Thank you for your kind response, I'm sorry if I came off really hostile. I've had bad experiences with people that have similar ideas to you in the past, and I've spent most of the last three years in severe chronic pain. You seem nicer and more humble in your comments and I really appreciate that.
Re: public self-model — I try to create as little difference between myself online and in meat space, because I think it's healthier, more honest, and leads to better self actualization, because if I want to be something in the freedom of cyberspace, then I want to try to be it in real life too if I can. And, here is as real as anywhere.
You're trying to bootstrap objective meaning and morality and something like truth out of nothing using a mishmash of tired ideas from various rationalist or adjacent schools of thought like Kant, Aristotle, Rawls, Plato, etc, while dismissing the schools of thought you disagree with (e.g. postmodernism) using tired cliches.
I'm happy for you if this framework you've constructed works for you, in fending off the derealization and depersonalization you speak about. I've had many of the same struggles, and for a few years actually spent time doing precisely what you've been doing — trying to bootstrap an entire rigid philosophical framework out of nothing using phenomenology and ontology and concepts from across philosophy, building a huge ediface with its own healthy helpings of people like Kant and Rawls. But for myself, as I became more familiar with Stirner, Nietzsche, Novatore, Daoism, post structuralism, and Wittgenstein, I found a better way for myself, where I wouldn't have to forever keep fighting an ultimately self-deluding battle defending a framework built on the rickety foundations of rationalism and, ultimately, nothing at all.
I've realized that my inclination to do so was born out of a few fundamentally false assumptions left over from the death of religion in our society, which I had unknowingly bought into, and which were desperately reaching out to trying to reestablish a religion around themselves because it's in their naturetod do so, in the process using me, becoming my masters. But I also realized that, iltimately, it was I who was choosing to listen to these ideas and give them power, so I could just stop.
I think there's a better (and more intellectually clearsighted) answer instead of "reconatructing" the very same ediface that's been crumbling for the last century or so.
How about instead realizing that there's nothing inherently absurd or unlivable about living without objective meaning, morality, or truth, because there never were such things in the first place, just ideas that you gave power. Learning how to immerse yourself in the fluidity of self and existence and finding joy within it? Instead of "taking yourself captive," learning to listen to yourself and your deeply-felt needs and desires, as they emerge from the creative nothing at the center of your being, and enacting them, so that action feels as inevitable and necessary as no action at all? Learning how to see that meaning is just a stance towards a thing or idea, and therefore that you can grant things meaning as pleases you, because ultimately you give meaning to things anyway, so why not own that? Become a conscious egoist, it's fun! We have cookies and hugs at least
I started with open curiosity, but the more I read the worse it got. I've spent too much time on the internet reading overconfident pseudophilosophical religious rationalists' arguments and dealing with their grandiose statements and unfounded assumptions to want to deal with any more of that, and the distinct lack of coherent argument and connective tissue anywhere on the about page and principles page (that proof of objective meaning!) convinced me this was more of that. It really reads like the time cube thing, or that one guy on reddit who thought he "disproved math." I understand what you're saying, and it's not worth engaging with seriously. Naive and effortful engagement is not owed you. I am very tired, and don't have a brain effort and space to waste.
I mean, there's a whole huge contingent of "feminists" getting popular these days who have explicitly and extremely bioessentialist misandrist beliefs, TERFs, so sadly I'm not super sure you're right, but it's entirely possible. You do tend to have to look holistically at people's actions and speech to figure out what they really believe, oftentimes.
How is itexpressing your feelings if you didn't write the prose with your own feelings and imagery informing it? This feels cyberpunk, but not in a good way, in a bad, dystopian way lol
Fair enough, I see your point. But like I said, that's background worldbuilding, instead of being dealt with directly by the narrative.
Check out some of the famous propaganda posters that hand inside Facebook's Tokyo headquarters.
They're so... empty and meaningless.
Can you have this post to an existing lemmt community? Like, pipe /r/WoT to wheeloftime@lemmy.ml?
I like Blade Runner (and 2049) a lot, but I always felt like they put much more emphasis on the 'cyber' part then the 'punk' part.
Not much commentary on socioeconomic issues, or engagement with themes of anti-athoritarianism and anti-capitalism, or the dystopian nature of the world, all of that is just background dressing to a much more standard science fiction exploration of "what it means to be human", which is something I could find better explored in classic golden age science fiction like Isaac Asimov's Robot and Foundation series, like Caves of Steel.
That's why, out of all visual media, it's really Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Robocop that made the genre click for me, believe it nor. It's the former that made me finally go out and get all the cyberpunk literature I could and start reading it. That's probably informed by my queer, anarchist, and punk leanings outside of cyberpunk, you know?
I don’t know. I’ve just always felt like it was weird to come up with a term for “normal” people. I don’t understand why it was necessary
Would you be fine with a straight person saying "I'm not straight, I'm normal" then?
Or would you realize that by choosing one aspect of the human experience to label as normal, instead of actually having a name for it, you are automatically labeling the others as abnormal — which means they're not just a naturally-occuring human thing, but something that's disordered or wrong or unnatural? If you decide to label being trans, but just call cis people "normal," then that's the implication.
Moreover, "cis" is a label for understanding a way of identifying regarding your assigned gender at birth, same "trans." I really don't see how it makes sense for it to be okay to have a word for one option — trans — but not the other. If it's okay to have a label for one option so we can accurately communicate about it, why isn't it okay to have a label for the other one, just because it's more common? That doesn't make sense. We have labels for all sorts of common things. Moreover, having a word that designates someone as not-trans is extremely useful for linguistic clarity: now instead of saying "normal" and having to infer from context in what respect the person is "normal", since that could refer to a million things, cis gives us a way of actually saying what we mean. Scientists label both common and uncommon options for things all the time.
Maybe it’s just me, and maybe I’m getting old, but I don’t understand the obsession with labeling everyone and putting them in a well defined box... Can't we all just be ourselves without the labels?
This talking point always hurts me deeply. Taking away the words and concepts we use to understand ourselves and communicate with others about that, find common ground and community and understanding, is the perfect way to erase us. That's why conservatives and TERFs so often say the same thing.
Unlike for conservatives, labels for the LGBTQ community aren't about putting everyone inside a well-defined box at all. Unlike conservatives with their traditional gender roles and expectations, our labels are actually not rigidly defined like that, they're fuzzy, socially constructed, often with multiple shades and versions of meaning and ways they can be understood. Neither are they supposed to be normative — if you associated with a label once, that doesn't mean you have to always do so (or have to have always done so), and if you don't perfectly fit a label, that's totally fine, you don't have to "live up to it."
(Except, I guess, in terminally-online Tumblr "discourse.")
And the fact that labels, at least how the queer community uses them, are not "boxes to put people in" is a function of how we use them: they're crucial tools to be able to communicate aspects of the incohate mess that is our experiences to others, and therein find community and solidarity with others, to know you're not alone because there are others that share those experiences, who can comfort you and even guide you, and so you can use those words that helped you make people able to finally understand you as a rallying point.
We need the words to describe ourselves.
Taking away our language, the language we need to explain some important part of who we are or the lives we life, is fucking horrible.
Do you know how painful it was to grow up without labels like trans and cis so I could understand what was happening to me and why I was different from others? The first moment I found a word that seemed to describe what I was feeling, even though it was a wrong one (crossdresser), I clung onto it desperately. And then, when I finally found the word to describe what I actually was, it was a watershed moment.
Have you stopped for a moment to listen to the queer people who will tell you that finding out there was a word to describe what they were going through was one of tbe most powerful moments in their lives? Remember, without words for things, its difficult to have concepts for things, and that means its almost impossible to think them.
I think this is a pretty good analysis, but I want to add onto it a little.
From where I'm standing, it seems like the reason they care so much about riling up their base is because their actual policies and interests hurt the working class rust belt people that are their main constituency. So they have to come up with some huge overriding cultural battle for their base to get really invested in fighting, to make them feel like they have to vote Republican and oppose the Democrats no matter what, and to distract them from the underlying social and economic issues that are the source of their undirected frustration in the first place, and deflect their anger onto a scapegoat that they can blame for all society's ills without actually changing the system.
Because if they didn't, their base would continue going down their populist route. They might start actually realizing how bad capitalism is for them and fighting against it in their own weird way. Some might see the benefit of Medicaid and Medicare and food stamps to working class people, or taxing rich more and the middle class less, and go over to the Democrats. And that could actually be pretty unprofitable for the elites and their donors and lobbyists.
Not to say that this would be exactly a good option either, though, because I think there is still a ton of genuine nationalism, traditionalism, anti-intellectualism, conservatism, and so on among today's right wing, it isn't all trumped up by their leaders, and that's going to tinge their social and economic understandings, so even if they went down this latter route, it would still end up being a conspirational populism that looks disturbingly like fascism.
This is an excellent post, thank you for sharing! You should put these in the wheel of time community: !wheeloftime@lemmy.ml
Yeah, perfect, solve inhumane crimes with.... other inhumane crimes, to humans. Totally. Let's totally bring back eugenics for "undesirables."
Haha, that's the same position my gf is in, yeah.
I flashed the updated infinitime firmware to my watch once, when I first got it, and it's worked flawlessly since with Gadgetbridge, so if you don't want to tinker with it and just want a simple no-nonsense smartwatch it's great for that. And everything seems to be in such a good working state it doesn't need updates at all. At least thats how it is for me. But it is relatively actively maintained.
As for needing to know a lot of microcomputing to do any tinkering with it, it really doesn't seem like it — the APIs and stuff for adding apps and functionality to either of the major operating systems for the pinetime seam really easy to use. WaspOS even uses MicroPython for everything! Yes, you can open it up, but even that isn't to do anything very complicated, it just makes access to the chips for direct flashing (instead of OTA flashing) possible, so that you can recover if you brick it. It doesn't require any crazy low-level or microcomputing knowledge.
This article from 2022 does a very good job of capturing the social media landscape and the condition of political discourse right now. It highlights one thing that I’ve been hearing a lot and agree with, the cruelty is the point.
It's beautiful.
The $27 PineTime smartwatch runs open-source software and now it's ready for non-developers
This is the smartwatch I own. True netrunners know that the tech we wear on (or under) our skin is a prime entry vector for ever hungry megacorps to bleed the pulsing data from our digital veins, so having a wearable I have full control over is of paramount importance. I can flash it with new firmware whenever I want, the multiple open source options available are all an open book to any hacker worth their cyberlinguistic salt, and I can know for a fact that it won't phone home with my location or other data to any corporation behind the scenes. If we are all going to be cyborgs integrating technology onto and eventually into our bodies, better to control that tech ourselves!
I've been following Haiku OS off and on since I was 10 (I'm 21 now) and it's been really nice to see it actually progress in a substantial and noticeable way since I first found out about it.
Lawrence Person positions postcyberpunk as the natural and perhaps even rightful successor to cyberpunk, the thing that not only is replacing it, but deserves to replace it and should be celebrated in doing so, primarily because it is more mature in some sense — more calm and staid and optimistic, less alienated and angry and nihilistic:
> Postcyberpunk uses the same immersive world-building technique, but features different characters, settings, and, most importantly, makes fundamentally different assumptions about the future. Far from being alienated loners, postcyberpunk characters are frequently integral members of society (i.e., they have jobs). They live in futures that are not necessarily dystopic (indeed, they are often suffused with an optimism that ranges from cautious to exuberant), but their everyday lives are still impacted by rapid technological change and an omnipresent computerized infrastructure.
> Postcyberpunk characters frequently have families, and sometimes even children... They're anchored in their society rather than adrift in it. They have careers, friends, obligations, responsibilities, and all the trappings of an "ordinary" life. Or, to put it another way, their social landscape is detailed as detailed and nuanced as the technological one.
> Cyberpunk characters frequently seek to topple or exploit corrupt social orders. Postcyberpunk characters tend to seek ways to live in, or even strengthen, an existing social order, or help construct a better one. In cyberpunk, technology facilitates alienation from society. In postcyberpunk, technology is society.
> Cyberpunk tended to be cold, detached and alienated. Postcyberpunk tends to be warm, involved, and connected.
The problem is that, looking around at the world we live in today, I don't think that postcyberpunk is actually more relevant than cyberpunk to the sociopolitical and technological landscapes we're facing. Maybe, to give Lawrence his due, this wasn't true in 1999 when he wrote this essay — maybe there was more cause for optimism — but whether that was true or not there's certainly no cause for optimism now.
For instance, millenials (and soon generation Z as well) have found themselves in a position where it is nearly impossible to get a steady career job, have kids, own a home, and become a part of the middle class like Lawrence talks about. Economic forces beyond our control have made that dream impossible for most of us, and we are doomed to forever remain to some degree on the outside of "the system" compared to the postcyberpunk protagonists that Laurence lauds as more realistic and mature. Likewise, the social isolation and atomization of our times, our lack of community and friends and real social fabric, has been extensively documented in study after study, affecting even the older generations.
Meanwhile, corporations have only extended their control over every aspect of our lives. Nearly everything we do and have is now partially owned and controlled by corporate overlords, to a degree those of the 80s and 90s could only have dreamed of, from subscription services to allow you to use your car's full capabilities to EULAs and data collection. Not to mention how those same corporations have, with vast reptilian intelligence and depthless patience, bent our entire political and economic system to their monomaniacal will.
Postcyberpunk's view of technology and social reform seem far less in tune with reality as we've experienced it in the last twenty years than cyberpunk's as well. Postcyberpunk seems like a return to the belief that the inevitable march of technological progress will eventually bring us to a point where society has been changed — or at least can be changed — substantially for the better from within the system, by reform and liberal notions of progress. I would argue that cyberpunk's view of technology as a fundamentally amoral, neutral force which can just as easily be put to oppressive uses as liberatory ones and which, therefore, will only serve to accentuate and hyperaccelerate whatever hierarchies and systems already exist is a far more realistic one.
Even if, for example, we eventually create the technology to enter a truly post-scarcity fully automated luxury communist world, if the systems and hierarchies that are in place when that happens are capitalist ones, then it is capitalists that will own such technological means, capitalists that will possess the intellectual property that allows you to create them, and capitalists that will own the materials, and so they will view it as just a means of reducing their production costs to nothing, while keeping their prices the same. Nothing will change radically but an increase in the centralization of power. It will take some radical leaking the intellectual property, and then a huge movement of people making such production machines and refusing to stop — even in the face of the police officer's baton — to break capitalism's hold. And what does this sound like?
> Cyberpunk characters frequently seek to topple or exploit corrupt social orders.
We cannot dismantle the master's house with the master's tools.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. Cyberpunk as a genre is fundamentally capable of being more radical, and sees the nature of our now more clearly, than postcyberpunk can. Postcyberpunk is a reformist, humanist, optimistic genre that is fundamentally a return to the Asimov philosophy of science fiction with the tools, but not the insight, of cyberpunk. That's not to say that all cyberpunk is so — only that cyberpunk has more of a capacity to be, that good cyberpunk is. There's always the derivative fluff.
Source: https://www.hackster.io/news/raspberry-pi-powered-virtuscope-cyberdeck-looks-plucked-from-the-pages-of-neuromancer-398a28c2c887 [https://www.hackster.io/news/raspberry-pi-powered-virtuscope-cyberdeck-looks-plucked-from-the-pages-of-neuromancer-398a28c2c887]
Flipper Zero is easy to use, versatile and powerful. Learn how it exposes device communication signals and how those signals could be manipulated.
This might be old news to most of you, but I still think this is a good explanation of what the Flipper Zero is, and it's definitely worth knowing about for those of you who don't already.
In my opinion, it perfects what Neuromancer and the Sprawl Trilogy introduced, with more sociopolitical commentary and things to say, and far better character work. If you’re looking to scratch the same itch as Edgerunners, this needs to be your next read. The best part? It’s short.
> It's the same as the city, Sarah knows, the same hierarchy of power, beginning with the blocs in the orbits and ending with people who might as well be the fieldmice in front of the blades of the harvester, pointless, countless lives in the path of a structure that can't be stopped. She feels the anger coiling around her like armor. The chance to rest, she thinks, was nice while it lasted. But right now another fragment of time must be survived.
For me, I'm not sure.
I love synthwave like GUNSHIP and PYLOT and Essenger as much as the next cyberpunk, but besides a few particular GUNSHIP and Essenger songs, they don't feel quite right.
Neither does straight up punk rock or metal, which is the other stuff I listen to.
The cyberpunk music I want needs to be a blend of the two I think — the atmospheric sounds and use of synths and technological effects from synthwave, and the overt rage and message and aggressive, imperfect rock sound of punk rock and metal.
Edit: I'm liking industrial so far!
!cyberpunk@dataterm.digital
A place for like-minded punks to gather from all around the federated Net, dedicated to the cyberpunk genre and its ethos as a whole. From DIY body mods to using bleeding edge software to subvert corporate interests.
This is a community dedicated to discussing anything cyberpunk, be it books, movies, or other art that falls into the genre, or real life tech, projects, stories, ideas or anything else that adheres to these ideals.
The ideals being both punk — anti authoritarianism, anti capitalism, radical self expression and freedom, anti traditionalism, and the DIY ethic — and cyber — all the stuff I said before, but high-tech.
Looking for a definition of 'Cyberpunk'? We keep the definition up-to-date as the genre and subculture continue to evolve. Read more here at Neon Dystopia!
> Cyberpunk is now. Many of the things that were predicted in cyberpunk are coming to pass today. Improvements in prosthetics and brain computer interface have resulted in brain controlled prosthetics, a mainstay of cyberpunk. Corporations increasing dominate global politics, and influence culture creating a situation ripe for subversion. The poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer, creating a larger and larger divide. The cyberworld is ever merging with the real world through things such as the Internet of Things, social media, mobile technology, virtual reality, and augmented reality. Hackers have brought gangs, corporations, governments, and individuals to their knees. We have entered the cyberpunk age. Welcome. > > Cyberpunk has spread to all forms of media, creating a subculture rather a simple genre. There are cyberpunk movies, television, comics, music, and art everywhere. All you have to do is look. Cyberpunk has influenced fashion, architecture, and philosophy. Cyberpunk has become much more than what it was when it began. And it will continue to evolve and become more relevant as we move further from the Cyberpunk Now into the Cyberpunk Future.
Those of you who had the opportunity to read our interview with Mike Pondsmith, already know that one of the major inspirations for the classic cyberpunk game, Cyberpunk 2020, was the novel Hardwired. And this was for good reason. Outside of Neuromancer this is one of the best examples of classic cy...
In my opinion, it perfects what Neuromancer and the Sprawl Trilogy introduced, with more sociopolitical commentary and things to say, and far better character work. If you're looking to scratch the same itch as Edgerunners, this needs to be your next read. The best part? It's short.
(My previous post about this, which I was very happy with, got somehow lost in the digital veins of the federated matrix, so here's take two)
Hey there chooms. I had a cool idea that I wanted to lay out for y'all in case it strikes someone'd fancy: a Lemmy community (subreddit) dedicated to anything and everything cyberpunk.
I don't have the time, energy, personality type, or special kind of insanity needed to run any kind of social group, but I do think it would be nova to have a place for like minded 'punks to gather from all around the federated Net, dedicated to the cyberpunk genre and its ideals as a whole.
The ideals being both punk — anti authoritarianism, anti capitalism, radical self expression and freedom, anti traditionalism, and the DIY ethic — and cyber — all the stuff I said before, but high-tech.
A community like this could be a great draw, and is uniquely suited to the underground, corporate resistance nature of the Fediverse. Could be a real draw, especially when the cyberpunk subreddit is little more than an Instagram for pictures of cities at night.
Anyway, that's it, that's the idea.
Hey chooms, I had an idea I wanted to throw out there in case anyone's inspired by it: a lemmy community (subreddit) dedicated to cyberpunk as a whole!
I don't have the time, energy, personality type, or expertise to properly moderate such a community myself, but I do think it would be preem to have a community dedicated to actual cyberpunk. The genre, or anything aligned with cyberpunk ideals... as opposed to the cyberpunk subreddit, which is basically just an Instagram board for cities at night. A good cyberpunk community on the other hand could actually be a great way to draw like-minded 'punks from around the net and create a place to hang out and share stores of fucking corpos over (or being fucked over) and hacking cool tech.
By cyberpunk ideals, I mean actually punk, and actually cyber. From punk, the DIY ethic, anticapitalism, antiauthoritarianism, nonconformism, radical freedom and self-expression. And the cyber part means all that with a special attention to technology — hardware or software — and its uses in service of those ends.
Anyway yeah, I think it could be nova.
Anna Ronan Anarchism as a Spiritual Practice May 23, 2019 This text was written as part of the LSC Pamphlet Program. The post reflects only the opinions of...
I may not be particularly inclined toward religion or spirituality, but I did really find this essay interesting and attractive.
Edgerunner Alexis @dataterm.digital Trans lesbian punk. Mutualist egoist insurrectionary anarchist. Computer science major. Dealing with a chronic neurological disability (persistent post concussive syndrome)