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Title: Cyberpunk and Technology Author: Alfredo M. Bonanno Date: 1992 Language: en Topics: cybernetics, anarcho-transhumanism, technology Source: https://archive.elephanteditions.net/library/alfredo-m-bonanno-cyberpunk-and-technology][archive.elephanteditions.net]]. Proofread text source from [[http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=4913, retrieved on December 10, 2020. Notes: Original title “Cyberpunk e tecnologia”, in *Anarchismo* 68.
The main characteristic of cyberpunk is that it escapes definition. This
is not only due to the wide range of choices in the ideas of its
supporters, it is also a direct effect of the possibilities offered by
the new methods of information technology. Nothing in this field can be
neatly separated from the rest. In many narrative texts the style of the
story reflects the means that make it into a transmittable object, and
this same story then has consequences on the elaboration of future
technology.
The mechanism undoubtedly allows for an autonomy of individual
consciousness and sophistication in decision-making capacity, if nothing
else as far as timing is concerned. It is impossible to predict the
amount of intellectual capacity, the rational element that supports all
the weight of the rigid pigeon-holing of procedures. Here all mandatory
remarks seem almost an attempt to exorcise an uncertainty one cannot
help perceiving.
The individual who accepts this relationship with information technology
soon moves towards a generic refusal of centralised authority, a path in
the forest that could lead them to conclusions that would be very
important from a liberatory point of view were it not that they
immediately come up against the obstacle of the instrument itself. The
actor-instrument interaction does not have any real outlet other than
constituting an atmosphere of tolerance, when not exactly indifference,
concerning all aspects that in any case are threatened by a rampant
spreading of the means of information technology around the somewhat
obscure operative field.
It should be said that all manifestations of cyberpunk almost
unwittingly end up producing a hedonistic view of life. Scepticism is
accepted as a value, an intelligent way of thinking which every level of
specialist is pushed towards, and the computer itself ends up becoming a
specialisation with its own language and mentality. A symbiosis between
those who start a dialogue with the machine and the machine itself is
thus inevitable. But this is occult, so much so as to be systematically
denied, negation becoming a further element of concealment. And the
specialist mentality is always a step ahead. The more it advances in the
field of manageable objectivity, the more it cradles itself in the sense
of security that comes from feeling at ease in the ambit of procedures
that know each other, interact, increasingly delimit the confines of a
world deprived of procedure that is just waiting to be regulated, so
taken back to the sphere of the measurable. The specialist is
distinguishable precisely because of his certainty of values that tend
to flow outwards in the direction of a knowledge of which he as a
specialist knows nothing, or almost nothing, about. But this ignorance
no longer seems to him to be a negative element to be remedied but
simply a remote, desolate place to be colonised, wild chaos that needs
to be put in order and understood.
All this must not take a rigid view of reality. Not measure and
technocrats. That would have been inevitable in other times, far from
the computer era of today. The elaboration of new procedures shows a
considerable level of creativity, allowing ironic reflections on the
organisational aspects of society. The paradoxical and the contradictory
therefore have access to reasoning techniques. That allows for an
explosion of practices in the visionary and perhaps surreal direction,
if one could only agree on the term. But that matters little. What does
matter is the parallel mechanism of acceptance of all the techniques
that make the visionary rupture of reality possible. In a way the
journey is realised at the cost of the dream mechanism, a neurological
level that we are unable to control, safeguarding it from unconscious
ordinative implications.
There thus emerges an implicit realism that constructs itself
independently of the decisions and desires of the participants in the
cyberpunk experience. The processes of the electronic organisation of
data build this reality within which all experience, even the violently
visual kind, ends up being codified in numbers in the same digital
communication. The virtual adventure which is at the centre, at least
for the moment, of cyberpunk culture, could run the risk of
disseminating intentions precisely in that territory of codification
where each game could be read in a key that confirms power. The implicit
ideology of tolerance towards hacking, no matter how extreme, is born
and nourishes itself in the idea, for the time being undeclared but
underground, that power is capable of recuperating and managing any
behaviour whatsoever in the information technology sector. Over the next
few years, the conditions of this relationship could change, both a
realisation of the dreams of the cyberpunks (in the sector things go
ahead by leaps and bounds), and an acutening of the preoccupations of
social control.
It is true that there are also attempts to demystify, and that the
action of recuperation and subtraction indirectly serve to study the
behaviour of power as it manages and controls data. But all that soon
comes back under the cover of the technology itself, interfering with
the intentions, putting it beyond one’s own project unbrakably. The
invention of new procedures is certainly an abstraction that uses cabled
means because they present themselves; but it itself ends up being the
opportunity of an intermediate part of the means itself, starting from
the uncontrolled threshold of the whole system of technological
interaction. It should be noted that all this happens at two levels: at
the specific level, in that no creation can subtract itself from its
interactivity within the system. At the technological level in general,
in that a wider interaction would end up playing on the development of
all the technological sectors that in a way are completely beyond
control. There is nothing in the world, either cyberpunk or the system
of control, that is capable of controlling this second level of
technological interaction.
Many have pointed out the negative aspects of a collaboration of certain
participants in this movement with the German government, or are
sarcastic about the restitution of money stolen via computers aimed at
demonstrating the weaknesses of the counterpart.
I do not consider these to be serious arguments within the sphere of a
substantial critique of the process of interaction with information
technology. First of all because these are personal decisions, and
second because the field of any critique must be that of the eventual
use of technology in general, information technology in particular, in a
way that is different to that controlled and managed by power. In other
words, the only valid question to ask is whether a really individual use
of computer technology is possible. The end of communication, visible in
the tatters of the written word, seems to mark the beginning of the
third millennium. Can virtual space constitute an effective
communication space, or will it become a way of sealing the coffin of
the individual? The massified management of communication is proceeding
vertically, while space for relating between individuals is shrinking.
When this survives, it is englobed in the unified code of the sector,
i.e. they appear as transmitters of uniformity, news becomes significant
precisely because it is preventively homologised in an identical
container. Everything depends on seeing whether the virtual model being
proposed is really capable of moving horizontally or whether this
movement is no more than a passage from intention to homologation. That
the other, precisely in its role as interlocutor, is finally substituted
by the machine itself and its virtual potential. But all that has one
conditional premise, at least for the cyberpunk: that it remains to be
proven that the machine can really be put to the service of man, and
that power cannot, parallelly, store up all the information necessary to
manage information technology and, in the present state of affairs, the
totality of production and control. Hacking would therefore only be
capable of demonstrating how many cracks there are in the controlled
structures of the dominant information technology, and where they
reside. If this aim were practicable, the opposite consideration should
also be certain, that the dominant structure would not have the means to
take radical measures. Now, no matter what experience there might be in
other fields and other modalities of attack, the capacity to take
measures always exists; and this capacity remains, let us say, only a
dialogue in the case in which the attack remains in the field of
symbolic procedure. Entering the sphere of real destruction the power
structure modifies its behaviour and adds countermoves that are not only
repressive but are also organisational.
What I am trying to say is that any demonstrative disturbance could
simply convince the counterpart to include it in the variables of
management, as a percentage of uncertainty. A more radical disturbance
leads to measures that cannot be studied and evaluated at the
technological level by those who simply chip in with the power
structure, precisely because their action does not provoke them, so does
not force it to come out. Remaining such an approach, which seems fairly
generalised, the for and against arguments are no more than simple
petitions of principle.
To suppose that results obtainable through the use of electronic
technology do not directly lead to a growth in human awareness simply
because they find themselves in the hands of a minority itself devoid of
social awareness, is either a tautology without hope, or an illusion
grafted into the social function of technology in general and computer
in particular. Can the excluded make a different use of it? Can this
hypothetical different use become the objective of all those who intend
to attack the management of power? The problem is the classical one of
the struggle against those managing power. But now, in addition to the
traditional aspects of this problem, one must also bear in mind the
elements and interactions specific to electronic means.
I am not trying to say here that one should desist from demonising all
aspects of electronic technology, or limit oneself to attacking the
negative expressions that are closest to hand. This would prevent a
direct awareness of the possible psychological effects of this
technology, therefore of any attacks aimed at remedying the problem by
contrasting it with relative social and political implications. It is
just that it seems to me to be naive to trust the equation that puts
things in a linear process of interesting oneself in these problems and
making a certain theoretical effort, concluding with the possibility of
understanding and deciding to put an end to the negative aspects, while
conserving the positive ones.
In order to avoid any misunderstanding, and consequently pointless
arguments concerning the use of computers or a return to the quill pen,
one should point out that there is nothing sacred about suspecting
rationality in general, or against penetrating, armed with a long-term
project, the strategy (moreover which is quickly replaced and constantly
on the verge of being superseded) of information technology. There are
two points to note on this problem: first, it does not seem to me to be
indispensable to have sophisticated knowledge of it in order to realise
the dangers of this technology at the level of revolutionary awareness.
Second, one should not forget the specialistic effect that this work of
penetration into the world of computer technology has on the individual.
Someone might say that to limit this cognitive entrance into a world
that is itself travelling towards global extinction is equivalent to
being on a train and not being interested in where it is going. A good
objection, without necessarily making one feel obliged to become train
drivers in order to understand better whether the destination is the
right one.
There are many ways to enjoy oneself, and virtual reality prospects new,
fascinating ones. However, one cannot lightly maintain that this is
equivalent to action that we could carry out (but often don’t want to)
in reality. There is a considerable difference between the passive
fruition of telematic means such as TV, and the active one, starting
from simple video games. But strangely this difference corresponds in a
way that is suspect to what power expects of us, i.e. a falsely active
response to its solicitations, a competition to realise the pace of
homologised initiatives of global consensus. The figure of the present
day spectator drinking his beer in front of the TV watching his
favourite football team, could in the not too far off future be replaced
by a spectator (the same one) playing his own game on TV or another
telematic instrument; while elsewhere the included are deciding his fate
as passive subject who is suddenly deceiving himself that he possesses
fantastic strength capable of upturning the world.
But the world is elsewhere, and this “else” would be far from our reach.