Computer science and technology :

historiography IV (9 - part ten)

Camille Akmut

June 10, 2022

Ethnography, social history of games and graphics continued

(games so far)Tokyo Jungle ecological-philosophical themes, play as animal (humans have disappeared, and nature is re-wilding cities)

Il. space craft launch: billionaires, elite leaving Earth (from possibly Orbital Air center/Morro Rock)[r.] Cyberpunk Edgerunners anime (Official ”teaser” published June 8th)

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People of Cyberpunk

Jackie (cont.) former member of the Valentinos* (and reader of Hemingway)Rhino notable Animal memberSyd Mead Commemorated at the Columbarium, with the epiteth ”Creator of worlds”Roy Batty the revolutionary leader in Blade Runner, and anti-hero of that work (or ”sympathetic villain”, as gracious liberals say)

: also commemorated at the Columbarium, neutrally, with a quote

*His family has multileveled ties to the Valentinos : a parent is an ”old school” member, El Coyote bar ownership, whose bothinside and outside features V tags and graffiti, a funeral attended by high ranking Valentinos ...

Misty about a basketball player -originally- from Heywood, to the protagonist says : ”I think he mighta been the first kid toditch the Valentinos. They both wanted more out of life.” Subtext of this conversation being leaving gangs’ complications, incl.death: Valentinos, Maelstrom, appear to be strict up to vicious; Nomads seem different in that regard, at least Aldecaldos, Wraithsand the like excluded...

Places of Cyberpunk

Atlantis, Brooklyn Barista, etc. Corpo., Wellsprings crowd (Friday night and brunch, respectively)... [Brooklyn and Manhattan]

[1-2] The Brooklyn Barista bar : sandals, coffee, dyed hair and pensive airs [3] Atlantis club, 2013 : Corporate mob, white cargosand blue shirts, letting it hang all out and low after a good, productive, succesful day’s work - ”wooooooooh”

Cyberpunk slang

Gonk appears to have for meaning, depending on context, range crazy - bad. (”I know it’s gonk”, ”... never give you gonk

advice” etc.) Preem seems to be a modification, simplification of premium, meaning, (opposite to gonk), good or great (e.g. ”Lifehasn’t been preem”)

Medicine, ethics in Cyberpunk

Human experiments conducted by Biotechnica under - Dr.! - Joanne Koch are reminiscent most of Tuskegee (in the game thegroup’s ethnicity is not clear, but they are a nomad clan whose deaths were thought to be mourned by no one1, a town was targeted)and the death camps run partly by corporations in Germany during the Nazi era and in controlled territories; Another parallel beingFraulein Koch’s habit, nearing obsession of having colleagues fired, in fact having them killed2.

1Red Orchid/Orcher however, if a guess had to be made, points to Native American.2A practice that must have been popular enough among academics at German Universities circa 1933 - 1945 if multiple case documents,

crossing several disciplines, survived archival destruction, planned, accidental, otherwise (Heidegger, Bieberbach, co.)

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Art, music of Cyberpunk

The power of art especially music in Cyberpunk is illustrated with the following origin story about Samurai and Silverhand :”The band broke up in early 2008. ... Silverhand and Eurodyne would both have huge solo careers. Silverhand would become the new

definition of Rockerboy. ... Johnny Silverhand released six albums of his own between 2008 and 2020. After an unsuccessful blackmailattempt by a rival recording company, [he] chose to go public about his desertion from the USMC. The brutal honesty about the realcauses of the wars, the lies, and the cyborg program led to the public acceptance of those dispossessed.” [Home of the Brave, p. 41]

All of his imperfections considered, if many consider Silverhand to be aggravating, or a bad character, Eurodyne on the other handdoes not appear to have been courageous a day in his life - a good quality in the world of pop stars - and always seemed like the”softer”, more vain, politically empty of the duo. (Even ’Ponpon Shit’ is more subversive than anything Eurodyne alone could do.)

Cyberpunk lit. overview

Home of the Brave ”reasons for the death of America, and its rebirth [in] Cyberpunk” RTG CP 3221, 1992

Pacific Rim RTG CP 3311, 1994

[NB. Pondsmith is listed as contributor for Home of the Brave, but not Pacific Rim(?)]

Home of the Brave highlights

31 The Electronic Subculture33 ’Religion in America 2020’, the var. groupings listed36 Maglev routes

Nomads37 ’The Maxes’ (not to be confused with the Moxes? they fashion themselves after Mad Max)39 ’The Digital Librarians’40 ’The Rocker Movement’, incl. Samurai, Silverhand, Eurodyne...

54 Voting105 Free States

Pacific Rim highlights

3 ’Recommended source list’ (books, movies, music etc.)

6 Japan11;24 ’What is Zaibatsu?’, ’Androgyny’25;28 Tokyo, Chiba

42 Korea59 China (Hong Kong 73, Taiwan 79)83 Southeast Asia (Singapore 96)109 ’Australasia’

ACADEMICS, WAR AND POLITICSExceptionally, we are extending the previous section dedicated to mathematicians and politics, to academics in general.

— Farias, Victor. Heidegger and Nazism. [English-language trans.]

In a comic and tragic passage of the foreword, its authors write : ”Heidegger had denounced several colleagues as Jews, includingat least one who was not Jewish” ... [xii]

It gets far less funny by the time the details of Heidegger’s wandering hand and pen are revealed (e.g., the case of Baumgarten) :

’The quality of Baumgarten’s courses was such that the University of Gottingen [engaged procedures to] give him the titleof professor ... Heidegger chose exactly this time to intervene from Freiburg. He sent a confidential political report to theNational Socialist organization of professors at Gottingen ... as follows :

”During his time here, [Baumgarten] was everything but a National Socialist. It surprises me that he is teaching ... Afterdisappointing me, he became closely tied to the Jew Frankel, who had been active at Gottingen and was later expelled. ...1 think he is pompous and without solid and true knowledge. This judgment comes from my experience with him for twoyears. In the meantime, has there been a change in his political attitude? I am unaware of it.” [210, emphasis text]

Baumgarten was suspended ”immediately” when the report reached Berlin, and was to be expelled from the country [ibid.]Heidegger, when not busy dissertating about Sein and Dasein, and when not strolling the streets of Freiburg (where he met the

”masses”, that did not deserve him, and for which he had so much contempt), and when not enchanted by the nature of the Schwarzwald,at his desk wrote such letters by the lantern and singing birds. (Existentialism can’t be worth much with such heroes...)

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GENERAL SOCIAL SCIENCE

— Jones, James. [1981]. Bad Blood. The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. New York : TheFree Press.

In one review, called a study ”of how the educated deliberately deceived and betrayed the uneducated”.

BOOK AND ADAPTATIONS

— Judge Dredd (1977-...)

Il. First story from 1977, in color [right] ”The Robot Wars” Part One

The city in which Judge Dredd comics take place - oh so important for the cyberpunk genre - is called, here in the firstissues, “Mega-City 1”; of which New York is a part. It is set shortly before, and then in the 22nd century as the storyprogresses (e.g. “the oxygen board” case is in 2100).

Dredd is described, there, as “dirtier than Harry” and “madder than Max”.Among so-called ‘early cases’ that of George stands out.

First issues give credits as follows : “Created and written by Pat Mills and John Wagner. Art: Carlos Ezquerra.”A convenient way to access this long running series is through The Complete Cases collection, for example.

Il. Dredd’s city in film adaptations : [1] 1995, detail : ”Motel” red neon / [2] 2012

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MONOGRAPHS

Wiesen. 2001. West German Industry and the Challenge of the

Nazi Past. Univ. of North Carolina Press.

”In early July 1945 [Siemens’s directors] were beginning to hear the ac-cusations raised against them, ... radio services reported that 100 indus-trialists had been arrested in Bavaria, among them Karl Knott, the headof Siemens’s Nuremberg works. Immediately, the nervous board membersin Berlin began designating their successors, in preparation for their ownpotential arrest” [27]

At times brilliant, at times fundamentally misdirected, this book is complicatedto recommend : the author gets excited about the detention of various industrialists -Siemens, Thyssen, Krupp etc. - at every turn as if this meant dire consequences wereawaiting : ”their past would not be forgotten” etc.

Mr. Wiesen should probably instead have emphasized for his readers such smalldetails as that :

Alfried Krupp spent just a few years in prison for aiding crimes against humanity.There are people in North Carolina doing more for weed... All talk of ””verarbeitet””is nonsense; BRD was never exemplary in that regard.

As for the relevance of this to computer science and technology, apart from Siemensbeing one of the modern, European IT giants :

Due to their dominant position, wealth, decadence (bless his soul, Visconti hascaptured and immortalized all of it in The Damned) the mighty Krupp family inmany ways was in an equivalent position at the beginning of the 20th century as techdynasties now, at the beginning of the 21st.

This history can very much be read also from that perspective.

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