The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
opening line of William Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer’
C-c-c-c-c-c-c-cyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyberpuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu̸̖̬͑͑u̴͇̍̌͂ů̵̢̼̳u̷̮͑ů̵͖u̶͉̐̒u̸͙̱̾ṵ̵́͗̚u̶͕͙̽̑͝ṷ̸͓͌ṳ̶͉̊̈̓ụ̵̢̃u̶̗͋͘u̶̡̗͊̍̇n̴̫͕͆k̴̢̃͘!̶͇̭̹̎!̵̨̭̬̀͐!̴̲̙̂͝
*start up modem noises*
Aw, dude, in the future you’ll be forced to eat algorithms, which will be injected straight into your anterior insula and be called “structuralising the framework”. You’ll be able to choose your newborn baby’s sex, race, Twitter handle and initial .README file, and births will instead be called “Day One Updates”. And these day one updates won’t come out your fanny like before, they’ll be shared through ethernet cables and your happy day will be marked by receiving a Steam download key. And and and and and people won’t even have sex anymore, they’ll just… like… merge their Javascripts or some shit. You want to do some shopping? Club Penguin. File your taxes? Club Penguin. Carry out a terrorist attack? Club Penguin. We may currently live in the age of ‘Everything Computer‘, but the future will be Everything Club Penguin. Billy Idol tried to warn us but we didn’t want to listen.
Yeah, we’re done with Cyberpunk, aren’t we? We’re now living in all the dystopian end times that Philip K Dick, William Gibson, Neal Stephenson and Hanna-Barbera warned us about. All that hyper-capitalist melting away of humanity for the benefit of computerised applications that lose multiple millions of human beings their livelihood but allow faceless corporations to save $0.007 every two years? We’re there. And it’s dull as hell. Do we really want some bearded oracle to tell us about a time in the near future where it’s potentially going to get worse and even more boring?? Nah, fuck that, we don’t want to hear about the year 2038 when people on Reddit are debating whether some Oscar nominated movie used AI to generate a couple of tiles on a bathroom wall, all while the robo-police kick down their door after learning that they failed to donate 62.5% of their wages that month to the Israeli war effort? Nah, at least give us Steam Punk, so we can console ourselves with the idea that corporate-backed genocide and social murder is being committed with, like, wind up generators and by men with moustaches and really tall hats. That’d be fun!
But no, our dystopia is being run by ugly, fat white men lathering their phone screens with grease from their sausage fingers while they try and fail to make a joke on Twitter that imagines what violent white supremacy would sound like if it was being explained by Mr. Meeseeks from Rick and Morty. No Cyberpunk author’s mind was anywhere near this perverted.
Oh, and speaking of gross, sausage fingered abominations who are almost too stupid to be described as fascist (but still, just to be clear, absolutely fascists): I’m very much back on Twitter this year. I did warn you all how much of an unbearable libby love-in Blue Sky is – to this day if you logged on and browsed for about ten seconds you’d swear that Kamala Harris was some mythical beast from millions of years ago who birthed Jesus Christ, مُحَمَّد and Beyoncé before being cruelly sacrificed before she could save the world (rather than some soulless capital defender who couldn’t even win an election against a literal moron because she loved supporting genocide too much) – and I simply couldn’t take it any more. Twitter is gross and owned by arguably the world’s grossest person, but it’s also where the people are, it’s where proper left wing and Communist viewpoints are shared, and someone with as small a following as me can’t afford to limit my advertising to the #VoteBlueNoMatterWho crowd. Also, wrestling coverage on Blue Sky is aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaass. That last point is probably the most important.
Both the ‘Cyberpunk’ fearmongers and the ‘Tech Twat‘ true believers speak of the oncoming ‘singularity‘ – where technology outgrows human control and takes over the world – as if it’s some Rapture-like inevitability that will soon leave eight billion pairs of smoking shoes next to the nearest air fryer that the person has just been onboarded onto. You know that the UK government has just announced it’s scrapping jury trial for sentences of less than three years? You know that’s just an horrendous attempt to speed up the process of working class (particularly no-white) disengagement, so now people can have their entire lives ruined and be completely removed from polite society forever in record time? Do you need me to spell out the implications of this?
Was that because everything computer? Did an algorithm make that decision?
No. It was humans. Horrible, horrible humans. If you choose to focus on hypothetical technologies rather than literal humans literally doing capitalism’s bidding, then you’re at risk of making the same dehumanising mistake you’re arguing humanity is heading towards.
‘Dead Channel Sky’ though, parties like it’s 1999 and Cronenberg’s ‘Existenz‘ has just been released, it’s a record that’s all about that Cyberpunk craze (the future was a much bigger deal back then). It’s an incredibly abrasive and yet artfully structured mini-masterpiece. Honestly, after listening to the opening handful of tracks, you’ll be swearing that this was one of the greatest albums you’ve ever heard. However, after another hour or so you’ll be more exhausted by the album’s twenty track length and predictable bloat. I would argue that it doesn’t really offer many new ideas, lyrically (and can even – whisper it – be a bit cringe at times), but Daveed Diggs might be amongst the most talented and technically accomplished rappers working today, so you learn to cut him a little slack.
And while I would generally argue against the appearance of many new ideas here, Diggs is still influenced enough by great writers like Mark Fisher to make statements like “A waste of energy debating the mechanical/For genitals when gender is so easily programmable“. It suggests a proper materialist view of gender, and also suggests that the accepted ability to choose your own gender is a byproduct of a future where the neoliberal idea of the self far supersedes the reality of community. Far closer to a separated dystopia than any communal utopia.
I am soooooooooooooo ending this post here!
78 by the fans as well, though not everyone was impressed:
Necessary Evil 