0¶212ąCYBERPUNK 35by D-Lite/D-29 ±f1 62INTRODUCTION 21First of all I have to say that I wrote this article because I'm very interested in the underground culture. But I'm not so fond of the music, but the "21lifestyle12". What is cyberpunk? Well, if you try to find the word in a dictionary you probably won't find it. The closest you can get is "2cybernetics1", a science about how technological and mathematical models can replace men, and that's actually the main characteristic of cyberpunk, too. Cyberpunk is a whole future vision culture where, besides from the technological take-over, things like war, 5blood2, death, drugs, pollution and corruption are important. There are "cyperpunky" influences in film, theater, music and books, but cyberpunk can also be related to technological advancements like "4Virtual Reality2" and e28a "eArtificial Intelligence2" which will be dealt with later in this article. 62CYBERPUNK GOES TO MOVIES 21The cyberpunk movies can be described as violent science-fiction. The scripts are often about killing robots, nuclear catastrophies, human and animal mutations, and there is often struggle between man and machine, where it's not always the machine that represent the evil. No, sometimes the machines and robots are even 21more human than the humans21 (ehh)! In one of the most famous cyberpunk-films , "f2Blade Runner21" (1982), the biological, mechanical and electronical systems have been integrated to a completely new system and bioscience makes it possible to create human replicants. On the whole - and this is concerning almost all the cyber- punk movies - you can say that the borders between real and not real, artificial and not artificial, is almost wiped away. Other famous cyber-movies are 21Terminator I and II, Robocop, Mad Max and Dune1.2 62CYBERPUNK - THE MUSIC 21Cyberpunk music has the same atmosphere as the cyber-movies. It's cold, it's hot, it's blood and death (understood??). The sound of the music is technological but not always with clean syntethic sounds. The voices and instruments are often distorted or processed in some other way. The kings of cyberpunk music are the Canadian group Skinny Puppy, which can be said to be a conglomerate of the cyberpunk culture. The most characteristic thing about Skinny Puppy's music is its never-ending unpredictability. Heavy funk-rythms are suddenly interrupted to revive or mutate into something completely different and stringsounds are drowned in a sparkling electronics. Voices cut out of media and movies link together and amplifies the musical impressions. Far from the melodies and refrains of the pop-music, the monotony of the dance-music, the ego of the hip hop and the cliches of the rock-music, they seek new ways in how to pull their listeners into their auditive universe. Cyberpunk music and Skinny Puppy in particular is mostly about corruption, pollution and politics but love and passion can also at least be mentioned. Common for all cyberpunk music is what you could call a "post-4th-world-war-feeling", and through what Skinny Puppy calls "Audio-sculpturing", you can after a while almost imagine what it would be like after a nuclear war. 62CYBERPUNK IN THE LITTERATURE 21The culture of cyberpunk started in the litterature, just after the 2nd World War, and the bombings over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A boom of books and films with mutations taking over the world were produced, for example with mutated ants, 5-6 meters long. Later in the 60's, when intellectuals and students revolted against the political systems of the world, 8Ray Bradbury2 wrote his book "fFahrenheit 4512", which describes a corrupt future. In this book, the fire brigades duty is not to put out fires, but to turn them on. Especially books are burned up. The name of the book comes from the fact that paper ignites at 451 °F. But the real pioneer of cyberpunk litterature is William Gibson, who was the first to write pure cyberpunk in words. The action in his books "Neuromancer" (1984), "Count Zero" (1986) and "Mona Lisa Overdrive" (1988) takes place in a future where computer technology and biochemistry have reached a level of development that is almost unthinkable. But the people who live in this futuristic world have the same feelings as todays people. When the big companies fight each other the people have to take the pain. 62CYBERPUNK IN TECHNOLOGY 21Artificiality is one of the main characteristics of cyberpunk, and from artificiality it isn't far to the technology called "Virtual Reality". Virtual Reality means that the person using the computer and his surroundings are reproduced by a computer. By using special glasses with integrated computer displays, built-in headphones and a special suit with sensors everywhere, the computer registers your movements at the same time as the glasses - using advanced computer graphics - reproduces a world, where you, or actually your computer twin, can not only walk around, but also pick up unreal things and actually feel the pressure of the thing in the hand. This technology is still under development, but already today there are commercial VR-systems for sale, and when prices are lowered and the computer science has brought us faster and more powerful computers, perhaps it will be possible to, not like today, controlling the computer with a mouse or a keyboard, actually walk into the computer world and work with the computer instead of working against it. What the VR-systems will mean to the world of computer games, you can only dream of. "Artificial Intelligency" is today one of the most expanding computer sciences. It's about how to learn computer processors to work just like the human brain. What for? Well, the main reason is not to build human replacements or human thinking robots. No, the reason is that the human brain has a processing capacity and speed, which is far better than that of todays processors (even 68000!!). By implementing the knowledge about the human brains into computer processing, something called a "2Neurological Network1" is created. And, speed is blinding. 62CONCLUSION 21The future vision that is explained in the cyberpunk culture, is cold and bloody. The nature is dead and people, companies and computers fight each other instead of the opposite. Let the cyberpunk be a warning not to let technology and greed get out of hand. The result is obvious. 8I hope that you have enjoyed this 9article and maybe you got own thoughts aabout it, so why don't you drop me a bletter. You will find my adress in cthe advertisements.2 ×