Whereas steampunk is more the same sensibility as cyberpunk, except the computers are made of string and toast.

I actually *do* understand steampunk better than I do cyberpunk. Chatty!co-worker is trying to explain cyberpunk to me, and he told me that maybe I'm incapable of understanding it because I'm ludditepunk.

ludditepunk.

Able to have a badass attitude no matter what the ambient level of technology is?

Like, Hec said that the 9/11 hijackers using box-cutters was very cyberpunk, and I don't get it. Shouldn't technology have been involved? Isn't that where the "cyber" comes from?

9/11 in its planning, execution and politics seemed like it came straight out of a Bruce Sterling novel to me.

Sterling's fiction and non-fiction is interested in how people use technology, not high technology. In fact, much of his fiction is interested in finding new uses for old technology to hack contemporary systems.

And hacking wasn't about breaking into a computer, but about figuring out and exploiting the weakness in a system.

So the weakness in airline security was an outmoded policy about how to deal with hijackers. What the terrorists understood better than anybody was that an airplane is a gigantic bomb. They exploited the weakness in the system (hacked it) with low tech (box cutters).

That's a scenario that recurs in Sterling's work. The early cyberpuynks were interested in the "elegance" of outthinking a system with the most efficient means. They were interested in how marginal groups use technology against the people who presumably own that technology.

He was also very prescient about the conflicts between the West and the Muslim countries, though most cyberpunk writers saw that coming.

I'm not trying to be deliberately obtuse, I swear.

I just don't think of box cutters as "technology," so that's part of where my disconnect comes from.

Although I don't quite buy the larger point, Steph, just think of any tool as technology.

There's been a jargon misuse that might not be recovered from--hackers doesn't have an automatic negative connotation, or didn't. It's like being a digital McGyver. It's about the insights, not so much the raw power. Although being shiny is still often a status symbol.

I just don't think of box cutters as "technology," so that's part of where my disconnect comes from.

Well, as ita notes, they are. Technology isn't just circuit boards. Sterling used to spin a scenario about creating machetes out of new light weight ceramics that were super strong and very sharp and imagining how quickly deforestation would happen if they were cheap too. Cyberpunk was very into the implications of cheap technology. Also into how things could be repurposed.

The main point about 9/11, though, is really about the mindset of hacking. The way the cyberpunks liked to write about it this involved understanding systems and the implications of them better than the people who made those systems. That's what the terrorists did with airport security.

I just don't think of box cutters as "technology," so that's part of where my disconnect comes from.

Well, as ita notes, they are.

What makes that "cyber," though? See, steampunk makes sense to me because the technology (if you can call it that, and I guess you can and I should) isn't electronic. "Steam" makes sense.

Box-cutters = "cyber" doesn't compute for me, though. (Pardon the pun.)

t edit If I'm frustrating the holy hell out of you, and you're just staring at your computer screen wondering how I manage to survive with only a brain stem, just ignore my retarded line of questioning. It's just a disconnect I've got in my head. I can see how the Matrix movies are cyberpunk (um....if, in fact, they are), but box-cutters? "Cyber" just seems like the wrong prefix.

Well, "cyberpunk" as a name came to stand for a lot of things that didn't have anything to do with cybernetics. Even a lot of people associated with the genre thought it was a catchy misnomer.

And like most artistic movements, while there might be a core of shared values or interests there usually wind up being a lot of things associated with the genre that are not so neatly encapsulated.

Looking at the "punk" part of the phrase, focus more on the Do-It-Yourself ethic of American Hardcore and Indie Rock than say the comic dopeyness of the Ramones.

Think of the way that early zines exploited copier machines as a cheap alternative to the printing press. Suddenly the tools of publishing were available to anybody who could stay in their office after the boss left. That's the sort of phenomenon that interested cyberpunks.

Punk also created it's own distribution systems before the internet's wide availability. Zines created a culture of trading copies and having certain clearing house Zines (most famously Factsheet 5, but all the major punk zines like Maximum Rock and Roll did it too) where you could see a short summary of the zine and their address. You'd send them five copies of your zine, and they'd send five in return.

Distribution is one of the major bottle necks in magazine publishing, but zines created an alternative network.

So cyberpunk was always looking for the way people burrow and bore through the existing culture.

The early cyberpuynks were interested in the "elegance" of outthinking a system with the most efficient means.

Mental parkour, in other words.

parkour

???