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Cyberpunkin’
what’s been all the rage for the last week has infected my computer, and corrupted my free time. i’m showing all the signs of infection. Irritability, lack of sleep, inability to focus… i’m of course talking about cyberpunk 2077, which has all the outward signs of a virus that gets at you through your technology.
of course, an open world game set in the future where crime is the life blood of the city is an easy sell for me, and yet, i’m kinda on the fence. maybe cause i’m in conflict about what i would have done different, or just that my concepts of a dark tech future clash with what is obviously the expectations of the average sci fi consumer…. who knows. but it’s not the glitchiness. that i find amusing, and i’ve seen some doosies.
i’m not sure if 2077 refers to the year, but i think we’re going to fall well short of flying cars in the next 50 years. it puts me in mind of a movie i saw recently, which is not at all worth your time, called ‘class of 1999’. set in the far off year of 1999, kids spray at each other with uzis like bullets are free and for some reason still go to school where they willingly relinquish their guns. to deal with this unruly batch of teens, a elon muskish tech upstart, played by stacy keach, who for the record has always looked 65, came up with the plan of placing 3 robots in the school as teachers, who beat people up for almost no reason. at this point, i should tell you, this is not a comedy. and while it’s hilarious, i don’t think the movie thinks it’s very funny. oh yeah, one of the teachers is played by pam grier. cause whatever anyways.
that movie was filmed in 1990, and it makes me smile to think that at that pre cd time, that we thought we were on the verge of realistic androids. it somehow feels like we got further away from some of our lofty goals, but science fiction is as optimistic as ever. i think it says something about people who look forward, naively think that, yes, of course all of this stuff is achievable, we can do it, cause why wouldn’t we? of course, it’s science fiction solving the problems of poorly behaved teens in an inner city environment by creating million dollar sentient beings, as opposed to just adding more teachers. or more realistically, doing nothing.
but i think that’s the double sided coin of science fiction. looking forward, to a better tomorrow, so we can have bigger, and worse problems. of course, i’m still on board. in my life, i want to see the flying cars, the androids, all the crazy crap. but i have a sad feeling that event he youngest of us right now, will see mild advancements, at best. ah well, i hope they get VR going good at a point. as i get older, and move slower, i want to fly, even if only in my mind.
All of it. The whole school system here is modeled after the prison system. This isn’t a weird mom rant. I was actually a correctional officer and can tell you that the inmates had it better than the kids in so many ways. Even with the kids not being able to go to school they have to take online classes which are not so much educational as rote memorization of tests they have to do well on or the school won’t get money. They aren’t teaching. Their only goal is to get through the tests and get the funding. And yes, they are even starting to build daycare centers in a spiral shape. The nursery goes in the center to protect the babies, then it spirals outward with each room able to be locked down with reinforced steel doors. The windows are bulletproof. IN A DAYCARE. And all I can think is “yeah, but…what do you do if there is a fire?”
wow. that’s a added level of weirdness. by the time you’re designing a school or daycare like a level in call of duty, maybe you should realize your spending your attention on the wrong thing.
but it just goes to add more validity to the concept of the school to prison pipeline, which we’ve been hearing more about lately. i was one of those ‘troubled kids’. in the wrong circumstance, any one of us could have been targeted by one of those cops they put in elementary school, leaned on hard, and forced down a bad path. i heard of one of those ‘resource officers’ (nice euphemism) who tried to scare straight a 6 year old, by fingerprinting her, and running her like a perp. all your going to teach a kid doing that is how people in authority can often be dicks for kicks.
you mentioned before how you were in corrections. that’s a tough gig. i wouldn’t want to do it. you’re at the first point of friction by a system you don’t profit off of, but someone certainly does. what a mess.
“I’m kinda on the fence. maybe cause i’m in conflict about what i would have done different, or just that my concepts of a dark tech future clash with what is obviously the expectations of the average sci fi consumer”
I share your opinion here. I was so intrigued after the 2013 trailer, it had a much harsher darker vibe. I still like the end product but it does feel a little too lighthearted and bright. It certainly does not have the atmosphere I crave in sci fi – a sort of dark city stagnating with hopelessness. You’re probably right though, not what the average person wants and too bigger project to go niche.
yeah, it’s an interesting puzzle. people MIGHT like something that was more tailored to them, but it would sell less. so they would have to charge more, or spend less to compensate. i think that’s why so many smaller projects can take chances with style that might not be for everyone, cause they don’t have to do as well to be considered a financial success. whereas a triple A game can not sell under X million copies, or the company is ruined.
i also think that ‘dark’ is more than just a colour palette choice, and when people assume it means more shadows, and a little bit extra violence, it doesn’t amount to that harsh vibe you refer to. my feeling is that artistic direction done by committee is never going to achieve real grit.
Flying cars? After the year we’ve had, I will settle for “slightly fewer madmen making decisions that affect me”, thanks.
here here. hear hear? what you said. back at ya.
Let’s see, wasn’t HAL supposed to be online in 1999? (Oops, January 12th, 1992) OK, so we were supposed to have AI in 1992, albeit on a mainframe. Currently, AI is actually badly trained “neural networks” that play a guessing game with data. No, it doesn’t do what it says on the tin, except from sucking down vast amounts of electricity. (https://aiweirdness.com/ “Scientists do science… … and then write about it!”)
Yes, I loaded “Cyberpunk 2077” on my computer. Oh lawdamity, what a piece of, uh, work! The car drives like something from a 1987 8-bit arcade game. The “hacking” is something that, for me, is completely bugged. Finally I gave up on the mess, and wished that I could get my money back.
As for a possible future, hey, it’s “possible.” In “Until the End of the World” they posited that video phones would be common. When was the last time anybody used video as part of an every day chat with somebody? It’s text, text, text. What is more likely? Probably collapse and chaos. Anarchy would be an improvement. Whenever I see some government bunker “self-sufficient for three months” I am always amused. Sorry, but in the case of nuclear war, the aftermath is going to be starvation, solid cannibalism and then more starvation. Everything now is too dependent on electricity and oil. The pandemic hit, and just by people staying home, look at the problems. At the store meat prices have about doubled. While I didn’t see any shortages locally (except toilet paper), there have been empty produce sections in other places.
So given various collapse problems, we should be grateful for whatever humor the computer can provide us.
https://aiweirdness.com/post/635599715510239232/post-human-flirting
Handkerchief flirting codes of the far future:
Twirling it in front of an emission port ……………………………………………. Are you in any way responsible for error 313?
Vertically drawing in front of your chassis with a hooked metal strip ….. Insults have been exchanged. A duel is to be held.
haha, i do find the idea of a culture revolved around something we haven’t really discovered yet interesting. so like, say sex is taboo, it’s all online. is the seductive way you insert your usb dongle into his or her port, is that foreplay? who’s to say?
and a self sufficient bunker is more like ‘stocked with mres, and then you’re in the shit with the rest of the normals’. you’re right. it’s an illusion.
Thanks so much for sharing this blog!! It’s fascinating and hilarious. I’ll be ordering the book and both “tea towels”. They’d make great ODD gifts, just the kind I like to push on friends.
I’ll be sharing the blog as well.
Been a while since one of your rants! I’ve missed them! I’ll stay far away from the issue of how to handle schools as thinking about the situation down here in the states makes me murdery. I do however hold out the same hope for the VR tech that was promised to us so long ago.
yeah, i haven’t ranted in a bit. i guess sometimes it feels a little samey, and i don’t want to just vent if nothing new will be imparted. what am i, some guy.. like, on the internet, making content? wait, i am? have i told you how i feel about the most recent star wars movie, and why it triggered an emotional reaction in me? in actuality, that would probably work, but then i’d have to live with being ‘that guy’.
what aspect of school handling has you bugged? there’s a few. honestly, i think my brain vomited in my skull when i saw a news report about a school that was being designed, so that school shooters would have a harder time killing students. like, zig zag hallways. cause clearly, we’re all out of ideas, so let’s use video game logic. fucking insane. honestly, best thing about covid (calm down, wait for it) no more school shootings.