Talk:Cyberpunk/Archive02

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"The Matrix" as cyberpunk?

Is it just me, or does "The Matrix" strike anyone else as being more in the post-cyberpunk genre? By the definitions listed in the Genres, subcategories and related topics to science fiction article for cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk, it is clearly post-cyberpunk since it contains a protagonist who works within a society to improve the society (as well as the world in general), using special powers posessed only by the protagonist—as "The Chosen One," Neo can do things that others are unable to accomplish, i.e. control the Matrix without a computer. Granted that "The Matrix" is as close to cyberpunk as Hollywood has come in a long time, it just doesn't seem to fit Wikipedia's definition. Should the definitions of cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk be revised to deal with this, or should we try to steer the classification of "The Matrix" in a way that more accurately (according to the definitions) describes the movies? Or should I just mutter to myself about it :) ?

Hi. First, thanks for writing. (-: Second, the big problem is that sorting works (books, movies, etc.) into "vanilla" cyberpunk or postcyberpunk based on our interpretations of the definitions constitutes original research. We can either make a definite claim which no one has made before (a bad idea), or we can write something wishy-washy like "some may claim that The Matrix is therefore more postcyberpunk than original cyberpunk". That's just too weaselly—better to say nothing at all!
The best one can do, I think, is to lay out what people mean by "postcyberpunk" in a clear and rational way, which I believe this article does decently well by now. People, being smart animals, can then make their own judgments as to where to include this or that work. Not everybody believes postcyberpunk is a useful term, after all. There exist plenty of sources which call the Matrix series cyberpunk, and a handful calling Snow Crash and Ghost in the Shell postcyberpunk. Reporting what these sources say and giving pointers back to the original statements is about the best the collective lifeform known as the Wikipedia can do.
Welcome to the wonderful world of encyclopaedia scholarship. But hey, there's always the Academia Wikicity! Anville 18:48, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
It's only my POV, but FWIW I see The Matrix as pure cyberpunk - about as pure as you can get. But all these categories are contestable. Gibson himself never even liked the term "cyberpunk"; it was others who promoted it. God knows what "post-cyberpunk" really amounts to, though the discussion here is quite interesting. Metamagician3000 12:56, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
The Matrix definantely falls into cyberpunk. However, it is cyberpunk with the intent to enter into postcyberpunk. It's a means to an end. What we see in the Matrix is the meat of things, and what happens after the series is where a postcyberpunk theory would come into play. Eluchil 13:17, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Anarchy Online

Congratulations for making this a featured article. Under the games section I think you should add Anarchy Online as well as it's a MMORPG Cyberpunk game.

Good job

I may not be a literary critic, but I think the discussion and analysis in this article is very good. Lots of good references and many definitive, concise statements. That said, I think it goes on for a bit too long about whether or not the Matrix sequels were any good, a tangent discussion most likely expounded upon at sufficient length in the article on the Matrix series. Deco 01:30, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

System Shock

I think Origin's System Shock deserves a prominent place in the Games section as one of the best and most complex games in the genre. Otherwise, this is a fantastic article, great job everyone! - Emt147 Burninate! 02:18, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree on both points, good job on the article, enjoyed reading it, and on the inclusion of SS. I would also add that Deus Ex should probably be in there as well. There is quite a bit that could be added on PC cyberpunk info, the games section at the moment tends (naturally) to focus on the RPG side of things. SFC9394 17:21, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

GURPS Cyberpunk

This article repeats an assertion uncritically that Steve Jackson games disputes. The raid on their offices was not actually part of Operation Sundevil. Rather than repeat that misnomer, how about crediting the event as the Electronic Frontier Foundation credits it: as a landmark case in electronic rights law that established privacy rights for e-mail. Durova 06:37, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Congrats on the featured article

Naturally I searched within the page for "Ghost in the Shell" and found it, so that made me happy. So, uhh, Ghost in the Shell is just two links away from the main page :-P Cyde 08:51, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Just echoing my congrats, it's a wonderfully done article - and I admittedly just clicked through because I remembered being on the talk page before, and loving the Sony photograph, heh. Great work though, this is a textbook example of what a featured article should be Sherurcij 09:35, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Ditto! My only question is whether or not Snow Crash should be listed. Arguably one of the more popular of the novels in the genre. Wikibofh 17:29, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Bruce Sterling definition of cyberpunk

While Sterling may be an innovator in this genre, his definition that is quoted doesn't seem very useful. Using this definition you could classify any number of non-cyberpunk works (even non-science fiction works) as cyberpunk. --Anon.


There is no mention of an an MMORPG game named Neocron which is based within a hug cyberpunk universe.

Garbage text at top of article

Someone added garbage text to the top of the article; I can't see it in the edit window so I can't remove it.

Ninja

"Protagonists in cyberpunk writing usually include computer hackers, who are often patterned on the idea of the lone hero fighting injustice: Western gunslingers, samurai (or ronin), ninja, etc." I took out the "ninja" part of it since ninja hardly fought alone.

I take it this means "real" ninja but in fiction, ninja does fight alone. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of fictious works available. By the same reasoning, it wouldn't make sense to have "Western gunslingers" as they often appear with a sidekick and almost always operated in a pair or larger group in reality because it's simply stupid to travel alone. I'm putting "ninja" back in. --Revth 00:22, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Genre tendencies

I've seen a couple of edits now that make a point of using "fascist" and/or "totalitarian" to describe the cyberpunk genre, claiming that examples "tend to be set in fascist or dystopian worlds." This strikes me as inaccurate, mainly because of the connotations of the words. "Fascist" and "totalitarian" both refer to the power of governments, but in many examples, the government is substantially weaker than what we know today. Breakdown of law and order is a common theme, as is the rise of megacorps. This is not "fascism" in the 20th century sense, which indicates a strong central government in alliance with corporations. Rather, the corporations *are* the law. I really feel that either "fascist" or "totalitarian" sends the wrong message about the genre. "1984" is not cyberpunk. Simishag 01:52, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I've always viewed cyberpunk as a world in which technology and humans are interconnected and interdependant on one another. One ends where the other begins and are mixed throughout. Socially, physically, and mentally; directly, and indirectly. Also that technology becomes a crutch for humanity, and technology is only limited to the people who wield it. I wouldn't know what to classify that other than cyberpunk, and of course that's self-referencing and redundant. Eluchil 07:37, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Some examples

mabbe:

  • deus ex(game)
  • deus es 2
  • dark angel(tv)

Restored "Style" section

The Style section got zapped several weeks ago, during what looks like a goof in reverting a silly piece of vandalism. I put it back and made a couple edits for text flow. Anville 12:53, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

We survived the Main Page!

First of all, I'd like to thank again everyone who helped make this article an FA, and also those responsible for its ascending to the Main Page. While that position always attracts the vandals and the p0z3rz, it also means that for a day, this page was the most visible authority on cyberpunk that the Internet had to offer. And that's pretty darn cool. (I just checked, and right now it's the second Google hit. The French Wikipédia article is the first hit on google.fr, but it's not nearly as good as this one.) So, cheers for everybody—if that's not too happy a sentiment for all those digital nihilgoths out there. Kids today, with their iPods and their VNV Nation and their wild serotonin imbalances. . . .

I'm glad to see the extra visibility brought some new additions. Kudos to all those who saw the page and jacked their brains into its revision matrix. Because I'm a killjoy, I'd just like to remind everyone that this article should be an overview of the entire genre—and this genre is a pretty big and varied place. I appreciate everyone throwing in a blurb about their favourite cyberpunk work; particularly in the "Games" section, the article records what the most popular pieces are, and to a first-order approximation, what is most popular and influential is probably reflected in what people are most eager to write about. So that's cool. However, if the game or the story is not really and clearly significant, a killjoy like myself will come along and snip it out. This is why we have the List of cyberpunk works: if all you want to do is to record that a particular thing is cyberpunk, that's the perfect place to do so. My personal rule of thumb is that to warrant a mention in this article, a particular work should have at least a couple good sentences indicating its importance, and a verifiable source backing up the assertion should be available either in this article or the one on the individual work. Not too much to ask, but with FA standards going up all the time, it's important.

Also, if you are considering adding a movie, song or story made before the genre got big—something created before Blade Runner, let's say—please stop and ask if what you're doing is original research. People at the time didn't consider Fritz Lang's Metropolis cyberpunk, for the very good reason that the word didn't exist yet. Ditto for Isaac Asimov's "Evidence", even though that story has a giant corporation and a cyborg trying to take over government. In 1965, Kurt Vonnegut wrote an essay entitled "On Science Fiction", where he points out how the people who truly love SF often appropriate other writers and other books into the genre. "Boomers of science fiction might reply, 'Ha! Orwell and Ellison and Flaubert and Kafka are science-fiction writers, too!' They often say things like that. Some are crazy enough to try to capture Tolstoy. It is as though I were to claim that everybody of note belonged fundamentally to Delta Upsilon, my own lodge, incidentally, whether he knew it or not. Kafka would have been a desperately unhappy D.U." It's recommended reading. I think the applications to the cyberpunk sub-genre are painfully obvious—but again, I shouldn't say so in the article itself, since that is (to the best of my knowledge) Original Research. So, before throwing in Metropolis or Tron, take pause.

For example, I'm dubious about including Styx's Kilroy Was Here, but not so dubious that I'll strike it out completely. Play "Mr. Roboto" right after VNV Nation's "Future", like I'm doing right now, and it becomes clear they are not the same kind of music. Ha. But Styx's eminently lip-synchable concept album does feature a dystopian future full of robots, so maybe it belongs after all.

Does anybody else think "Wild Serotonin Imbalance" would be a pretty good name for a nihilistic synthpop band? (-;

Best wishes for Twenty-Aught-Six. Be seeing you. Anville 17:08, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

"Wild Serotonin Imbalance" is a good name, as is "Commercial-Free Hour", if only for the verbal tricks radio DJs would have to go through in order to say it. =FaxCelestis 23:39, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Spoken Wiki

Am just beginning to lay down tracks; probably be about a week. Potteryfreak 00:39, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Awesome! When it's done, we can make a techno remix. (-; Anville 10:16, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
Um, I did one too. Didn't see this way down here. I'll upload mine; if yours is better, feel free to overwrite. =FaxCelestis 23:21, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Setting of Ghost in the Shell

So, should we say the obvious choice, "a futuristic Japan", or the subtle choice, "a futuristic Hong Kong"? Well, the manga is pretty clear where its action takes place: if I do not mistake myself terribly much, it identifies the locale as Japan on the first or second page. (Working away from one's library can be such a pain, sometimes. . . .) On the other hand, the city itself—Niihama, "Newport City"—seems patterned after Hong Kong. Here's a random reference substantiating that claim; note that the page begins, "In 2029, Japan has reemerged as a world economic and political power."

Personally, I'm inclined to leave the GiTS section the way it is right now. In the second episode of Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. 2nd GIG, the animators modeled the city after New York, particularly the New York of Taxi Driver, and in episode 18, Our Heroes go to Berlin, where the newspapers are in German but everybody speaks Japanese. If you ask me, I'd chalk up Niihama's "look" in the first movie to the production design people, rather than an actual choice of setting. (After all, Niihama is only as real as the New Hong Kong in Greg Egan's Quarantine.) Anville 19:20, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Edits in question: this article and the 1995 movie. Anville 19:35, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Am I crazy or does this not massively go against Wiki's neutrality policy? There is an absolute, and very debatable, POV in this article!

cite examples, please. Simishag 01:53, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

eep

Hello. I've been studying the (information systems) architecture of the human mind. I have an articulation of human experience that is completely quantifiable in informatical terms - so I believe I have found a way for human beings to cleanly and clearly explain their experiences in toto, as if they were machines. I believe this has been done before in Vedantic and other meditative traditions, only without the contextualisation with analytical philosophy and set theory that I believe I can present. So I find myself in the position of bridging certain intellectual traditions... i.e. I find myself outside any existing research project to my knowledge. Therefore I have endeavoured to make the writing of my textbook/manual a night-job, and I am drafting it entirely on the WWW, where I can easily refer it to any interested parties. Anyway, I feel that this whole project is very 'cyberpunk' so I was wondering if anyone would be interested in linking me to the Wikipedia entry on 'cyberpunk'. Please tell me, should I just come back in 2023 or sooner, when I finish writing the whole thing? I don't want to be a disturbance to anyone.

Here is the project core: http://cyberpunk101.blogspot.com/2006/01/textbook-scribbles-drafts.html

Criticisms

The section on criticisms is rather vague and weaselly. Can we attribute some of those criticisms to specific people? Just A Shibboleth 10:08, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk is more than a story or a movie, it is a way of life for some people. Music, weapons, technology, science, medicine, computers are all part of 'the future', and who else but a cyberpunk would want to embrace this all ? Its not about being in a band, its not about owning a gun, its not about using a microscope, its not the next high. Its about going outside of mainsteam society control. It's about getting what you want whilst working in this culture. It's about being able to draw attention to yourself and at other times fade in the background.

Cyberpunk grew out of a need. The need for control after the cold war. The need for better communication in an ignorant world. The need to actually change things, instead of letting the world just blindly stumble on.

Cyberpunk IS the future. Don't be ignorant and assume its a set period in time. It's 'the future', it happens '20 minutes from now' as Max Headroom would say. Adapt or die. Humanity didn't stop elvoving when we invented the car, or the computer.

Doesnt matter if you don't believe me. These are just words on a screen. In the end everyone makes a choice. Society has a choice. Does it want the future to be like a Star Trek styled utopia, or an aggressive dystopia ?

I know which one im living in right now. And I don't see any one peice uniforms... --Dem 04:39, 8 March 2006 (UTC)