Gibson's Neuromancer introduces a completely new world, a futuristic world in the sense of technology but a retrogressing one in terms of human behavior. Both progress and deterioration permeate practically all areas of life and the environment. The novel creates an upheaval in different spheres of human endeavor: political, medical, social, corporate, and the law. The disintegration of the United States is felt because of its becoming a non-entity. This status becomes more obvious when placed against a backdrop of advanced technology, both in medicine and engineering. There's a sudden shift of occurrence of important events from the West to the East, represented by establishments in Japan and China. It marks the rise of corporate power where identification is based on the name of the conglomerate, such as the Tessier-Ashpool corporation. Corporate rivalry bares greed and employs modern technology, humans with implants to increase capabilities and displays utter disregard for both moral and legal laws (Divine and Turing laws). There seems to be no limit to the means to attain the ends. This is exemplified by the operation instigated by Wintermute, an intelligence arm of Tessier-Ashpool. Indiscriminate killing becomes casual to attain a goal and loyalty is always suspect. There is moral degeneration that is no different from the barbaric means of survival of the ancient world. Medicine/drugs and gadgets dominate people instead of humans controlling their creations. Medical advances have spawned human factories of flesh and metal, and there's a proliferation of body part exchanges in the black market. The objects of trade in the market have turned from monies to human parts. Architecture is not exempt from the changes. Construction of "coffin" apartments and hotels is a backlash of poor economic conditions for most people despite progress in technology. The latter also keeps people from the need for too much furniture. Amidst all this, advanced communications systems offer a glimmer of light, however, businesses use them clandestinely. Visual, audio, and even sensory devices keep tasks and activities moving at a fast pace. It serves the corporate intelligence arm best to crack business strategies compared to the well-protected secrets of the board rooms of the present world. The world that the novel creates is not fit for human existence in terms of living a sane life. It is a dystopia, a cruel and dirty society, reminiscent of the times when man has to cross borders and subjugate others to survive. It is a move backwards despite the availability of modern technology. The science that creates technology becomes the root cause of the malady.
So, I know that if we didn't really speak up in section, we're supposed to pitch in here. I'm not as articulate as Sophia, but there were a couple things that I found pretty fascinating in this novel--particularly, the increasingly evanescent boundary between life, as we might define it, and death. Gibson tinkers with this more than once throughout the novel; there are multiple people who, for all intents and purposes, should be dead, but one way or another have found away to transcend that which is supposed to be supremely permanent. Each owes their survival to advanced technology. Case runs into Linda Lee, presumed dead, when he's pulled into Neuromancer; the construct explains to him that though Linda's body is deceased, her consciousness is still alive and well inside the matrix. Ashpool, the creepy old man that Molly comes across toward the end, has also found a way to elude death, though he seems much less thrilled about it. In order to insure the formation of the Tessierr-Ashpool corporation/hive-mind creepshow, Ashpool was cryogenically frozen multiple times and thawed only when the family was in need of him. Though he never technically "died", he has lived a lifespan far longer than the average human; technology has eliminated death for him. It doesn't necessarily turn out to be a good thing, though, as when Molly comes across him, he's so sapped and drawn and colorless and his mind so degraded that all he WISHES is to die. Interesting. So the line between the living and dead no longer exists. Laws that are usually unbreakable are now turned on their heads.
I also found an quote I found rather interesting. It's not very long, and I have a different book than everyone else, so I can't give the page-number, but it's near the beginning of Ch. 17. "He'd seen it in the men who'd crippled him in Memphis, he'd seen Wage affect the semblance of it in Night City, and it had allowed him to accept Armitage's flatness and lack of feeling. He'd always imagined it as a gradual and willing accommodation of the machine, the system, the parent organism." I thought it sort of ties in to the hive-mind, corporation mentality that we discussed in section. Yep.
Gibson's Neuromancer introduces a completely new world, a futuristic world in the sense of technology but a retrogressing one in terms of human behavior. Both progress and deterioration permeate practically all areas of life and the environment.
ReplyDeleteThe novel creates an upheaval in different spheres of human endeavor: political, medical, social, corporate, and the law. The disintegration of the United States is felt because of its becoming a non-entity. This status becomes more obvious when placed against a backdrop of advanced technology, both in medicine and engineering. There's a sudden shift of occurrence of important events from the West to the East, represented by establishments in Japan and China. It marks the rise of corporate power where identification is based on the name of the conglomerate, such as the Tessier-Ashpool corporation.
Corporate rivalry bares greed and employs modern technology, humans with implants to increase capabilities and displays utter disregard for both moral and legal laws (Divine and Turing laws). There seems to be no limit to the means to attain the ends. This is exemplified by the operation instigated by Wintermute, an intelligence arm of Tessier-Ashpool. Indiscriminate killing becomes casual to attain a goal and loyalty is always suspect. There is moral degeneration that is no different from the barbaric means of survival of the ancient world. Medicine/drugs and gadgets dominate people instead of humans controlling their creations. Medical advances have spawned human factories of flesh and metal, and there's a proliferation of body part exchanges in the black market. The objects of trade in the market have turned from monies to human parts.
Architecture is not exempt from the changes. Construction of "coffin" apartments and hotels is a backlash of poor economic conditions for most people despite progress in technology. The latter also keeps people from the need for too much furniture.
Amidst all this, advanced communications systems offer a glimmer of light, however, businesses use them clandestinely. Visual, audio, and even sensory devices keep tasks and activities moving at a fast pace. It serves the corporate intelligence arm best to crack business strategies compared to the well-protected secrets of the board rooms of the present world.
The world that the novel creates is not fit for human existence in terms of living a sane life. It is a dystopia, a cruel and dirty society, reminiscent of the times when man has to cross borders and subjugate others to survive. It is a move backwards despite the availability of modern technology. The science that creates technology becomes the root cause of the malady.
So, I know that if we didn't really speak up in section, we're supposed to pitch in here. I'm not as articulate as Sophia, but there were a couple things that I found pretty fascinating in this novel--particularly, the increasingly evanescent boundary between life, as we might define it, and death. Gibson tinkers with this more than once throughout the novel; there are multiple people who, for all intents and purposes, should be dead, but one way or another have found away to transcend that which is supposed to be supremely permanent. Each owes their survival to advanced technology. Case runs into Linda Lee, presumed dead, when he's pulled into Neuromancer; the construct explains to him that though Linda's body is deceased, her consciousness is still alive and well inside the matrix. Ashpool, the creepy old man that Molly comes across toward the end, has also found a way to elude death, though he seems much less thrilled about it. In order to insure the formation of the Tessierr-Ashpool corporation/hive-mind creepshow, Ashpool was cryogenically frozen multiple times and thawed only when the family was in need of him. Though he never technically "died", he has lived a lifespan far longer than the average human; technology has eliminated death for him. It doesn't necessarily turn out to be a good thing, though, as when Molly comes across him, he's so sapped and drawn and colorless and his mind so degraded that all he WISHES is to die. Interesting. So the line between the living and dead no longer exists. Laws that are usually unbreakable are now turned on their heads.
ReplyDeleteI also found an quote I found rather interesting. It's not very long, and I have a different book than everyone else, so I can't give the page-number, but it's near the beginning of Ch. 17. "He'd seen it in the men who'd crippled him in Memphis, he'd seen Wage affect the semblance of it in Night City, and it had allowed him to accept Armitage's flatness and lack of feeling. He'd always imagined it as a gradual and willing accommodation of the machine, the system, the parent organism." I thought it sort of ties in to the hive-mind, corporation mentality that we discussed in section. Yep.