If the RIAA kicked our doors in right now…

…and rounded us all up, what would we call ourselves?

asks Chris Minotaur. A really great article on what happend to cyberpunk – i.e. is it dead allready? And yes, I choose “I want my brain haxxorred right now!”

Actually the article is so good that Bruce Sterling (Islands in the Net, Schismatrix) blogged about it. I guess you better start reading. The text is not only really clever, but also a fantastic read.

Easter Linking

If you came over to read stuff, you’re going to be disappointed. Even I have something better to do on Easter then to write for you.

But fear not: Others wrote stuff worthy of your attention:

  1. Wired shows you how to create your own combat bot. Ground, aerial and submerged bots for you to build – for just some 100s or 100s of $. It’s a wiki, so you can help. I wonder when homeland security takes down that site. Terrorists might use the cheap combat bots… :) (Am I the only one who thinks that “Homeland security” sounds deliciously fascist?
  2. Contact lenses that can do some stuff we thought cybereyes would needed for, esp. a HUD (head up display, showing you images superimposed over your view – today used by fighter pilots)
  3. A Cyberpunk documentary from 1993. Look how William Gibson looked like 14 years ago:
The young William Gibson, ca 1993
Click for bigger size

People who say I'm dystopian are middle class pussies!

Says William Gibson in this Interview

On the seamless net being woven

“There’s some enormous number, millions and millions, of Iranians who are about to get their first cell phones. The infrastructure has been built. That’s an interesting side of Iran we don’t hear so much about. And you know, they’re not just getting cell phones, they’re getting Internet. What is that going to do to that country? The government is not going to be able to control what those people are watching. I just find that amazing, really.

“We’ve grown up thinking: ‘Over here is the Internet, over there is cellular telephony, and here are iPods.’ It’s not going to be like that. That stuff is all just one cloud of stuff and it works together and you can’t just get a little piece of it. The kids being born today will grow up finding the quaintest thing about the past was that people had these different devices that had discrete functions.”

(Source: This Interview)