Word: cyberpunk
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Largely patched together from back issues of Mondo 2000 magazine (and its precursor, a short-lived 'zine called Reality Hackers), the Guide is filled with articles on all the traditional cyberpunk obsessions, from ARTIFICIAL LIFE to VIRTUAL SEX. But some of the best entries are those that report on the activities of real people trying to live the cyberpunk life. For example, Mark Pauline, a San Francisco performance artist, specializes in giant machines and vast public spectacles: sonic booms that pin audiences to their chairs or the huge, stinking vat of rotting cheese with which he perfumed...
Much of this, of course, is a cyberpunk pose. As Rucker confesses in his preface, he enjoys reading and thinking about psychedelic drugs but doesn't really like to take them. "To me the political point of being pro- psychedelic," he writes, "is that this means being against consensus reality, which I very strongly am." To some extent, says author Rheingold, cyberpunk is driven by young people trying to come up with a movement they can call their own. As he puts it, "They're tired of all these old geezers talking about how great the '60s were...
That sentiment was echoed by a recent posting on the WELL. "I didn't get to pop some 'shrooms and dance naked in a park with several hundred of my peers," wrote a cyberpunk wannabe who calls himself Alien. "To me, and to a lot of other generally disenfranchised members of my generation, surfing the edges...
More troubling, from a philosophic standpoint, is the theme of DYSTOPIA that runs like a bad trip through the cyberpunk world view. Gibson's fictional world is filled with glassy-eyed girls strung out on their Walkman-like SIMSTIM DECKS and young men who get their kicks from MICROSOFTS plugged into sockets behind their ears. His brooding, dehumanized vision conveys a strong sense that technology is changing civilization and the course of history in frightening ways. But many of his readers don't seem to care. "History is a funny thing for cyberpunks," says Christopher Meyer, a music-synthesizer designer...
Rosenfeld -- known on computer networks by the code name Storm Shadow -- is a hacker who went to extremes, a cyberpunk who surfed right off the edge. Authorities say he was just one of many bandits stalking the electronic highways. In recent years, individual outlaws and entire "gangs" have broken / into computers all over the U.S., using their wits and wiles to pilfer and destroy data...