Cyberpunk and Science Fiction

1506 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Advancement of technology affecting modern society

Cyberpunk and Science Fiction

Science fiction can be defined as a method of story telling that steps outside of the box of life as we know it and into the realm of the impossible. Science fiction works are often designed to be only truthful in the eyes of the author and the reader. However, there are times when either a science fiction work parallels closely to the future of our world and therefore becomes a possibility or life pursues a science fiction-like ideal making the quest heroic in itself. The latter of the two can describe the viewpoint of our growing cyberpunk culture and its belief that technology is the end no matter what means be.

The stories in the book Cyberpunk seems to focus on the life of a hacker. The book follows the life events and trends that a hacker typically goes through. Individuals who are impressed by technology often become wrapped into a technological advancement such as the computer or telephone, and become engulfed in curiosity. However, at this point, these individuals are nothing more than a target market for the product. They not only test the power that comes from understanding what they have in their hands, they become obsessed with it, and even begin to abuse it. Now the person has crossed the line of a fan of a product and entered the realm of hackers. In well-known cases, the individuals who manipulate todays technology for personal gain or pleasure can be related to the villains in science fiction works. Todays hackers are the new generation of pioneers whom we fear because their knowledge gives them control over us. They rationalize their abuse and control over us for the good of technology and feel little or no remorse for any such unscrupulous actions.

In most cyberpunk nov...

... middle of paper ...

... with an ultimatum, villains would surely choose their evil profession over a life full of love and emotions. The world of science fiction is just a fantasized portrayal of our non-fictitious world of today. However, there is a significant relation among the innovators of our world and the inhabitants of the science fiction world. Their mentalities are equal; their intentions similar; their idea of a new world realized. One fears what one fails to understand, and there will always be those who test others fears. These are the characters of the science fiction novels; these are the characters of the world we live in.

Works Cited

Markoff, John and Hafner, Katie. Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991.

Gibson, William. Johnny Mnemonic. Composing Cyberspace. Ed. Richard Holeton. Boston: McGraw Hill, 1998.

Show More
Related

  • The Time Machine And The Veldt Comparison

    1795 Words  | 4 Pages

    Have you ever had the thought that technology is becoming so advanced that someday we might not be able to think for ourselves? There is no questioning the fact that we live in a society that is raging for the newest technology trends. We live in a society that craves technology so much that whenever a new piece of technology comes out, people go crazy to get their hands on it. The stories that will be analyzed are The Time Machine by H.G Wells and The Veldt by Ray Bradbury. These stories offer great insight into technologies’ advancements over time that will ultimately lead to the downfall of human beings. These two stories use a different interpretation of what will happen when technology advances, but when summed up a common theme appears. In the story, The Time

    Read More

  • The Lasting Effects of the Hugo Chávez Regime

    1900 Words  | 4 Pages

    In today’s world, a leader of a country has an immense power. That person can either wisely nurture the nation he or she has sworn to guide, or be responsible for the steps backward that country will be doomed to take at the end of their rule. There is no in between. Venezuela, a South American country that has a coastline on the Caribbean Sea, is a prime example of this truth. Venezuela is an oil-rich country that suffers from a multitude of problems created by previous governments, most notably the Chávez regime. Under Chávez’s rule, the country was guided down a devastating and highly controversial path (Rohter). Although this oil-rich nation had been lead by flawed leaders before, Hugo Chávez was the man who is ultimately responsible for the fact that Venezuela is currently spiraling out of control. A champion of the poor, his legacy in Venezuela can be felt still today (Rohter). Although he died over a year ago, the ultimately disastrous choices Chávez made for Venezuela have culminated into violent protests that began in February 2014. Hugo Chávez was a highly controversial leader whose socialistic ideologies and policies that focused on elevating the poor continue to affect not only the current president, Nicolas Maduro, but the country as a whole by providing the fuel to the violent protests occurring in the country due to issues such as inflation, government corruption, terrible crime rates, and food shortages.

    Read More

  • Diagnosis and Treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

    1181 Words  | 3 Pages

    Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, also known as PTSD, is an anxiety disorder that can develop after a traumatic event (Riley). A more in depth definition of the disorder is given by Doctor’s Nancy Piotrowski and Lillian Range, “A maladaptive condition resulting from exposure to events beyond the realm of normal human experience and characterized by persistent difficulties involving emotional numbing, intense fear, helplessness, horror, re-experiencing of trauma, avoidance, and arousal.” People who suffer from this disease have been a part of or seen an upsetting event that haunts them after the event, and sometimes the rest of their lives. There are nicknames for this disorder such as “shell shock”, “combat neurosis”, and “battle fatigue” (Piotrowski and Range). “Battle fatigue” and “combat neurosis” refer to soldiers who have been overseas and seen disturbing scenes that cause them anxiety they will continue to have when they remember their time spent in war. It is common for a lot of soldiers to be diagnosed with PTSD when returning from battle. Throughout the history of wars American soldiers have been involved in, each war had a different nickname for what is now PTSD (Pitman et al. 769). At first, PTSD was recognized and diagnosed as a personality disorder until after the Vietnam Veterans brought more attention to the disorder, and in 1980 it became a recognized anxiety disorder (Piotrowski and Range). There is not one lone cause of PTSD, and symptoms can vary from hallucinations to detachment of friends and family, making a diagnosis more difficult than normal. To treat and in hopes to prevent those who have this disorder, the doctor may suggest different types of therapy and also prescribe medication to help subside the sympt...

    Read More

  • Blade Running to Cyberpunk

    1162 Words  | 3 Pages

    Labels are a product of too many ideas that describes a field. Cyberpunk fiction is a genre that has only recently received its due respect as an art form. This label is the cause of great controversy when it comes to actually defining cyberpunk. To any definition, there are arguments to its validity and consistency, but there are some generally accepted traits of Cyberpunk (CP). CP is a reflection of the pop-culture of the eighties, an extension of Science Fiction that entangles hard and soft technology, and its stories contain realism.

    Read More

  • Red Tides

    1115 Words  | 3 Pages

    issues, but if there is an onshore breeze then it is a problem. On one side of the coast, the people might...

    Read More

  • What´s Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?

    846 Words  | 2 Pages

    According to a veteran, anxiety and depression are often misdiagnosed as PTSD. Since the Vietnam War, the occurrence and diagnosis of PTSD has skyrocketed. After a sev-ere reduction in the rate of PTSD in veterans where poorly documented PTSD cases were culled from the collection, Bruce P. Dohr-enwend of Columbia found a 13% reduction in the lifetime rate of PTSD; in a continuation of Dohr-enwend’s work, McNally concluded that a majority of PTSD patients were fit to live in everyday life, re-ducing the lifetime rate of PTSD by another 7% (Dobbs 2). In addition, many veterans have been known to be over- or under-reporting their PTSD symptoms, making the accurate diagnosis even more trouble-some.

    Read More

  • The Dispossessed and Invisible Man

    1332 Words  | 3 Pages

    Darko Suvin defines science fiction as "a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device" (Suvin 7-8) is a fictional "novum . . . a totalizing phenomenon or relationship" (Suvin 64), "locus and/or dramatis personae . . . radically or at least significantly" alternative to the author's empirical environment "simultaneously perceived as not impossible within the cognitive (cosmological and anthropological) norms of the author's epoch" (Suvin viii). Unlike fantasy, science fiction is set in a realistic world, but one strange, alien. Only there are limits to how alien another world, another culture, can be, and it is the interface between those two realms that can give science fiction its power, by making us look back at ourselves from its skewed perspective.

    Read More

  • Rise Of The Hackers: Movie Analysis

    1336 Words  | 3 Pages

    The documentary Rise of the Hackers, focuses on the rising criminal use of hacking and how it is effecting multiple areas of technology. The documentary describes simple and complicated situations concerning hacking, but there still questions that must be answered when it comes to hacking and crime. The main question is in trying to determine why a person would choose to commit computer hacking. There are various theories already present within the criminal justice system that may explain at a micro-level and macro-level. These theories would explain why offenders would commit the crimes, but it may not answer the full scope of the question. The Routine Activities Theory would help to explain why offenders offend, why victims are victimized,

    Read More

  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

    1623 Words  | 4 Pages

    National Institute of Mental Health 2009, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), viewed 18 August 2011, .

    Read More

  • The Genre of Cyberpunk

    1267 Words  | 3 Pages

    Cyberpunk is, as its authors would have it, a revolutionary new genre. The Movement is made up of radical new authors breaking from traditional SF ideology and prose. The style evokes a sense of fear and paranoia while overloading the reader with information. Aside from these indefinable feelings evoked by the genre, cyberpunk contains several concrete, identifiable themes in every story. The central theme is about fringe characters -- outsiders -- living in a grimy, seedy world ruled over by huge, all-encompassing megacorporations. The megacorps permeate the world of these characters with an impersonal, hopeless aura. One can either work for them as a wage-drone in mediocrity, or against them as against gods in a pitiful fight to outwit them. The cyberpunk world is completely overwhelmed, infused, and inundated by corporate technology such as decks, the Matrix, "prosthetic limbs, implanted circuitry, cosmetic surgery, genetic alteration" (Sterling xiii), and artificial intelligences. The megacorporate philosophy that everything can be bought and sold, like the technology that is bought and sold, makes human life cheap and worthless. Technology has replaced humans, much like machines today have already replaced workers on the assembly line.

    Read More

  • science fiction and fantasy

    1201 Words  | 3 Pages

    The question is whether it is possible to distinguish between fantasy and true science fiction. I am reminded of the analogy, attributable I believe, to Theodore Sturgeon, of the elf ascending vertically the side of a brick wall. In a science fiction story the knees of the elf would be bent, his center of gravity thrown forward, his stocking cap hanging down his neck, with his feet quite possibly equipped with some form of suction cups. In a fantasy, on the other hand, the elf would simply stride up the wall in a normal walking posture, with his stocking cap standing straight out from his brow. What is the difference between these scenarios? The typical answer is that the science fiction story must play by the implicit rules of the universe; in this instance, gravitation. Fantasy, however, need not "tip its hat" to the Law of Universal Gravitation the story can bend the rules in which gives it the fantasy genre.

    Read More

  • The Horror of Dystopia Revealed by Neuromancer

    1583 Words  | 4 Pages

    When William Gibson's futuristic novel Neuromancer  was first published, it seemed farfetched that technology could reach the level of sophistication he described. Science fiction movies have since repeated and expanded upon this theme, portraying corporate anxieties and paranoid fears of people to be controlled by aliens, man-made machines and artificial intelligence. Neuromancer takes us into the subculture of cyberpunk, a dystopia of an amoral society ruled by abstract powers. Gibson creates a world of fear and terror where technology permeates this futuristic world into its smallest detail and instead of serving humanity, rises to become its ruler and God.

    Read More

  • Burning Chrome by William Gibson

    629 Words  | 2 Pages

    The text of “Burning Chrome” by William Gibson, is based on the tale of two professional hackers, Automatic Jack and Bobby Quine. Jack buys a piece of unknown software that turns out to be a sophisticated and almost untraceable Russian hacking software. Bobby decided to use this software to break in and steal money from a high level and well connected criminal known as Chrome. After Jack agrees, the two hackers successfully break in and steal money as well as take down Chrome. These two characters live in a futuristic world where human anatomy and customizable technology have become one and both software and hardware have become crucial to the people of this time. In this essay I will briefly explain how software and hardware play a crucial part within the plot and how they differentiate from one another.

    Read More

  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Description

    1957 Words  | 4 Pages

    U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. (2014). Post-traumatic stress disorder: National center for PTSD. Retrieved from http://www.ptsd.va.gov/PTSD/index.asp

    Read More

  • The Red Tide

    1199 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Red Tides occur can occur from human actions from agricultural runoff. Agricultural runoff can help the Red Tides can form because they are full of nitrates that will grow phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are single celled organisms that are plant-like organisms that can form dense, visible patches near the water's surface. And when they are in a high concentration area they can produce toxins that can paralyze . They can also change colors from either brown to green to red. Another way that the Red Tides can occur from humans is global warming (which humans have increased drastically since 1970). Global warming has increased sea level temperature which in turn will increase the number of phytoplankton and in turn can increase the Red Tide.

    Read More

More about Cyberpunk and Science Fiction

Open Document