Update

Paul Taylor doesn’t need meandensity to tell him which way the wind blows:

“The ambivalence of hackers’ claims to be a counter-cultural force are mirrored in what has been identified as an inherent contradiction of cyberpunk literature. Cyberpunks are presented as anarchic opponents to established corporate power yet the genre is marked by the frequency with which the cyberpunk’s human agency is subsumed to the greater ends of their corporate hirers. They fail frequently to redirect corporate power to more humane ends and this is perhaps due to the ultimate conflation of the cyberpunks/hackers and corporations’ desire for technological experimentation. Hackers and cyberpunks only wish to surf the wave of technological innovation, but corporations constantly seek to co-opt that desire for their own ends.”

-”Hackers–Cyberpunks or Microserfs?” (1998)

 

To which we will merely add what we can’t help but notice, given who we turn out to be: this desire and that desire whose true name is not the love of literature for literature’s own sake are structurally identical, and produce identical results.

~ by Tim on May 5, 2008.