[HN Gopher] Cyberdecks (2013)
___________________________________________________________________
Cyberdecks (2013)
Author : keiferski
Score : 168 points
Date : 2023-07-29 13:17 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.rfox.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.rfox.eu)
| rcarr wrote:
| - Steam Deck
|
| - Viture AR glasses
|
| - Ferris Sweep 34 key Bluetooth Split Keyboard
|
| - Magic Trackpad
|
| This is my intended setup for long term travel, about as cyber
| deck as it gets.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| >The Deck I would like to build: Given unlimited budget and
| access to good workshop, I would build highly customized
| workstation, with highly customized software.
|
| I was playing around with the Smalltalk/Self/Alternate Reality
| Kit kind of highly customized software side of that equation in
| NeWS PostScript, with the PSIBER Space Deck and Pseudo Scientific
| Visualizer (inspired by Gibson's Neuromancer of course):
|
| The Shape of PSIBER Space: PostScript Interactive Bug Eradication
| Routines -- October 1989:
|
| https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-shape-of-psiber-space-octo...
|
| >Abstract: The PSIBER Space Deck is an interactive visual user
| interface to a graphical programming environment, the NeWS window
| system. It lets you display, manipulate, and navigate the data
| structures, programs, and processes living in the virtual memory
| space of NeWS. It is useful as a debugging tool, and as a hands
| on way to learn about programming in PostScript and NeWS.
|
| >PostScript Source Code Available Here:
|
| http://www.donhopkins.com/home/pub/NeWS/litecyber/
|
| >Introduction: Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced
| daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by
| children being taught mathematical concepts ... A graphic
| representation of data abstracted from the banks of every
| computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of
| light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and
| constellations of data. Like city lights, receding .... [Gibson,
| Neuromancer]
|
| [...]
|
| >The Pseudo Scientific Visualizer
|
| >Darkness fell in from every side, a sphere of singing black,
| pressure on the extended crystal nerves of the universe of data
| he had nearly become... And when he was nothing, compressed at
| the heart of all that dark, there came a point where the dark
| could be no more, and something tore. The Kuang program spurted
| from tarnished cloud, Case's consciousness divided like beads of
| mercury, arcing above an endless beach the color of the dark
| silver clouds. His vision was spherical, as though a single
| retina lined the inner surface of a globe that contained all
| things, if all things could be counted. [Gibson, Neuromancer]
|
| >The Pseudo Scientific Visualizer is the object browser for the
| other half of your brain, a fish-eye lens for the macroscopic
| examination of data. It can display arbitrarily large,
| arbitrarily deep structures, in a fixed amount of space. It shows
| form, texture, density, depth, fan out, and complexity.
|
| >It draws a compound object as a circle, then recursively draws
| its elements, scaled smaller, in an evenly spaced ring, rotated
| around the circle. The deeper an object, the smaller it is. It
| will only draw to a certain depth, which you can change while the
| drawing is in progress.
|
| >It has simple graphical icons for different data types. An array
| is a circle, and a dictionary is a circle with a dot. The icon
| for a string is a line, whose length depends on the length of the
| string. A name is a triangle. A boolean is a peace sign or an
| international no sign. An event is an envelope. A process is a
| Porsche.
|
| >It randomly forks off several light weight processes, to draw
| different parts of the display, so there is lots of drawing going
| on in different places at once, and the overlapping is less
| regular.
|
| >After the drawing is complete, the circular compound objects
| become mouse sensitive, selectable targets. The targets are
| implemented as round transparent NeWS canvases. When you move the
| cursor over one, it highlights, and you can click on it to zoom
| in, pop up a description of it, open up another view of it, or
| select it, and then push it onto the stack of the PSIBER Space
| Deck.
|
| >Figure 9 shows a Pseudo Scientific Visualization of the NeWS
| rootmenu instance dictionary, also shown in figure 3 and figure
| 8. Figure 10 shows two views of a map of Adventure. Figure 11
| shows two views of a map of the ARPAnet. [...]
|
| [...]
|
| >References: [...] Shu, Nan C.: Visual Programming; 1988; Van
| Nostrand Reinhold; New York
|
| https://archive.org/details/visualprogrammin00shu_2pf
| anthk wrote:
| - Get a netbook, even the libretto would work with a wired
| conn/pcmpcia/wifi-wpa2 would work with a custom current-ish
| kernel such as Hyperbola GNU/Linux once you strip linux-libre of
| all the unneded junk. - Connect kbtin or
| tintinplusplus to cs.netsville.com - type in "help"
|
| Congrats, you got a recursive retrofuturist experience.
|
| Also, if you use slrn/lynx/links/irssi/gopher/gemini
| software/networks, you already are in the retro cyberpunk dream.
|
| Finally: gopher://midnight.pub or gemini://midnight.pub . Best
| viewed under sacc or bombadillo.
| anthk wrote:
| OK, I'l correct myself: cs.netsville.com 7777
|
| That's it, a cyberpunk MUD.
| pimlottc wrote:
| The black and white line drawing of the Ono-Sendai Cyberspace 7
| [0] is basically an exact copy of the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A
| [1]
|
| 0:
| https://blog.rfox.eu/en/Hardware/Cyberdecks/Untitled_12_thum...
|
| 1:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-99/4A#/media/File:TI99-IMG_...
| araes wrote:
| If you're doing a cyberdeck, and you already include some form of
| AR display, then why include the keyboard? Haptic feedback gloves
| [1] are already a thing, and would allow typing wherever. They
| frankly need to get smaller, and not include such bulky hardware,
| even if it means "light, soft" feedback, yet they exist. I'd be
| happy with a floating "type zone" and soft "you touched a key"
| response. Wolfram's mobile computing piece [2] was one of the
| only tech things I've been a bit envious of lately.
|
| Now if smart/digital contacts could just get around all the
| patent fortresses / other issues, and actually produce a working
| product. Saw research prototypes back in the early 2000's.
| Apparently people are still trying. [3]
|
| [1] https://www.manus-meta.com/vr-gloves
|
| [2] https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-
| prod...
|
| [3] https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/augmented-reality-
| co...
| Groxx wrote:
| https://www.tapwithus.com/product/tap-strap-2/ seems like a
| very pragmatic option, tech-wise - I'm not convinced floating
| will ever actually be good. Bouncing off a surface is extremely
| efficient, self-calibrating, and basically always available in
| some form (e.g. tap on yourself).
| ilyt wrote:
| Make it look like knuckle dusters and it will look cyberpunk
| too
| Vecr wrote:
| Nah, typing on a keyboard is faster and more precise. I think
| having a split keyboard with each side on the cummerbund of
| your plate carrier (split by the mag pouches or med kit you
| have on the front of your carrier) would work better. Assuming
| you actually want this to be practical and not just an
| aesthetic/signaling thing.
| gumby wrote:
| > Deck or CyberDeck is this mobile computer first imagined by
| William Gibson in Neuromancer ...
|
| The Cyberdeck was first used in the 1980 John M. Ford novel Web
| of Angels, about half a decade before Neuromancer, and before
| Vinge's far more influential "True Names" for that matter.
|
| I have always had a fondness for Ford's cyberdeck as it had
| analog sliders as well (and a few other absurd features).
| [deleted]
| dtx1 wrote:
| Whenever I get a swept into the Cyberdeck Youtube rabbit hole and
| think about building one, after a while of planning, Ideas, etc,
| I end up realising I just want a notebook with lots of USB Ports.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| I recommend this post from the r/cyberdeck subreddit
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberDeck/comments/jzvvli/a_7_scree...
| throwaway2903 wrote:
| The whole point of the cyberdeck was that it was a way to see VR
| in your minds eye rather than with a screen. Hence the no screen.
| I always thought the decks themselves would be rather boring
| looking - the keyboard would just be a black rectangle. Only Case
| could like the aesthetic in any way that was meaningful, which
| was why Armitage had to have his approval. To anyone else it just
| looks like a plastic brick.
| IOT_Apprentice wrote:
| I think back to the movie Hackers with a young Angelina Jolie.
| Lord Nikon, the Sony game at the arcade, the fight over the late
| night cable channel. Mess with the best, die like the rest.
|
| Hack the Planet !
| thih9 wrote:
| Can we add 2016 to the title? The article starts with the
| "2016/02/13" date. Current title is just "Cyberdecks".
| appplication wrote:
| They updated the title but the wrong year
| corysama wrote:
| This is pretty darn close
|
| https://www.theverge.com/23727583/spacetop-augmented-reality...
|
| https://www.sightful.com/
| bloopernova wrote:
| I'd like a cyberdeck that uses a Linux tablet as its display. So
| I could dock it and use a good small mechanical keyboard, maybe a
| low profile Keychron, or use it on the go.
|
| An Android tablet would also do, since there's a lot that can be
| done with Termux, but I'd much rather have a "real" Linux device.
|
| Seeing a keyboard like this one[1] makes me wish I could get some
| sort of origami fold out dock for a tablet, that would be so cool
| I'd have to wear shades indoors.
|
| [1]
| https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/75acdf98-6bb5-4d5b-8dd5-a87...
| seltzered_ wrote:
| I've been using this as my setup for two years, but I've been
| calling it more humbly an ergonomic mobile computer (
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMobileComputers/ ) , not a
| cyberdeck.
|
| I'm aiming more for a boring everyday setup to hopefully own
| less electronics compared to the
| virtualism/maximalism/tacticool stuff I see in the cyberdeck
| world. The other thing is I hesitate around maximizing around
| _personal_ computing - I think we need setups friends can walk
| up to and use when appropriate.
|
| See
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMobileComputers/comments/vzs8mm...
| for my particular linux tablet setup.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Oh that is really nice, thank you for sharing!
| Beached wrote:
| I am really close to buying the astro slide for this reason.
| they plan to support debian, and I'm just waiting for the day
| that they say debian is fully supported to buy one.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Now that Raspberry PIs are back in stock, I'm actually working
| on this concept using a Wacom One screen.
|
| The RasPad v3 isn't too far from it:
|
| https://raspad.com/products/raspadv3
|
| but touch only, no stylus.
| maxwell wrote:
| > Now that Raspberrt PIs are back in stock
|
| Didn't see retail 8 GB models in probably over a year, had to
| confirm, sweet:
|
| https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/raspberry-
| pi/RASP...
| chongli wrote:
| Ahhh, I thought this would be about real cyberdecks people are
| actually building now. These devices are basically laptops
| without a hinge. A "slab" computer with a small, wide-format
| display and a compact mechanical keyboard layout. They seem to be
| an off-shoot of the mechanical keyboard builder hobby.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| I just set the device name in my phone as "cyberdeck" and
| called it a day.
| nvy wrote:
| The overwhelming majority of cyberdecks I see get posted on
| reddit are basically raspi + pelican case + ortho/ergodox. It's
| grown quite stale and certainly almost none of these devices
| get toted around despite the emphasis on portability in the
| source material.
|
| I think a really useful cyberdeck would be something like one
| of the old chunky ThinkPads with the guts replaced with
| something smaller, leaving space for a KVM switch and other
| interconnects/peripherals, so that you can use its keyboard and
| display for an external server box, or accessing the serial
| console on random digital signage boxes/IOT things.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Prefer to see more SDR (Software Defined Radio) decks. If
| this isn't a thing, it should be.
| nvy wrote:
| Me too, like the hackrf portapack.
|
| Unfortunately I think most posters on r/cyberdecks don't
| have the skills for SDR.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Might say as much about the accessibility of the software
| though....
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| Come do Defcon! there will be a ton of them roaming around.
| ruleryak wrote:
| The article is from 2016, not 13. I was confused for a minute,
| like wait did the rift come out then years ago? 2016 was a fairly
| monumental year for VR and hmds
| causality0 wrote:
| Odd to me that futurists always seem to eschew the power of
| convenience. Everything runs on a balance between opportunity and
| convenience. Technology is created to generate opportunity, then
| refined to create convenience without losing that opportunity.
| Decks were never going to take off because nobody wants to deal
| with a setup that has all the inconveniences of a laptop and a
| headset and almost none of the advantages of either. Not to
| mention that the nature of the internet means it's all available
| at home anyway. There's no advantage to hiding in the back of a
| delivery truck with your deck and breaking into an evil company's
| network from their underground parking lot when whatever exploit
| you used may as well be deployed from your multi-monitor desk at
| home.
| kmstout wrote:
| Imagine cleaning out the case of a Kaypro II [0], replacing the
| internals with a RPI or something more capable; the display with
| an LCD of the same size; and a large battery pack. After leaving
| a dedicated space for a flask of whiskey, you'd still have a lot
| of space to put in modules for extra capabilities.
|
| [0] https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=550
| wazoox wrote:
| The Hosaka OSC7 looks almost exactly like a TI99/4A... with a
| neural interface cartridge :)
| bullen wrote:
| http://move.rupy.se/file/last_computer.png
|
| If you want to drive VR you'll need minimum Jetson Nano and 15W.
| alexpotato wrote:
| Didn't Immersed + Oculus 2 basically create the Virtual Desktop
| mentioned in the article?
| swiftcoder wrote:
| The one mentioned in the article exists as a commercial product
| too: https://www.vrdesktop.net/
| prenoob wrote:
| Applause for the cyberdeck that looks like a TI99/4A.. saved
| tetris11 wrote:
| I'd be interested to know what SDXL generates for "cyberdeck"
| based on the images, hopefully some of which come from this
| article
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| I'm making focaccia this morning, but give me an hour or two
| and I'll post a link.
| syx wrote:
| Nice article I would say the most cyberdeck looking computers
| from 80s would probably be MSX/MSX2. I remember reading a blog
| post from a guy converting an old MSX to a working cyberdeck
| using Raspberry Pi. Now I want to look up the article again!
| slim wrote:
| that pictured black msx with double cartridge + diskette is a
| Sakhr
|
| https://www.msx.org/wiki/Sakhr_AX-370
| hoherd wrote:
| Adafruit makes a cyberdeck HAT for the pi400
| https://www.adafruit.com/product/4863 It's definitely not the
| same aesthetic as what people think of as a cyberdeck, but as
| far as retail cyberdecks go, it might be the closest thing.
| Beached wrote:
| I have one of these and they work well, my only issue is
| display support is limited. running this with a secondary
| display isn't currently support, you will have to write that
| yourself. also, window scaling and resizing of windows is not
| fully supported and you have issues with normal daily use at
| a screen that size.
|
| if you are 100% sold on a single 3.5" screen and no gui, then
| it will work. outside of that, it's a novelty item
| throwaway33381 wrote:
| I always felt that a lot of the aesthetic choices in the
| cyberpunk genre have been subject to scrutiny as the genre aged.
| Things like black leather outfits to punk rock. The overall tone
| of cyberpunk as a genre has always been a favorite of mine. But
| that it hasn't really changed too much in the decades that came.
| Instead derivates instead of additions and adjustments to the
| core cyberpunk genre.
|
| The Cyberdeck itself is well gone a bit off the rails, personally
| I think a more modern rendition work be more about discreteness
| it would provide in contrast to a conventional notebook, along
| with it's utility purposes. But the more modern renditions still
| heavily favor brick like designs which is fine, sometimes I wish
| the genre would change. Personally I think the addition of
| virtual reality and it's inclusion since early on in the genre
| was a mistake by authors who at the time didn't have an
| understanding of what the cyberspace really was. This is getting
| long but if anyone wants to talk I'm all ears.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > Personally I think the addition of virtual reality and it's
| inclusion since early on in the genre was a mistake by authors
| who at the time didn't have an understanding of what the
| cyberspace really was
|
| It remains a neat way to get around the display problem,
| though. Even if most practical work in cyberspace takes place
| on 2D surfaces, nobody really wants to cart around a pair of 34
| inch 4k monitors to work on the go.
| throwaway33381 wrote:
| Yeah that's true. Though usually I see more of a retinal
| display but that's also more of a times piece sort of thing.
| Carrying around goggles is also kind of makes you really
| stand out. Google Glasses were pretty interesting in the
| early 2010s. Realistically for a netrunner, you aren't even
| really coding while you're at the location, Mr.Robot does a
| good job with this but in a different way.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| that in-meatspace ar/vr devices would be unavoidably nerdy
| was a trope since at least Snow Crash: "gargoyles" weren't
| exactly well regarded.
| Aeolun wrote:
| If we're going there we might as well have cybernetic eyes
| right? As long as you can somehow attach the nerves to your
| new eyes.
| bradbeattie wrote:
| "Interface evolves toward transparency. The one you have
| to devote the least conscious effort to, survives,
| prospers. This is true for interface hardware as well, so
| that the cranial jacks and brain inserts and bolts in the
| neck, all the transitional sci-fi hardware of the sci-fi
| cyborg, already looks slightly quaint. The real cyborg,
| the global organism, is so splendidly invasive that these
| things already seem medieval." -Gibson
| throwaway33381 wrote:
| That's where things tend to become more complicated. It's
| dependent on what you're writing and when it's occurring.
| It's a big leap from retinal displays and discrete leds
| to full on eyes. Neuroprosthetics especially the Bionic
| eye are a more complicated. There are biological and
| technical factors that play a part. Often this is ignored
| but you kind of can't really do that.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| It may be a little boring but a laptop _is_ basically a
| "cyber deck".
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| This came up while I was playing ShadowRun, a cyberpunk
| game where decks are wielded by spellcaster-type characters
| in a way that resembles how wands are used by Harry Potter
| characters (more or less).
|
| There's something about the way that a laptop screen folds
| towards you (like it might be part of a maw that consumes
| you and traps you inside it), and about how the input and
| output surfaces are so close together that you have to
| hunch to use it, which makes laptops an unsatisfying form
| factor for a deck.
|
| Imagine the scene in LOtR where Gandalf says "you shall not
| pass" to the Balrog. A good deck would fit into that scene
| without making Gandalf look like a dweeb.
| Macha wrote:
| There was all sorts of gameplay reasons also as to why
| they did it, but in shadowrun's 3e->4e transition they
| changed the whole decks and hacking from a hardwired
| matrix where people jack in to a basically... wifi/5g
| type affair. I always felt it lost part of the
| strange/cool factor in that move.
| falcolas wrote:
| If I think along the line of B5's technomages, Gandalf's
| staff _is_ his cyberdeck. It has everything built into
| it, with a verbal and touch interface to access it. All
| he 'd need is a small, highly directional speaker built
| into his cloak or hat, and he'd be set.
|
| "You shall not pass!"
|
| "Initializing scan. Acoustic scan of bridge indicates
| significant brittleness in materials. Initializing
| directional vibratory motivators to further destabilize
| bridge materials."
| anthk wrote:
| No, you are getting it wrong =)
|
| If you thinkg about it, your command line prompt
| dispatches and parses "spells" to "tame"... daemons.
| intelVISA wrote:
| Is this why manpages resemble grimoires?
| anthk wrote:
| man -Tpdf perlintro > perlintro.pdf
|
| Kinda.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| I would even posit that the modern smart phone meets the
| requirements as well. I've seen people walking around
| defcon with Nreal glass on while they were moving about, so
| there's still ways of modernizing the styling/ ethos of the
| original intent.
| keiferski wrote:
| I generally agree with you, even though I have a soft spot for
| the 80s-inspired aesthetic that cyberpunk refuses to leave
| behind. Part of its staying power, I think, is because there
| simply hasn't been an alternative "tech aesthetic" with as much
| appeal since. Devices themselves are no longer sculptural forms
| but just basic slabs of glass. Nor does there seem to be a
| relationship between computers and fashion style, as there sort
| of used to be.
|
| This can also probably be placed in context with the general
| "death of genre" that has happened since the early 2000s.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| I'm absolutely here for retro hacking aesthetic inspired by
| the late 90's candy-coloured iMac phase
| anthk wrote:
| That happened in 2004, were even Unix users with fluxbox
| mimicked Aqua with good copycat themes and metallic icons a
| la OSX Tiger's QuickTime.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Prefer the Compaq Portable phase, ha ha.
| samstave wrote:
| Personally, I think that all the nostolgia with cyberpunk, at
| least for me, is that I grew up in the 80s and Neuromancer
| was a formitave book for me... and the thing is, as someone
| who has helped build the tech world we live in --
|
| "Wouldnt it be cool if" was inspired in me and my ilk that we
| saw these opportunities in tech, and though "wouldnt it be
| cool if we did XYZ"
|
| And then, as tech nerds from the 80s - we brought as much
| sci-fi and cyberpunk as we could to how we built out the
| technoscape.
|
| While being too young to understand the consequences of "what
| if"... and thus we have Snowden and Wikileaks, and 100%
| surveillance state... and now we have FN UAP confirmation in
| the USG...
|
| Cyberpunk has basically molded modern society even if one may
| not want to acknowledge it.
| throwaway33381 wrote:
| Personally I don't think Cyberpunk as a genre has died but
| rather that it had failed to adapt, by the early 00s we
| weren't as sure as to how technology would progress into the
| future and many of the existing assumptions they had made
| were wrong. Publishers were tending to become less interested
| in continuing it as many parts of the writing world sort of
| just began to shift to a field of disrepair.
|
| With science fiction as a whole as a genre sort of just
| wavering off, the problems with writing a systemic whole and
| how authorship works making it impossible for any progress to
| really be made. Comic books as well during this period began
| to waver off sales slumping as progressively all genres have
| begun to collapse.
|
| I know that several artists and writers are barely even
| struggling to get by. Essentially being screwed by the
| industry they had trusted to take care of them. Neil Gaiman
| talked about it, how he was paid $40 dollars per comic at
| times. Those rates are still the exact same today, not
| exactly 40 dollars but not livable. The same happened to
| Clarke's World and various other science fiction magazines
| like Asimov. I'd argue the genre did not die, the entire
| writing community supporting it has died.
| AnonymousPlanet wrote:
| > Personally I don't think Cyberpunk as a genre has died
| but rather that it had failed to adapt, by the early 00s we
| weren't as sure as to how technology would progress into
| the future and many of the existing assumptions they had
| made were wrong.
|
| I think some of it has just moved on. William Gibson's
| novels from the 2000s are set in the present. There's no
| Ono Sendai and the Matrix, instead there are iPods, Google,
| and weird art is discussed in obsucure web forums.
|
| The TV show _Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex_ had a
| much more updated setting than the original manga. That
| show has dated quite well since it first aired 20 years
| ago.
| throwaway33381 wrote:
| It's true there are but even these examples are in my
| opinion too small scale. I had hopes with the reboot of
| Cyberpunk 2077 but it was largely a miss. It had the
| cybernetics but not anything else. Personally I think
| that when Cyberpunk is done well it acts as a
| metacommentary of how our world runs the people that are
| often left behind and the stories of others.
|
| Communities for this just don't exist. And they won't.
| The lives of the average writer in every part of the
| world just hasn't gotten better, you need groups of
| people working on things, not just experts but people who
| can interpret and work together on things. And it doesn't
| exist. A market could exist but there's no one willing to
| invest in a venture like this, talking about these
| complex issues and the lives that people live. A living
| world. Well, I doubt anyone's really interested.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Or the smart phone killed Cyberpunk.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| One of the important concepts in cyberpunk, and this applies to
| the cyberdeck, is the customization of hardware and
| connectedness between the power user (the jockey) and their
| gear.
|
| A good cyberdeck isn't clean or new. It's well used,
| customized, hand repaired.
|
| Which means it has to be customizable and hand repairable.
| Which (in the common mind) means chunky. Cyberdecks are about a
| love affair with good tech (full size mechanical keyboard, a
| trackball, an outdated OS) than slick hardware.
|
| When brand new slick cyberdecks show up in cyberpunk culture
| they aren't the ones that belong to hackers but signs of a
| corporate entity. The classic trope is the jockey who takes on
| a corporate job and discovers his employer is actually a corp
| because they provide some hot and brand new cyberdeck.
|
| The hacker/jockey/protagonist subverts their culture because
| they have a personal connection to their tech. It is not
| disposable, it is loved.
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| > A good cyberdeck isn't clean or new. It's well used,
| customized, hand repaired.
|
| This is not by choice, the subjects of the fiction are
| criminals who largely do not have legal means to get new
| equipment.
| zikzak wrote:
| That's why the scene in Johnny Mnemonic when they break
| into that computer store is so cool. He's got a wish list
| of gear he knows they will have and that he can use out of
| the box to do what he needs to do. It shows his competence.
| navane wrote:
| A lot of emphasis on neuromamcer was on punk, you know, from
| cyber punk. 70s punk, dirty, scraggy, poor, filth. This part is
| omitted in a lot of later Cyberpunk. The cyber part, the
| internet, was very different envisioned than it turned out to
| be. Today, cyberpunk is not a vision of a future, but an
| alternative reality for today. The parts where megacorps are
| running the world, including militech, resonates, but of course
| the implementation differences are numerous.
| forgetfulness wrote:
| I think that what makes Cyberpunk appealing has changed over
| time; it once reflected the concerns of the day, it invited you
| to reflect about the present and the future looking forward,
| now it offers solace in familiarity, with the social problems
| it presented being something that people are used to coping
| with, it invites you to look into a familiar past.
|
| Back then, it explored the mystery of what the surge of
| computer technology in daily life meant, and what their makers
| would become as they grew more powerful. We know how that
| played out now.
|
| It speculated on what the direction taken by the hegemon of the
| West, the United States, meant for common people in the future,
| as it vested itself on the idea that removing fetters on large
| businesses would deliver boons on the far less powerful,
| entirely atomized individual. We're well into that now.
|
| The architectural aesthetic was familiar then, more so now.
| Fear over Japanese investments in the US seem quaint and
| innocuous, though the wealth transfer from West to East took
| that was prognosticated was as difficult as portrayed.
|
| That's all forecasting from the state of affairs of the early
| 80s.
|
| Reading cyberpunk today is done more an act of escapism from
| the struggles tearing at the seams of society today than
| exploring current or new ones.
|
| Cyberware and bioware aren't part of the transhumanist
| experience that cyberpunk primed you for; instead, we have the
| polemics surrounding the transgender experience, with an
| intense debate and division on what it means to accept it,
| going as far as questioning if society should accept it.
|
| Renegades working outside the law aren't clad in anything
| derived from Punk, that British subculture of rowdy youths
| espousing familiar ideologies in unsophisticated ways; what we
| got instead is the aesthetic created by the racial minorities
| of the US and their feedback loop with the countries of origin
| of the gangers proper, or their parents, or grandparents, which
| have more elements that are difficult to deal with for
| onlookers or people affected by them, from their origin, to
| consequences, and biases. These people give no space to the
| rugged individualist, the cartel will demand the submission of
| individuals to it like a fief, the liberty that the cyberpunk
| protagonist enjoyed at the margins of society doesn't exist.
| ehutch79 wrote:
| Cyberpunk is 100% a product of the 80s.
|
| I disagree that it should change. Moving beyond what it was
| kind of ruins it, in the same ways 80s horror movies could be
| solved with a cell phone.
|
| It's better to look at it as a sub-grene or alternate
| historical fiction.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| High tech = cyber, low life = punk
|
| Income inequality and resource scarcity will make the average
| person a cyberpunk.
| postmodest wrote:
| Having grown up in that era, I think the "cyberpunk" look is
| very much tied to the end of the 70's nostalgia for the
| counter-culture of the 50's (I'd even argue that Punk is the
| first symptom of that nostalgia; a reaction to the hippie
| aesthetic and a look back to the postwar rebellion of surplus
| military leather-wear.) So cyberpunk as a vibe is a neon Disco
| veneer atop the inward-looking exhaustion about the failed
| Space Age, over a substrate of 50's nostalgia. It was a mash up
| of dated styles from the start, ageless in the way that all
| postmodern thing are, because it refuses to imagine a
| "present", it's just a blend of every past moment.
|
| Cyberdecks in particular though, are dated, because they
| imagined a Present, and came from the mind of an author whose
| idea of "a machine that creates a consensual hallucination" was
| the very typewriter he was using to hallucinate the tale.
| Gibson had never used a computer when he wrote Neuromancer. So
| his model starts with what he knows, and alludes to the
| computers of the day: typewriters you plug into your Sony TV.
| Having read the book in the 80's, I imagined the cyberdeck as
| being something between an ZX Spectrum and a TI-99. It had that
| Bertone wedge aesthetic, and was black. A Keyboard with a ROM
| slot for the Dixie Flatline. Because while Neuromancer was
| nominally a sci-fi novel, it wasn't imagining anything new in
| the way that other Big Science space-age authors did. It was a
| beat-inspired noir novel about demonology and ghosts, that only
| happened to take place in the future. It was in its own way
| backward-looking nostalgia.
|
| And that's why I think it's hard to "date" Cyberpunk: it's not
| so much futurism as it is encompassing the whole 20th century
| ("Le Vingtieme Siecle" if you will...) and placing it in the
| future context as a way of transposing it for examination.
| coldtea wrote:
| Opposite take:
|
| I don't see any 50s nostalgia or "postwar rebellion of
| surplus military leather-wear" in Bladerunner, one of the
| biggest influences in the cyberpunk aesthetics (even bigger
| than Neuromancer, who mostly provided language and concepts,
| not the look).
|
| I do see 40s noir aesthetics, combined with the "rising
| Japan", "corporatism", and "dystopian future" ideas of the
| mid-late 70s.
|
| And Gibson wasn't that far off with his Cyberdeck either. 40
| years later and hs description is not that different to a Mac
| Mini, a Raspberry Pi 400, or even, with some minor form
| adjustments, to the Apple Vision setup.
|
| If anything both our "cyberspace" and machines are still
| lackluster compared to the imaginations of that era, even
| with the authors being "soft" sci-fi and not into
| engineering.
|
| I don't think it's "hard to date" cyberpunk either. It's a
| distinctive early 80s vision. The reason that it still looks
| cool, is because we've lost the knack for inventing new
| visions of the future (or even bold looking industrial design
| that's not some minimal Braun inspired fare).
| anthk wrote:
| Also, more than rpi400, we already had cyberdecks in the
| 90's: Jornada PDA's.
|
| Install NetBSD on them and you have more power than any
| smartphone in your pocket, which is just an enhanced pocket
| TV + videocamera + phone blend. With a proper "cyberdeck",
| you can write. And if you can write, you can change things,
| more than resending viral videos making money for anybody
| else.
| anthk wrote:
| Check solarpunk. The wooden aesthetics with curved bezels
| will come back. No, not heavy and easily-degrading wood,
| but wooden covers for hardware and a think layer of safe
| paint with environmentally kind nano-materials.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I love that they credit Tumblr and Pinterest for the
| illustrations, most of which are just taken from the Shadowrun
| sourcebook. It would be like me crediting The Pirate Bay as the
| director of a movie.
| anthk wrote:
| Sometimes I fire up a MegaDrive/Genesis Shadowrun romhack under
| Mednafen, it adds lots of stuff and balances the game
| difficulty a bit down.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| Is it just me or does the Hosaka OSC 7 look an awful lot like a
| TI 99/4A?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-07-29 23:00 UTC)