HUPOMNEMATA

Next August in Prague, maybe we should visit this:
“Visions of Humanity in Cyberculture, Cyberspace and Science Fiction is a new project being launched in August 2003.

The aim of the project is to promote the inter- and multi-disciplinary study of all aspects relating to how cyberculture, cyberpunk and science fiction can bring significant perspectives to bear on the nature of what it is to be human and the understanding of what it means for human beings to live in communities.

The project will initially centre around an annual conference held each August in Eastern and Central Europe, and the United Kingdom. The work of the project is to be supported by an email discussion group, ISSN ejournal, ISBN publication series and an evolving research and resource centre.

The project will seek to identify, develop and explore a number of key themes;

* the relationship between cyberculture, cyberspace and science fiction
* science fiction and cyberpunk as a medium for exploring the nature of persons
* humans, cyborgs and the biotechnology
* human and post-human politics
* bodies in cyberculture
* gender and cyberspace
* electronic persons, community and identity
* nature, enhancing nature, and artificial intelligence
* Cyberpolitics, cyberdemocracy, cyberterror
* Cybercultures
* religion and spirituality
* technology vs. the natural; cyberculture and the green movement”

This, on Charles Stross’ blog is too funny not to be copied :
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Just finished reading Limit Of Vision, by Linda Nagata. Three sides. 1 : an artificial intelligence called Mother Tiger, getting to the point of singularity where it/she will jump one step in its/her evolution. 2 : artificial life, the LOVs, barely big enough to be seen (hence the title and their name) that can build complex structures among themselves or can become symbiotic LOVs, linking with the brains of humans. 3 : the human bodies, most of them children ready to embrace the changes. Networking between the three of them, leading to « cognitive circles » : a next step in intelligence fuelled by instinct and feelings, not only rationnal thinking. How the protagonists link to the rest of the world, through technology, how they link among themselves, through technology and their new transformed bodies, and how their identities fluctuate. Ultimately, the book is not enough, not really facing the implications of what it proposes despite some nice ideas along the way.

It didn’t last long : William Gibson should soon stop blogging. Too bad. I think it was sometimes far better than the books.

Several days ago we linked to some News of the private efforts to get into space. It now appears that Jeff Bezos is paying for this, and he’s taking Neal Stephenson with him!

Today a friend of mine challenges me to react to a discussion lead on the mailing list nettime (check their April archives), a highly recommended and refined place for intellectuals from all over the world to discuss and publish on very important issues.
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News from the space tourism industry, with nice photographs of the spacecraft.

They’re writing a story together online. You can see the work progress, including discussions about how it should evolve.

Reading Adam Roberts’ Science Fiction (Routledge New Critical Idiom, Routledge 2000), I couldn’t help being infuriated by this (about Starship Troopers) :

“Altering the racial identity of the hero in Verhoeven’s 1997 film of the book went some way towards producing a more straightforwardly fascist text. This is not the point.”

Well, I don’t know what is the point, but it is absurd to go on pretending not to notice that Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers is a text about fascism (and more precisely the american brand of fascism) and not a fascist text. The same cannot be said of Heinlein’s book, although the protagonist is black. Recommended screening : the Starship Troopers dvd with audio commentary by Verhoeven.

Yet another paper on the major Kusanagi, by Mobina Hashmi :

“To conclude this paper, I want to briefly touch on some of the problems raised by Ghost in the Shell endorsement of a dispersed disembodied consciousness. I prefer an understanding of cyborgs as highly technological constructions which bring the body back into technological discourse, not as something to be transcended through technology, but as something integrated within it that add a whole new set of variables that cannot be easily explained or controlled. (…) The desire to remove bodies from this weave is the desire to ignore the structures of race and gender privilege that make it possible for some bodies to be “invisible” while others cannot-and do not necessarily want to-obtain the same kind of transcendence.”