Cyberpunk interview questions?
Posted by PsychochildJul 26
Looking for a bit of feedback here. I’ve talked to a few people about doing interviews about their work. So I’m working on some questions to send them and thinking of some good general questions to send to whomever we might interview in the future.
Since you are the ones who will have to read the questions, let me pose this to the audience here: what questions do you think we should ask in an interview?
5 comments
Comment by unwesen on July 26, 2010 at 1:45 AM
Where do you think cyberpunk is going?
The reason I’m interested is that many of the tech ideas cyberpunk is based of is … well, already obsolete even though we still don’t have neural interfaces. It’s obsolete in the sense, though, that we’ve since made such great advances in biotech that it seems more conceivable than previously, and certainly more futuristic, to drop the idea of enhancing humanity’s ways of interacting with their environment (natural or artificial) through cybernetic means, and go a biotech route only.
So there’s been a bit of biotech cyberpunk, like the Dark Angel series, etc. But as much as I liked that example, it fell a bit flat when compared to how Neuromancer charted this exciting, new world of cyberspace.
So… long question, or rather explanation of the question, but I’d love to hear some thoughts on that from, well, anyone really ;)
Comment by Ysharros on July 26, 2010 at 4:41 AM
I’m with unwesen there — and I’m interested in hearing more about the increasing biological integration. It’s less likely now that we’ll be sporting burning chrome everywhere and more likely that they’ll be bio-based.
Can we still have cyberpunk if the cyber isn’t metal-based?
This isn’t a question per se, but I’ve wondered about it a fair bit. The concept of cyber-space itself (data/cityscapes/Tron-like grid) as a separate “explorable realm” seems to have receded in recent years*. The concept of netrunning seems almost old-fashioned now, and I wonder why. Over-exposure in movies and TV shows? Knowledge that the web isn’t actually that simple?
Not sure it’s a useful thing to ask an author; it’s just something I’ve been pondering because I *liked* the whole blocky datascapes / netrunning / frontier exploration concept.
I’m also very interested in why our interweb ponderings so often bring in mystical entities — Gibson’s loa being just one example. Ghost in the machine? A spiritual/intangible counterbalance to the pure math/tangible computers?
* Not counting notable exceptions such as The Matrix
Comment by Dave Toulouse on July 26, 2010 at 4:52 AM
I think unwesen have something nice here. I think you could even do a whole post about that and gather thoughts from a couple of people on top of doing separate interviews.
The evolution of cyberpunk, the clash with today’s reality, how technological matters might have lost some of their magic to be incorporated in stories. What does it change for an author to be “caught up” by reality.
Comment by Haversack on July 26, 2010 at 9:13 AM
It is funny that there seems to be only one ubiquitous Tron like vision for cyberspace. Its always kind of bugged me that there are these whole worlds inside of computers that somehow designed themselves visually. I get that its supposed to be a personification of virtual space but still, anything that has human input isn’t going to be so uniform.
Architecture is a good example since its changed so much throughout history. It never made sense to see a futuristic city with all the same architecture (even if it looks really cool).
I mean what would a web 2.0 cyberspace look like? If Gibson or any other cyberpunk creator were to redo their worlds to todays web enabled society what would change?
Biotech is incredibly interesting especially since “nano-machines” now are pretty much re-purposed virus strains and protein constructs. Maybe instead of jacks made of metal stuck into our necks we will have sensory pits connected to our nervous system that are grown using our own genetic makeup. Instead of our systems possibly rejecting the machine interfaces(I think there was a GITS:SAC episode about this) it would just be a part of us. You also wouldn’t have to wait till a certain age to go cyberized since the mods would theoretically grow with you. Ok sorry for the rambling “what if”. I love this stuff.
Comment by Haversack on July 27, 2010 at 11:04 AM
Interesting article on the necessity of transparency for medical software. Talks about implant technology. There is a link in the article to a report about it as well. Probably not on the scale of cyberpunk but its not to hard see cyberpunk type scenarios arising.