Man's Critical Annotated Webliography

Question 3: Cyberpunk is a genre of science fiction that literally imagines our future. Identity some of the associations between (written or cinematic) cyberpunk and technological innovation in the popular imagination.

Introduction:

According to the guiding question, I would like to use the keywords such as ‘Cyberpunk’, ‘Technological Innovation’ and ‘Cyberculture’ to search via Google (http://www.google.com), Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com) and Google Scholar (http://www.scholar.google.com). At first the result I located were too broad, got plenty of non-academic information. After I narrow down the searching by using bulletin words its better, however, I still need to check the credibility of this information. I used several days for searching the information that I need. I still want to say; I really flooded by the information this week!! After I check the credibility, I had located 7 articles for my assignment.

In the following essay, I would like to demonstrate those article’s summaries, then I would like to compare those articles for present the relationship between cyberpunk and technological innovation in the popular imagination.

Webliography:

In “What is Cyberpunk” [1], it had give a simple definition by using one sentence, ‘Cyberpunk is about expressing (often dark) ideas about human nature, technology and their respective combination in the near future.’ SFMA. Moreover, it also states some characteristics of Cyberpunk for people to have a basic idea of this genre, for example, the story will focuses on the underground which the world is damaged as a dystopia and the protagonists are always deal with access to information or hackers, also the boundary between human and machines is also blurred in the Cyberpunk would. However, I think it didn’t explain deeply about what cyberpunk really is to the ‘new comer of Cyberculture’, such as where the name comes from or the history of Cyberpunk. In this way, I think “Cyberpunk” [2] and “History of Cyberpunk” [3] have present a very clear information of that, such as provide some example and timeline to explain the development of Cyberpunk. At least, after read the website, people will know that the word ‘Cyberpunk’ is first appeared as the title of a short story by Bruce Bethke.

‘Technology is integral to Cyberpunk’ is the first sentence extract from “Evaluation of the Importance of Technology to Cyberpunk” [4] which stated the close relationship between Cyberpunk and technology. In this article, it had stated that cyberpunk is all about ‘near future’. The writer will predict and foresee the development of the technology and the future world, but they will be ‘grounded in reality’. The imaginary future world is no longer inspired with ‘fantastic imagery’ but ‘extrapolated from current technological and sociological conditions’ which become more current and believable than the traditional SF. This can be seem as the main different between traditional Science Fiction and the Cyberpunk, and the difference had distinguishes Cyberpunk’s unique. As a result, technology is very important to Cyberpunk, because it is playing a ‘realistic’ and ‘near future’ role for Cyberpunk, otherwise, Cyberpunk would completely lose its significance.

Donna Haraway is a academic scholar on Cyborg. In class, we always questioned on why Donna Haraway assigns Cyborg as Female? Or is the SF movie had been gendered? etc. “Razor girls: Genre and Gender in Cyberpunk Fiction” [5] is a journal article from a Woman Magazine, Lauraine Leblanc is a doctor in Women’s Studies from Emory University. In the article, there have large coverage on Cyberpunk Gender, such as she pointed out that in Cyberpunk film, most of the cyborgs are male (e.g. Johnny Mnemonic) however, literary Cyberpunk fictions are ‘dominated by female cyborg characters’, and also there have some example of cyborg characters which ‘transform gender’.
Moreover, in this article, it stated that there have three central themes which make Cyberpunk different from other mainstream science fictions: ‘futurology, techno-paradigms, and the cyborg presence’. The cyberpunk present a ‘non-apocalyptic’ view of future, and the ‘futuristic extrapolation of current social and economic trends’. Also, the central theme of cyberpunk is ‘advanced communications technology’ and the fusion of human and machine because Lauraine Leblanc said ‘in cyberpunk fiction, computers are also artists, people are also machines, and nature is also technology.’

In the article, ‘Future Shock: Night City 2020” [6], I think it’s quite different from the above articles. At the beginning of the article, it state that ‘today, science fiction equals cyberpunk.’ quite different from what “Evaluation of the Importance of Technology to Cyberpunk” [4] said. According this reading, it had state out some of the movement or event during the 60s, 70s, and 80s which the era of cyberpunk. In the middle of the article, it had a large coverage about dystopia and it state that ‘cyberpunk dystopias often have strong political qualities and… are basically capitalist dystopias’. Moreover, I think this article is using Cyberpunk to take about our ‘real world’, the technology is developing, the weapons, the conflict between global…as the author said, ‘the cyberpunk nightmare will come true….’

When I was searching about Cyberpunk via WWW, an article suddenly came out; it is not exactly about Cyberpunk, but Postcyberpunk. As I know, the word ‘post’ is meaning something ‘after’. In “Notes Toward a Postcyberpunk Manifesto” [7] Lawrence Person had mention about several characteristic of (differences between) Cyberpunk and Postcyberpunk. Cyberpunk characters are lived in a dystrophic future and they had a large connect with the rapid change technology. On the other hand, Postcyberpunk characters are live in future, but not necessarily dystopia, but they are still influence by the technology. Lawrence Person had mention about Isaac Asimov ‘Three Orders of SF’ to describe Cyberpunk and Postcyberpunk.
In this article, I think it had many examples of writer and science fiction, if people want to check out this website, they better have a good information background of the science fiction works.

For the above webliographies, I would like to do a little sum-up analysis. Firstly, most of the article I found are define Cyberpunk is a sub-genre of SF, as it’s different from SF, there have several characteristics which make it more current and believable than the traditional SF: Cyberpunk fiction have several characteristics: focus on technology, extrapolate from current social, economic and technology trends so that they can foresee a ‘near future’ and form a ‘imaginary world’ for their story. The Cyberpunk world had depict as a dystopia and socially disorder. Secondly, there have an important relationship between technological innovation and Cyberpunk. The technology keeps on changing people perspective and also cyberpunk world, as the technology develop, the cyberpunk world will changed constantly. Lastly, as mentioned above, the boundary of human and machines are blurred, in a Cyberpunk world there will have some cyborgs present, that is the combination of organism and mechanism.

The [6] article are not really relevant to the guiding question, but I think it had question us about: as we can see from the “Future Shock: Night City 2020” [6], we seems walk to Cyberpunk world step by step, no longer is fiction, no longer is film, but a real Cyberpunk world.

Reference:

[1] SFAM. “What is Cyberpunk?” Cyberpunk Review. 25 Mar. 2007 <http://www.cyberpunkreview.com/what-is-cyberpunk/>

[2] H.J. “Cyberpunk” Media In Transition. 25 Mar. 2007 <http://web.mit.edu/m-i-t/science_fiction/jenkins/jenkins_5.html>

[3] “History of Cyberpunk” Cyberpunk Project. 25 Mar. 2007 <http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/history.html

[4] “Evaluation of the Importance of Technology to Cyberpunk” Cyberpunk Project. 25 Mar. 2007 <http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/importance_of_technology_to_cyberpunk.html>

[5] Leblanc, Lauraine. “Razor girls: Genre and Gender in Cyberpunk Fiction” Women and Language 20 (1997). 25 Mar. 2007 <http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/genre_and_gender_in_cyberpunk_fiction.html>

[6] “Future Shock: Night City 2020” Exploring Dystopia. 25 Mar. 2007 <http://hem.passagen.se/replikant/cyberpunk.htm>

[7] Person, Lawrence. “Notes toward a Postcyberpunk Manifesto” Era Cyberpunk. 25 Mar. 2007 <http://eracyberpunk.altervista.org/notes_toward_a_postcyberpunk_manifesto.htm>