Strafe Sez: Bite THIS!

Is Cyberpunk dead?
No, but it is getting pissed on by a bunch of venture-capital-funded zombies...

I hear it all the time, usually several times a month. Whether it's some critic deriding the latest effects-encrusted hacker flick, or buried in the stuffier backwaters of some literary journal, the message is always the same. Cyberpunk is Dead.

Some celebrate the demise of the genre, others mourn a naive yet enthusiastic time. The funeral-goers tip their hats to the founding visionaries, writers like Gibson, Stephenson, Effinger and Sterling. They smile fondly at the memory of the movement's standard bearers, people like Stephen Levy, John Perry Barlowe, R.U. Serious (and the rest of the smartdrug-addled lunatics at Mondo 2000). They even sniffle through their veils over Timothy Leary since he discovered that technology could provide a head trip every bit as satisfying as LSD.

Too bad, so sad. But then they start chuckling about the movies. Lawnmower Man. Hackers. Johnny Mnemonic. The Net. Embarrassing action movies made for mass consumption by flatline mowers that wouldn't know a dongle from a doorknob. It would seem that the idea of splicing a human nervous system directly into the stream of pure information proved too difficult for Hollywood to spoon feed to the sheeple. "Pity", they say, shrugging. "Still, perhaps it's better that C-Punk died, rather than continue suffering. Ashes to ashes..."

The funny thing is, the body never stopped moving.

Hollywood continues to churn out cyber-flavored flicks, and after the success of The Matrix, that isn't about to change anytime soon. The books keep coming out too. William Gibson is still riding that bullet train that left the station in Virtual Light. Upstarts like Greg Egan and Jonathan Lethem have risen up to march alongside the "old timers", armed with a bag full of new science that makes the Cyberpunk of the 80's look comically dated by comparison and new points of view about how that technology will affect you and I. Magazines once reserved for techno-weenies are now on every newsstand in the country, and even stodgy rags like Time and Newsweek have a regular technology section.

Cyber culture has become so pervasive and far reaching that it's permeated nearly every aspect of everyday life in any vaguely industrialized nation. The radical fringe has been absorbed into the mainstream. The digital revolution is over and the yuppies won.

The Yuppies? We didn't even know they were involved until they started copping our toys and our look and a fair amount of our methodology. Our hue and cry of hack the world is now couched in marketspeak, printed in glossy colors with the company logo and passed out to the corporate animals to put on the walls of their little veal-fattening pens. And why should a promising prototechie risk prison to explore the electronic frontier when he can opt instead for an IT position with a reliable paycheck, heath benefits and stock options? Heck, maybe he can wear his leather jacket to the golf course.

But what the dot-com carpetbaggers didn't take was our attitude. Your average e-commerce flunky isn't going to take something apart just to see what makes it go, then put it back together differently so it does something else instead. The idea that you can subvert the manufacturer's intention and replace it with your own isn't even going to occur to you when you are the manufacturer! The street has it's own use for things is an axiom that only has meaning to people who actually spend time in the streets. I mean living there, not just running over pedestrians in an SUV, driving with a cel phone in one hand and a cup of Starbucks coffee in the other.

Those of us who cut our teeth dumpster diving for components are still out here -- for the moment. We, who see technology as an art form and a way of life rather than a giant cash cow to be milked until it dies of exhaustion, are still around. We are still hiding in the "less desirable" corners of the Bay Area, ferinstance, hanging on for dear life until rents driven up by web companies with more dollars than sense force us farther afield.

And that's exactly what's happening . At first, many of us slacker types retreated across the bridge or down the peninsula. Then the all-devouring e-commerce machine started chewing up Emeryville, Oakland and as far south as Gilroy. Now, it doesn't seem like there's any town around The Bay that hasn't been infested. Some of the real folks have bugged out for BFE, shacking up in Modesto, or packing up and moving as far as New Orleans.

And those of us who do stay are looking at a bleak picture. You been to a club in San Francisco lately? Well, you better hurry, while you there's still a couple open. The oblivions move in over a bar then complain about the noise until the police shut it down. You like live music? That's too bad. With no venues or places to practice left, bands are fleeing the city like horses from a burning barn. Remember when you could go to an awesome all-night art party in a dilapidated old warehouse on Minna St.? Forget it, baby, that warehouse just sold for a mil and a half and is being cut up into pint-sized yuppie palaces as we speak. The Bay Area is bleeding teachers, cops, firemen, nurses, and anyone else who just can't afford to take a stand here anymore. As more of the e-zombies come in, it's only going to get worse.

Enough. I think it's high time we re-introduce the dotcommies to the rest of the cyberpunk legacy, the part they didn't steal. We need to wake them up to the fact just because you own the world doesn't necessarily mean you rule it. There were other people here first, and we aren't going to sit on our asses and allow the total sterilization of everything we hold dear. Let's see how those who want a life like a sitcom deal with a little taste of true art. Muffy wants a nice Norman Rockwell home? Fuck you, honey, you've moved to the corner of Mapplethorpe and Giger.

We need to show them they must adapt, evolve, and add to the merry mayhem or we'll send 'em back to those oh so wholesome corn and missile silo states where they belong. It's time. Get LOUD. Be visible. When they try to push you out of your place, push back. And if they still don't get the picture, perhaps it's time to start breaking out the ol' monkey wrench.

And in the meantime, keep 'em guessing. Weave a web of streetspeak around them so thick they begin to think they've somehow ended up in another country. Watch their eyes glaze over as the lingo sails over their vapid materialistic heads. Plot their downfall right in front of their greedy clueless faces. Slang your way into their lairs and open a big can of wake up call upside their heads. Information isn't a commodity to be bought and sold by the mouse click. In the hands of someone who knows what to do with it, it's still power. Take It Back.

Prayin' for a quake,

Strafe

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