moving!

Sorry to upset your bookmarks (that is, if anyone's reading), but I'm moving this blog to somewhere that allows me to actually make backups. My new home for scholarly rants is Thought Emporium. I have moved over all the old posts. Please feel free to comment on anything you see.

big groups in cyberpunk

As I've said, both Neuromancer and Snow Crash in the cyberpunk chapter. The former is important because the actual use of the "templates of identity" thing. One of the issues with it, however, is that its depiction of large groups is a little light. In terms of identity, we get the entirely subaltern/lumpenprole/criminal group of hackers and thieves, but they are explicitly a minority, an alternative...and proud of the fact. The AI is definitely big, and I can use it metaphorically, but it is still, in the end, only one entity, not a group. Then there's the Tessier-Ashpoole crowd, but they also don't really work...as they are a dictatorship led by the insane, they really can't be representative of much.

Remember, the ultimate goal in all of this is to see how identity works in the mainstream. Insane clans are not mainstream any more than are the criminal dregs. If I want my cyberpunk discussion to fit anything, then I am going to have to tie it into larger, more normalized identities. The marginalized simply will not do.

This is what Snow Crash is exceedingly good at. First off, there are the various franchised city-states, burbclaves, and all that. This is one element where the novel can be very postmodern. However, national identity and issues relating to it still come up. The "Nipponese" still come up repeatedly as a unified culture, with identity, customs, and all that. And so do the Orthos. American identity also surfaces, but not with as much vigor. In this novel, it's taken the role of the standard assumed identity, much the way that whiteness, maleness, and heteronormativity work here in the "real world."

This mainstream has to be there, because this is also a world that operates on binaries (which is a bit of an issue, with all the postmodernism exhibited). A major one running through many identities here is the elite/commoner construction. This shows up in the Pearly Gates setup (the priests versus the refus). More importantly, though, there are several explicit statements of a technological binary: the hacker elite versus the "almost illiterate" masses.

(this is one that will have to be teased out in some more depth, because it shows Stephenson's blithe disdain for the mainstream. They are illiterate because they watch tv...because, I assume, all tv is stupid. This is the same argument that the academic elite frequently use, and it stinks just as much here, when it is used in the service of Stephenson becoming a "Great Literary Mind.")

Another interesting mainstream identity that shows up is in the book's discussions of religion. Time for a quote:

The ministry of Jesus Christ was an effort to break Judaism out of this condition (of legalism)...Christ's new gospel is...an attempt to take religion out of the temple, out of the hands of the priesthood, and bring the Kingdom of God to everyone. That is the message explicitly spelled out by his sermons, and it is the message symbolically embodied in the empty tomb....The message is clear enough> We are not to idolize Jesus, because his ideas stand alone. (Stephenson 401)

Read like this, the priesthood and indeed the very body of the church acts as an interface between God and the people (and you know what we've said about interfaces). The gospel of Jesus (in this interpretation) removed that interface, allowed people to talk directly to and work with God himself.

This makes the ideal religion sound an awful lot like anarchy (a political/philosophical person could find a much more precise word). If Christiantity should be God for the masses, this argument seems to plead for more democracy.

Of course, now we have to explicate this massive theme of anarchy/democracy and the removal of interfaces with the elitism of the book...not that these can/should be reconciled, but it is at least something we should come to terms with.

I still need to reread Neuromancer, but it seems that book doesn't really have to deal with the elitism and the contradictions it brings to the whole cyberpunk bit. More as I get it.

interfaces and identity

I was reading Snow Crash today after a meeting, when I had an epiphany.

You see, one of my major faults as a scholar is that I usually end up doing more research than I need. I feel the insatiable pull to learn everything about everything. Now, intellectual curiosity is usually a good thing, but sometimes, you just want to get stuff done. When I was doing the diss, for instance, I found myself sitting at a desk in the library with a stack of twenty sociology books at the corner of the table...all so I could write a three page segment of a chapter. This wasn't research, it was work-avoidance.

Since my theory chapter now is being moved to the end and being filtered through an examination of cyberpunk, I've been mentally strategizing how exactly I'm going to pull this off. Now, I want to know enough and be able to demonstrate enough knowlege so I can truly claim a position of authority on cyberpunk literature as a subject. I want people to pay attention to me, and if they think that I haven't read the scholarship, then I will come across as a half-wit amateur...something I definitely do not want.

On the other hand, if I do too much research, I will find myself drawn to the desire to argue against everything, to contextualize everything, to be the cyberpunk expert. And really, this is not a good thing, because for the purposes of this book, I only really have to demonstrate that these two novels are important because they are examples of how the popular culture of the era itself had a much better grip on identity than did anything or anyone else.

In other words, I've been looking for ways to limit exactly what arguments I will make, so I don't end up with a pile of cyborg study books that won't really help me.

Today, though, I found a focus of analysis: interfaces.

We all have experience with interfaces. When I record something on my TiVo, I use their interface. When I jump on my laptop, I'm using the Ubuntu/Gnome interface instead of directly working with the code. When I type this blog, although I can use some html coding, I usually just let the blogger interface do everything for me.

Interfaces are a vital part of our technological existence. They keep us from dealing with the minutiae, the guts, the code, the actual stuff of our technology. Because of interfaces, I don't have to worry about how this is all going to turn out on my blog's webpage. In the process, I do surrender control over that appearance, but interfaces offer ease of use instead of control.

Ultimately, what I realized about Snow Crash (one of its major themes) is that interfaces are primarily about that separation from code, but they are also about separation from reality. They act as an intermediary so we don't have to deal with the complexities of existence. In the novel, interfaces include Metaverse avatars, daemons, visual programming, the librarian, and so forth. These things make it so we don't have to understand how the world works, we don't have to know arcane commands to alter our existence, we don't have to risk being exposed to the guts of the world....we just have to have faith in these interfaces.

But it's not just in terms of computer stuff. This can be read much wider, with much more relevant (and sometimes chilling) effects.

Identity...and identity templates ... is an interface for reality. Identity works to protect us from the harshness of life. We don't have to know where the world is going, we don't have to worry about how to control our destiny. We don't have to risk being caught in seismic battles. Instead, we just put our faith in our group identity (and, by extension, in our group). Why worry about altering existence, when we can just let the group worry about that?

Of course, there is the big flaw in that identities are never total, and they are never permanent. They do not protect us from badness. They are mighty poor insulators from the world at large.

More importantly, identities break down. The book is largely about the rise of, the battles, and the disintegration of Reaganism as an identity. It changed, it warped, it became used for other purposes.

Identities are interfaces designed to help us, but identities ... much like the Metaverse in Snow Crash ... often can and do become dangerous places.

cyberpunk and templates

There is a lot going on in the two cyberpunk novels (Snow Crash and Neuromancer), but I will be focusing on the models of identity therein.

When I did my original dissertation, I used the phrase "templates" of identity" to describe exactly what the connection is between individuals and groups in terms of identity. Simply put, we lead a multiplicity of lives, perform a multiplicity of roles (sociology calls this Dramaturgy) depending on what group we're around. The example I always use for my classes is that you don't talk to your grandmother the same way you'd talk to someone at a keg party. But since we have a large number of groups with which we identify, we never just pick the standards of one full-force, only to drop it in favor of another group's standards when we change our social context.

Our identity comes from elements we pick up from all the various groups with which we identify. It is an amalgamation, a mish-mash, (as the postmodernists would say) a pastiche.

This, however, is only from our point of view. The groups still have coherent identities they wish to push. If you want to be (on some level) a Reaganite or a metalhead, each of those groups does have an ideal image they sell. This image of what a Reaganite should be, for instance, could be said to be the biggest thing the group in question sells.

However, these images are only ideals, and the groups know (not that they are in fact a sentient organism, but you get the drift) that very few people will pick all the parts of said ideal identity and adopt them wholesale...or even, for that matter, adopt most of the parts.

The best way to think of these ideal identities is as a template. Follow it entirely, you will fully be marked (by yourself and others) as a full member of the group. But you can just pick subcultural elements from the template and incorporate them into your own individual pastiche.

Hence, the term "identity templates," that I coined in my dissertation.

That is, I thought I coined it. My first post-dissertation "fun" read was William Gibson's Neuromancer. That novel (loosely) deals with Case, a hacker who's been recruited by an artificial intelligence computer in an elaborate plan to help it merge with another computer entity and become an independent, autonomous, sentient being of some sort.

The AI keeps meeting Case in cyberspace/subconsciousness to give him updates and such. However, the AI doesn't take its own form; strictly speaking, it doesn't (so it claims) have a form of its own. Instead, it adopts the form of people who Case knows, these forms being ripped out of his own subconsciousness.

One meeting, the AI uses the form of a now-dead ex-girlfriend of Case (verify), and Case finally complains. This is where the AI tells him he doesn't really have an identity of his own and just uses these other identities as templates, to allow him to corporeally interact with Case.

Template of identity. This is one of those all-too-common moments where I thought I wasn't working but, as it turns out, I was in fact on the clock.

At any rate, that's why I'm studying cyberpunk...or at least two of its seminal works.

the role of the mainstream

Still in the land of Duncan J. Watts:

[talking about innovators:] success....has less to do with their particular vision and their individual characteristics than with the pattern of interactions into the midst of which their pinprick falls...The trick [for the analyst/critic] is to focus not on the stimulus itself but on the structure of the network that the stimulus hits. (249)

This is one that I have mixed feelings with. I tend to think that there is still a lot to be said for a focus on the level of culture. Individual actions are still affected by the cultural position in which the actors/innovators reside. Context is still important, because it affects how innovators innovate, what they change. The relationship between individuals (any individual.whether innovator, initial adopter, or whatever) and culture is cyclical--it's an A=>B=>A=>B=>A thing--so we can't just focus on the role of the individual in all this.

At any rate, most theoretical approaches seem bound up in the approaches most concerned with authority, structure, individuals, agency, and all that. This is because most culture studies approaches have firm Marxist/neomarxist roots, which is descended from the land of economics. While there might be categories such as dominant, mainstream, and all that, culture (particuarly popular culture) is an entirely different animal. There is clearly a cultural mainstream, because there are shared cultural artifacts and markers that cross social lines. Culture, as a force, operates in relation to other theoretical categories, but it is not equivalent.

(yes, very vague, but I needed to get it down)

is culture a virus?

You remember the Agent Smith/Morpheus conversation in The Matrix when Morpheus is being held hostage? The agent talks about metaphors, and in a way typical for the film (in that the dialog is horrific, yet the scene and the idea are both strangely compelling), he says that humans are not animals; instead, "you are a disease, and we are the cure."

Corniness aside, the virus metaphor might be one worth thinking of when we consider how cultural trends spread. Remember the great prime time game show trend of a few years ago? How it just kind of died? Now, think of this quote:

Eventually, however, even the most out-of-control epidemics come to an end, if for no other reason than they burn themselves out. Because there are only so many people...who can be infected, so many susceptible targets become harder and harder to find, and the trajectory of the disease flattens out. (Watts 172)

There is some possible descriptive power at work here. Obviously, this would not work for all competing identities, because there are groups/identities that manage to persist and grow long after the trend that brought them has died out, including Deadheads and Survivor. The virus outbreak model might work to describe some cultural trends, however. Now we just have to figure out why some things last beyond expectations and some fade away.

The example from the book I'm thinking of here is the Guns N' Roses/Living Colour debate. I like each band to a certain degree (if I exclude everything from GnR except their debut). I prefer Living Colour, I think they were a more thoughtful and thought-out band, I thought they had greater diversity and applicability. Yet even though Living Colour has reformed, is touring, has actually put out another album, they have pretty much zero cultural capital at this point.

Contrast this with Guns N' Roses, who has pretty much done everything possible wrong. They were drug addicts who became famous. They've eliminated all but one core member. They've been abusive to the press. They've been unprofessional to their fans (see the riots). They haven't produced anything new in ages (I discount the really horrific album "leaks"...not sure how accurate they are). Yet they are the band that everyone still talks about.

Why is this? What are the factors? One might just argue that the soap opera around GnR makes them more compelling in a "car crash" way, but I don't buy this. Living Colour had an amazing push for their first album. They were plastered all over the media. They had every appearance of being a cultural phenomenon...hell, a cross-cultural phenomenon, as I knew people who became die-hard fans who came from both the metalhead group and from others, including the preppies, alt rockers, and more.

Why did this happen? Why did one die out like an epidemic that had run its course, while the other, in spite of doing everything possible to destroy its reputation, is still a matter of conversation.

Watts later quotes researchers who claim that "scale-free networks [ones like airline networks, with hubs] are far more resistant to random failures than are ordinary random networks" (191). Not sure how this relates yet, but I have a feeling it does, in some way. More as I get it.

distance, dimensions, and identity templates

From Watts, Six Degrees:

individuals in the real world derive their notions of distance from an assortment of social dimensions. Geographical location is still important, but so is race, profession, religion, education, class, pastimes, and organizational affiliations. In other words, when we partition the world into smaller and more specific groups, we make use of multiple dimensions simultaneously. (150)

First, I like this quote because it shows me a very major problem I was having with DeLanda, who put much stock in location as a territorializing factor in organizations. However, he only really addressed physical distance...a move which seems naive at best in a world where we have the internet. Even without the web, though, there are more types of distance...with the net, though, distance becomes even less crucial to assemblages and the actors of which they consist.

One thing I do not like about this quote, however, are those words "smaller and specific." In fact, I also don't really like the term "partition" either. These terms make this look like the partitioning is a division we perform on our life as a whole. to our culture as a whole, instead of being good descriptive terms for how our culture/life is as a matter of course. Erving Goffman used the concept of "dramaturgy" to discuss the various roles we play in our life, and while these may be conscious decisions to emphasize one part of ourselves over another, it's also an unconscious process what we can't resist anyway...because we're really not chopping up one "I" into a lot of facets for public presentation...we're more like assemblages than complete identities.

This is not to say there is no "self," just like I would never say there is no "us" as a culture. There is in fact a mainstream...but it's better conceived of as a cultural mean, an average of everything out there. The cultural mean is what we think of as normal. Example one: while we still don't think of Chinese cooking as American, it is both prevalent enough and within our range of cultural expectations that we do think of the Chinese restaurant as a normal part of American Culture...or perhaps more accurately, we don't think of it as existing outside the range of American Culture...we don't think about its level of difference as an analytical factor. It's the same with "self"...it's an individual mean taken from all the options, what we think of as "default."

Eliminate the possibility that Watts may be referring to these alternate conceptions of distance as smaller, subordinate parts of a larger identity, though, and this quote works marvelously as a theoretical "in" for my notion of identity templates.