70-Year-Old Cyberpunk: 'This Interview Is a Mistake' (spikeartmagazine.com) 37
Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: He was the co-publisher of the first popular digital culture magazine, MONDO 2000, from 1989–1993. Now as R. U. Sirius approaches his 70th birthday, a San Francisco-based writer conducts a rollicking interview for the Berlin-based Spike Art Magazine. ("I wanted to speak with someone who had weathered the shakedown of history with art, humour, and a dose of healthy delusion. Or derision. Whatever arrived first...")
That interview itself was star-crossed. ("What came first, R.U.'s stroke or the Omicron surge? As I recovered from a bout of corona, R.U. fell ill with his own strain.. ") But eventually they did discuss the founding of that influential cyberculture magazine. (Editor Jude Milhon is credited with coining the word "cypherpunk" for an early crytography-friendly group co-founded by EFF pioneer John Gilmore.) Asked about the magazine's original vision, Sirius says "I was pretty much diverted by Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson and their playful, hopeful futurisms, their whole shebang about evolutionary brain circuits being opened up by drugs and technology."
I needed something to get me out of bed at the end of the 1970s. I mean, punk was great – rock and roll was great – but it wasn't inspiring any action. I remember my friends stole some giant lettering from a sign at a gas station and some of it hung behind the couch in our living room where we took whatever drugs were around and tossed glib nihilisms back and forth. The letters read "ROT".... I couldn't sink any deeper into that couch, so there was nowhere to go except up into outer space.
The surrealism and so forth were influences that travelled with me when I moved to California to create this new thing based on psychedelics, technology, and incorrigible irreverence that eventually became Mondo 2000.
It's a funny interview. ("The 'R.U. a Cyberpunk' page from an issue of Mondo is the only thing most people below a certain age have ever seen from the magazine and we were taking the piss out of ourselves....") They scrupulously avoid mentioning Mondo's undeniable influence on the early days of Wired. But inevitaby the conversation comes back around to that seminal question: whither cyberpunk?
Q: The internet, which was a prime source of Mondo subject matter, is home to many eyes, rabbit holes, and agents of algorithmic manipulation. Where is cyberpunk culture alive and well in our contemporary moment? Are you still invested and engaged with cyberpunk as a means of exploring radical possibilities and ideas...?
RUS: [T]here's not really a cyberpunk movement... Surrealism was a movement for a number of years because an anguished control freak named André Breton maintained it in various formations. We didn't have that person, and if we had, he or she or they probably would have been laughed out of the sandbox for the attempt....
I'll remain influenced by playful spontaneity from ancient 20th-century moments not because of any dedication, but only because that's probably the only way I was ever going to be able to write or create. I lack rigor and once declared it a sign of death.
And Sirius jokes at the end that "usually my attitude is that the world today is bloated with people opinionizing so, this interview is a mistake!"
That interview itself was star-crossed. ("What came first, R.U.'s stroke or the Omicron surge? As I recovered from a bout of corona, R.U. fell ill with his own strain.. ") But eventually they did discuss the founding of that influential cyberculture magazine. (Editor Jude Milhon is credited with coining the word "cypherpunk" for an early crytography-friendly group co-founded by EFF pioneer John Gilmore.) Asked about the magazine's original vision, Sirius says "I was pretty much diverted by Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson and their playful, hopeful futurisms, their whole shebang about evolutionary brain circuits being opened up by drugs and technology."
I needed something to get me out of bed at the end of the 1970s. I mean, punk was great – rock and roll was great – but it wasn't inspiring any action. I remember my friends stole some giant lettering from a sign at a gas station and some of it hung behind the couch in our living room where we took whatever drugs were around and tossed glib nihilisms back and forth. The letters read "ROT".... I couldn't sink any deeper into that couch, so there was nowhere to go except up into outer space.
The surrealism and so forth were influences that travelled with me when I moved to California to create this new thing based on psychedelics, technology, and incorrigible irreverence that eventually became Mondo 2000.
It's a funny interview. ("The 'R.U. a Cyberpunk' page from an issue of Mondo is the only thing most people below a certain age have ever seen from the magazine and we were taking the piss out of ourselves....") They scrupulously avoid mentioning Mondo's undeniable influence on the early days of Wired. But inevitaby the conversation comes back around to that seminal question: whither cyberpunk?
Q: The internet, which was a prime source of Mondo subject matter, is home to many eyes, rabbit holes, and agents of algorithmic manipulation. Where is cyberpunk culture alive and well in our contemporary moment? Are you still invested and engaged with cyberpunk as a means of exploring radical possibilities and ideas...?
RUS: [T]here's not really a cyberpunk movement... Surrealism was a movement for a number of years because an anguished control freak named André Breton maintained it in various formations. We didn't have that person, and if we had, he or she or they probably would have been laughed out of the sandbox for the attempt....
I'll remain influenced by playful spontaneity from ancient 20th-century moments not because of any dedication, but only because that's probably the only way I was ever going to be able to write or create. I lack rigor and once declared it a sign of death.
And Sirius jokes at the end that "usually my attitude is that the world today is bloated with people opinionizing so, this interview is a mistake!"
Executive summary? (Score:4, Insightful)
Executive summary of the ./ story? Maybe it's getting too late here but I read the first two paragraphs above and between the names I did not recognise and the multiple parentheses etc I could not make much sense and gave up...
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe it's getting too late here but I read the first two paragraphs above and between the names I did not recognise and the multiple parentheses etc I could not make much sense and gave up...
Summary: Don't do drugs kids.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Summary: Don't do drugs kids.
Expected response.
Thing is, we need more people like R.U. Sirius in the world.
How do you propose we achieve that?
Re: (Score:3)
If you do not know who R. U. Sirius is... then there is nothing I can do for you
Re: (Score:3)
The founders of cyberpunk culture were radical anarchist psychedelic users heavily into philosophy, drugs, and computers. They look at the current culture of the internet and the corners where these guys used to dwell have been taken over by Christian Dominionist Intel nut jobs and are wondering how the fuck they didn't see that coming.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Frankly, the only group that I find worse than "christian dominionists" are "radical psychedelic users heavily into philosophy, drugs, and computers". The first group is the one who created our current culture, even the so called social justice left can be traced back to christian doctrine (and that is a good thing, for both sides). The second group is just a bunch of indulgent manboys, overdosing on drugs, creating debts for the next generation.
Re: (Score:2)
Frankly, the only group that I find worse than "christian dominionists" are "radical psychedelic users heavily into philosophy, drugs, and computers". The first group is the one who created our current culture, even the so called social justice left can be traced back to christian doctrine (and that is a good thing, for both sides). The second group is just a bunch of indulgent manboys, overdosing on drugs, creating debts for the next generation.
So western culture then? Including the part where people get to point at something and say they created it because it exists? And another one swears to it so making it legal to point and damn?
Clearly (Score:3)
Posting this story on Slashdot is a mistake.
Re: Clearly (Score:4, Insightful)
This should be a discussion of how this garbage has warped people's minds and caused drug users and mentally ill people to spiral out of control into the abyss.
If you spent any time working with those people, you head the mish-mash of pseudoscience, religious, and political conspiracies, all different from each other, and the believers are conviced that they are on to something big and fantastic that the public does not know. And they believe that have been 'gifted' with this 'knowledge' and that they are missionaries to spread this 'knowledge'.
Re: Clearly (Score:4, Informative)
Amazingly, you get a mish-mash of pseudoscience (erototoxins and yellow cake uranium), religious and political conspiracies (they hate us for our freedoms and only about 20 years in the desert to find illumination) from the mainstream that doesn't quite get nearly as much scorn (even though there was a body count that followed). And let's not forget the current drama to gift the public with secret knowledge coming from cable news.
I get it if it isn't your thing, but in comparison, you just look like an ass.
Re: Clearly (Score:2)
At least you have the option to turn your TV off.
Imagine having to listen to what I will call neo-cyberpunks drone on for hours on end, and worse anything that you rebutt their spiel with might get a chair thrown at your head.
This is not something that you want to have to handle as a long term career, as you will get burned out really quick or might end up going crazy yourself.
This is likely why none of those people are getting any help, because there are not many people alive who can deal w
Re:Clearly (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because it harkens back to a time when there were truly creative people and outsiders who worked in tech, before things changed and everybody became so bloody-minded that they needed everything spelled out for them and their opinions spoon-fed to them by pseudo-libertarian billionaires with hair plugs.
Those what knows, knows.
Cyberpunk != Cypherpunk (Score:5, Informative)
Please don't confuse them.
The cypherpunks included Hal Finney, who worked on the implementation of Bitcoin with Satoshi Nakamoto. (Finney said they never met in person.)
In a real sense Bitcoin came out of the cypherpunks.
The "secret admirers" mailing list described in Neil Stephenson's _Cryptonomicon_ was an analog of the real cypherpunks mailing list.
ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Cyberpunk != Cypherpunk (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, fuck. Posted a lengthy 'I second OldMugwump'' remark, with a summary of what Cypherpunk is and /.'s fucking 'no anon' mechanism destroyed it when redirecting me to authenticate.
Not doing that again, but cyberpunk is dystopian technoSF. Cypherpunk is Hughes, Tim May, Gilmore, Finney and Zimmerman and Assange and Back's PGPsig and Anon Remailers and the mixmaster and cryptocurrency and the fucking EFF and FreeSWAN and TOR and anyone fighting tooth and nail against Dorothy Denning (damn, remembered her name -- called her Dorothy Whozname first time around) and governmental backdoors into crypto (Clipper chip, . It's OTR. It's privacy-as-a-foundational-right, enforced by tech since fucking governments hate it. It's knowing the tools can be abused by pedos and mobsters and nation-states, but building them because they're an equalizer -- people can protect themselves from thugs and nation-states with these tools. And so much more.
TFA embarrasses us all. Please Stahp acting bandying those two terms interchangeably.
Re: (Score:2)
Stephenson wrote The Great Simoleon Caper [time.com] in 1995 which probably foreshadowed the work of Satoshi more than anything else
You can roll a die to see if Stephenson, Gibson Dick, or ... coined (or inspired) the term cyberpunk
While I appreciate the technical merits of your case, the society at large has accepted cyberpunk at the apex of this meme-tree and likely thinks cypher-punk is a misspelling ')
Re: (Score:2)
yeah, I also tilt at windmills when folks abuse the term 'hacker'. Won't die on these hills, but it's worthy to burn off some rage from time to time.
Comment Subject (Score:2)
I don't really know what this article is saying, but VRChat is the closest we've come to the depiction of the metaverse from Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash." Complete with talking penises.
Cyberpunks everywhere (Score:2, Troll)
If come across a few people who went on a nonsensical monologue involving magnets, Jesus, space aliens, vampires, The Matrix, the US government...basically a shit stew of sci-fi, conspiracy, and religious theories that they try and fail at putting all of this together in some semi coherent manner that could at least be a cheap paperback novel written by some basement hack. These people were also on drugs or suffering severe mental illness, and many of them lived on the streets and didn't even have a pocket
Re: (Score:3)
Your comment reads like something written by the very people you apparently abhor.
Cyberpunk is first and foremost a literary genre, and second a fashion movement. Any lifestyle is a distant third.
As a genre it is uniquely prophetic, in that it typically doesn't attempt to project too far into the future. Anyone who can extrapolate reasonably can see the future looks dark.
For those of us who have been readers of the genre since its beginnings, played the roleplaying game or what have you, your contentless ra
Re: Cyberpunks everywhere (Score:2)
"For those of us who have been readers of the genre since its beginnings, played the roleplaying game or what have you, your contentless rant resembles nothing so much as the mumblings of a cyberpsycho, strung out on inhalable designer drugs."
The people I am talking about aren't the ones who just read the novels, or follow fashion trends.
The people I'm talking about are the ones who mash a bunch of different things that they heard about into a shit stew, believe it to be 100% reality, and th
Re: (Score:2)
"Cyberpsychos". That's a good term, and a way to distinguish people who are simply into the cyberpunk genre from the batshit insane people.
In the R. Talsorian Cyberpunk 2020 RPG, "cyberpsychos" are people who have replaced too much of themselves with machines and consequently lost [most of] their humanity. An example from the classic literature ;) is the Street Preacher from Johnny Mnemonic.
Re: Cyberpunks everywhere (Score:2)
"cyberpsychos" are people who have replaced too much of themselves with machines and consequently lost [most of] their humanity"
There are too many people who have managed to do this without the aid of any machines. This is something that has gone on long before the terms "cyber" or "punk" (in the modern sense) were invented, but it's gotten a whole lot worse in recent times (with and without the aid of machines).
You know the saying "Machines are becoming more like people and people are becom
"This interview was a mistake" (Score:1)
Glad he warned me, so I didn't waste my time reading it.
But the summary did a pretty good job of raising the ref flag anyway... after the first paragraph or two, I was pretty sure I couldn't care less about this person.
Re: (Score:2)
Unless you're the kinda guy who listens to Information society and wears mirrored Oakleys and an LED butt plug 24/7 you definitely don't need to give two shits. R U Serious is, as his moniker implies, a piss-taker whose media influence is entirely due to colorful sound bites. I'm not mad at him for it, but he's pure entertainment.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:"This interview was a mistake" (Score:4, Insightful)
Why are you so bitter about an interview of a "web 1.0" era of the dream of endless possibilities in Cyberspace? What else would we need here on this niche, decrepit site, another chance to talk about Twitter?
Re: (Score:2)
Right, now we know where taking LSD and being a pseudo-intellectual-futurist-punk-rocker takes you in life. I'm sure he is happy and a had a lot of fun along the way. Really its more Art than anything.
Actually read article (Score:4, Interesting)
So after some time I actually read the article. Although the summary is pretty much incomprehensible. the actual interview is pretty good.
The guy is pretty obviously an old-school hardcore leftist hippie, but at least seems to have his eyes open.
It ends with an absolutely great line from a song he wrote that is directly applicable to our modern times:
While we try to make sense/ideas are being steamrolled by events.
Don't know if anyone else noticed, but the media is really keep on shuffling all of us from crisis to crisis... and no-one is allowed to debate rationally anymore, torn down by rabid monkeys from all sides.
Re: (Score:3)
no-one is allowed to debate rationally anymore, torn down by rabid monkeys from all sides.
In general people are able to debate rationally so long as they remain rational. What happens is they go off the rails when they don't. They're trying to justify a belief, not share a discovery.
"Acts of God" aside, events don't just happen. Humans make them happen. Humans create environments in which bad things flourish, whether they're ideas or viruses.
Re:Actually read article (Score:4)
I know I know, they mentioned Leary so they _must_ be hippies
I would argue that they are really punks and would likely enjoy eviscerating most of what you call hippie culture, particularly since so many hippies became money grubbing yuppies, and then lawn shouting boomers as they aged
Leary did a speaking tour, Tune in Turn on and Take over, it was very focused on the "next" generation and Leary was encouraging the "Whiz Kids" as he called them to take over American culture.
Unfortunately, he was mostly speaking to Gen-X, which has just been a small tide between Boomer and Millenials. On the positive side, imo Gen-X has punched out of their weight class and delivered some real gems
Re: (Score:2)
I would argue that they are really punks and would likely enjoy eviscerating most of what you call hippie culture
Ok, fair enough, even though I personally subscribed to Mondo 2000 in the early days, I guess I never was Hippie or Punk enough myself to really have a great final call on which camp someone belongs in... however my parents were defiantly hippie-ish and not at all punk, some of the things he was talking about (the environmental parts) landed him more hippie to my mind currently, though a while ag
If there is such a thing as "cyber culture" (Score:1)
It's people staring zombie-like, while doomscrolling on their smartphones.
The revolution will not be televised; it's just not that interesting.
A step beyond Creative Computing (Score:3)