Announcements
In the e-mail I sent, I mentioned some changes and how I screwed up and gave you two “Coronavirus-Induced Reflections Post #1–March 23rd.” Just respond to the post you didn’t respond to last week. If you’ve responded to both in 250 words, great, you’re good until next week. Also, respond in 100 words to a classmate’s post on either “Coronavirus-Induced Reflections Post #1–March 23rd” you didn’t respond to.
Also, I’m pushing the due date of your final Social Construction of Technology essays to Friday, April 3rd by 11:00 pm. There’s already an assignment on Canvas. Remember, this is a 12-page essay.
William Gibson–Cyberpunk Author
Please review the information about William Gibson from March 9th’s page. This is part of Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy, but, as you noticed, Count Zero isn’t the type of sequel we’re used to. It references Neuromancer, but Count Zero doesn’t continue the plot of Neuromancer the same way most sequels (novels and films) do.
Neuromancer and Count Zero will be on your final exam, which is now going to be online through Canvas, so make sure you know their general plots and the characters. Also, notice one of the biggest differences between the two stories: where were all the families and children in Neuromancer? Also, was anyone able to find how long it had been between events from Neuromancer and Count Zero? {That would be an excellent Final Exam question…}
William Gibson’s Count Zero
I have notes up for today and Wednesday, so one page is all we need for this week, but I’ve linked it twice. Although I like Count Zero, I think Neuromancer is the better novel because it was so groundbreaking. Overall, Count Zero is good and brings up similar questions, but it was more action motivated than cerebral.
Main Characters
- Turner–the mercenary
- Marly Krushkhova–the art dealer
- Bobby Newmark–emerging console cowboy
- Angela “Angie” Mitchell–a very special augmented person
- Christopher Mitchell–“lucky” biotech (hybridoma) engineer wanting to defect from Maas Biolabs to Hosaka
- The Finn–the agoraphobic fence
- Conroy–coordinator for Mitchell’s defection
- Josef Virek–old mega rich entity
- Paco–Virek’s assistant
- Andrea–Marly’s roommate (sort of…)
- Alain–Marly’s ex-boyfriend
- Beauvoir–Vodou follower looking for Vyej Mirak, “Our Lady Virgin of Miracles”
- Jackie–the horse of Danbala and an ex-dancer
- Lucas–another Vodou follower
- Jammer–nightclub owner
- Jaylene Slide–a character you need to finish the book to meet
Plot
- Turner, after rehabilitating from being blown up after his last job, agrees to extract Mitchell with the team Conroy assembles (all hired guns), but things don’t work out exactly as planned.
- Marly, after being unemployed due to a bad art deal, gets a very lucrative proposal from Virek to find a special box.
- Bobby Newmark dies on his first run (p. 58–we learn it was his very first run with the new ICE at the end of ch. 9) because he’s a guinea pig for Two-a-Day’s new deck, but he’s revived and goes searching for why…and gets brutally attacked. He gets fixed up and joins Beauvoir’s team to find the Virgin in cyberspace.
- All of these plot lines eventually converge, revealing a vast network of people trying to find the source of those secret boxes…
The plot of Count Zero takes us back to the Sprawl and back into Cyberspace, the matrix. Remember, from our discussion on Neuromancer, Gibson coined the term “cyberspace.” Although characters “jack in” to the matrix, that component is less of a factor in Count Zero. Bobby Newmark gets fried when he first jacks in, and he goes in for an important run at the end, but he doesn’t go in as much as Case did. There are a lot more key characters in Count Zero, and their stories converge. A surface reading would be that that the plot is contrived to get all the subplots to conform. However, a deeper, more metaphorical reading is that nearly the entirety of human activity (and consciousness) is connected. We’ll go into economics, technology, and spirituality. There are a lot more themes, but these should help focus your attention to what’s important for this class. [Of course, if we were still meeting face to face, we’d have time for more discussion.]
Economics
Globalization and multinational corporations run the world much like they do in Neuromancer. You should be reading metaphorically and considering these corporations as allegories for contemporary big businesses today. Gibson noticed the growth and influence big corporations were having in the late-1970s and early 1980s. The idea that corporations would replace governments is a common theme of 1980s and 1990s science fiction.
Some of you a familiar with the Internet of Things (IoT), but, generally, just notice all the products you have that connect you and are connected to the Internet. Now, consider the way you do much of your purchases. Currently, you’re probably making more purchases online due to quarantine restrictions, but I believe you made a lot prior to COVID-19 shutting us down. The world of Count Zero isn’t quite post-apocalyptic (although bot it and Neuromancer reference a major war, which changed things), but it doesn’t seem to be entirely stable. However, there is still money, so there’s an economy, and, just like ours, people need to buy stuff to keep the economy going.
Technology
Of course, science fiction narratives have science and/or technology as major components driving a plot. While we can’t actually plug ourselves into the global communication technologies connected to the internet, metaphorically, the book comments on the increasing connectivity and interlocking of systems Gibson recognized. Put it this way, there was a time when some businesses weren’t hooked up to a network that allowed credit cards to be swiped and “instantly” work. Instead, when one bought products using a credit card, the cashier would make an imprint on a carbon copy receipt. The business would take the white copy, and the pink and yellow (technically, golden rod) would go to the credit card company and the buyer. You can see an example of this from the film Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987).
Bobby gives us a clue as to how we should interpret technology when, early on in the novel, he points out that being online “wasn’t space” but “[humanity]’s unthinkable complex consensual hallucination, the matrix, cyberspace, where the great corporate hotcores burned like neon novas” (pp. 38-39).
Spirituality
There aren’t any actual ghosts, spirits, or other metaphysical entities in cyberspace, but there are programs the mimic these forces. Beauvoir, Lucas, Jackie, and Rhea are Vodou (alternate spelling) followers looking for the Virgin, who passes between the real world and cyberspace without having to jack in. We eventually learn that this individual is a surgically enhanced human. The technology that augmented her is truly out of this world!
Much like the Rastafarians from Neuromancer, the Vodou followers search for the divine through technology. The interpretation I think isn’t that Gibson is claiming there are gods in technology; instead, I think he’s alluding to the fact that humans see technology as salvation. Think back to Noble’s The Religion of Technology, where he traces the campaign to link scientific and technological discovery to Christianity. One possible interpretation is that Gibson is critiquing contemporary fascination and cult-like devotion to our devices.
Now, let’s not gloss over the fact that both novels use religions with roots in Africa: Rastafarianism and Vodou. Although many interpretations are possible, I will propose two. First, Rastafarianism and Vodou are smaller religions than the three Abrahamic religions, Hinduism, and Buddhism, which are the world’s dominant religions (there are, of course, other religions, but we recognize these as major religions). Therefore, there size makes using these “street religion[s], which came out of a dirt poor place a million years ago” (p. 77), as more portable in a world where dominant organizations (e.g. governments) seem to be nonexistent. Secondly, using a postcolonial lens, I think we can claim that these religions are prevalent in the Caribbean, and they got there because of the legacy of slavery–displaced groups formed these religious identities while not being connected to their ancestral lands. I know some will argue that Judaism has the same history (and I would love to read that argument), but we can point to Jewish holy sites the same way we can point to holy sites of the other dominant world religions–place has been settled (more or less). In contrast, Rastafarianism and Vodou have less settled holy sites, making them easier to incorporate into these novels where borders–the familiar borders of states and countries–are less important. The portability of the religions seems foundational, and cyberspace is well suited to conveying that.
Also, Beauvoir even references Ezili Freda (p. 58–end of ch. 9), so we know Gibson did some research.
Next Class
Don’t forget to turn in your final revisions of your Social Construction of Technology essays by Friday, April 3 at 11:00 pm. I’m giving you an extension.
Also, keep up with the reading. You have to read Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s “The Industrial Revolution in the Home: Household Technology and Social Change in the 20th Century,” which is on Canvas.