david taus

Approaching Cyberpunk

music: Paul Oakenfold- Tranceport

I can remember conjuring images of the future as a kid. Fueled by Blade Runner, and Back to the Future II, then later by Akira,, Show Crash, Neuromancer, and especially by the RPG Cyberpunk 2020 the future as I dreamt it would be a dark, grimy urban place replete with healthy amounts of libertarianism, grit, corruption, shadows within shadows, minor technological miracles around every corner, a blurring of the line between biology and computer science, militarism, and governmental collapse. Luckily the extreme cases offered by these visions I sucked up as an adolescent have not fully come to pass. We are not living in a nuclear winter, the government is still more or less intact, there are not gratuitous bouts between street gangs, and technology has not yet gotten the upper hand on our mortal coils. Still, there are some very strong indicators that we are living in my childhood’s future.

Things change slowly, so slowly in fact that we barely notice the changes. Even the progress of certain cultural artifacts that evolve rather quickly, such as computer technology, is not really perceived as progressing minute-to-minute. Who among us fleshy simpletons would have thought even 10 years ago that you could jump on the internet and download DVD quality feature films in a matter of hours or even minutes? But technology does change. The contours of automobiles, the production of popular music, the integration of communication media into our daily lives (now people walk around with ear-implanted Bluetooth telephones!) indicates that things have been changing, and quick. If we aren’t living in my childhood’s vision of the future right now, we will soon enough.

There are brief moments where I find myself looking around and for the briefest of seconds actually seeing the future in the present. And as of late these moments have become more and more regular. Volker and I were discussing this as we gazed out on the skyline of San Francisco from Angel Island a couple weeks back; this is the sense I’ve been getting more and more as I roam the city’s streets after sunset. This is the feeling I get when I scan headlines and news abstracts online. This is the feeling I get when I peer underneath the hood of a car and find more electrical wiring than mechanical moving parts. This is the feeling I get when I reflect on how much of the social human interactions we enjoy are tied to TV, movies, cell phones, email, instant messenger, and myspace. This is the feeling I get as I pause for a painfully brief moment to realize I’m about to complete my 28th year of life on this planet, and that these are the darkest days of the whole year. The immediate future will see me on the road heading North for the next couple days, much like Hiro Protagonist on his bike. Now is the time of year to breathe in, take stock of my surroundings, and attempt to cling to those aspects of life that are the most vital, the most real, the most human. Here and now, it’s getting harder and harder.