Edgerunner Alexis @dataterm.digital Trans lesbian punk. Mutualist egoist insurrectionary anarchist. Computer science major. Dealing with a chronic neurological disability (persistent post concussive syndrome)
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 [email protected]?
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?
Amiga 4000 with one of those accelerators that comes with a compact flash hard drive adaptor, 128MB of RAM, and an 060 at 65Mhz, plus maybe a retargetable graphics card, as well as as a proper original Commodore CRT monitor, mouse, and keyboard.
It isn't. I used to exercise with this kind of mindset, and it caused a lot of anguish and unhappiness, not more effective exercising.
Haha, that's the same position my gf is in, yeah.
Let's hope they don't sign their root of trust with publicly available Google development private keys this time and fix their other shit so you can actually get some semblance of security on their phones!
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 piece really, really deserves a read: Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things: Three Decades of Survival in the Desert of Social Media
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.
PineTime - a $27 smartwatch that runs open source firmware and software that's easy to flash and easy to modify and tinker with
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!
Discuss: postcyberpunk and cyberpunk — which is more relevant today?
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.
A RaspberryPin powered DIY cyberdeck
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.
Hardwired, imo, is probably the most CYBER+PUNK cyberpunk novel I've read yet, superseding Neuromancer. Highly recommended.
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.
What music is the soundtrack to a cyberpunk world for you?
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!
/c/Cyberpunk - a place for cyberpunks to gather and discuss anything within the cyberpunk ethos
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.
Hardwired - the book that inspired Cyberpunk 2020
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.
Idea: a general cyberpunk community
(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.
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.
Some people here probably already know about this, but DATAFORTRESS is an amazing resource for the Cyberpunk world and CP2020
Preem sourcebooks, nova new chrome, new rules and places — and even a complete new fan-made edition of the CP2020 rules themselves, rewritten and redesigned!
Not sure if this is relevant here, but I recently found a conversion of all the cyberware from CP2020 to GURPS
Forked from the original to update the file format from GCS 4.30 to GCS 5.10 - GitHub - alexispurslane/GURPS-4e-Cyberpunk-2020-Conversion: Forked from the original to update the file format from GC...
I forked it to update the file format for modern versions of the GURPS Character Sheet app, and add some custom rules to integrate GURPS pyramid netrunning rules and a different approach to cyberpsychosis.