The Lessons of Cyberpunk

Fitting, Peter. "The Lessons of Cyberpunk." Technoculture. Constance Penley and Andrew Ross, eds. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1991: 295-315. Limited access on JSTOR.

See for the literary history of cyberpunk by a knowledgeable scholar, including the relationship of cyberpunk with the larger issue of the postmodern.

Highly useful for William Gibson's work, with an important discussion of Gibson and the figures of the cyborg (following Dona Haraway), and computers, AI, and the human-machine linkages "that make cyberspace possible (pp. 301-04, here, p. 303). Note also Fitting on Gibson on "The dissolution of the defining boundaries of the human" as mediated by "the electronic (re)production of the shapes and sounds, thoughts, and experiences of the human. In this futuristic society of the spectacle" in the Neuromancer series (or "Sprawl" novels), "people depend on technology to mediate and re-present their experiences and perceptions for them," followed by comments on "simstim" ("simulated stimulation").

For miscellaneous machines and their relationship to cultural history and future weapons, note:

In Count Zero, the abandoned Tessier-Ashpool data cores have been hooked up to a machine out of Raymond Roussel — "dozens of arms, manipulators, tipped with pliers, hex drivers [...] a dentist's drill" (CZ, 246) — which "sings" to itself, making small boxes in the manner of Joseph Cornell. Gentry builds strange, giant machines as a kind of therapy [...] which end up as terrible weapons in the final showdown of Mona Lisa Overdrive [...]. (pp. 306-07)

Also: See for "The total television of simstim" and the resultant passivity, "the complete surrender to an artificial reality," vs. the activity and relative agency of the matrix, a place of possible adventure (p. 310).

RDE, finishing 5Aug20