酷我-北美枫

[ericcoliu]

On Gibsonian Cyberspace in Neuromancer

(The full-text version of the essay is published in Cultural Studies Monthly, an online bi-lingual journal launched by Cultural Studies Association, Taiwan, and it can be accessed at http://hermes.hrc.ntu.edu.tw/csa/journal/72/journal_park72x.htm The following are the introduction to and plot outline for Neuromancer)


Introduction

In 1984, William Gibson’s ground-breaking debut novel, Neuromancer, gained a cult-status soon after being published, and it also won a trio of the most prestigious awards in the science fiction world: the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Philip K. Dick. Featuring an electronically created virtual space where human consciousness can enter through a special device connected to the nervous system, Neuromancer is diverges from science fiction tradition by setting its alternative world not in some far-away galaxy, but in an imagined dimension behind the computer screen. Cyberspace1, a term coined by Gibson to name this digital environment, had not only inspired a new breed of science fiction recognized as "cyberpunk,"2 but also found its way into the official English lexicon as internet technology came into being years later in uncanny accordance to Gibson’s vision (Chuo, 2002:14). Until the present, the novel’s continued relevance and resonance can be boiled down to this single, religiously evoked image:

“The matrix has its roots in primitive arcade games,” said the voice over, “in early graphic programs and military experimentation with cranial jack.” … “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…” (1984:51)

Like all great mythic images, cyberspace suggests more than it explains. By creating a space that follows the virtual laws of thought rather than the concrete laws of matter, cyberspace suspends the usual scientific rules that constrain the physical reality where human bodies live, and it provides a shared interactive environment, an electronic "soul-space" that beckons the postmodern psyche to both find and remake itself (Davis, 1998:191-2). Recent theoretical works on cyberspace and its related social manifestations have reiterated the free-floating exchanges between culture, society and technology. For example, Featherstone and Burrows (1995:1-19) term cyberspace and related phenomena "cultures of technological embodiment", and they affirm that cyberpunk science fiction can be read both as fiction and as "social and cultural theory".

The sociologist Tim Jordan, writing in Cyberpower: The Culture and Politics of Cyberspace and the Internet, puts a special emphasis on this techno-cultural phenomenon that cyberspace is with us but it is an emergent form of cyberspace: elements appear before our eyes without any certainty that they will eventually coalesce into fictional visions. But neither can fictional visions be ignored, because many people are fired to work toward them and they will have profound effects on any future cyberspace. These visions provide an essential intellectual framework within which cyberspace is being shaped, because they allow us to grasp the significance of some changes as steps on the road to "somewhere" rather than just aimless steps (1993:23).

William Gibson's hallucinatory account of cyberspace provided the first social and spatial blueprint for digital frontiers. His writings explore the implications of a global network culture, and they have shaped our expectations of what is possible in virtual environments. The well-known VR theorist Allucquere Rosanne Stone, writing in Cyberspace: First Steps, reports on the auto-catalytic effects of the publication of Neuromancer:

Neuromancer reached the hackers who had been radicalized by George Lucas’ powerful cinematic evocation of humanity and technology infinitely extended, and it reached the technologically literate and socially disaffected who were searching for social forms that could transform the fragmented anomie that characterized life in Silicon Valley and all electronic industrial ghettos. In a single strong, Gibson’s powerful vision provided for them the imaginal public sphere and refigured discursive community that established the grounding for the possibility of a new kind of social interaction…Neuromancer in the time of Reagan and DARPA is a massive intertextual presence not only in other literary productions of the 1980s, but in technical publications, conference topics, hardware design, and scientific and technological discourses in the large (1992:95).

She also argues that the novel gave voice to a virtual community identity, suggesting broad new avenues of research:

During this period, when Neuromancer was published, “virtual reality” acquired a new name and suddenly prominent social identity as “cyberspace”. The critical importance of Gibson’s book was partly due to the way that it triggered a conceptual revolution among the scattered workers who had been doing virtual reality research groups for years: As task groups coalesced and dissolved, as the fortunes of companies and projects and laboratories rose and fell, the existence of Gibson’s novel and the technological and social imaginary that it articulated enabled the researchers in virtual reality – or, under the new dispensation, cyberspace – to recognize and organize themselves as a community (ibid., 99).

This was a common occurrence in the years after the publication of Neuromancer; thousands of hackers around the world began their own VR projects and worked to actualize the text into artifacts. Therefore, to grasp the very nature of cyberspace, Gibson’s dream must be described. If it is ignored, as Jordan emphasizes, we may fail to see the real condition of computers, phone lines and codes that create cyberspace or fail to recognize the possibilities that are dawning (1993:23). This essay will first discuss Neuromancer’s narrative structure because Gibson’ vision of cyberspace itself is novelistic in origin, then focus mainly on analyzing the characteristics of cyberspace, and finally conclude with reflections from the viewpoint of the ethics of human communication.


Plot Outline for Neuromancer

Basically speaking, Neuromancer is the story of Case’s quest to be re-integrated with cyberspace and the information that it possesses. The story begins with the plight of its protagonist, Case, who was once a hotshot "console cowboy" and whose job is to jack into cyberspace and to steal invaluable information from business corporations. His nervous system was severely damaged by his former employers as punishment for his trying to double-cross them. He went to Chiba, a Japanese city known for its advancement in neurosurgery, to have the damage repaired, but lost all his money without being cured. Molly, a heavily modified razorgirl, is under contract by Armitage to find Case, and soon Case’s nervous system is fully mended under Armitage’s arrangement on the condition that Case will do jobs for him.

The first job assigned to Case is to help Molly steal the personality ROM construct4 of McCoy Pauley a.k.a Dixie Flatline, Case’s former teacher, from the Sense/Net archive5. The next job takes Case and Molly to Istanbul to abduct a psychopath named Peter Riviera, a man noted for his ability to project holograms of other people’s fears and desires. With the addition of Riviera to his team, Armitage’s task of recruitment is completed, and the whole group flies to the space station Freeside, an orbital city built by the Swiss clan Tessier-Ashpool SA who reside in the Villa Straylight at the top of the spindle.

Meanwhile, Armitage has shown strange signs of insanity, and his unusual behaviour induces Case and Molly to investigate his background. Surprisingly, it turns out that his true identity is Willis Corto, a former Colonel in the U.S. Army who had nearly been killed in an attack against Russian forces and who was later diagnosed as schizophrenic and locked up in a French asylum. Eventually an enigmatic AI (Artificial Intelligence) named Wintermute took him out of the asylum and gave him a new identity. This Wintermute is the real mastermind behind the scenes.

Due to Armitage’s increasing instability, Wintermute starts to contact Case directly and by degrees reveals to him the full intent of the plan, which involves infiltration into the industrial clan of Tessier and Ashpool. Founders of the family, John Harness Ashpool and his wife, Marie-France Tessier, had each developed plans to achieve immortality. Ashpool opted for extending his lifetime to infinity by periodically putting himself and his children into a frozen slumber. But Tessier made her bid for eternal life by constructing two AIs: Wintermute and Neuromancer. She decided to place her personality construct into an AI, Neuromancer. This would enable her to "live" forever. She also constructed a second AI, Wintermute to take over the role of corporate decision-maker. This would enable the Tessier-Ashpool clan itself to become immortal. Because of her refusal to follow Ashpool’s plan, Ashpool killed Tessier. After her death, Wintermute began gradually to run the corporation on its own, and tried to break though the hardwired constraints placed on it and sought to unify with its counterpart, Neuromancer, which had fought against the union.

But things gradually became more complicated than the smart AI expected. Armitage’s madness gets worse and Wintermute has no choice but to kill him. Riviera had already gone to the Villa Straylight, where the Tessier-Ashpools family was based, by the personal invitation of Lady 3Jane, one of the twenty clones of the children of John Ashpool and Marie-France Tessier. Wintermute sends Molly to the Villa Straylight to get the codeword from 3Jane so that its union with Neuromancer will be completed. On her way to the Villa Straylight, Molly always keeps in touch with Case via simstim6 (simulated stimulation). When she enters 3Jane's private cave, Riviera severely hurts her.

Case who has been monitoring the situation through his cyberspace deck and simstim unit on the Zion cluster7, heads in with a Rastafarian named Maelcum to rescue Molly. After severe combat, 3Jane falls captive to Case and gives Case the codeword. Therefore, the two AIs can now become a being which constitutes and dominates the whole matrix. After accomplishing their mission, Molly leaves Case. Case returns to the Sprawl where he buys a new cyberspace deck, and settles down to his old life as a console cowboy.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

On Gibsonian Cyberspace in Neuromancer

(The full-text version of the essay is published in Cultural Studies Monthly, an online bi-lingual journal launched by Cultural Studies Association, Taiwan, and it can be accessed at http://hermes.hrc.ntu.edu.tw/csa/journal/72/journal_park72x.htm The following are the introduction to and plot outline for Neuromancer)


Introduction

In 1984, William Gibson’s ground-breaking debut novel, Neuromancer, gained a cult-status soon after being published, and it also won a trio of the most prestigious awards in the science fiction world: the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Philip K. Dick. Featuring an electronically created virtual space where human consciousness can enter through a special device connected to the nervous system, Neuromancer is diverges from science fiction tradition by setting its alternative world not in some far-away galaxy, but in an imagined dimension behind the computer screen. Cyberspace1, a term coined by Gibson to name this digital environment, had not only inspired a new breed of science fiction recognized as "cyberpunk,"2 but also found its way into the official English lexicon as internet technology came into being years later in uncanny accordance to Gibson’s vision (Chuo, 2002:14). Until the present, the novel’s continued relevance and resonance can be boiled down to this single, religiously evoked image:

“The matrix has its roots in primitive arcade games,” said the voice over, “in early graphic programs and military experimentation with cranial jack.” … “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…” (1984:51)

Like all great mythic images, cyberspace suggests more than it explains. By creating a space that follows the virtual laws of thought rather than the concrete laws of matter, cyberspace suspends the usual scientific rules that constrain the physical reality where human bodies live, and it provides a shared interactive environment, an electronic "soul-space" that beckons the postmodern psyche to both find and remake itself (Davis, 1998:191-2). Recent theoretical works on cyberspace and its related social manifestations have reiterated the free-floating exchanges between culture, society and technology. For example, Featherstone and Burrows (1995:1-19) term cyberspace and related phenomena "cultures of technological embodiment", and they affirm that cyberpunk science fiction can be read both as fiction and as "social and cultural theory".

The sociologist Tim Jordan, writing in Cyberpower: The Culture and Politics of Cyberspace and the Internet, puts a special emphasis on this techno-cultural phenomenon that cyberspace is with us but it is an emergent form of cyberspace: elements appear before our eyes without any certainty that they will eventually coalesce into fictional visions. But neither can fictional visions be ignored, because many people are fired to work toward them and they will have profound effects on any future cyberspace. These visions provide an essential intellectual framework within which cyberspace is being shaped, because they allow us to grasp the significance of some changes as steps on the road to "somewhere" rather than just aimless steps (1993:23).

William Gibson's hallucinatory account of cyberspace provided the first social and spatial blueprint for digital frontiers. His writings explore the implications of a global network culture, and they have shaped our expectations of what is possible in virtual environments. The well-known VR theorist Allucquere Rosanne Stone, writing in Cyberspace: First Steps, reports on the auto-catalytic effects of the publication of Neuromancer:

Neuromancer reached the hackers who had been radicalized by George Lucas’ powerful cinematic evocation of humanity and technology infinitely extended, and it reached the technologically literate and socially disaffected who were searching for social forms that could transform the fragmented anomie that characterized life in Silicon Valley and all electronic industrial ghettos. In a single strong, Gibson’s powerful vision provided for them the imaginal public sphere and refigured discursive community that established the grounding for the possibility of a new kind of social interaction…Neuromancer in the time of Reagan and DARPA is a massive intertextual presence not only in other literary productions of the 1980s, but in technical publications, conference topics, hardware design, and scientific and technological discourses in the large (1992:95).

She also argues that the novel gave voice to a virtual community identity, suggesting broad new avenues of research:

During this period, when Neuromancer was published, “virtual reality” acquired a new name and suddenly prominent social identity as “cyberspace”. The critical importance of Gibson’s book was partly due to the way that it triggered a conceptual revolution among the scattered workers who had been doing virtual reality research groups for years: As task groups coalesced and dissolved, as the fortunes of companies and projects and laboratories rose and fell, the existence of Gibson’s novel and the technological and social imaginary that it articulated enabled the researchers in virtual reality – or, under the new dispensation, cyberspace – to recognize and organize themselves as a community (ibid., 99).

This was a common occurrence in the years after the publication of Neuromancer; thousands of hackers around the world began their own VR projects and worked to actualize the text into artifacts. Therefore, to grasp the very nature of cyberspace, Gibson’s dream must be described. If it is ignored, as Jordan emphasizes, we may fail to see the real condition of computers, phone lines and codes that create cyberspace or fail to recognize the possibilities that are dawning (1993:23). This essay will first discuss Neuromancer’s narrative structure because Gibson’ vision of cyberspace itself is novelistic in origin, then focus mainly on analyzing the characteristics of cyberspace, and finally conclude with reflections from the viewpoint of the ethics of human communication.


Plot Outline for Neuromancer

Basically speaking, Neuromancer is the story of Case’s quest to be re-integrated with cyberspace and the information that it possesses. The story begins with the plight of its protagonist, Case, who was once a hotshot "console cowboy" and whose job is to jack into cyberspace and to steal invaluable information from business corporations. His nervous system was severely damaged by his former employers as punishment for his trying to double-cross them. He went to Chiba, a Japanese city known for its advancement in neurosurgery, to have the damage repaired, but lost all his money without being cured. Molly, a heavily modified razorgirl, is under contract by Armitage to find Case, and soon Case’s nervous system is fully mended under Armitage’s arrangement on the condition that Case will do jobs for him.

The first job assigned to Case is to help Molly steal the personality ROM construct4 of McCoy Pauley a.k.a Dixie Flatline, Case’s former teacher, from the Sense/Net archive5. The next job takes Case and Molly to Istanbul to abduct a psychopath named Peter Riviera, a man noted for his ability to project holograms of other people’s fears and desires. With the addition of Riviera to his team, Armitage’s task of recruitment is completed, and the whole group flies to the space station Freeside, an orbital city built by the Swiss clan Tessier-Ashpool SA who reside in the Villa Straylight at the top of the spindle.

Meanwhile, Armitage has shown strange signs of insanity, and his unusual behaviour induces Case and Molly to investigate his background. Surprisingly, it turns out that his true identity is Willis Corto, a former Colonel in the U.S. Army who had nearly been killed in an attack against Russian forces and who was later diagnosed as schizophrenic and locked up in a French asylum. Eventually an enigmatic AI (Artificial Intelligence) named Wintermute took him out of the asylum and gave him a new identity. This Wintermute is the real mastermind behind the scenes.

Due to Armitage’s increasing instability, Wintermute starts to contact Case directly and by degrees reveals to him the full intent of the plan, which involves infiltration into the industrial clan of Tessier and Ashpool. Founders of the family, John Harness Ashpool and his wife, Marie-France Tessier, had each developed plans to achieve immortality. Ashpool opted for extending his lifetime to infinity by periodically putting himself and his children into a frozen slumber. But Tessier made her bid for eternal life by constructing two AIs: Wintermute and Neuromancer. She decided to place her personality construct into an AI, Neuromancer. This would enable her to "live" forever. She also constructed a second AI, Wintermute to take over the role of corporate decision-maker. This would enable the Tessier-Ashpool clan itself to become immortal. Because of her refusal to follow Ashpool’s plan, Ashpool killed Tessier. After her death, Wintermute began gradually to run the corporation on its own, and tried to break though the hardwired constraints placed on it and sought to unify with its counterpart, Neuromancer, which had fought against the union.

But things gradually became more complicated than the smart AI expected. Armitage’s madness gets worse and Wintermute has no choice but to kill him. Riviera had already gone to the Villa Straylight, where the Tessier-Ashpools family was based, by the personal invitation of Lady 3Jane, one of the twenty clones of the children of John Ashpool and Marie-France Tessier. Wintermute sends Molly to the Villa Straylight to get the codeword from 3Jane so that its union with Neuromancer will be completed. On her way to the Villa Straylight, Molly always keeps in touch with Case via simstim6 (simulated stimulation). When she enters 3Jane's private cave, Riviera severely hurts her.

Case who has been monitoring the situation through his cyberspace deck and simstim unit on the Zion cluster7, heads in with a Rastafarian named Maelcum to rescue Molly. After severe combat, 3Jane falls captive to Case and gives Case the codeword. Therefore, the two AIs can now become a being which constitutes and dominates the whole matrix. After accomplishing their mission, Molly leaves Case. Case returns to the Sprawl where he buys a new cyberspace deck, and settles down to his old life as a console cowboy.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[anna]

Interesting....

thanks for sharing.

I am now reading "Waiting" by Ha Jin.

I like his writing style, simple and natural.
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[[星子安娜]]

Interesting....

thanks for sharing.

I am now reading "Waiting" by Ha Jin.

I like his writing style, simple and natural.
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[ericcoliu]

Thanks for your reading of my essay.

In the minds of sci-fi critics, William Gibson is the founder of gods of VR and one of best sci-fi writers, and his Neuromancer is a, if not the, must-read handbook for WWW surfers.


Sounds like Canada on CBC Radio One interviewed Gibson yesterday morning along with other prominent computer scientists and media scholars about the future of humankind in light of the advancement of computer technologies. If you’re interested in his viewpoint on the human future conditioned by computer technologies, you can get access to Sounds like Canada at www.cbc.ca/soundslikecanada.

I like Ha Jin’s work, too. I’m reading his latest novel entitled A Free Life, which, I believe, sheds light on his journey of writing exclusively in English.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

Thanks for your reading of my essay.

In the minds of sci-fi critics, William Gibson is the founder of gods of VR and one of best sci-fi writers, and his Neuromancer is a, if not the, must-read handbook for WWW surfers.


Sounds like Canada on CBC Radio One interviewed Gibson yesterday morning along with other prominent computer scientists and media scholars about the future of humankind in light of the advancement of computer technologies. If you’re interested in his viewpoint on the human future conditioned by computer technologies, you can get access to Sounds like Canada at www.cbc.ca/soundslikecanada.

I like Ha Jin’s work, too. I’m reading his latest novel entitled A Free Life, which, I believe, sheds light on his journey of writing exclusively in English.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[Champagne]

In his essay,

[[Champagne]]

In his essay,