The matrix, cyberpunk literature, and the apocalyptic landscapes of information technology
Paul F. Starrs, Lynn Huntsinger · Information Technology and Libraries · 1995
Perhaps no theme has so attracted febrile imaginings of postmodern scholars as creations--and technological culture--of literature. Cyberpunk science fiction is the apotheosis of post-modernism, in one assessment, dystopian anticipation, in lights of another, and the only art systematically dealing with most crucial political, philosophical, moral, and cultural issues of our day, as envisioned by a third.[1] For such fervor there is solid backing. A great theme in literature is Matrix, an abstract representation of relationship between data systems, in words of William Gibson.[2] Enormously complex and almost impossible to map, geometry and particularities of this cybernetic space are not qualities easily defined. Among unearthly delights of Matrix is assessing its elusive dimensions. The broad literary movement, as it is often described, blends fast-paced and imaginative writing with a pungent if admiring wariness for computers.[3] Rather more importantly, cyberpunk takes an often-savage delight in roaming information networks that especially personal computers make possible. Altogether gone is bland worship of technology that once defined science fiction; no part survives in cyberpunk. Instead there is edgy opposition, awareness of intrusive give-and-take of everything from hi-tech drugs to mirrored sunglasses that are a common motif in writing--reflective shades slamming shut unilaterally and peremptorily window to soul. Yes, is alienated, but hardly alien.[4] The geography is ineluctable. Punched into writing and world it anoints lies a remarkable new frontier of geographical exploration and discovery, couched in a most visceral form: delves through canyons of mind by navigating pure information. For all its estimable presence, Matrix poses nasty dilemmas, including notable quandaries for geographers and other traders in information of places who live and breathe for maps and mappable. While conventional libraries are challenged by computer data, so too are descriptive powers of cartographers--not a group, as Jorge Luis Borges once suggested, generally known for being easy to intimidate.[5] What is structure, map, of this informational nether world?[6] That it exists is certain enough. Net statistics show a rate of growth that leaves no doubt about current existence of this world that is exposed in bits and bytes. The world created is cyberspace--a territory of facts and lies; of binary naughts and ones; sustained by data packets, ethernets, and network links; a virtual reality existing in eyes of beholder, wherever, in Michael Benedikt's phrasing, electricity runs with intelligence.[7] Yet, for all their value as speculative devices for positing dimensions of future society, cyberspace and Matrix are here now: And Yakuza would be settling its ghostly bulk over city's data banks, probing for faint images of me reflected in numbered accounts, securities transactions, bills for utilities. We're an information economy. They teach you that in school. What they don't tell you is that it's impossible to move, to live, to operate at any level without leaving traces, bits, seemingly meaningless fragments of personal information. Fragments that can be retrieved, amplified ...[8] As any number of commentators on technological scene note, computers are useful these days, not as dandy encapsulations of technological wizardry, but for legion ways that computer networks offer to improve an otherwise all-too limited human capacity to communicate and absorb information. That 1990s daily life is enmeshed with computers is obvious, if not always welcome: witness e-mail addresses that appear in professional paper abstracts, World Wide Web, online catalogs that all major university libraries maintain, computer-accessible bank accounts, Wired, electronic chat groups, or (now yesterday's news) BBS--the computer bulletin board. …