There is this book by a woman named
Pat Cadigan
. It’s called Synners and it is a novel in what they call
the cyberpunk genre. If you don’t know what that means, think “The
Matrix” or “Johnny Mnemonic”, or “Strange Days”.
It is an offshoot of straight science fiction, the origin of which is
usually credited to William Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer.
Synners occurs in the not-so-distant future at a time when people are getting cerebral implants (she calls them ‘sockets’, I call them ‘datajacks’) so that they may interface directly with their computers. A datajack is like the wall jack your phone plugs in to, except it is connected directly to your neural plexus (read: really important brain stuff) via your own sensory input fields (the parts of your brain which process sight, sound, taste, touch and smell) so that it functions like a synapse (the parts of your brain which talk to each other and create what we know of as thought). In theory, this is possible.
At least, it would be—if the nanotechnology which were necessary to create such neurocanulas (the datajacks) were developed. Even so it would be quite costly (in the tens of billions of U.S. dollars) and would almost certainly be opposed by most of the so-called civilized people in the developed countries of the world, not to mention most religions orders and all of the other Luddite creepazoids masquerading as your friends and neighbors.
Being none of the above, I’d like to be the first in line to have the holes drilled in my head so I can talk to my computer directly.
When I was reading this book (along with a lot of other science fiction, which forms a large portion of what I read) I developed an image in my head of a group of trendy people who abuse this type of technology the way the trendy people of today abuse all the current technologies: driving down the street in their gas-guzzling SUV while talking nonstop on their global wireless internet-ready-combination-CD/DVD/VHS/BETA/NTSC/MPEG-playing- global-digi-phone which of course, they only really use to play games, to look cool and to send grocery lists to their spouse who is working two jobs so they can afford to look like they can actually afford the trappings of success.
And of course, for sex. As we all know, the Internet is for porn.
These people ruin it for all of us. Look at what they did to online access. Most people who aren’t total geeks (like me) don’t know this, but the Internet has been around in some form or another since at very least the mid-1960’s and has been easily accessible to the public since the advent of the so-called “micro-computer” (if you don’t know what that is, let me give you a hint- you’re probably reading this from the screen of one). When I was a kid (in the early eighties) I dialed into my first BBS (bulletin board system—you know them as ‘forums’) from my Commodore 64 so I could talk to other geeks about geeky stuff like how to write a program which would translate my notes to my best friend across the street into indecipherable code based on a rotating permutation system and then translate it into binary. All this just so her brother wouldn’t be able to make fun of us for writing girly notes back and forth—but of course he made fun of us for being geeks instead.
Now I can’t even get my frigging e-mail without being constantly inundated with SPAM, banners, pop-ups and images of naked boobies, which I am not against necessarily—bit I would rather go looking for the naked boobies myself, rather than having them pop up unasked for.
These unasked for and unwanted uses and abuses of the tech are instituted and perpetuated by people whose only use for technology is making money. The trendy people who would ruin a cool idea like datajacks are these same people.
So after reading the book, I had this mental image of one of them who doesn’t want to use his datajack for creating cool art, or music, or even entertaining himself by playing a virtually-enhanced video game. He just wants to have more realistic cyber sex. So he plugs in.
And again, there’s nothing wrong with that. But there is a certain subset society, of this society in particular that finds sex disturbing. So they push it to the fringe instead of keeping it out in the open. And like anything pushed to the fringe, this gives those unscrupulous types who would use human needs and desires for their own profit an edge. I find it so sad and yet so typical that as a race, humans find new and extravagant ways to attempt to make their primal needs look like something else. It’s like we are so conditioned to believe that being human is dirty and evil that we disguise our basic needs and functions. It isn’t polite to talk about bodily functions or reproduction. Most profanity in all cultures comes from words for bodily functions, fluids and parts. (i.e. shit, fuck, asshole, etc.) If we marginalize some aspect of ourselves, there will always be some guy down the alley in a trenchcoat waiting to sell it to us. And because we want it, or need it, we will pay any price.
There is also an element in the book which talks about this one character’s motivations to develop an AI (artificial intelligence). I don’t want to give the whole book away, for some of you may want to read it, but there is a scene where this programmer named Gabe is talking to a videographer named Visual Mark. Gabe sees Mark staring off into space near the soda machine. He walks over to him and asks “Do you need some change for the machines?” This causes a chain reaction in Visual Mark’s brain which results in a paradigm shift of the highest order. He looks back at Gabe and says “Change for the machines.” Except to Mark, it has taken on a whole new perspective.
We are human beings. We evolve based upon stimuli introduced to us from the world around us. The most adaptable creature is the one who survives to breed and so passes on his adaptations to his progeny. And in a world where the machines are all around us, we must change for the machines. The technology changes us, molds us against it. We invented technology, starting with fire and the wheel, to make our lives more bearable. Now, it makes our lives more complicated. We are adaptable—so we adapt to our technological environment, changing and shifting ourselves to fit into those sockets, to interface with advertising, with television, with corporate greed.
We are killing the organic environment, but people breeze right past Al Gore’s impassioned, if somewhat scientifically muted plea for environmental awareness to comment on how full of life he looks. “This is a guy,” the public says “for whom we would have voted.”
Will
there be a future, and what kind of future will it be?
Synners was published 16 years ago, when I was 16 years old—the same
age as Sam, one of the book’s hacker protagonists. And though much has
changed since then, most of what Cadigan predicted has come true—-the
net has evolved in much the way she said it would. Though datajacks
are still pretty far off, the corporate greed that drives the
development of such things is here now.
Unfortunately, all I can see from this vertex is a future where that which we need and want—air, water, food, and hope—will be for sale to the highest bidder. And I don’t want that kind of world.
So I wrote this song, about 5 years ago,
based on that idea—the guy who wants to use the greatest technology
since transistors to have better, safer sex. I wrote this—and much
like the book—no one got it. But I give it to you now: you don’t
have to understand it. You don’t have to like it. Art, like almost
everything else, is subjective. What this song means to me won’t be
what it means to you.
And hey—-go buy Pat’s book and read it.
SYNNERS
lyrics by raven nightshado
copyright 2002 Carpe Diem Publishing, all rights reserved.
In the datastream, I found my soul, found my soul
Change for the machines
Everybody wants some
Change for the machines
Everybody needs some
Change for the machines
Everybody has some
Change for the machines
Get out and grab some
Grab your modem, shed your skin
strap down, jack in
digital sex is a virtual sin
whoever dies with the most ram wins
never before have I felt as fine
as when I’m fucking my telephone line
Sometimes it’s hard not to get too bored
sometimes it’s hard to keep my hands on the keyboard
Upgrade your hardware, lose your soul
boot your software, lose control
stroke your joystick, once again
whoever dies with the most ram wins
my body electric is filled with your fire
give in to the darkness, give in to desire
I just flip the switches, and then it begins
and whoever dies with the most ram wins
change for the machines
all we ever do is
change for the machines