Week 4.

Week 4s lecture explored the topics of cyberspace, cyberpunk and cybernetics in some detail. Cyberspace began in the 1980’s in science fiction literature and was quickly adopted by computer professionals and hobbyists which became a common term a decade later. William Gibson  provides quite a detailed description of cyberspace and its function from his 1984 novel ‘Neuromancer’- ‘A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts…A graphic representation of data abstraction from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the non-space of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.’ Explained in more simple terms, cyberspace is a way people tried to understand the internet or more specifically, ‘the sum of internet users imaginations (Stockwell, 2013).’

I found cyberspace a challenge to understand at first, but as I progressed through the tutorial and the reading,  I gained a far better grasp of its concept and how easily applicable it is to modern society.The possibilities of new communication technology surrounding the internet are endless and ever-expanding, and what cyberspace depicted decades ago about a future of consensual hallucinations via the interweb is something society is now well submerged in. Millions of people have become so enamoured with the net, that we can spend hours on it and essentially upload our entire life, our dreams, our goals, our ideas on there without even having to leave the house..and by doing all these things, we are submerging ourselves in cyberspace. Just by clicking a button, you’re unknowingly passing through cyberspace and into a consensual hallucination in the non-space of the mind...into an online reality that seems to be far more popular than the real world..

                                                       

We also learnt throughout the lecture and tutorial of cyberpunk’s existence within the 1970’s/80’s and how it was linked to cyberspace. It features advanced science, such as information technology and cybernetics, coupled with a degree of failure or radical change in the social order. ‘Blade Runner’ is a typical example of the cyberpunk style and theme, which we watched within the lecture.-'Classic cyberpunk characters were marginalised, alienated loners who lived on the edge of society in generally distopian futures where daily life was impacted by rapid technological change, an ubiquitous data-sphere of computerised information and invasive modification of the human body (Lawrence Person).'

Although Lawrence has described a genre of film, it’s none too difficult to imagine our world turning into this...where technology gets the better of us and we are at war with the technology we created.  Cyberspace exists in this hallucination that we all partake it, in some way or another which is what makes this whole ‘fiction’ of cyberpunk so damn relatable.

Tutorial Task: This week's task was to create a timeline on the history of cyberpunk and you can find it: here