Recently, the Netflix animation "Cyberpunk: The Fringe Walker" has driven the popular cyberpunk culture phenomenon across the Internet. "Cyberpunk: The Edge Walker" is produced by the Trigger Club and directed by Yoyu Imashima. It is derived from the CDPR game "Cyberpunk 2077". After the release of the animation, the number of original games online on Steam has increased sharply, and a large number of illustrations, imitation makeup, novels, etc. have been derived on social media. There is no doubt that "The Fringe Walker" activates the long-silent cyberpunk theme, and the content of the work also transcends the superficial pink visual effects in popular culture, becoming an important work in the cyberpunk genealogy.
Cyberpunk was born from the science fiction new wave movement that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. Compared with the space opera type science fiction that praises technological progress, the New Wave movement no longer attaches importance to technology, wonders, and adventure, but combines the reflection of social science with the depth of humanities in the text, and widely uses creative techniques such as symbolism and stream of consciousness that are popular in modern European literature. In the 1970s and 1980s, information technologies such as the Internet and personal computers developed rapidly. At this time, the Cold War has not yet ended, and the aftermath of the hippie commune and countercultural movement since the 1960s are still there. In 1984, William Gibson's "Neuromancer" was born, and the cowboy adventure story of western films moved to Cyberspace , and classics have emerged one after another. The protagonist of the cyberpunk theme combines the two charming identities of punk musicians and hackers, both rebellious and cool, while mastering new technologies.
Many settings of "The Edge Walker" can be found in the echo of classic works. " Blade Runner " The chaos and danger of the future city and the debate on robotic nature; in "Akira", the technology giants use children to conduct scientific research experiments, and urban orphans gradually lose themselves in mechanical transformation; team configurations similar to "Interstellar Cowboy", wandering and risking together to form a life-and-death friendship, and the ending battle of the male protagonist; the fantasy of landing on the moon against the will of heaven and change his fate in "The Crisis" and the courage to sacrifice themselves to become partners; " Hacker" The game between the rebels and the ruling order in Empire or "Snow Country Train" is entangled with the game of ruling order; in " "American Journey to the West" , the protagonist who insists on taking the tight curse without hesitation...
The past and present cyberpunk
In the cyberpunk world, technological development has not brought welfare to the general public, but has aggravated totalitarian and social inequality. On the other hand, new technologies have given marginal punk new weapons of resistance, thus transcending the constraints of the body and the social system, and rebel organizations and thoughts are connected in the cyberspace.
The protagonist David comes from a working-class family in East Asia. His mother works hard to make money and lets her children go to aristocratic college. After graduation, she becomes a big-factory social animal. This is a typical story of a small town working hard to achieve class leap. David has a clear understanding of this class gap. David does not want to and cannot become "people like them" because they are unkind. After David lost his mother and became an orphan in a car accident, he was bullied by the rich second generation of the school board in the school. They relied on their money to buy the most advanced prosthetic equipment on the market and used the physical strength of the transformed Cyborg to suppress, beat and bully ordinary David. This is a scene that is becoming a reality. Genetic transformation, biochemical machinery, brain-computer interface and other technologies can improve lifespan, intelligence, physical fitness, and eliminate illness. Class differences are transformed into species differences. Is the elite group who are the first to transform " transhumanism " with their economic advantages? Are they still the same people as the "equal people" originally endorsed by the biological level?
On the way to school, David walked out from a ground floor block and took rail transit to the higher block where Arasaka College was located, witnessing the cruel section of the strong prey on the weak in the Night City. David's doorstep was filled with homeless people who were drunk and dreaming, and crimes were happening everywhere around him. People who were addicted to Nipple VR were wandering on the streets. The data was squeezed out like a walking dead. This is the people at the bottom of Night City. Although technology brings flying cars, grand buildings, and superb medical care, the premise is to serve customers only.David's mother was in a coma in a car assassination by a street gang, but the trauma team refused to help her. "These people are left to the municipal corpse transport truck." David paid for the cheapest first aid service, did not save her mother, and could not even see her for the last time before her mother passed away, because the cheapest package did not include visiting services. David finally received the cold urn and walked home sadly, but found that because he failed to pay the rent on time, Smart Home locked him out the door. These experiences became David's permanent trauma, and appeared in the form of memories in the subsequent plot. In order to take revenge, David had to go to the black clinic to install Sian Westan's military combat prosthetic body in order to get revenge. It can be said that David's tragedy was destined from the beginning. It was not Adam's heavy hammer that killed David, but the instructions from the leaders of Arasaka Company, this oppressive structure, and a night city that devoured life.
Cyberg, Cyber Madman and Posthuman
Cyberpunk The word is composed of cyber (network) and punk (punk). The etymology of cybernetics is cybernetics ( cybernetics ). Cybernetics is an important ideological movement in the 20th century, laying the foundation for the era of quantitative social sciences and information technology after the Cold War. Punk is a subculture of the British working-class community after World War II. Restless and rebellious teenagers resist all dominant authority through music, clothing, and street actions. Governance and rebellion, two contradictory concepts are entangled.
1948, Norbert Wiener published the interdisciplinary masterpiece "Cybernetics: Science on Control and Communication in Animals and Machines", creating the concept of cybernetics. "Cybernetics" originated from Greek kybernētēs, meaning "governance". Wiener believes that human society, organisms and automated machines can all be regarded as such control systems, and the system completes self-regulation and control through the exchange and feedback of information of various components. As a methodology, cybernetics integrates the boundaries between machines and organisms, and also challenges the subjectivity of human cognition and behavior.
Wiener, a student of Russell and was influenced by Dewey (John Dewey) Progressive thoughts, predicting the future of cyberpunk, implying that the digitalization process initiated by cybernetics is Pandora's box, "A huge problem we must face in the future is the relationship between humans and machines." In "The Uses of People: Cybernetics and Society", he wrote: "Under the chaotic market of capitalism, the development of automation will lead to a new industrial revolution , turning people with medium intelligence into redundant people, putting them in a dead state." Wiener also said, "The only way out is to establish another society. In this society, people's lives are not evaluated as objects of business, but based on themselves." Another synthetic word derived from Cybernetics and Organism is Cyborg - a fusion of biological machines. Donna Haraway wrote in "The Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and the Late 20th Century Socialist Feminism ": "A Cyborg is a biocontrol system, a combination of machines and organisms, a social reality, and a fictional creature in the novel."
In the play, the Cyborg, which has been modified into a prosthetic body, is a Cyborg. David installed Sian Westan's military combat prosthesis that her mother had obtained as a nurse. Compared with the commercially available stylists that can be purchased on the market, most of the transformations of Cyberpunks are illegal, underground, and risk-filled, so they have stronger power and put higher requirements on the driver's talent.
In the Cyberpunk Urban Dark Forest Rules, the modification of the prosthetic body is a way to no return. Cyberpunks not only have to carry out dangerous missions, but also face anytime street attacks and revenge from other gangster enemies.Continuously replace and upgrade the prosthesis to obtain stronger strength, bring a heavier burden, and require a larger dose of immunosuppressive drugs until the original body is not much left, such as the Ship of Theseus. Is the "I" still the original "I" at this time? Get a bounty when doing tasks, use bounty to transform the prosthetic body. A stronger prosthetic body faces stronger enemies and forms a vicious cycle until you become a cyber madman.
Cyberman (Cyber Mentality) is an immune response formed by excessive prosthetic transformation, mechanical structure and biological body rejection, which leads to the driver's mental disorder and loss of mind. The opposition to be wary of the transformation of "transhumanism" is similar to that. Some scholars believe that the transformation of Cyborg will lead to a crisis of human nature and threaten the existing social system. So the question is, do we really have an unchanging human nature?
When David just carried out his first prosthetic transformation and joined Mann's cyberpunk team, he was still a fledgling boy in the eyes of others. Although he was gifted, he did not know how to strengthen the prosthetic body, maintain the immune system, and maintain the body's balance. Through the cross shots of Mann's conversation, he trained running with Lucy at night, learned boxing and fighting with Dorio, and learned gunfighting skills with Rebecca, what he brought to David was not only physical enhancement, psychological maturity, but also a socialization process - integrating into the Cyberpunk lifestyle and life experience. My mother gave David the initial military cervical prosthesis (mother's flesh and blood), and Mann (father's role) gave David socialization and leadership training, and passed on his prosthesis to David after his death in the battle. After David became the core of the team's leadership.
The love between David and Lucy touched countless audiences. Lucy was once a talented child selected by the Arasaka Group at its base in overseas colonies. She was instilled with the dream of working for large companies. In fact, for the interests of Arasaka, she was sent as cannon fodder to carry out the most dangerous hacker infiltration mission. Later, Lucy and her companions escaped from a slave-like life, but their companions were all killed, leaving only Lucy alone to escape from the pursuit. David is not living just for other people’s dreams, nor is he brainless punk. David, who was admitted to the aristocratic college based on his ability, has always had a profound criticism of Arasaka. Whether it was the death of his mother or the colonization project on the moon, David felt that countless people were the price of sacrifice. At the moment when they decided to face Arasaka head-on, the conversation between the two in the corridor said, "The big company is monitoring you and me all the time." This sense of oppression often tortures the two of them unable to fall asleep. They rode motorcycles to the suburbs late at night, looking at the "cage made of flashing lights in the city of Night." Lucy takes David into her simulated Moon’s unique super dream, and the super dream Cyborg bond built by the two makes Lucy awaken David when he is on the verge of collapse of the Cyborg man. Holding hands and running and jumping on the moon surface, they find a beautiful sustenance from their lovers and become the meaning of each other's survival. In "The Multiple of Love", French philosopher Badiou regarded "love" as a thorough adventure, believing that love is the smallest unit of communism. It is through each other that David and Lucy overcome this dark age that love becomes a kinetic energy in a political situation.
From the theory of embodiedness, the subject of perception is the body, and thoughts and cognition are closely related to the specific body. The process of David gradually growing into a qualified cyberpunk warrior is also the process of the generation of the human subject of Cyborg. Form the embodied cyberpunk ideological , that is, the new human nature combined with technology. As Katherine Hayles discussed in "How We Be Posthuman" or Andy Clark in "Born Cyborg". Human beings have been co-evolving with technology . There has never been a solid human nature. Human ideas and social relations have been adapting and evolving to each other in the process of infiltration with technology.
Resistance and Entanglement of Governance
In " Blade Runner 2049", Wallace, the largest manufacturer of the replicant, said: "Any civilization is built on a disposable army of labor."After discovering that David is a genius philosopher driver, the senior management of Arasaka has always wanted to capture the experimental products David used as a new technological product.
The modern ruling order against the labor force is called "governmentality" in the French philosopher Foucault . Foucault stated in "Discipline and Punishment" that only when the body has both the ability to produce and be tamed can it become a useful force; the knowledge and technology that completes this process can be called the life politics of the body (Life Technical ). The object of governance is not only living individuals, but a statistically significant population, a series of numbers and indicators: birth rate, mortality rate, health degree, total body that can be trained by the state and driven by production and war activities.
Another French philosopher Deleuze continued Foucault's critical path and proposed the concept of "control of society", which is more appropriate to the information age after World War II. In 1990, Deleuze published the "Afterword on Controlling Society", which controls society as a continuous digital variable, and controls society with the help of constantly regulated coding operations. In this society, individuals become "dividuals", while groups become "sampling, data, or 'banks'. Information technology and computers have become the control medium of this social dominance.
The core of cyberpunk is punk resistance to governance, exploring alternative technologies and local organizations, and resisting biopolitics and digital totalitarianism.
Arasaka Group has been difficult to find a suitable tester in the process of developing prosthetic King Kong. David is the most suitable target as the legendary cyberpunk. The teamwork of the Cyberpunk group is more efficient than that of a super-large bureaucratic group for digestion and use of new prosthetic equipment. In order to save the hostage Lucy, David was forced to wear a prosthetic King Kong, and the Cyberpunk team destroyed the military technology unit and Arasaka's security team, demonstrating a powerful ability beyond expectations. After David died in the battle, his prosthetic body will be dismantled, the data will help the technology giants upgrade their products, and the combat memories stored in the prosthetic body will be made into a super dream for players to experience.
governance system may absorb subculture, slogan routes and action modes of rebels to support manipulated agents, or transform them into new products and promote them to the consumer market. This process not only releases internal contradictions, but also expands the boundaries of market economy . This energy of marginal resistance has been incorporated and upgraded by the governance technology, and the spiral game between governance and anti-governance, the temple and the rivers and lakes echoes the history of Internet technology in the 20th century.
1940-1950s, at the beginning of its birth, computers were invested and developed by the military-industry consortium. As a symbol of social machines in the cold industrial era, it represents a huge centralized bureaucratic structure, and life is completely rational and rigid. The key innovations in computer functions in the 1960s and 1970s came from scientists participating in the civil rights movement and the hippie commune: image interface, mouse interaction, table and pictures and other document processing functions, file downloads, emails, online neighbor group chats - the functions of miniaturized computer services for individual creation are improved. The computer network in the 1980s and 1990s symbolized the tools of individual liberation. Individual creativity absorbed the concepts and organizational models of the countercultural movement and hippie commune - open sharing, flexible employment, community collaboration - individuals, computers and point-to-point virtual communities. The symbolic transformation and technical journey of computers are jointly constructed by the hippie-engineer group in the complex historical interaction between military-industry-commune-club groups.
technology is built by many social forces and political visions. It is the vector parameters of the technical process that inspired the cross-border, shock and conflict-like social interaction. Technology upgrades are inherent in social innovation, and this social innovation often comes from "marginal walkers" who resist governance.
Leninism believes that the revolution takes place at a weak link in the capitalist world system . As Greber believes, real democratic technology and diverse practices arise from "intercultural improvisation zones", that is, "middle zones" or marginal groups, which are usually places that are not controlled by state power.In the social history of information technology inspired by cyberpunk, the revolution did not occur at the center of advanced productivity , but was born in the resistance of the most marginal communities. Rather, advanced productivity requires the catalysis of marginal resistance.
Just as David's bombarded plasma turned into the prosperous CBD landscape of Night City, the blood of cyberpunk watered the Night City, and all the true love and legends of resistance were swallowed by Night City.
The Cyberpunk, the iron-torn Night City, the legend and destruction of David's team, the Night City is still running, and there are still talented philosopher drivers born, feeding the training data of new products of technology giants, so what is the meaning of resistance? As for Arasaka Daiichi, in the last episode, David fought against the giants, and the ultimate boss he appeared on was just a p5-level administrative manager. Here, the ultimate Cyborg vision has entered the withering of Cyborg myth.
Cyberpunk narratives are moving towards withering because cyberpunk is no longer a fantasy on the other side, but a struggle on this side. The technological society predicted by Cyberpunk has become a reality, and it has even been trapped in the cycle of heroic dragons. At this time, we need a way out of the crisis. After the commercialization of the Internet in the 1980s, the global expansion of neoliberalism, the powerful technology companies monopolize data and manipulate citizens. Facebook unlimited user data, invading privacy; Google cooperates with the US Department of Defense to develop artificial intelligence weapons; Amazon abuses monitoring on the warehousing system to squeeze employees. The separatist and monopoly of data and mobile platforms by Internet giants violates the spirit of the basic open agreement of the World Wide Web. Smartphones are like organs of the body, as extensions of limbs, and each user has become Cyborg. Internet users, such as the utensils that support the mother's body in "The Matrix", collect user data on mobile phones, transmit it to a centralized platform, squeeze data and labor, and feed and train AI to create value for the giants. The existing capitalist system is shrouded in global crises: environmental pollution and climate catastrophe, intensification of contradictions between urban space, social inequality between the rich and the poor, the vicious circle of economic depression has led to social division, and the global spread of extreme right populism...
Cyberpunk first appeared as a science fiction theme, and then evolved into a series of subcultures, thoughts, and art movements. On the cyberpunk section of Reddit, the sentence "high tech, low life". Cyberpunk once gave people a glimpse of the dark future in the last century, and rose together with the electronic information industry and became an important trend of thought after the countercultural movement. This dark future, Hart and Negri called "imperial", a data capitalist rule of super-nationals, Deleuze or Agamben called "a society of hypercontrol", all social life is quantified as part of the database, controlled by surveillance and feedback.
After cyberpunk, the crypto-punk trend emerged on the west coast of hippie fertile soil. Crypunk witnesses this dark future, and the cryptography tool is a self-defense weapon that gives everyone, which can protect citizens' privacy and data and fight against Internet giants. In 1992, Tim May published the Crypto Anarchist Manifesto. May, who was a senior scientist and electronic engineer at Intel, launched the cryptographic punk mailing list. The mailing list community has born many functions and protocols, laying the technical foundation for Bitcoin proposed by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008, and opening up Web3 narrative and technological innovation.
In addition, there are many XX-punk narratives, such as in Sunpunk, it advocates the design of a future society with ecological prosperity, community harmony and high technology coexist. In the 20th century overhead history of atomic punk imagination, the Soviet Union did not disintegrate, and human atomic energy technology made rapid progress, solving the energy crisis and driving the progress of the entire society... Going back to the cyberpunk genealogy, it is like sneaking into a time machine that salvages various historical alternative possibilities, those suppressed, forgotten, and ignored "edge walkers" indicate the future diverse technological routes.
At the end of 2022 "Cyberpunk: The Edge Walker", the moment when the titular body transformer David covered his teammates to escape, was brutally destroyed by Adam with a huge power gap, recalled everything:
Things I have seen, you robot slaves can't believe it
I sneaked into the moon's super dream and leaped on a huge solar panel
I watched the rising data of the night city
I fought bloody battle with the cyberpunk teammates
All these moments will eventually be engraved into the super dream
Just like a hot tear
Disappeared in the night city
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