Slashdot Mirror
William Gibson's Neuromancer Staged With Porn Star
destinyland writes "Sunday night saw a reading of the William Gibson's classic cyberpunk novel featuring porn star Sasha Grey at a New York art museum, along with sculpture-props simulating virtual reality. Artist Brody Condon promised to combine 'Gibson's 1980s dystopian techno-fetishism with early twentieth-century abstraction,' but the editor of H+ magazine challenges that description. 'In a 1993 interview, Gibson himself told me: "I think my world looks dystopian if you're a middle class white guy doing reasonably well in 1993... There are so many places in the world today that are so much crappier than anything I'm writing about."' And earlier this month William Gibson shared his response to a blog post about the event. 'Gol' dang! It's news to me!'"
.. is this on slashdot?
The world of _1984_ would look great to someone from Somalia or some of the other hellholes of the world. _Brave New World_ even more so. Yet they're still both considered dystopian. Same goes for Neuromancer.
Yes, they're all considered dystopian in the context of the West, but I think his point is astute, that whether something is a dystopia is contextual. The people living in positions of privilege, i.e. the West, wring their hands over and work hard to prevent these various dystopias from occurring, even while they may be actually working against the interests of the majority of humanity.
What we have now, if it wasn't reality, could be easily portrayed as a dystopia in a novel. Worse, the people with power to change things (the powered and moneyed people who are citizens in the first world) are unwilling to consider a lot of possibilities that may be on the table because they seem worse than their own privileged positions, without considering how badly off the majority of humanity is under their current system.
When I was growing up porn stars were very rare.
Today they are very common.
The stigma is less but so is the cachet.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
STD's are actually fairly uncommon in the mainstream porn industry. Some performers wear condoms (which if you wore during your little escapade with Ms Grey then you have little to worry about - it's not a 100% thing but it's close enough not to fret over it), and those who don't are constantly tested and essentially sign contracts explicitly stating that they'll only have sex with others in the porn industry who are subjected to the same tests. Generally they'll stick to that as, well, most people in porn are getting laid more than enough to seek out more action outside of the biz.
When there's an outbreak of AIDS or something similar it literally hits national (porn) news. Haven't seen a scare in about 2 years, and the last one didn't affect too many in the industry.
All in all, strap on your glove and bang who you want. Heck most prostitutes use condoms religiously to the point where you're probably safer there wearing your rubber than with some random chick you take home from the bar if she doesn't care if you wear it.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
sculpture-props simulating virtual reality
You get the sense that someone doesn't quite grasp the basic concepts.
No, actually, they got it right. Something real styled after something that doesn't exist must be simulated.
Thinking about any one of their props hard enough leads me to this train of thought: It's a real object, therefore it is real reality. So it can't be real virtual reality, it has to be simulated virtual reality which is what any real real reality made with real virtual reality in mind has to be, though since it's based on a cyberpunk novel it's really a simulated virtual fictional object, or a non-real non-real non-real object and now my ears are bleeding and I wonder why that is and it's all really real ooooh....
If your boss gives you a car, you feel great.
If your boss gives your co-worker two cars, now you feel badly.
The last three decades have consisted of taking away pieces of white middle class males cars until now they are riding a used bicycle only very slightly better than everyone else's.
The drop in status, income, prestige, and even the ability to retain a job has been painful and protracted. Very soon white males will be a minority in many areas and from what I've seen, the former minorities have a lot of illegal practices (like hiring only the same minority as they are) which no one is willing to fight against yet. I think that at some point very soon (the next 10 years), you will see a Mexican company based in the U.S. sued successfully for not hiring/promoting white males.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.