculture, but I think cyberpunk really seems to draw from a different writer of that time; Lovecraft. There seems to be a romance with an ancient hidden urban mythology in both Lovecraft's universe as well as the assorted cyberpunk futures. There's a sense of age along with these beings of mysticism, like the box-maker of Count Zero, for example. These beings, such as the Loa, are all quite a part of the urban landscape, even if they ARE technically young.

I won't even mention the similarities between Lovecraft's work and Gibson and Shirley's "The Belonging Kind" because frankly it's so Lovecraftian that it could very well be a nod in that direction.

Ah, my dear howard philip lovecraft. yes, there's certainly a lot of influence between gibson and lovecraft, but I think there's an intermediate step as well...burroughs. of course, dwelling on influences isn't entirely productive. It could be said that the velvet underground had as much to do with neuromancer as did lovecraft.

another writer who means a great deal to me, and who really taps into this mysticism thing, is tim powers. LAST CALL is his greatest novel, I think, though works like DECLARE and DRAWING OF THE DARK are equally memorable. The blending of mystical reality and the common day are a great deal of fun. It could be called magical realism, but it's really a step beyond that, a sort of ascended magickal reality that takes into account the sheer depth of history of religion, and the mutability of truth.

anyway, sorry...people mention lovecraft and i gotta say something, cuz i love that man.

I've always felt that religion/mysticism was a
requisite for good cyberpunk. A good working
definition of cyberpunk I had read was that it's
about the human condition in a dystopian near-
future (although that has been expanded to the
present). The vast majority of humanity is
religious or at least spritual in some generic
sense. It would be odd, to say the least, to
deal with a human condition where religion didn't
appear.

I also feel that this blend of human condition
and technology provides a (perhaps irresistable?)
venue for exploring certain... erm...
metaphysical [hmm... poor word choice?] or at
least philosophical issues. "What happens to the
soul when consciousness is uploaded into a
machine?" &c.

Lovecraft (how do I like his writting!) and his
world/genre had the working theme that science
(and perhaps base observation) couldn't explain
everything and would, at times, fail. Cyberpunk
sort of follows this, but the failure isn't so
catastrophic. Rather, it points out that science
and technology (in particular) not only can't
solve certain problems inherent in personal (and
professional) interactions, but can indeed help
cause new problems (eg globilization).

my $.02

Humm...could be off topic or a new topic...

Read ORBIS (Scifi)by Scott Mackey for a bit of
organized-religion-mind-warping.

I wonder about 1984 by George Orwell and
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Who to they mirror?

Lots of interesting ideas coming up here, but none seem to get to the heart of my concern. I think that it is my love of the avant-garde that means I want to escape the forces of history, and technology seems to be the perfect mechanism for this escape - a force of the new. What I want to get at is how technology reconfigures the way understanding and thought themselves take place. To some extent this may be seen a a radical break from previous discourse, the technological mode of thought overcomes (and I use this word with caution, as overcomming is both a completion and a surpassing) the humanistic mode of thought. For example the technological mode subsumes all understanding within itself, and defines everything by its own mode - mechanistic production, there is literaly no place for mystery within its domain, everything is explained-already in principle. In opposition the humanistic mode of thought makes appeal to some unknown human condition as a mode/essence of understanding and hence is intrinsically tied to mysticism. The two modes are in tension. The connection which is often made in cyberpunk literature often approaches the technological from the perspective of the human and hence injects a large amount of mysticism into it. The loa are a perfect example of this, the technological is filtered through the mystic and its own inner logic is not confronted, merely covered up.

To engage with the technological mode of thought from within its own logic is a much more terrible idea. It dehumanises people, 'we' may no longer be human, indeed, talk of a we or an I becomes problematic as any appeal to human nature is not possible from within the technological mode of thought.

Now, because mystical cyberpunk is firmly rooted in these humanistic modes of thought it must approach technology from within this mode, hence exploring, and explaining, the technological with the humanistic. Hence, the proliferation of mysticism, the loa are a human, i.e., mystic interpretation of a technological phenomenon; while all the time the inner essence of technology remains hidden and inadequately confronted - and the conclusion is never satisfactory, the happy ending reinforces warm-fuzzy human ideals, which have no way of engaging with the horror of the modern technological world. That said, at the same time cyberpunk is also pushing the technological to a large extent. People are dehumanised by technology, their modes of understanding are changed and the problems are confronted.

Here I would like to see cyberpunk be pushed to its limits, confront the technological from within itself, jump into the abyss. It may be necessary to say that the human race has ended, or at least the idea of the human has, and along with it the mystical understanding of the world. I (to any extent that 'I' can say I, given that 'I' have just argued against it) am unsure what this would lead to, but that exploration and experimentation is where the fun is.

'I' am not trying to make value judgements here, the aim is to force a confrontation with the new by pushing cyberpunk ideas to their limits in order to examine the new territory opened up by one of 'my' favourite genres. Half the reason I love cyberpunk is because it deals with these issues already.

quote:

---

Originally posted by lsprod:
I think that it is my love of the avant-garde that means I want to escape the forces of history, and technology seems to be the perfect mechanism for this escape - a force of the new.

---

You can't escape history. The further you jump
foward, the more history you create.

The big problem with the "new" is it'll become
old and familiar at some point. OTOH, the newer
products don't really get old so much as self-
destruct. It'll still be there until recycling
technologies are greatly improved. Then would
could conceivably see a point where the past
would become less evident. The past is still
there. We can still see it, although
interpretation is always a bit funky.

quote:

---

For example the technological mode subsumes all understanding within itself, and defines everything by its own mode - mechanistic production, there is literaly no place for mystery within its domain, everything is explained-already in principle. In opposition the humanistic mode of thought makes appeal to some unknown human condition as a mode/essence of understanding and hence is intrinsically tied to mysticism.

---

I'm not so sure. By your examples, it would seem
that the technological mode is conciderably self-
centered. It works by it's own rules and doesn't
worry about something that may be an other. Even
in the technological world, others do exist.
Sometimes NICs made by different manufacturers
won't talk to each other, even though they
supposedly follow the same standards.

The humanistic mode isn't necessarily looking at
some unknown condition of itself (although I
suppose that can happen) so much as trying to
work with, and understand, the "other" that the
technology doesn't take into account.

It would be nice to be self-deluding and feel
that there is nothing other than the self-imposed
rules, but honestly, no matter how much people
try to replace the "other" with technology, the
"other" will always be there. The truth is there
is not "other." We're all part of the same
gestalt. Trying to separate out a ridgedly
defined technological system from the very system
it's a part of, seems pretty comical to me.

quote:

---

The two modes are in tension.

---

Hardly. Technology and technological thinking
has always existed along-side the more humanistic
lifestyle. Well... maybe not always for
definitely for a few thousand years.

This is still dualistic thinking.

Are you a lumper or a splitter? Are they trees
or is it a forest? Is it world where technology
is separate from mysticism, or is it a world
consisting of the human condition (which is
probably too devisive a term as well)? Perhaps
this is the koan of cyberpunk.

quote:

---

The connection which is often made in cyberpunk literature often approaches the technological from the perspective of the human and hence injects a large amount of mysticism into it.

---

Can technology have a differing perspective than
that of humanity, the creators?

quote:

---

To engage with the technological mode of thought from within its own logic is a much more terrible idea. It dehumanises people, 'we' may no longer be human, indeed, talk of a we or an I becomes problematic as any appeal to human nature is not possible from within the technological mode of thought.

---

Do we cease to be human just because we were
looked upon from a dehumanizing perspective? We
have a long and continuing history of
dehumanizing others. Those dehumanized never
actually stopped being human, although certainly
terrible things have happened to them. Of course,
that notion of "terrible things" is a humanistic
declaration.

quote:

---

Now, because mystical cyberpunk is firmly rooted in these humanistic modes of thought it must approach technology from within this mode, hence exploring, and explaining, the technological with the humanistic.

---

Why must it? If cyberpunk is about including the
mixture of the mystical and technological within
the human condition, what would be gained by
removing the mystical and just focusing on the
technological? Wouldn't this produce stories
similar to other subgenres of science fiction
that focus more on the technological than the
mystical? And how would you propose doing this?

quote:

---

Hence, the proliferation of mysticism, the loa are a human, i.e., mystic interpretation of a technological phenomenon;

---

Is it? I don't remember that being all that well
explained. I thought it was insinuated that the
loa were products of the AIs finding and
connecting with an alien net. They were, in a
sense, following in their creators exploratory
drive, and thus adding a certain amount of human
condition to their own.

This all goes with the famous Arthur C. Clarke
quote about misunderstood technology being
mistaken for magic.

quote:

---

while all the time the inner essence of technology remains hidden and inadequately confronted - and the conclusion is never satisfactory, the happy ending reinforces warm-fuzzy human ideals, which have no way of engaging with the horror of the modern technological world.

---

What are these horrors of which you speak?

quote:

---

Here I would like to see cyberpunk be pushed to its limits, confront the technological from within itself, jump into the abyss. It may be necessary to say that the human race has ended, or at least the idea of the human has, and along with it the mystical understanding of the world.

---

But if you remove the human element, doesn't it
cease to be cyberpunk? It would, perhaps, make
for some interesting science fiction, but is it
cyberpunk?

I dunno. I'm just thinking out loud.

quote:

---

Originally posted by lsprod:
I think that it is my love of the avant-garde that means I want to escape the forces of history, and technology seems to be the perfect mechanism for this escape - a force of the new. What I want to get at is how technology reconfigures the way understanding and thought themselves take place.

---

History is part of technology. That which came before is what brings technology forth, and creates a reason for it to exist. To seperate technology from the movements that created it is to make it sterile and entirely artificial. I hardly see that that could make any sort of fiction believable: or indeed, that it would take away the mysticism. If you pull technology away from what birthed it, those who experience technology will see it as a magic force and the mystery of it will be in its existence instead of the details. You'd just be moving the from micromysticism to macromysticism.

As far as technological thinking goes, I think that's partially what cyberpunk explores. The world we live in today is so radically different from one twenty years ago because of the availability of information: in a near future dystopia, it changes even more. Information available for download right into your shades, or even an internal eye-display, changes your outlook on things. A constant flow of data can make the world around you have entirely new meaning, and make you think of things in new light. Being cybered out to move faster than those around you makes the world seem to crawl by, and could have a profound impact on the amount of thinking you put into actions, words, etc. The thought process in cyberpunk very much-so changes with technology, unless I'm reading you wrong.

quote:

---

For example the technological mode subsumes all understanding within itself, and defines everything by its own mode - mechanistic production, there is literaly no place for mystery within its domain, everything is explained-already in principle.

---

What sort of fiction are you considering reading if there's no mystery? Technological predetermination? The concept is scary and, I admit, cool, but as far as fiction goes, the ways of attacking such a plot really are quite limited. The closest I can think of to what you're talking about is Minority Report, which I've only heard things about, so I'm not at all in a position to discuss at any length.

quote:

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The connection which is often made in cyberpunk literature often approaches the technological from the perspective of the human and hence injects a large amount of mysticism into it. The loa are a perfect example of this, the technological is filtered through the mystic and its own inner logic is not confronted, merely covered up.

---

I don't agree. The Loa, if taken in context with the earlier novel, Neuromancer, have a lot of depth that is indirectly explored. They need to be given some sort of face to be understood, or else the book would read like a technical readout-- boring and shallow. The different Loa being connected, yet fragmented as they are, are exploring the limit of technology to trick itself; something which could be nearly omnipotent creates restrictions on itself to explore the human condition. I think the Loa present the perfect argument on this side: we see what technology thinks of, and does with, our mysticism.

quote:

---

To engage with the technological mode of thought from within its own logic is a much more terrible idea. It dehumanises people, 'we' may no longer be human, indeed, talk of a we or an I becomes problematic as any appeal to human nature is not possible from within the technological mode of thought.

---

Again, I don't see this making good fiction. Touching on it, yes, exploring things from the technology's POV, but an entire book of logical progression of activity without conflict between the tech would be a laundry list.

quote:

---

Here I would like to see cyberpunk be pushed to its limits, confront the technological from within itself, jump into the abyss. It may be necessary to say that the human race has ended, or at least the idea of the human has, and along with it the mystical understanding of the world.

---

I agree that this is less cyberpunk and more sci-fi. I still fail to see how this could become a fiction plot, and I'd be interested to see it done well.

quote:

---

'I' am not trying to make value judgements here, the aim is to force a confrontation with the new by pushing cyberpunk ideas to their limits in order to examine the new territory opened up by one of 'my' favourite genres.

---

The "new" is being confronted in the way cyberpunk has always done so-- the way that makes it cyberpunk. It puts a dark future into the near future and challenges us to see how eerily similar it is to our world today. Cyberpunk literature is a funhouse mirror of today's problems-- skewing some to huge proportions while minimalizing others, or concentrating them in one area. The technology involved can be explored, but the basic heart of cyberpunk itself is the exploration of technology as it affects humanity. You get into an entirely different realm when you remove the human element from it.

-Hawksfire, the Cheshire Harlequin

You might propose to only read circuit diagrams and c++ compilations, but there is still a narrative to found even in them, though a pretty boring one. Even the prhase 'technological thought' is a very human construct, giving a certain romantic sheen to the notion that machines are somehow purer than humans - but of course technology is as value-neutral as, say, the water that can keep you alive or drown you, depending on how you use it.

I think that the major problem that I have is the way in which a lot of cyberpunk engages with technology in interesting ways, and to a large extent deals with the issues that I am talking about, this is the element of cyberpunk that I love. But then also seems very sceptical of them, the resolution of the plot (again the loa), and even the plot itself (I am thinking of 'Snowcrash' here) is often facilitated via the mysticism I talk about, and this seems like a backing away from the really interesting ideas concerning technology it is a standard deus ex machina (literally). Another example of this would be the way in which a lot of main characters (especially in Gibson, e.g. Case) are just about fully human, rather than all cybered up. This strikes me as a bit nostalgic for the flesh, almost conservative in some way. It is like the difference between the studio and director's edits of Bladerunner. The studio resolves the technological nightmare, while Scott refuses to resolve it, capturing the viewer inside it.

Then these ideas have been filtered through all the other things I am thinking about at the moment. In particular Heidegger, Benjamin, and the avant-garde. The ideas on technology are almost straight from Heidegger's 'Question Concerning Technology'. I also have a love for the more experimental "speculative-fiction", in particular Ballard, but it was interesting that Delillo was mentioned, Pynchon is another great example. A point of interest here is that Ballard rates a copy of the Los Angeles phone book as one of the best books he has read, this connects with some comments about laundry lists and programs.

It is a given that mysticism is an element of cyberpunk as it stands, but as said above, I am wondering what would happen if it were pushed to the limit. Here the idea of the new might come into play, if the text pushes the limits the reader is pushed beyond them, the new is found in the act of reading not the text. I should probably be trying to write this stuff myself.

quote:

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A point of interest here is that Ballard rates a copy of the Los Angeles phone book as one of the best books he has read,

---

Then he has some problems to be resolved, or was just making a statement-- did he actually read the entire thing? If so, unless he has a photographic memory (which would make such an endeavor useful), he wasted a good chunk of his life.

quote:

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It is a given that mysticism is an element of cyberpunk as it stands, but as said above, I am wondering what would happen if it were pushed to the limit.

---

You speak of The Limit, but never give any specifics at all. Provide us with something or else it sounds like you're taking shots in the dark trying to give birth to genius. Kudos on the new ideas, but make sure you can communicate them first: this sounds like mental nut-flexing.

quote:

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I should probably be trying to write this stuff myself.

---

Yea, you probably should.

-Hawksfire, the Cheshire Harlequin

quote:

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Originally posted by Hawksfire:

quote:

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A point of interest here is that Ballard rates a copy of the Los Angeles phone book as one of the best books he has read,

---

Then he has some problems to be resolved, or was just making a statement-- did he actually read the entire thing? If so, unless he has a photographic memory (which would make such an endeavor useful), he wasted a good chunk of his life.

---

How useful is reading any book? Is reading 'Ulysses' any more "useful"? What does the process of reading actually involve? The result of reading a phone book as if it were fiction may have interesting results, like reading the dictionary as a cut and paste story. Also, it is a given that Ballard has problems - have you read 'Crash'?

Engaging in dialogue is a way of trying to flesh out these ideas, and this seems like a good forum in which to do it. The links with mysticism have always intrigued me and I wondered what other people thought of it. This then developed into speculation about the nature and future of cyberpunk (or s-f in general) and potential ideas that have been floating around in my head (oooh, humanism) for a while.

Where are the limits? How far can paranoia go? How far can the division, or lack thereof, between flesh and machine be pushed, is it a valid distinction at all? How does the reconfiguration of spatiality via cyberspace change the experience of the world? What does the extension of the senses mean for subjectivity and/or individuality? What are the shifting identities and positions of society in the age of information technology? How must our very modes of thought change in the face of technology, what does this mean for our self and selves? Cyberpunk has already broken new ground in all these and many more areas, how much more ground is there before we fall over the edge (without stopping to admire the view).

quote:

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Originally posted by Michael Jennings:
Computer programmers tend to use a lot of vaguely mystical and magic related terms of reference in describing what they and computers do: there is lots of discussion of wizards and dark magic. This may come from the very nature of what programming actually is. Writing a program is the closest thing in real life to casting a spell. Programming is the writing down of words, and things actually happen as a consequence of those words.

---

I guess, there are different ways how people see the technology. Say, I am a sysadmin, sitting in front of my computer, opened a terminal with a shell, seen "$ " prompt and entered "ssh foo". Since I am a programmer, I know that:

1. what I have typed passes through few layers of software, X server reads the keys value, passes them to xterm, xterm passes it to a couple of oseudoterminal drivers, they pass it to the shell process.

2. Shell process reads characters, parses them, finds that the command is to run "ssh" and pass "foo" as a single argument.

3. According to the $PATH variable, "/bin/ssh" is the file that should be run.

4. shell process calls fork() and creates a copy of itself. Two identical processes run, with the only distinction being a process ID, and a return value of fork(). New process calls /bin/ssh that replaces it.

5. ssh runs, gets the argument "foo", looks it up through dns, finds an IP address, connects to the port 22 at that IP address using TCP, that runs over IP, that in its turn runs over Ethernet (a huge amount of details is omitted here).

6. At the same time on the host "foo", ssh daemon sshd is sitting on the port 22. Seeing someone connected it talks to him, and determines that it is an SSH v2 client. ssh and sshd exchange keys and continue talking over the encryption. Many books were written about how exactly the encryption should be made, but here I'll omit that. In the end ssh sends my user name, and sshd, after calling PAM library, decides to ask for the password. ssh asks me for the password at the terminal (again, terminal drivers, xterm, X server...).

7. I see the password prompt and enter the password. Password passes to ssh, then encrypted to sshd on foo. sshd uses PAM to verify it, it checks to be valid, so sshd runs shell.

8. Shell on foo runs a startup script, calls few programs the same way as my shell called ssh. Finally it sends a string "$ " to its terminal driver. String is picked by the driver, passed to sshd, sshd encrypts it and passes to ssh, ssh decrypts it and send to its terminal driver, terminal driver sends it to xterm, xterm sends it to X server, X server renders "$ " and moves the cursor.

It looks like I am where I have started, at the terminal, displaying "$ " prompt. Except that everything that I enter is passed not to my shell, but to the shell on the box "foo", that is somewhere else.

Now, if someone asks me to explain what I have just did in details, I can tell the above story, and possibly add some details about how xterm talks to X server, how terminal drivers work, what encryption is used, how TCP handles flow control and recovers from errors, how DNS gives me an IP address when I give a hostname... I know that.

But do I think about it when I type "ssh foo" and enter the password? Hell no. I just want to be in the shell on the host foo, and want to turn my terminal into a terminal from "foo". If I will get a bunch of errors in the process, I certainly will know what exactly caused them -- X, terminal, ssh, DNS, network, shell on the other side. But unless things are broken, I don't think about it, "ssh foo" means that I am going to the host foo, and that's it. ssh certainly does not give me a magical ability to be in multiple places at once, but in the big picture of things it just as well may be, even though there is nothing magical about a piece of code that implements that.

But what about some beginner sysadmin still studying things? He has to use ssh before he learns about all the details that I have mentioned. He may find the idea of having physically invisible encrypted channels to a bunch of computers, to be fascinating, and he knows that there is some code that does it for him. But he doesn't know how it works, what to do when it's broken, and he can't reproduce a part of it if it was missing, so he can see "ssh foo" to be just like a spell, at least until he will learn all the details.

And what about some clueless newbie that just sees me typing in 10 terminals while never touching any computer other than one on my desk? It probably won't occur to him that I have just replaced half of the system on each of those boxes, his idea of doing so would be running around them attaching terminals, stuffing CDs in and watching progress bars go. It's not like this level of cluelessnes is common now, but users usually see sysadmins doing their work as something far outside of what they are accustomed to.

Same thing, but orders of magnitude higher happens with programming. If users sometimes may see a sysadmin working, or at least know that he is there to run things in some weird ways, they almost never see a programmer. Programs usually are seen as almost living creatures, and if users may know what sysadmins operate with, programmers are far, and apparently something they have entered in their editors make things happen. And the more unobvious the thing is, usually the less understandable is the source code that does it. And sometimes it gives an impression that some incomprehensible forces are at work creating trouble -- programmers know that those forces are nothing but bugs in their programs, but how one can admit his own stupidity in front of a person that does not know the very definition of things that allow to understand things where one goofed? Things get reduced to "it's magic, and I suck at it".

Certainly looks like magic.

After some more thought about this I have decided that really there are two questions here. The fist is the simple "why is there so much mysticism in cyberpunk?", i.e., why do authors use it so much? And this is answered by "it is a common thought/idea and is often used in literature"; and, "there is an affinity between ideas of magic etc. and the technology apparent in cyberpunk." The second question is a much more in depth topic about how the presentation of the technological in cyberpunk engages with 'humans' and various modes of thought, and the problems that arise from this engagement. The relationship between the mystical understanding of the world and the technological, which to me seem to be in tension/confrontation. Although it seems to me that other people do not see this same tension.

It is interesting that I dwell on Ballard, because I think that his writing, and in particular 'Crash', is getting closer to the ideas about the technological that I am pushing - a benevolent psychopathology that beckons towards us.

<But this is the history of religion! When new religions or social organizations come along, they don't REPLACE the old systems; they blend with the old systems. Christian practices in much of the world are idolatrous, yet idolatry is one of the first things outlawed by Christianity. The new belief/technology never wipes away with the old. It only changes the context of the old.>

Right o SplitCoil

As the African & Haitians use Christian symbols , icons & names to hide their home grown voudou behind.
And then bring it bk out when the C's are gone.

"What does the process of reading actually involve?" Isprod

Pattern recognition.