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...
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... 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.
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.
The article under review is Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in the DSM-5: Controversy, Change, and Conceptual Considerations by Anushka Pai, Alina M. Suris, and Carol S. North in Behavioral Sciences. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a mental health problem that some people develop after experiencing or witnessing a life-threatening event, like combat, a natural disaster, a car accident, or sexual assault (U.S. Department VA, 2007). PTSD can happen to anyone and many factors can increase the possibility of developing PTSD that are not under the person’s own control. Symptoms of PTSD usually will start soon after the traumatic event but may not appear for months or years later. There are four types of symptoms of PTSD but may show in different
In Bruce Sterling's article, "Cyberpunk in the Nineties," he explained how public opinion had defined himself, Rucker, Shiner, Shirley, and Gibson as the cyberpunk "gurus" in the 1980's. Because of being labeled cyberpunk "gurus," the public had come to understand the definition of cyberpunk as "anything that cyberpunks write." To break this definition of cyberpunk established by popular public opinion, I will pursue giving cyberpunk a more definite definition. After reading numerous cyberpunk fiction stories, I noticed reoccurring themes in these stories. I believe these themes can form a criteria under which a story can be defined as cyberpunk. These criteria are total enhancement and integration of everyday life by technology, some degree of pleasure (by the author) in explaining this technology, cyber-lingo, and some degree of global connectiveness.
In this book Sterling discusses three cyberspace subcultures known as the hacker underworld, the realm of the cyber cops, and the idealistic culture for the cyber civil libertarians. At the beginning of the story Sterling starts out with discussing the birth of cyberspace and how it came about. The Hacker Crackdown informs the readers of the issues surrounding computer crime and the people on all sides of those problems. Sterling gives a brief summary of what cyberspace meant back then and how it impacted society, and he investigates the past, present and future of computer crimes. For instance he explains how the invention of the telephone led to a world that people were scared of because the telephone was something that was able to let people talk to one another without actually being in the same area. People thought that it was so strange and so different because they didn’t understand all of the information behind it. Back then people thought of the telephone as a tool that allowed others to talk to them in a way that was so personal yet impersonal. Sterling then goes on to explain how “phone phreaks” played such an important part in relating the telephones to computer crimes and how they were so closely related back then.
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.
The term Science Fiction carries multiple meanings to people, which has led to various definitions over the years. According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition, which states "fiction dealing principally with the impact of actual or imagined science on society or individuals" (p.652). This provides a clear detail of what science fiction is, there are still many people that have their own beliefs of what science fiction is and feel society fails to properly label genres. A good example of this: "Science fiction is a label applied to a publishing category and its application is subject to the whims of editors and publishers" (Clute, 1995). From centuries old to the present, science fiction fans to educators have tried many ways
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.
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.
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...
National Institute of Mental Health 2009, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), viewed 18 August 2011, .
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.
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.
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.
History has evolved through a series of counter-cultures, contraries to a community's subjective, shared system of beliefs that provide meaning to objective reality. Timothy Leary has defined the evolution of countercultures that range from the beatniks of the early fifties, the hippies of the sixties and seventies to the present day cyberpunks and new breeds (Vitanza 365). These groups have been met with resistance over the years as a result of their expressive attitudes and tendencies to break the molds of conformity which their culture had previously set. I will focus of the latest stage of evolution, the cyberpunk. The cyberpunk counterculture has encountered mixed reviews over the years. Many people feel as though it is a movement that is made up of no good troublemakers who pose a threat to the computer world. On the contrary, I feel that cyberpunks are taking a lot of heat from a small number of hell raisers who roam the data-highways looking to cause havoc. For the most part, cyberpunks have contributed to society in beneficial ways. As computer technology is rapidly increasing everyday, the issue is becoming relevant to society as a whole. We are all affected by its presence and therefore should become more aware of what lurks in the cyberworld.