Episode 7 - Johnny Mnemonic

TBD - To Be Determined

Theme: Welcome to CyberMart
Time: 41:47

Episode Connections
Authors, stories. Bruce Sterling. Harlan Ellison. J.G. Ballard. Phillip K. Dick. Martin Caiden, Cyborg. Gordon R. Dickson, The Forever Man. Frederick Pohl, Man Plus. William Gibson, “Burning Chrome.” Dick Hebdige, Punk: The Subculture of Style. Clifford D. Symak, “Desertion.”
Films. Johnny Mnemonic. Blade Runner.
TV episodes, series. Star Trek. Battlestar Galactica. 6 Million Dollar Man.
Ideas. What is a mnemonic, anyway? Johnny the data courier. Sampling the flavor and style of cyberpunk … hyperstimulation & sensory overload. The Yakuza. Tech noir. Cyberpunk as sc-fi counterculture. Moving away from sci-fi’s golden age. Not yer dad’s sci-fi. No one is doing any good with all of this tech. Atmospheric tech. Corporate espionage. Socio-economic, socio-technical layers of society. Hightechs v. Lowtechs. Mercenary life is a good life. Hard-scrabble existence is the way of the world. Everyone is shaped in or involved with technology espionage. Chrome, plastic, and vinyl … oh my. The disenfranchised in cyberpunk. Cyborgs in cyberpunk v. cyborgs in classic sci-fi. Tech / personal augmentation as an expression of personal style. Relationship to the corporate economy determines your enhancements. Communication tech is oddly absent. World Wide Web, DARPA Net. The etymology of punk. Punk music. Punk as a social movement. Punk as an attitude - “I could be a rebel.” Cyberpunk is dead! Punk as a literary derivative. The case of Steampunk. Cyberpunk as predictor of contemporary society. Off the grid v. on the grid. The surveillance society. Preppers. The Millennium Bug. Y2K preppers. "We are so invested in technologies we don’t understand." Surviving the collapse of society as we know it. Dated tech … 100s of megabytes of data! Bill goes off on a soliloquy about resistance, social stratification, technology, and the periodic bleakness of contemporary life.
Whoa - Hmmm - WTF. Dan says its a Whoa-Hmmm-WTF tapestry. Bill says we need a Venn diagram.

Previous episode: Clifford D. Simak, “Desertion”
Next episode: Lewis Padgett, “Mimsy Were the Borogoves”

Music Credit: "Ouroboros" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
Link: Creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/