The likely evolutionary path of the human race:
by David M. Petersen
One book, Neuromancer, by William Gibson, started a movement. More importantly, it was a highly technical future vision brought forth by a man in an old house writing on an old typewriter in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1984. The movement is called Cyberpunk, and the technological vision is even now influencing the course of scientific research, from virtual reality to the surgical augmentation of human beings. Neuromancer's dark juxtaposition of the "consensual hallucination" (Gibson 5) of the Matrix and the decaying urban infrastructure of the Sprawl populated by characters in various stages of being "post-human" (Trench) is quite haunting. The book stands out within the Genre of Science Fiction like a lighthouse on a dark night on an island. It is very densely written, meaning very dense with ideas and descriptions. The novel remains to this day a truly powerful glimpse into the possible destiny of the human race. Neuromancer made many individuals look outward to the future with their imagination and also happened to influence me to do the same, ultimately helping to perform an important function, that of the envisioning process necessary for us to create our evolving world.
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One way the book helped people look outward to the future with their imagination was by starting the Cyberpunk movement. More accurately, it pulled together a bunch of people who were previously unassociated with each other, namely Punks, Acadamians and Computer Hackers, and gave them an identity and a set of common ideas (Brians 1). The birth of the Cyberpunk movement brought these people together and inspired them to try to create the type of world envisioned in Neuromancer. Basically, a Cyberpunk can be defined as an iconoclastic innovative person who fights the establishment with technology in some way. (Trench) The Cyberpunks want to ask the question "Who owns the future?" Or in other words, who controls technology? Based on this perspective, the battle cry of the Cyberpunk movement is "Information must be free" (Trench). In other words, Cyberpunks are committed to having technology and information remain decentralized and in the hands of the individual. The movement has its heroes, for example, the infamous Kevin Mitnick who was arrested by the FBI in the late 1980's. "...Mitnick fit the public's perception of an archetypal ...computer hacker. He was thought to be able to manipulate credit ratings, tap telephones and take complete control of distant computers" (Hafner 10). It doesn't take a genius to see Kevin's distinct similarity to computer cowboy Case in Neuromancer. Kevin is the Cyberpunk movement's idea of someone fighting for the decentralization of information. Cyberpunk represents a movement of people who have been inspired by Gibson's book to look outward towards the future with their collective imagination.
Additionally, Neuromancer made me look outward to the future with my imagination as well. This book really opened my mind and expanded my horizons when I first read it about 12 years ago; I have since read it about 7 times. It actually influenced me to start reading, thinking, and writing along philosophical lines on my own. One of the ways I was inspired by the book was its use and extension of evolutionary concepts. For example, Gibson's description of the Tessier-Ashpools, the business/family/organism that owns the orbiting vacation resort "Freeside." The Tessier-Ashpools are of course a family business, but the are a family/business that lives in space, clones its members, keeps them rotating through cryogenic suspension (on ice) so they can last hundreds of years, and has the whole show being run by an Artificial Intelligence entity! (Gibson 75). They have in essence become a sort of human "meta-organism." Gibson illustrates this organism analogy by the dream Case has of burning the wasp nest. "The spiral birth factory, stepped terraces of the hatching cells, blind jaws of the unborn moving ceaselessly, the staged progress from egg to larva, near-wasp, wasp" (Gibson 126). In his dream, the wasp nest has the Tessier-Ashpool logo stamped on it, equating the Tesseir-Ashpools with a sort of "hive organism" (Gibson 126). This "businesses as organisms" idea is very prevalent in Gibson's work.
Another prominent evolutionary idea in Gibson's work that inspired my imagination can be summed up as the concept of an individual being "post human." The idea is that as soon as mankind acquired the ability to begin manipulating his body or mind surgically to enhance his capability, he was no longer human, but post-human. In Neuromancer, a good example of "post-humanness" is the "biosoft" capability of Gibson's characters. When Molly tries to contact the Panther Moderns with a job by talking to Larry, a young man in a software store, Larry is staring off into space, accessing data. "His hand hovered, selected a glossy black chip that was slightly longer than the rest, and inserted it smoothly into his head. His eyes narrowed. "Molly's got a rider, he said" (Gibson 57). Larry is inserting software into a slot behind his ear that allows him to sense whether Molly has any surveillance equipment on her person. This illustrates the radical vision that Gibson had concerning the man/machine interface way back in the 1980's when very few people even had personal computers! This post-humanness idea really got me thinking about questions like man Vs nature, the function of humans in the universe, the destiny of the human race, etc. Reading Neuromancer helped me realize that I love thinking and learning about these types of big philosophical questions, thereby helping me to look outward with my imagination.
Fundamentally, Nueromancer is a Science Fiction work of pure imagination, and imagination is a very important prerequisite in the actual field of Science for the creation by scientists of the thing being imagined. A very well known example of Science Fiction influencing Science itself is the writer Jules Verne and his idea of sending a man to the moon, which of course we eventually achieved. Gibson even acknowledges Verne by naming a street after him in Freeside. However, probably the best example of the connection between imagination and Science would be the example of Albert Einstein. Einstein was a man who couldn't even get a job within the physics community when he graduated, and had to go to work in the Swiss Patent office in Berne. His math skills were seen as not so exceptionally strong, and he was widely believed to be not much of a Physicist. However, in a lecture by Jeremy Bernstein on the subject of Einstein called "Science and the Human Imagination", Bernstein says "...Einstein had the heart of a poet...[he was] in short, a man of imagination, the essential quality of every scientist" (Angoff 14). What eventually set Einstein apart was this powerful imagination, and as we all know he proceeded to revolutionize the field of Physics with his Theory of Relativity using it. It is clear that the process of "imagination then creation," either starting within Science Fiction or within the pursuit of Science itself, is extremely important to Science.
Furthermore, I think the reader will agree that Science is an important part of we humans' building of our evolving world. Science obviously contributes in so many ways to the way we live our lives. From washing machines to airplanes, the way that discoveries in Science have shaped our world are too numerous to count. In fact, Science is probably the most fundamental force driving the evolution of our evolving world. However, we all help build our evolving world using this process of "imagination then creation." All of the little ordinary things we achieve are first accompanied by a flash of imaginary inspiration, no matter how small. For example, my idea to write this paper was just such an event. I believe that everything that each and every one of us creates, no matter how big, is absolutely essential for the universe and one of the most important things a human can do. This is because we are an integrated part of the universe, which must evolve to exist since it has been continuously evolving since the "Big Bang" approximately 15 billion years ago. Evolution is change, and changing the universe is what we are doing when we create something new. Therefore, it follows that this process of "imagination then creation" is something we all do and is an extremely important part of the evolving Universe, and thus the building of our evolving world.
As a small but essential part of this "building the evolving world" process, the Cyberpunks, influenced by Gibson's Neuromancer, create music, art, and a fashion all their own, which makes up a big part of the Internet culture. Cyberpunk art is very influenced by Japanese anime and bizarre animation shorts. A search on the Internet under "Cyberpunk Art" will yield many examples. The music most associated with Cyberpunk is what is known as "Techno". This is mechanized haunting music that has a harsh futuristic element to it. Kids around America dance to this music and its variations in parties known as "Raves." A good example of the "fashion sense" of Neuromancer is, of course, the "Panther Moderns." "Dark eyes, epicanthic folds obviously the result of surgery, an angry dusting of acne across pale yellow cheeks.... His body was nearly invisible, an abstract pattern approximating the scribbled brickwork [behind him] sliding smoothly across his onepiece. Mimetic polycarbon."(Gibson 58). This fashion sense of the Panther Moderns is all about shock value, and this corresponds with definite real world examples in the Cyberpunk movement. Today's Cyberpunks would alter their faces surgically like this and wear one piece suits that mimic what is behind them if they could. One look at the "Cyberpunk Handbook" by St. Jude, R.U. Sirius and Bart Nagel confirms this. Cyberpunk is about leather, electronics and freaky hairstyles. (St Jude). The Cyberpunks have clearly helped do their part to build our evolving world by contributing heavily to the Internet culture.
Being initially influenced by Gibson's Neuromancer myself as discussed before, I have done my humble part towards creating our world by creating my own philosophy over 10 years of independent research. This Philosophy is constantly evolving, and I love to debate and defend it whenever I get the chance. It describes the probable evolution of the human race and the Universe, and could also be described as a framework of ideas within which both science and religion could comfortably coexist if both are just slightly adjusted. The work is on the Internet at http://philosophy.dmpetersen.net and has been accessed worldwide with an 86 percent click-through ratio from the index page. I am constantly rewriting it in order to try to communicate this perspective, being actually more of a thinker than a writer, per se. Neuromancer was definitely one of the chief factors in inspiring me to do this kind of research.
In addition to inspiring my work, there are also many instances of technologies created by Scientists that contribute to the building of our evolving world and were heavily influenced directly or indirectly by Gibson's Neuromancer. One very big example of this is the Internet. The Internet grew from a very small network of computers called Arpanet that linked military and academic computers for research. Around the mid 1980's this network began to expand into the Internet with the addition of commercial enterprises. Some of the builders of the Internet were captivated by Gibson's "all encompassing computer network" (the Matrix), and this idea continues to influence their research today. (Hafner 279) Also, researchers at Nasa Ames research center are working on what is known as Virtual Reality, the current partial parallel to Gibson's Matrix, where an individual wears a helmet and "data glove" to become completely immersed in a computer created environment that they can manipulate. These researchers widely acknowledge Gibson as a major influence on their work (Trench). The so called "post-humanness" envisioned by Gibson involving the surgical "augmentation" of human beings is going on today mainly in the work of helping severely handicapped people. Doctors are envisioning highly technical ways of helping the blind to see and the paralyzed to walk again. One doctor, Dr. Michael Rosen, is a Cyberpunk hero and has clearly been influenced by their ideas, as he talks enthusiastically about making mechanical limbs that are better that human. Dr. Rosen sees these as a definite possibility in the not to distant future (Trench). As shown, Neuromancer continues to have a profound effect either directly or indirectly on the work of researchers currently doing a wide range of scientific endeavors within the course of creating our world.
When I first read this book I was a young working musician who was growing tired of it. I was very idealistic, a bit of a nomad, and looking for something to believe in. Neuromancer introduced me to a possible world of technology and evolution beyond anything I had remotely imagined, even though I had been reading Science Fiction for years. The book very definitely planted the seeds of philosophical thinking in my mind. Neuromancer helped me look outward to the future with my imagination and also influenced Cyberpunks and Scientists to do the same thing, helping to perform a very important function in the evolution of the human race, that of the envisioning necessary to create our evolving world. In his strange essay "The Sinister Fruitiness of machines: Neuromancer, Internet Sexuality, and the Turing Test", Tyler Curtain makes the observation that "the characters of ...Neuromancer...are all entities who live to one degree or another in the machine, or in cyberspace, ...or... in the matrix of human knowledge "from the banks of every computer in the human system" (Curtain 129). I believe that metaphorically, we are all part of this "matrix of human knowledge," and we all do our part to build it as it evolves into the future.
Work Cited
Brians, Paul. "Study Guide for William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)." Nov 7, 1999. April 9, 2001. http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/
science_fiction/neuromancer.html.
Curtain, Tyler. "The‘"Sinister Fruitiness"' of Machines: Neuromancer, Internet Sexuality, and the Turing Test". Novel Gazing: Queer readings in Fiction. Ed. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Durham: The Duke University Press. 1997. 129-148.
Gibson, William. Neuromancer. New York: Berkley Publishing Group, 1984.
Hafner, Katie and John Markoff. Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier. New York: Simon and Shuster. 1991.
St. Jude, R.U. Sirius and Bart Nagel. Cyberpunk Handbook: The Real Cyberpunk Fakebook. New York: Random House, Inc. 1995.
Science and the Human Imagination: Albert Einstein. Papers and Discussions by Jeremy Bernstein and Gerald Feinberg. Ed. Charlse Angoff. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. 1978.
Trench, Marrianne. "Cyberpunk". New York: Mystic Fire Video, 1990.
Other Works by David M. Petersen