rsalz@papaya.bbn.com.UUCP (10/05/87)
Can we stop playing "SciFi Reference Librarian" and get on to discussion of real cyberpunk issues here? Screw definitions, too: save the hair-splitting for talk.something. I tried to stir up discussion with my Media-Lab posting, which had side questions of the value of a C-punk life, among other comments. I'm gonna get a look-see of the place from some friends who work/play/study there, and if there's anything interesting I'll post it. /r$ -- For comp.sources.unix stuff, mail to sources@uunet.uu.net. And if C is the assembly language of the 80's, why is ACP written in MIX?
bc@mit-amt.UUCP (10/05/87)
Well, it is important to find one's roots, and to distinguish one's identity. BUT, be aware that most any concept worth thinking about is too hard to give a concise definition of. And, how are we gonna decide what is punk and what not, if stuff is 80%, or 60% or 20% as punk as current? fnord So let's shelve the chat (although I'd welcome a cyber geneology if someone is scholarly enough to pull it off, to point out sources of key ideas that ended up in yer-average-punk-pulp), and get down to the ideas. fnord Also, reviews would be nice. fnord Anyway, how would you design a newspaper that was smart enough to know what you were and were not interested in, and edited things accordingly? (Note the different style of coverage that the Wall Street Journal gives than, say the New York Times.) What if something you might consider too boring to read turns out to be vitally important? So who (or what) decides what you read? (And if you don't think that this is already a problem, you won't see this: fnord) Here at the Media Lab, we are making just such a newspaper. Remember, if you can't see the fnords, they won't eat you............bc(fnord)
johnm@well.UUCP (10/08/87)
OK, here's a cyberpunk application to consider. I was at the Artificial Life conference in Los Alamos a couple weeks ago and a computer scientist at a government lab described a neural net application for speaker recognition. The application? To be able to browse through thousands of phone conversations scoop up by ELINT vacuum cleaners (ferret satellites) and findindividual by matching his or her voice. A lovely technology -- of course its totally illegal in the U.S.....