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  • Blotter updated: 2011-09-26 Show/Hide Show All

File 12868364594.gif - (27.90KB , 400x263 , fashion3.gif )
721 No. 721 Stickied hide expand quickreply [Reply]
So I was strolling through the brassy meadows of our steampunk friends just now, and I couldn't help but feel a shred of jealousy over their rather image-driven sub-culture. The gears, the silly goggles, the ye olde dress... usually I'm the first to decry, 'cyberpunk has Googles not goggles!' but tonight, I feel a little more relaxed. Perhaps in my old age I am weakening, giving in to the foolish masses. Or perhaps I am resigned to the fact that cyberpunk will be foist upon us when the GitS and Neuromancer films come out. So let's weather it, stick our tongues firmly in cheek and have a 'cyberpunk fashion' thread.

I for one don't hold for a unified cyberpunk fashion. I always advocate that real 'cyberpunks' if there are such things are probably overweight middle-aged men with (KFC, not motor oil) grease-stained t-shirts, hawaiian shorts and an overabundance of facial hair. Yet, there are elements of the subculture which might well be absorbed into popular fashion at some point, so I might as well be resigned to the idea of mirrorshades, bondage trousers and other silly sorts of things making a reappearance in the near future. Now, living with a girl who dresses in a distinctly cybergoth fashion (something I have often derided and now feel a little bad about), I don't see any real links to a 'cyberpunk' fashion. The plastic hair, the corsets. It's not cyberpunk. Neon is not cyber; it's rave influenced, fetish influenced. All well and good in its own corner, but not cyberpunk.
Perhaps what we often overlook is the 'punk' aspect. Given that when Gibson was writing, he took influence from the punk culture, particularly the violent and anarchic hardcore scene which was at the time in its infancy, might we not perceive that as a majorly cyberpunk style - just add some mirrorshades.
I'm not sure I really believe this, of course, I'm just throwing out some crap for you lot to discuss. I'm gonna bet this thread becomes full of latex-clad fetish model bullshit though.
130 posts and 28 images omitted. Click Reply to view.
>> No. 4311
>What color is your phone?
black
>What color is your laptop?
black with stickers
>Are your sun glasses way cool?
black
>Do your pants have enough pockets for all your gear?
yes
>Do your pants keep your gear from getting wet?
no but my houlder bag
>Do you have 1 good pair of boots/boot-like shoes?
yes
>Do you look like shit to protect your gear?
no, punkrock!
>Or do you just look angry enough to die for your gear?
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File 132853655971.jpg - (73.13KB , 500x499 , epic-win-photos-tardis-cafe-win.jpg )
4313 No. 4313 hide quickreply [Reply]
Good afternoon /cy/, I've recently began writing a silly little cyberpunk story, and I was wondering if you could give me any stylistic tips. My background is in science with some programming and human geography, so my style is perhaps a bit too literal. My story is set in a future version of the West of Scotland. All criticism welcome. Pic semi related, cafe in Glasgow.

Some of the italicised words may not come out properly.

Scene 1.

It had been a long day at Drumellan Secondary School, especially for the latest batch of first years. They had only been at the school for a week, and had already witnessed fights, illicit CeeD deals, and the arrest of one teacher. The school's lighting and fire suppression systems had also been interfered with by the new class of sixth years, resulting in unpredictable showers of expanding foam and strobing lights. The school had received a rating of 'Requires Improvement' - for the seventh consecutive year - by the Greater New Glasgow School Board.
The first years clumped together, often with friends from primary school, but many new friendships were forged amongst children from different backgrounds. The arbitrary assigment of a seat in a class might result in a lifelong rivalry, but no-one in class 4b noticed this. There was thirty minutes left of their geography and sociology class, and the teacher had resorted to displaying still images from the aged ceiling-mounted projector. The holographic projector's bulb had exploded, burning away any hope of 4b absorbing anything before the final bell. The palpable boredom in the room was most evident towards the window, where three new classmates sat staring at the impressive vista.
Almost the entire length of New Glasgow was visible from this high ground to the southeast. To the unfocused eye, it looked like a sixty kilometre pit bing: a steep sided grey ridge, snaking through a forest of lower-rise Schemes. Closer inspection would reveal an Escheric surface of tangled, interlocking metal and concrete. Huge conduits ferried people, vehicles and data around, between and through the suspended skyscrapers and tightly-packed modular flats. The colour of the city
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>> No. 4314
Scene 2

The small square in front of the school was half-dark, kept in the gloom by the imposing silhouette of the school, and the local council's labyrinthine offices which loomed from three sides. Despite its darkness, it was filled with hundreds of pupils, with more streaming from the school's doors every second, and then splitting off down the adjoining tunnels, forming writhing distributaries of concentrated boisterousness. Security cameras bristled on the council building, flicking hyperactively between pupils who were suspected of subversive conversation or anti-social behaviour. This didn't deter the inhabitants of Drumellan Sec (officially know as school 192-a), as the city's authorities were widely despised, particularly in the deprived outer Schemes.
Fitz, Tormod and Manda were sprawled over a cracked plascrete bench, planning their escape into the Core.
"What time should we get the train at, Fitz?" asked Manda, staring at the porthole of grey sky that lay above them.
"Ah reckon about four. That gives us an hour tae get hame and doon tae the station" replied Fitz. It had begun to gently snow.
"Ah, sneachd, it's early this year, I thought it didnae start till October normally?" said Tormod, addressing his question to the same square of sky that the other two were staring into. The snow had buried them in a strange ennui, as the first snow symbolised the beginning of the long dark winters that had been the norm for a generation. Snow meant discontent in the Schemes, as people struggled to heat their hab-units; snow wreathed the city in anger at the monolithic Council and its Byzantine machinery; snow meant hunger. Fitz snapped out of this shared contemplative trance. "Right! Let's go and ah'll see youse at the station at four!" he said. The other two responded with nods; the children split and ran in opposite directions.
Tormod ran south, towards the edge of the Scheme, where the city abruptly transitioned into a cold moorland studded with pines. Here, at the underused city gate lay one of the urban GĂ idhealtachdan inhabited by immigrants from the Hebrides and Western Highlands. These
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>> No. 4315
Scene 3

The New Drumellan train station was a graffiti-encrusted building of indefinite shape; it seemed to merge into the surrounding tenements, as the stratigraphy of spray-paint didn't recognise paid no heed to property deeds. Tall, triple-glazed windows punctuated this illicit calligraphy, allowing the crowds swarming outside to see their clones swarming inside. Trains slid noiselessly into the building, dumping their cargo and then sliding back out along the elevated magnetic tracks that burst from the structure.
Fitz, Manda and Tormod trod through the damp snow that was beginning to lie on the concrete of Drumellan Civic Square, weaving amongst the blank-faced crowds of suited council employees and grimy recycling plant workers. They wound their way up to a ticket machine and waved their credit chips at before selecting the cheapest return tickets.
"Whit station d'ye want tae get aff at?" said Fitz, studying the tangled web of a railnet map.
"Ah dinnae know, what aboot Old Buchanan Street? It's right in the middle a the Core" replied Manda, "Whit d'ye think?"
"Aye, I'm easy-ozey, let's go there" said Fitz.
Tormod had wandered off, not particularly interested in their destination. The other two quickly caught up with him, deep in a thicket of legs, and steered themselves towards the train that had just arrived on one of the many lines that burrowed into the heart of the Core. The carriage was grubby from the dirt of a hundred thousand commutes, so they sat down on the cleanest seats beside the window. The carriage filled up with a few more blank faces, then an almost imperceptible movement indicated their departure. The line they were on was not a particularly direct one, so it began by heading west.
Drumellan's hotpotch of tenements gave way to a blurred vista of ancient stone buildings, many without roofs and slowly crumbling. Corrugated iron warehouses slowly rotted as the train sped through the remains of Old Paisley, which was slowly being taken over by the forest spreading down from the braes above the town. The train stopped briefly to take on a few bedraggled passengers before
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File 132805622063.jpg - (6.71KB , 359x196 , 4100074_std_png.jpg )
4275 No. 4275 hide expand quickreply [Reply]
Axiom: If something is profitable, people will do it regardless of any laws, customs, or resistance they may encounter.
Therefore, privacy on the internet will continue to erode as long as tracking of online activities, and the resulting targeting of ads is very profitable.

Idea: Instead of fighting tracking tools, use them to send back intentionally corrupted user data damaging the reliability and therefore profitability of the entire database of the web-tracking organization.

http://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/owr5x/protecting_your_online_data_is_hard_corrupting_it/

Original thread author is not myself but I thought the topic interesting enough to post here.
Personally I think it's a pretty good idea, if we can get enough people doing it.
9 posts and 1 image omitted. Click Reply to view.
>> No. 4287
>>4275
There was a program which sent fake google searches I think if you installed it as a firefox addon
>> No. 4290
You could just run a site like, http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/

except have legitimate user credentials, just use same API and all the plugins for browsers that fill out forms using fakenamegenerator etc will work.

That way you can go to a site, click one button to fill out the form with someones harvested info (with all data entered the same as another person).

Obviously using the same IP address as the person who usually uses that information is not simple to do, but a lot of data miners are simply web spiders.
>> No. 4312
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4312
>>4287
TrackMeNot


File 13267469112.jpg - (1.06MB , 1611x2361 , wallpaper-755381.jpg )
4128 No. 4128 hide expand quickreply [Reply]
Well, let's try and steer this board back on track.

Of the original 'Cyberpunk' authors (a nebulous, hard to define group, but we'll assume Gibson, Sterling, Cadigan, Williams and leave it at that) not many engaged fully, to my mind, with the gender implications of cyberpunk, and especially those of prosthetic bodies. Like race, the fluidity of gender afforded by technology was used to spice the stories and make them appear more exotic without ever really analysing its implications. Cadigan's Rock On in the Mirrorshades anthology was interesting, but grounded in second-wave Feminism, and involved with a still relatively binary gender. Many of the other authors, in using the language of film noir and gumshoe novels, subscribed to a representation of women that verged on hypersexualised - Molly Millions recalls the femme fatale more than a sexually liberated woman.

In my opinion, it took Shirow Masamune, a pin-up artist, to really begin approaching the gender implications that cybernetics have. Kusanagi Motoko, completely divorced from a 'meat' gender is a powerful part of this, especially when we consider her prostitution (in the original manga), her continued selection of a female body over a male one (played, unfortunately, for post-Feminist yucks in S.A.C. where she uses her sex against Batou) and, of course, the much stickier implications of her reproduction with the confusingly gendered puppet master (particularly good in the Japanese language film, where it has a female upper body, a male voice and - importantly - no genitals). Motoko's merging with the Puppet Master implies either a post-gendered future, or the continuing dominance of a masculine tech, depending on your reading, and what version you're studying.

After Cheap Truth kicked it and the original authors began to expand their horizons, and new writers got in on the fold, the treatment of sex and sexuality became a lot more nuanced. Gibson's Bridge trilogy isn't so full of painful femme fatale stereotypes as the Sprawl was, while Stephenson takes it further (not to mention smashing the 'race as exotic spice' thing) in
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>> No. 4307
>>4306
> A documentary is not pornographic imo. We just can't have boobs, dicks, vaginas.
There are vaginas in this documentary, that was entirely my question. If you think that's OK, well here it is:

http://vimeo.com/9924049

Delete this post if you must but please don't ban me :( You have been warned. It's worth the seven minutes though.
>> No. 4308
>>4307
What I meant was 'we can't have them displayed on the site.' Linking to a documentary/article about them is ok so long as it's pertinent to a thread :3
>> No. 4309
>>4307
Also so long as you warn people thoroughly that there ARE naughty bits. A lot of us check this site from work. :p


File 132683913881.jpg - (92.96KB , 1016x700 , 1purglogo.jpg )
4146 No. 4146 hide expand quickreply [Reply]
Hi all, just discovered this page & love it.
I'm a big cyberpunk fan.
Check out my horror/cyber-punk page
http://www.purgcomic.com
feedback from fellow fans appreciated, if you like it follow me on twitter for news & updates and like me on facebook (links on page).
love this site so far fyi.
8 posts omitted. Click Reply to view.
>> No. 4176
Honestly I didn't even look at this until now because of the other reactions, but I just read through what's up. I like the art style actually, quite a lot. It almost reminds me of old TMNT comics.
The dialogue isn't, for me, really up to much, and the explanatory notes aren't always needed. Still, I quite liked the second story. The ending of the first was a bit out of nowhere, and not in a cool twist way, just in a, we didn't really care enough about the character at that point to be too upset about the ending.
>> No. 4207
Hi all, ty for the feedback it's all appreciated. >=)
For those that don't like the viewer, other formats will be up to view it, including a cbr, I'll give a notification when these are up.
I'm currently working on character profiles and chapter 3 will be up around Feb 1rst.
Best regards fellow cypunks
the j.
>> No. 4294
Hi all
Chapter 3 is up! There is a link on the main page if you've already read the first 2 and you want to skip to it, enjoy! http://www.purgcomic.com/
Character profiles are nearly done and will be up soonish.
Chapter 4 will be up for viewing around Feb 15th.
Follow/Like/Watch >=)
http://twitter.com/#!/Purgcomic
http://www.facebook.com/pages/purgcomiccom/280445308659418
http://j2040.deviantart.com/


File 132491750815.jpg - (33.06KB , 637x480 , rubbers_lover3.jpg )
3916 No. 3916 hide expand quickreply [Reply]
http://eyetap.org/

Eyetap is pretty interesting, though there are a few things about it that irk me. The lab that produces it seems like it has the right idea, though. The Eyetap can apparently be used to stimulate specific areas of the eye, allowing people with poor sight to see clearly through bypassing damaged parts. They also seem to do some work with AR and the like, and other forms of wearable computing.
The device itself seems functional enough to enter production, it would be nice to see it at least for people with poor sight. A die hard part of me hates that it's wearable and not screwed into the skull though...
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>> No. 3974
>>3970
If I'm not mistaken there was an eye implant that allowed the user to zoom in? I think it was a CIA development or something. It could have been purely speculative though, don't hold me to this.
>> No. 4182
>A die hard part of me hates that it's wearable and not screwed into the skull though...
You probably don't want this, transdermals are shit (They infect too easily).
Try this: http://www.google.com/patents?id=Y-AXAAAAEBAJ
There's another interesting company that makes military use HUDs, but I forgot their name.
>> No. 4291
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBzMWVOTFi8
There's this. Then again, their site looks a bit shabby.


No. 3977 hide expand quickreply [Reply]
I'm guessing many of you are kind of tech-focused when it comes to your own homes, so I'm interested in what kind of computers, storage systems and general tech you keep around the homes.

Attached is a pic of (part of) my setup.
4 posts and 1 image omitted. Click Reply to view.
>> No. 3998
I gave up multiple monitors a couple years ago. I was rocking 4 screens. Sometimes I hook up 2 screens for big Photoshop projects I do for clients. I have a few PCs, but only one I use all the time,

-6-core 3.2ghz
-12GB RAM (16GB of RAM causes wicked BSOD)
-2 Crossfired Radeon HD 5770 1GB
-96GB SSD (OS and installs)
-4 x 1TB HDD for internal storage
-Several external HDDs from 500GB to 1TB
-wired Logitech G15 V1 Blue keyboard (with 6-key rollover [the V2 Orange edition doesn't have n-key rollover, fyi])
-wired Logitech G5 mouse
-Logitech Cordless Rumblepad 2 gamepad (old style with augmented port holes for the analog sticks to make them round instead of CLACK CLACK CLACK square)
-CRT monitors EVERYWHERE (which have outlasted all my flatscreens lol).
>> No. 4001
>>3997
That shit is evil and you should be burned for it.
>> No. 4289
>>3978
Post pictures of Rory.


File 132733205355.png - (117.50KB , 640x240 , logo.png )
4193 No. 4193 hide expand quickreply [Reply]
Remember Digital: A Love Story? Well the author of it is releasing a sort-of successor, unimaginatively titled 'Analogue: a Hate Story.' Apparently it's going to be set on a spaceship and will see you navigating the hulk with a [sic]spunky AI sidekick[sic]. Also promised are elements of transhumanism. Not really one for the art direction she's taken, because one of the best things about Digital was its mimicry of old computer systems, but she knows how to write a video game, that's for sure.
2 posts omitted. Click Reply to view.
>> No. 4196
>>4195
Well I played her other game, don't take it personal, babe, it just ain't you story today, which uses the VN style rather than the cool interface that Digital used. Not a huge fan of the art style or anything, but her writing is still top-notch and deals with a lot of things people, especially in video games, are loathe to discuss. Another interesting thing is that don't... was created in a single month, with a small group of people, which rather puts Four Leafs and their Katawa Shoujo to shame, hah!
>> No. 4283
Game is out now, costs $15. Trying to decide if I'll purchase or not.
>> No. 4288
>>4283
I saw the price and am wracking myself whether or not to pay it. On the one hand, I love her work. On the other, the cost for a visual novel... made on free software... it seems a bit much. The art isn't exactly stellar. If it was a 'choose what you pay' deal I'd probably toss $10, max. Maybe I can wait until I have some more money and pay the $15 though, I do want to play this at some point.


File 130830293355.gif - (66.15KB , 211x353 , jub10.gif )
2883 No. 2883 hide expand quickreply [Reply]
The future of food in a 'cyberpunk' world? Saw this today and gagged; http://youtu.be/u1N6QfuIh0g
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>> No. 4273
>>4271
But he's got a white coat, a microscope and he's like Asian and stuff. That means he's really smart and a scientist, so it must be true.
>> No. 4274
>>4270
Don't know anyone that makes the crap.
>>4271
A properly designed, efficient waste disposal system would get rid of those problems, as well as allow for the collection of urine for power plants, and MASSIVELY reduce the waste of water, which is a scarce resource.

Not that I'd eat crapburgers, but it could be done.
>> No. 4277
>>4274
Could, but there are probably better things to do with sewage sludge than make Big Macs out of it. I grew up in a community with untreated sewage being pumped into a sheltered harbour which didn't get a lot of flow and everything that got flushed down a hundred thousand toilets just sort of floated around there forever. I read OP's link and thought, great! give me a poop burger and a side order of condom fries.


File 132698920827.jpg - (32.58KB , 973x278 , lepth.jpg )
4157 No. 4157 hide expand quickreply [Reply]
"Lightning talk on biohacking, complete with cyborg speaker, implant demonstrations, and knowledge of how to hack your own perception of electromagnetic radiation for approximately thirty Euros."

http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2010/27c3-4003-en-cybernetics_for_the_masses.html
13 posts omitted. Click Reply to view.
>> No. 4252
>>4250
Biohacking reminds me of that terrible movie with Bai Ling in it. Where people literally just hack into DNA remotely, no real explanation...

That second term though, I have never heard, and never, ever, ever want to see again.
>> No. 4256
Yeah, "gengineering" makes me laugh out loud and makes my skin crawl simultaneously. Kind of like "sexting".
>> No. 4257
Yea, 'sexting' pretty much ensured I stopped sexting altogether.


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