Angry and Astute

As Sojourners' culture czar, I like to keep myself, and I hope others, in touch with some of the happenings in the worlds of popular and print culture. We will regularly attempt to define some of the terms bandied about here: from "virtual reality" to "postmodernism," from "grunge" to "ska," from "smart drinks" to "guerrilla theatre."

Today's assignment: the cyberpunk movement.

Angry and Astute

The cyberpunk movement is a growing, media-popular subculture in America. "Cyber" of course refers to computers; "punk" relates to the youth rebellion of the early '80s. Cyberpunk is the space created by the collision of technology, fantasy, reality, and pop culture. Think of it as science faction.

Cyberpunks draw their lineage from punk rebels and hacker-geeks, making a hybrid hip hacker. These are folks with a fairly powerful analysis about what's wrong with society, and they have an equally powerful tool for righting the perceived wrongs: technological innovation, especially in the form of computer invasion.

To the business world they are nothing but scoundrels and thiefs; to the marginalized they are something of a merry band, offering vengeance on the silver-spooned of society and redistribution of wealth.

Recently Julie Caniglia of the Twin Cities' City Pages met with a couple of Minneapolis cyberpunks (Kid Thalidomide and St. Vitus) who live off their street and hacker skills. These two ride computer waves, looking to access information and gain revenge against their enemies.

They are angry and astute enough to do so. Working with other cyberpunks around the country, they are organizing an "electronic riot," which will be "the most delicious event ever to be perpetrated on corporate America," according to St. Vitus. They hope to bring about a national bank collapse comparable to "an atom bomb."

Cyberpunks use a combination of computer virtuosity and "social engineering" -- authoritative or coy interactions with the "weak link" in the system...other humans -- to gain access to information systems, according to Katie Hafner and John Markoff, authors of Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier (Simon & Schuster, 1991, $22.95, cloth). Consummate hackers, once in, know how to get themselves around.

THE ENTERTAINING LOOK, the angst expressed, the articulate opinionating, make cyberpunks interesting subjects for journalists (including this one). Cyberpunk as a concept grew out of a couple of science fiction books written within the last 15 years.

John Brunner's Shockwave Rider (1975), a fictional parallel to Alvin Toffler's Future Shock, is credited with establishing this movement. The massive data-nets become the superhighway of the compu-traveler protagonist, who, discovering that the government was using him, escapes into the countercultural movement. Technological sorcery and counterculture are synthesized.

William Gibson wrote the definitive cyberpunk work, Neuromancer (1984), the first of a trilogy dealing with a sentient cyberspace matrix. Keyboard operators could actually "enter" the system, creating their own archetype within the computer itself. Reality becomes a series of binary operations. Like the Westward Movement, these hackers believe they are "homesteading" in as yet unclaimed space.

In the past few years, several loosely defined cyberpunk magazines have begun publication. The best known is Mondo 2000. This trendy mag, arising from the ashes of drug-defending High Frontiers, offers a sort of New Age cyberpunk view, trying to clean up the image of rebel hackers with hip, glitzy covers.

Although the articles in Mondo appear primarily to be an excuse for ads for "virtual sexual experiences," occasional glimpses of a political edge do pop up. But cyberpunks are so deeply dipped in unbridled angst, one wonders what bridled angst would look like. Could these kids be organized for social change, rather than for pirating the corporate computer highways?

And in keeping with the trend, Billy Idol, who has made a successful transition from punk to metal (if that can be called success), released last month Cyberpunk (Chrysalis, 1993), a virtual recording of synthesized and computerized metal licks. With a digitalized, sonic CD cover, this becomes a "new-look" package. Idol wants to be the Max Headroom of his generation, it would seem.

On "Wasteland," the opening track of Cyberpunk, Idol pontificates, "Out in the Wasteland/no religion/no religion/no religion at all." Not a new thought for rebellious youth, but the new context provides the theme of the stanzas: "In VR land/The future of fun/Tell me what to do/in VR law/Computer crime/Um, so sublime/A fantasy scene/In my machine...."

Moral questions of break-ins, theft, and destruction of property are never raised. Crime is a foreign concept. Cyberpunks are no respecters of property rights.

In "Neuromancer" Idol tips his hat to the book that set off the movement by painting the futuristic landscape it portrayed. "Tomorrow People" makes the movement's participants the salvific hope within this dark future.

But does all this attention mean there is a cyberpunk movement that is gaining influence and power? And more important, will this movement contribute to positive social change?

I suspect that right now 'punks still confuse new toys with new sensibilities and new ethics. The problem is, it's not new toys but new ways of relating to the world and its inhabitants that are so desperately needed.

Most cyberpunks are too unself-critical and even unself-aware to offer a serious, viable lifestyle alternative for most. But, though they are a nuisance to the powerful, they will for a long time be heroic to the alienated and marginalized.

That by itself makes them worth noting in my book.

Bob Hulteen was Under Review Editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.