tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post4316171118063323002..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: Cyberpunk 2020 Hindsight Is... 2077?Dale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-76456131032521560432012-10-19T09:34:23.666-07:002012-10-19T09:34:23.666-07:00I played Cyberpunk 2020 back when it first came ou...I played Cyberpunk 2020 back when it first came out. I recall thinking that it was very implausible at the time.<br /><br />Our GM sucked, the missions we went on didn't pay enough. The low point was when we just performed some fancy mission involving all kinds of shooting and fancy cyberpunk stuff. To make our getaway we ran a few blocks and had to take the bus (couldn't afford vehicles or cabs). I had to loan some of my team members bus fare. That kind of ruined the illusion.jollyspaniardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10999141103840765243noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-37059285008358743152012-10-18T15:36:33.477-07:002012-10-18T15:36:33.477-07:00I think Gibson got the 80s FAR more right than he ...I think Gibson got the 80s FAR more right than he did our 2010s, and I think it does something of a disservice to the force of his critique in its moment to try to cram it instead into the contours of "predictive" scenario sketching. Watch a non-cyberpunk film like Beineix's equally 80s-iconic Diva and observe the precise parallels to get some sense of what I mean about its moment. Now, manufactured consent to corporate-military plutocracy in the form of technofetishistic consumer spectacle has, after all, been the broad-brushstrokes order of the day since the consolidation of the postwar Washington consensus, and it doesn't seem to me a particularly prescient or notable accomplishment to paint that picture -- I think Gibson was doing something much more interesting, something indicated in the thematic/figurative connection between the sprawl tales and stories like "The Gernsback Continuum." I would say the aspirational immaterialism of the disdain of meat bodies coupled to the noir/punk rebel without a clue iconicity of his "bad boys" seems more specific to the genre and its moment, not to mention quite superannuated, to our eyes here and now, and also more pathetic than prophetic.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-35521132136732796992012-10-18T15:20:31.435-07:002012-10-18T15:20:31.435-07:00Gibson's topoi, let's see: large-scale dis...Gibson's topoi, let's see: large-scale disenfranchisement through corporatocracy ascending from de facto to de jure status, an America that went has-been and new tech (IT or otherwise) as just the latest tools to implement human malice.<br /><br />The big names of old may have got the details wrong, but the greater picture feels eerily prescient.Barkeronhttp://ultraphyte.com/noreply@blogger.com