Misc. Stuff/Cyberpunk Info/About Me

Covers for the "New Rose Hotel" movies. The old one and the current one.

New Rose Hotel

The posters for the two different live productions of the Burning Chrome play

Cover of some copy of Mona Lisa Overdrive, is it Molly or Mona?

Wired Articles

And by clicking here you get links to a bunch of articles that Gibson, Stephenson, and Sterling have written for Wired

My Shot At Software Authoring

Click here to download "Truth.exe", a small program I created to accompany my stories in the stories section. It is written in Turbo Pascal, and I am in no means a programmer. If you really get stuck (and most probably will) at answering the cryptic riddle at the beginning, scroll down to the bottom of this page, the answers are written in black small font print.

Cyberpunk Definition

Well something can be cyberpunk at varying degrees. There is no real definitive meaning for cyberpunk. So you make a personal judgment based on the elements in the book/game/movie. A short and not comprehensive (but as comprehensive as i can pull off) list is as follows:

THEMES

Elements of the philosophical discussion of what makes something "alive"
Discussion of whether or not artificial life forms (Be they robots or AI's) should have citizenship/rights
The effect on a technology entrenchment/dependence on the individual or society.
Legality of hacking/using neural augmentation

STOCK ELEMENTS

Neural augmentation
AI's
Genetic and/or Cybernetic modifications
Some sort of a internet. Remember, cyberpunk was created before the internet. Some old cyberpunk books like "Islands of the Net" describe a cyberspace that was basically a communication medium including TV, Phone, Fax (they really emphasized the wonders of fax...), and a "Data Feed" which seemed more like Telnet than the web.
Drugs
Hackers/Netrunners/Deck Cowboys/Ect
All form of weird mindfucks.
Megacorps

STYLE/BACKDROP

A sort of gritty "streets" feeling
Overpopulation
Pollution
Usually takes place on the "wrong side of the law" that sort of thing
Highly manipulated government (like we don't have that already)
Struggle of humanity against the power of machines
I think that is about all i can come up with. The more of the elements a story/game/movie has. The more cyberpunk it is.

"The future masters of technology
will have to be lighthearted and intelligent.
The machine easily masters the grim and the dumb."
-- Marshall McLuhan, 1969

About Me

My name is Josh K. I currently attend UW Whitewater and am majoring in Management Computer Systems. I enjoy punk, techno and alternative music, and am tinkering with techno myself. This is the third webpage I have made, the first being a nine inch nails page, the second being a homepage (that was at this address). Questions, comments, and story submissions to this site would be greatly appreciated and my e-mail address is at the bottom of the page. My ICQ# is 21516057.

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