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Friday, June 2, 2023

Cyberpunk derivatives

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Since the advent of the cyberpunk genre, a number of derivatives of cyberpunk have become recognized in their own right as distinct subgenres in speculative fiction, especially in science fiction. Rather than necessarily sharing the digitally and mechanically focused setting of cyberpunk, these derivatives can display other futuristic, or even retrofuturistic, qualities that are drawn from or analogous to cyberpunk: a world built on one particular technology that is extrapolated to a highly sophisticated level (this may even be a fantastical or anachronistic technology, akin to retrofuturism), a gritty transreal urban style, or a particular approach to social themes.

Steampunk, one of the most well-known of these subgenres, has been defined as a "kind of technological fantasy;" others in this category sometimes also incorporate aspects of science fantasy and historical fantasy. Scholars have written of the stylistic place of these subgenres in postmodern literature, as well as their ambiguous interaction with the historical perspective of postcolonialism.

Background

American author Bruce Bethke coined the term cyberpunk in his 1980 short story of the same name, proposing it as a label for a new generation of 'punk' teenagers inspired by the perceptions inherent to the Information Age. The term was quickly appropriated as a label to be applied to the works of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, John Shirley, Rudy Rucker, Michael Swanwick, Pat Cadigan, Lewis Shiner, Richard Kadrey, and others. Science fiction author Lawrence Person, in defining postcyberpunk, summarized the characteristics of cyberpunk thusly:

Classic cyberpunk characters were marginalized, alienated loners who lived on the edge of society in generally dystopic futures where daily life was impacted by rapid technological change, an ubiquitous datasphere of computerized information, and invasive modification of the human body.

The cyberpunk style describes the nihilistic and underground side of the digital society that developed from the last two decades of the 20th century. The cyberpunk world is dystopian, that is, it is the antithesis of utopian visions, very frequent in science fiction produced in the mid-twentieth century, typified by the world of Star Trek, although incorporating some of these utopias. It is sometimes generically defined as "cyberpunk-fantasy" or "cyberfantasy" a work of a fantasy genre that concerns the internet or cyberspace. Among the best known exponents are commonly indicated William Gibson, for his highly innovative and distinctive stories and novels from a stylistic and thematic point of view, and Bruce Sterling, for theoretical elaboration. Sterling later defined cyberpunk as “a new type of integration. The overlapping of worlds that were formally separated: the realm of high tech and modern underground culture.

The relevance of cyberpunk as a genre to punk subculture is debatable and further hampered by the lack of a defined 'cyberpunk' subculture. Where the small 'cyber' movement shares themes with cyberpunk fiction, as well as drawing inspiration from punk and goth alike, cyberculture is considerably more popular though much less defined, encompassing virtual communities and cyberspace in general and typically embracing optimistic anticipations about the future. Cyberpunk is nonetheless regarded as a successful genre, as it ensnared many new readers and provided the sort of movement that postmodern literary critics found alluring. Furthermore, author David Brin argues, cyberpunk made science fiction more attractive and profitable for mainstream media and the visual arts in general.

Futuristic derivatives

Biopunk

Biopunk builds on synthetic biology and biotechnology (such as bionanotechnology and biorobotics), typically focusing on the potential dangers to genetic engineering and enhancement. As such, this genre generally depicts near-future unintended consequences of the biotechnology revolution following the discovery of recombinant DNA.

Emerging during the 1990s, biopunk fiction usually describes the struggles of individuals or groups, often the product of human experimentation, against a backdrop of totalitarian governments or megacorporations that misuse biotechnologies as means of social control or profiteering.

As in postcyberpunk, individuals are most commonly modified and enhanced by genetic manipulation of their chromosomes rather than with prosthetic cyberware or dry nanotechnologies (albeit, like in nanopunk, bio-, nanotechnologies, and cyberware often coexist), and sometimes with other biotechnologies, such as nanobiotechnology, wetware, special bioengineered organs, and neural and tissue grafts.

Film examples include Naked Lunch (1991), Gattaca (1997), Children of Men (2006), and Vesper (2022).

Nanopunk

Nanopunk focuses on worlds in which the theoretical possibilities of nanotechnology are a reality, including the use of Drexlerian 'dry' nano-assemblers and nanites.

It is an emerging subgenre that is still less common in comparison to other derivatives of cyberpunk. The genre is similar to biopunk, which focuses on the use of biotechnology, such as bionanotechnology and biorobotics, rather than on nanotechnology. (Albeit, like in biopunk, bio-, nanotechnologies, and cyberware often coexist in contrast to classical cyberpunk settings tending to heavily focus on mechanical cyberware to the point of genetic engineering and nanotechnologies being outright banned in some cyberpunk settings.)

One of the earliest works of nanopunk, Tech Heaven (1995) by Linda Nagata, looked into the healing potential of nanotechnology. Currently, the genre is more concerned with the artistic and physiological impact of nanotechnology, than of aspects of the technology itself. For instance, Prey (2002) by Michael Crichton explores a potential doomsday scenario caused by nanotechnology. Still, one of the most prominent examples of nanopunk is the Crysis video game series; less famous examples include the television series Generator Rex (2010) and film Transcendence (2014).

Postcyberpunk

Postcyberpunk includes newer cyberpunk works that experiment with different approaches to the genre. Oftentimes, such works will keep to central futuristic elements of cyberpunk—such as human augmentation, ubiquitous infospheres, and other advanced technology—but will forgo the assumption of a dystopia. However, like all categories discerned within science fiction, the boundaries of postcyberpunk are likely to be fluid or ill-defined.

It can be argued that the rise of cyberpunk fiction took place at a time when the 'cyber' was still considered new, foreign, and more-or-less strange to the average person. In this sense, postcyberpunk essentially emerged in acknowledgement of the idea that humanity has since adapted to the concept of cyberspace and no longer sees some elements of cyberpunk as from a distant world.

As new writers and artists began to experiment with cyberpunk ideas, new varieties of fiction emerged, sometimes addressing the criticisms leveled at classic cyberpunk fiction. In 1998, Lawrence Person published an essay to the Internet forum Slashdot in which he discusses the emergence of the postcyberpunk genre:

The best of cyberpunk conveyed huge cognitive loads about the future by depicting (in best "show, don't tell" fashion) the interaction of its characters with the quotidian minutia of their environment. In the way they interacted with their clothes, their furniture, their decks and spex, cyberpunk characters told you more about the society they lived in than "classic" SF stories did through their interaction with robots and rocketships. Postcyberpunk uses the same immersive world-building technique, but features different characters, settings, and, most importantly, makes fundamentally different assumptions about the future. Far from being alienated loners, postcyberpunk characters are frequently integral members of society (i.e., they have jobs). They live in futures that are not necessarily dystopic (indeed, they are often suffused with an optimism that ranges from cautious to exuberant), but their everyday lives are still impacted by rapid technological change and an omnipresent computerized infrastructure.

Person advocates using the term postcyberpunk for the strain of science fiction that he describes above. In this view, typical postcyberpunk fiction explores themes related to a "world of accelerating technological innovation and ever-increasing complexity in ways relevant to our everyday lives," while continuing the focus on social aspects within a post-third industrial-era society, such as of ubiquitous dataspheres and cybernetic augmentation of the human body. Unlike cyberpunk, its works may portray a utopia or to blend elements of both extremes into a relatively more mature societal vision.

Denoting the postmodern framework of the genre, Rafael Miranda Huereca (2006) states:

In this fictional world, the unison in the hive becomes a power mechanism which is executed in its capillary form, not from above the social body but from within. This mechanism as Foucault remarks is a form of power, which "reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives". In postcyberpunk unitopia 'the capillary mechanism' that Foucault describes is literalized. Power touches the body through the genes, injects viruses to the veins, takes the forms of pills and constantly penetrates the body through its surveillance systems; collects samples of body substance, reads finger prints, even reads the 'prints' that are not visible, the ones which are coded in the genes. The body responds back to power, communicates with it; supplies the information that power requires and also receives its future conduct as a part of its daily routine. More importantly, power does not only control the body, but also designs, (re)produces, (re)creates it according to its own objectives. Thus, human body is re-formed as a result of the transformations of the relations between communication and power.

The Daemon novel series by Daniel Suarez could be considered postcyberpunk in this sense.

In addition to themes of its ancestral genre, according to Huereca (2011), postcyberpunk might also combine elements of nanopunk and biopunk. Some postcyberpunk settings can have diverse types of augmentations instead of focusing on one kind, while others, similar to classic cyberpunk, can revolve around a single type of technology like prosthetics, such as in Ghost in the Shell (GitS).

Often named examples of postcyberpunk novels are Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age and Bruce Sterling's Holy Fire. In television, Person has called Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex "the most interesting, sustained postcyberpunk media work in existence." In 2007, San Francisco writers James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel published Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology.

Cyber noir

Cyber noir is a noir genre story placed in a cyberpunk setting.

Retrofuturistic derivatives

As a wider variety of writers began to work with cyberpunk concepts, new subgenres of science fiction emerged, playing off the cyberpunk label, and focusing on technology and its social effects in different ways. Many derivatives of cyberpunk are retro-futuristic: they reimagine the past either through futuristic visions of historical eras (especially from the first and second industrial revolution technological-eras), or through depictions of more recent extrapolations or exaggerations of the actual technology from those eras.

Steampunk

Victorian-style attire with a steampunk mechanical arm
 

Steampunk is a retro-futuristic genre that is influenced by the Steam Age, ranging from the late Regency era (1795–1837; when the Industrial Revolution began) through the Victorian era (1837–1901) and the Belle Époque (1871–1914).

The word steampunk was invented in 1987 as a jocular reference to some of the novels of Tim Powers, James P. Blaylock, and K. W. Jeter. When Gibson and Sterling entered the subgenre with their 1990 collaborative novel The Difference Engine, the term was being used earnestly as well. Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's 1999 The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen historical fantasy comic book series (and the subsequent 2003 film adaptation) popularized the steampunk genre and helped propel it into mainstream fiction.

The most immediate form of steampunk subculture is the community of fans surrounding the genre. Others move beyond this, attempting to adopt a "steampunk" aesthetic through fashion, home decor and even music. This movement may also be (perhaps more accurately) described as "Neo-Victorianism", which is the amalgamation of Victorian aesthetic principles with modern sensibilities and technologies. This characteristic is particularly evident in steampunk fashion which tends to synthesize punk, goth and rivet styles as filtered through the Victorian era. As an object style, however, steampunk adopts more distinct characteristics with various craftspersons modding modern-day devices into a pseudo-Victorian mechanical "steampunk" style. The goal of such redesigns is to employ appropriate materials (such as polished brass, iron, and wood) with design elements and craftsmanship consistent with the Victorian era.

Other examples include Wild Wild West (1999) Hugo (2011), Treasure Planet (2002), Last Exile (2003), Bioshock Infinite (2013) Arcane (2022).

Clockpunk

Clockpunk, a subgenre of steampunk, reimagines the Renaissance period (14th–17th century) to include retro-futuristic technology, often portraying Renaissance-era science and technology based on clockwork, gears, and Da Vincian machinery designs. Such designs are in the vein of Mainspring by Jay Lake, and Whitechapel Gods by S. M. Peters.

The term was coined by the GURPS role-playing system. Examples of clockpunk include The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish; Astro-Knights Island in the nonlinear game Poptropica; the Clockwork Mansion level of Dishonored 2; the 2011 film version of The Three Musketeers; the TV series Da Vinci's Demons; as well as the video games Thief: The Dark Project, Syberia, and Assassin's Creed 2. Ian Tregillis' book The Mechanical is self-proclaimed clockpunk literature.

For some, clockpunk is steampunk without steam.

Alita: Battle Angel (2019), based on the manga Battle Angel Alita, is mostly cyberpunk but sometimes its machines contain elements of clockpunk.

Dieselpunk

Dieselpunk

Dieselpunk is a genre and art style based on the aesthetics popular in the interwar period through the end of World War II into the 1950s, when diesel displaced the steam engine. The style combines the artistic and genre influences of the period (including pulp magazines, serial films, film noir, art deco, and wartime pin-ups) with retro-futuristic technology and postmodern sensibilities.

First coined in 2001 as a marketing term by game designer Lewis Pollak to describe his role-playing game Children of the Sun, dieselpunk has since grown to describe a distinct style of visual art, music, motion pictures, fiction, and engineering.

Examples include the movies Iron Sky (2012), Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), The Rocketeer (1991), K-20: Legend of the Mask (2008), Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004), and Dark City (1998); video games such as the Crimson Skies series, Greed Corp, Gatling Gears, BioShock and its sequel, Skullgirls, the Wolfenstein series, Iron Harvest, and Final Fantasy VII; and television shows like The Legend of Korra.

Decopunk

Decopunk, also known as coalpunk, is a recent subset of dieselpunk, centered around the art deco and Streamline Moderne art styles. Other influences include the 1927 film Metropolis as well as the environment of American cities like New York, Chicago, and Boston around the period between the 1920s and 1950s.

Steampunk author Sara M. Harvey made the distinction that decopunk is "shinier than dieselpunk;" more specifically, dieselpunk is "a gritty version of steampunk set in the 1920s–1950s" (i.e., the war eras), whereas decopunk "is the sleek, shiny very art deco version; same time period, but everything is chrome!"

Possibly the most notable examples of this genre are games like the first two titles in the BioShock series and Skullgirls; films like Dick Tracy (1990), The Rocketeer (1991), The Shadow (1994), and Dark City (1998); comic books like The Goon; and the cartoon Batman: The Animated Series, which included neo-noir elements along with modern elements such as the use of VHS cassettes.

Atompunk

Cover of Atomic War number one, November 1952

Atompunk (also known as atomicpunk) relates to the pre-digital period of 1945–1969, including mid-century modernism; the Atomic, Jet, and Space Ages; communism, Neo-Soviet styling, and early Cold War espionage, along with anti-communist and Red Scare paranoia in the United States; underground cinema; Googie architecture; Sputnik and the Space Race; comic books and superhero fiction; and the rise of the American military–industrial complex.

Its aesthetic tends toward Populuxe and Raygun Gothic, which describe a retro-futuristic vision of the world. Most science fiction of the period carried an aesthetic that influenced or inspired later atompunk works. Some of these precursors to atompunk include 1950s science fiction films (including, but not limited to, B movies), the Sean Connery-era of the James Bond franchise, Dr. Strangelove, Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, The Avengers, early Doctor Who episodes, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Green Hornet, The Jetsons, Jonny Quest, Thunderbirds, Speed Racer, and some Silver Age comic books.

Notable examples of atompunk in popular media that have been released since the period include television series like Dexter's Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls, Venture Bros, Archer, and the web series The Mercury Men; comic books like Ignition City and Atomic Age; films like Logan's Run (1976), The Incredibles (2004), The Iron Giant (1999), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015), X-Men: First Class (2011), and Men in Black 3 (2012); video games like Destroy All Humans! (2005), the Fallout series, and Atomic Heart (2023); and books like Adam Christopher's novel The Age Atomic.

Steelpunk

Steelpunk focuses on the technologies that had their heyday in the late 20th century. It has been described as being characterized by hardware over software, the real world over the virtual world, and mega-technology over nanotechnology; rather than grown, printed, or programmed, artifacts in steelpunk are built (typically with rivets).

Examples include films like Snowpiercer (2013), as well as those in the Mad Max, Terminator, and Robocop film franchises; stories centered on comic book characters Barb Wire, Iron Man, and Stainless Steel Rat; and Heinlein juveniles novels.

Cassette futurism/Formicapunk

Cassette futurism is a subgenre of cyberpunk that reimagines early 1980s aesthetics as popularized by the IBM Personal Computer and imitators, regardless of the real time setting of the media. Notable elements of cassette futurism includes loud, bright, contrasting colors and geometric shapes, a tendency towards stark plainness, a lack of powerful computers and cell phones, and the prominent usage of 1980s or 1980s-inspired technologies such as: magnetic tape data storage, cathode-ray tube displays, computer systems reminiscent of microcomputers like the Commodore 64, freestanding music centres, small, monochromatic LCDs as opposed to full-color screens, floppy disks, and analog technologies. The internet, or some analogue to it, may exist in a cassette futurism work, but be used less frequently in data exchange than physical media.

Notable cassette futurism works include the designs of Syd Mead and Ron Cobb, the 2018 Netflix miniseries Maniac, works featuring Max Headroom, Blake's 7, the 1995 film Strange Days, and some elements of the TVA in the Disney+ series Loki.

Rococopunk

Rococopunk is a whimsical aesthetic derivative of cyberpunk that thrusts punk attitude into the Rococo period, also known as the late Baroque period, of the 18th century.

Although it is a fairly recent derivative, it is a style that is visually similar to the New Romantic movement of the 1980s (particularly to such groups as Adam and the Ants). As one steampunk scholar put it, "Imagine a world where the Rococo period never ended, and it had a lovechild with Sid Vicious." Rococopunk has most recently been seen through the artist Prince Poppycock as featured on The X Factor. Fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, often known as "the Queen of Punk Fashion," also mixes Rococo with punk stylings.

Stonepunk

A Flintstones-themed cafeteria, an example of stonepunk architecture

Stonepunk refers to works set roughly during the Stone Age in which the characters utilize Neolithic Revolution–era technology constructed from materials more-or-less consistent with the time period, but possessing anachronistic complexity and function.

The Flintstones franchise, including its various spinoffs, falls under this category. Other examples include the episode "The Nightmare of Milky Joe" in The Mighty Boosh, Gilligan's Island, The Croods franchise, and Castaway (2000). Literary examples include Edgar Rice Burroughs' Back to the Stone Age and The Land that Time Forgot, and Jean M. Auel's "Earth's Children" series, beginning with The Clan of the Cave Bear. Riichiro Inagaki's manga series Dr. Stone can also be considered stonepunk.

Other proposed science fiction derivatives

There have been a handful of divergent terms based on the general concepts of steampunk. These are typically considered unofficial and are often invented by readers, or by authors referring to their own works, often humorously.

A large number of terms have been used by the GURPS roleplaying game Steampunk to describe anachronistic technologies and settings, including stonepunk (Stone-Age tech), bronzepunk (Bronze-Age tech), sandalpunk/ironpunk (Iron-Age tech), candlepunk (Medieval tech), clockpunk (Renaissance tech), and atompunk/transistorpunk (Atomic-Age tech). These terms have seen very little use outside GURPS.

Raypunk

Raypunk (or more commonly "Raygun gothic") is a distinctive (sub)genre that deals with scenarios, technologies, beings or environments, very different from everything that is known or what is possible here on Earth or by science. It covers space surrealism, parallel worlds, alien art, technological psychedelia, non-standard 'science', alternative or distorted/twisted reality, and so on.

It is a predecessor to atompunk with similar "cosmic" themes, but mostly without explicit nuclear power or definitive technology. It is also distinct in that it has more archaic/schematic/artistic style; and its atmosphere is a more dark, obscure, cheesy, weird, mysterious, dreamy, hazy, or etheric (origins before 1880–1950), parallel to steampunk, dieselpunk, and teslapunk.

While not originally designed as such, the original Star Trek series has an aesthetic very reminiscent of raypunk. The comic book series The Manhattan Projects, the animated film Fantastic Planet (La Planète Sauvage) and the pre-WWII Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon comics and serials would be examples of raypunk.

Nowpunk

Nowpunk is a term invented by Bruce Sterling, which he applied to contemporary fiction that is set in the time period (particularly in the post-Cold War 1990s to the present, or a future where that particular time period is influential) in which the fiction is being published, i.e. all contemporary fiction. Sterling used the term to describe his book The Zenith Angle, which follows the story of a hacker whose life is changed by the September 11 attacks in 2001, This genre can often be identified for its strong use of '80s and '90s fashion and music, Gen-X and Millennial pop culture references, video games, early MTV, Japanese anime, and the internet. Some of the leading Nowpunk works include, Tank Girl, Watch Dogs, FLCL, Scott Pilgrim, Megas XLR, Mr. Robot, Regular Show, Steven Universe, Rick and Morty, Years and Years (TV series), Detroit: Become Human mixing the nowpunk with cyber and bio punk, Not Tonight (video game) series and We Bare Bears.

Cyberprep

Cyberprep is a term with a similar meaning to postcyberpunk. A cyberprep world assumes that all the technological advancements of cyberpunk speculation have taken place, but life is utopian rather than gritty and dangerous. Since society is largely leisure-driven, advanced body enhancements are used for sports, pleasure, and self-improvement.

The word is an amalgam of the prefix cyber-, referring to cybernetics, and preppy, reflecting its divergence from the punk elements of cyberpunk.

An example of this genre would be Stanislaw Lem’s Return from the Stars.

Solarpunk

Solarpunk is a movement, a subgenre, and an alternative to cyberpunk fiction that encourages optimistic envisioning of the future in light of present environmental concerns, such as climate change and pollution, as well as concerns of social inequality. Solarpunk fiction—which includes novels, short stories, and poetry—imagines futures that address environmental concerns with varying degrees of optimism. One example is News from Gardenia by actor-writer Robert Llewellyn.

Lunarpunk

Lunarpunk is a subgenre of solarpunk with a darker aesthetic. It portrays the nightlife, spirituality, and more introspective side of solarpunk utopias.

As seen in the film Avatar (2009) by James Cameron, the genre focuses on living in unison with nature; spiritualization is very present and nature is seen as a deity of sorts. In this way, it can be defined as "Witchy Solarpunk." Aesthetically, lunarpunk usually is presented with pinks, purples, blues, black, and silver with an almost omnipresence of bioluminescent plants and especially mushrooms.

Other proposed fantastic fiction derivatives

Elfpunk

Elfpunk is a subgenre of urban fantasy in which traditional mythological creatures, such as faeries and elves, are transplanted from rural folklore into modern urban settings.

The genre has been found in books since the 1980s, including works such as War for the Oaks by Emma Bull, Gossamer Axe by Gael Baudino, the Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer, the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, and The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick. It also existed in other mediums at that time, for example the 1989 role playing game Shadowrun. Set in the near future, it would be considered traditional cyberpunk, if not for the appearance of orks, dwarves, elves, trolls and dragons, and the return of Magic.

During the awards ceremony for the 2007 National Book Awards, judge Elizabeth Partridge expounded on the distinction between elfpunk and urban fantasy, citing fellow judge Scott Westerfeld's thoughts on the works of Holly Black who is considered "classic elfpunk:" creatures depicted in elfpunk are those that have already existed in literature—urban fantasy, on the other hand, "can have some totally made-up f*cked-up [sic] creatures."

The 2020 Pixar animated film Onward is an example of elfpunk fiction, set in a "suburban fantasy world" that combines modern and mythic elements. The Netflix film Bright is another example of elfpunk in cinema.

Mythpunk

The technological change that separates mythpunk from our reality is a difference in a philosophy or a social science from our own. Catherynne M. Valente uses the term mythpunk to describe a subgenre of mythic fiction that starts in folklore and myth and adds elements of postmodernist literary techniques. Valente coined the term in a 2006 blog post as a joke for describing her own and other works of challenging folklore-based fantasy.

As the -punk suffix implies, mythpunk is subversive. In particular, it uses aspects of folklore to subvert or question dominant societal norms, often bringing in a feminist and/or multicultural approach. It confronts, instead of conforms to, societal norms. Valente describes mythpunk as breaking "mythologies that defined a universe where women, queer folk, people of color, people who deviate from the norm were invisible or never existed" and then "piecing it back together to make something strange and different and wild."

Typically, mythpunk narratives focus on transforming folkloric source material rather than retelling it, often through postmodern literary techniques such as non-linear storytelling, worldbuilding, confessional poetry, as well as modern linguistic and literary devices. The use of folklore is especially important because folklore is "often a battleground between subversive and conservative forces", according to speculative fiction writer Amal El-Mohtar, and a medium for constructing new societal norms. Through postmodern literary techniques, mythpunk authors change the structures and traditions of folklore, "negotiating—and validating—different norms."

Most works of mythpunk have been published by small presses, such as Strange Horizons, because "anything playing out on the edge is going to have truck with the small presses at some point, because small presses take big risks." Writers whose works would fall under the mythpunk label include Ekaterina Sedia, Theodora Goss, Neil Gaiman, Sonya Taaffe, Rick Riordan and Adam Christopher. Valente's novel Deathless is an example of mythpunk, drawing from classic Russian folklore to tell the tale of Koschei the Deathless from a female perspective.

Some worlds imagined in children's and young adult programming, such as She-Ra and the Princesses of Power and The Owl House, seemingly portray worlds without misogyny or homophobia, with the former portraying several queer characters and the latter featuring a bisexual female protagonist, Luz Noceda, who escapes from the real world into the inclusive mythpunk world of the Boiling Isles.

Posthuman

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posthuman

Posthuman or post-human is a concept originating in the fields of science fiction, futurology, contemporary art, and philosophy that means a person or entity that exists in a state beyond being human. The concept aims at addressing a variety of questions, including ethics and justice, language and trans-species communication, social systems, and the intellectual aspirations of interdisciplinarity.

Posthumanism is not to be confused with transhumanism (the biotechnological enhancement of human beings) and narrow definitions of the posthuman as the hoped-for transcendence of materiality. The notion of the posthuman comes up both in posthumanism as well as transhumanism, but it has a special meaning in each tradition. In 2017, Penn State University Press in cooperation with Stefan Lorenz Sorgner and James Hughes established the Journal of Posthuman Studies, in which all aspects of the concept "posthuman" can be analysed.

Posthumanism

In critical theory, the posthuman is a speculative being that represents or seeks to re-conceive the human. It is the object of posthumanist criticism, which critically questions humanism, a branch of humanist philosophy which claims that human nature is a universal state from which the human being emerges; human nature is autonomous, rational, capable of free will, and unified in itself as the apex of existence. Thus, the posthuman position recognizes imperfectability and disunity within oneself, and understands the world through heterogeneous perspectives while seeking to maintain intellectual rigor and dedication to objective observations. Key to this posthuman practice is the ability to fluidly change perspectives and manifest oneself through different identities. The posthuman, for critical theorists of the subject, has an emergent ontology rather than a stable one; in other words, the posthuman is not a singular, defined individual, but rather one who can "become" or embody different identities and understand the world from multiple, heterogeneous perspectives.

Approaches to posthumanism are not homogeneous, and have often been very critical. The term itself is contested, with one of the foremost authors associated with posthumanism, Manuel DeLanda, decrying the term as "very silly." Covering the ideas of, for example, Robert Pepperell's The Posthuman Condition, and Hayles's How We Became Posthuman under a single term is distinctly problematic due to these contradictions.

The posthuman is roughly synonymous with the "cyborg" of A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway. Haraway's conception of the cyborg is an ironic take on traditional conceptions of the cyborg that inverts the traditional trope of the cyborg whose presence questions the salient line between humans and robots. Haraway's cyborg is in many ways the "beta" version of the posthuman, as her cyborg theory prompted the issue to be taken up in critical theory. Following Haraway, Hayles, whose work grounds much of the critical posthuman discourse, asserts that liberal humanism—which separates the mind from the body and thus portrays the body as a "shell" or vehicle for the mind—becomes increasingly complicated in the late 20th and 21st centuries because information technology puts the human body in question. Hayles maintains that we must be conscious of information technology advancements while understanding information as "disembodied," that is, something which cannot fundamentally replace the human body but can only be incorporated into it and human life practices.

Post-posthumanism and post-cyborg ethics

The idea of post-posthumanism (post-cyborgism) has recently been introduced. This body of work outlines the after-effects of long-term adaptation to cyborg technologies and their subsequent removal, e.g., what happens after 20 years of constantly wearing computer-mediating eyeglass technologies and subsequently removing them, and of long-term adaptation to virtual worlds followed by return to "reality." and the associated post-cyborg ethics (e.g. the ethics of forced removal of cyborg technologies by authorities, etc.).

Posthuman political and natural rights have been framed on a spectrum with animal rights and human rights.[18] Posthumanism broadens the scope of what it means to be a valued life form and to be treated as such (in contrast to certain life forms being seen as less-than and being taken advantage of or killed off); it “calls for a more inclusive definition of life, and a greater moral-ethical response, and responsibility, to non-human life forms in the age of species blurring and species mixing. … [I]t interrogates the hierarchic ordering—and subsequently exploitation and even eradication—of life forms.”

Transhumanism

Definition

According to transhumanist thinkers, a posthuman is a hypothetical future being "whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer unambiguously human by our current standards." Posthumans primarily focus on cybernetics, the posthuman consequent and the relationship to digital technology. Steve Nichols published the Posthuman Movement manifesto in 1988. His early evolutionary theory of mind (MVT) allows development of sentient E1 brains. The emphasis is on systems. Transhumanism does not focus on either of these. Instead, transhumanism focuses on the modification of the human species via any kind of emerging science, including genetic engineering, digital technology, and bioengineering. Transhumanism is sometimes criticized for not adequately addressing the scope of posthumanism and its concerns for the evolution of humanism.

Methods

Posthumans could be completely synthetic artificial intelligences, or a symbiosis of human and artificial intelligence, or uploaded consciousnesses, or the result of making many smaller but cumulatively profound technological augmentations to a biological human, i.e. a cyborg. Some examples of the latter are redesigning the human organism using advanced nanotechnology or radical enhancement using some combination of technologies such as genetic engineering, psychopharmacology, life extension therapies, neural interfaces, advanced information management tools, memory enhancing drugs, wearable or implanted computers, and cognitive techniques.

Posthuman future

As used in this article, "posthuman" does not necessarily refer to a conjectured future where humans are extinct or otherwise absent from the Earth. Kevin Warwick says that both humans and posthumans will continue to exist but the latter will predominate in society over the former because of their abilities. Recently, scholars have begun to speculate that posthumanism provides an alternative analysis of apocalyptic cinema and fiction, often casting vampires, werewolves and even zombies as potential evolutions of the human form and being.

Many science fiction authors, such as Greg Egan, H. G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, Bruce Sterling, Frederik Pohl, Greg Bear, Charles Stross, Neal Asher, Ken MacLeod, Peter F. Hamilton, Ann Leckie, and authors of the Orion's Arm Universe, have written works set in posthuman futures.

Posthuman God

A variation on the posthuman theme is the notion of a "posthuman god"; the idea that posthumans, being no longer confined to the parameters of human nature, might grow physically and mentally so powerful as to appear possibly god-like by present-day human standards. This notion should not be interpreted as being related to the idea portrayed in some science fiction that a sufficiently advanced species may "ascend" to a higher plane of existence—rather, it merely means that some posthuman beings may become so exceedingly intelligent and technologically sophisticated that their behaviour would not possibly be comprehensible to modern humans, purely by reason of their limited intelligence and imagination.

Thursday, June 1, 2023

High-tech architecture

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
High-tech architecture
Lloyd's Building, London.jpg
Years active1960–present
CountryInternational

High-tech architecture, also known as structural expressionism, is a type of late modernist architecture that emerged in the 1970s, incorporating elements of high tech industry and technology into building design. High-tech architecture grew from the modernist style, utilizing new advances in technology and building materials. It emphasizes transparency in design and construction, seeking to communicate the underlying structure and function of a building throughout its interior and exterior. High-tech architecture makes extensive use of aluminium, steel, glass, and to a lesser extent concrete (the technology for which had developed earlier), as these materials were becoming more advanced and available in a wider variety of forms at the time the style was developing - generally, advancements in a trend towards lightness of weight.

High-tech architecture focuses on creating adaptable buildings through choice of materials, internal structural elements, and programmatic design. It seeks to avoid links to the past, and as such eschews building materials commonly used in older styles of architecture. Common elements include hanging or overhanging floors, a lack of internal load-bearing walls, and reconfigurable spaces. Some buildings incorporate prominent, bright colors in an attempt to evoke the sense of a drawing or diagram. High-tech utilizes a focus on factory aesthetics and a large central space serviced by many smaller maintenance areas to evoke a feeling of openness, honesty, and transparency.

Early high-tech buildings were referred to by historian Reyner Banham as "serviced sheds" due to their exposure of mechanical services in addition to the structure. Most of these early examples used exposed structural steel as their material of choice. As hollow structural sections, (developed by Stewarts and Lloyds and known in the UK as Rectangular Hollow Section (RHS)) had only become widely available in the early 1970s, high-tech architecture saw much experimentation with this material.

The style's premier practitioners include the following: Bruce Graham, Fazlur Rahman Khan, Minoru Yamasaki, Sir Norman Foster, Sir Richard Rogers, Sir Michael Hopkins, Renzo Piano, and Santiago Calatrava.

Background

High-tech architecture was originally developed in Britain (British High Tech architecture), with many of its most famous early proponents being British. However, the movement has roots in a number of earlier styles and draws inspiration from a number of architects from earlier periods. Many of the ideals communicated through high-tech architecture were derived from the early modernists of the 1920s. The concepts of transparency, honesty in materials, and a fascination with the aesthetics of industry can all be traced to modern architects. High-tech architecture, much like modernism, shares a belief in a "spirit of the age" that should be incorporated and applied throughout each building. The influence of Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Mies van de Rohe is extensive throughout many of the principles and designs of high-tech architecture.

Some of the earliest practitioners of high-tech architecture included the British architecture group Archigram, whose members frequently designed advanced futuristic buildings and cities. On the most influential of these was Peter Cook's Plug-in City, a theoretical mega structure designed around the detach-ability and replacement of each of its individual units. The concept of removable and interchangeable elements of buildings would later become a widespread characteristic within the high-tech style. Less direct precursors included Buckminster Fuller and Frei Otto, whose focus on minimizing construction resources generated an emphasis on tensile structures, another important element in many high-tech designs. Louis Kahn's concept of "served" and "servant" spaces, particularly when implemented in the form of service towers, later became a widespread feature of high-tech architecture.

Other projects and designs that contained or inspired elements common across the high-tech style include the Archigram member Mike Webb's concept of bowellism, the Fun Palace by Cedric Price, and the Walking City by Ron Herron, also a member of Archigram. These theoretical designs, along with many others, were circulated widely in British and American architectural circles due to their examination by Reyner Banham. These conceptual plans laid out the ideas and elements that would later go on to be hugely influential in the works of prominent high-tech architects like Norman Foster and Nicholas Grimshaw.

Characteristics

The HSBC Hong Kong headquarters, completed in 1985

High-tech buildings often incorporate a range of materials reminiscent of industrial production. Steel, aluminium, glass, and concrete are all commonly found in high-tech structures, as these elements evoke a feeling of being mass-produced and widely available. Not all high-tech designs are made to accommodate truly mass-produced materials, but nonetheless seek to convey a sense of factory creation and broad distribution. Tensile structures, cross beams, and exposed support and maintenance elements are all important components found in high-tech designs. A focus on strong, simplistic, and transparent elements all connect high-tech as a style to the principles of engineering. The engineer Anthony Hunt was hugely influential in both the design, choice of materials, and ultimate expression of many of the earliest high-tech buildings in Britain, and as such many of these designs are suffused with a focus on the aesthetics of engineering and construction.

Buildings built in the high-tech style often share a number of characteristic layout elements. These include an open floor plan, a large central area serviced by many smaller maintenance spaces, and repeated elements which either can be or appear to be able to be detached and replaced as needed. Spaces or elements dedicated to service and mechanical components like air conditioners, water processors, and electrical equipment are left exposed and visible to the viewer. Often these spaces are placed in large service towers external to the building, as in the Lloyd's building in London by Richard Rogers. The Lloyd's building also has offices designed to be changed and configured as needed by the shifting and removal of partitions - creating a flexible and adaptable interior environment that can be changed to meet the needs of the building's occupants. This theme of reconfigurable spaces is an important component of high-tech buildings. The HSBC Building in Hong Kong, designed by Norman Foster, is another excellent example of a high-tech building designed to be changed over time according to the needs of its users. Its use of suspended floor panels and the design of its social spaces as individual towers both place emphasis on the new approach to creating and servicing an office building.

The high-tech style is often interpreted as glorifying technology and emphasizing the functional purpose of each element of the building. These designs incorporate elements that obviously display the technical nature of the components within them, creating a sense of honest, open transparency. The Centre Pompidou in Paris, by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, exemplifies the technicality and focus on the exposure of service elements. The externalization of functional components is a key concept of high-tech architecture, though this technique may also be applied to generate an aesthetic of dynamic light and shadow across the facade of a building. Color also plays an important role in the decoration of high-tech buildings, as various colors can be used to represent different service elements or to give the building the appearance of a set of architectural diagrams.

As of 2016, recent Structural Impressionism has two major trends: braced systems and diagrid systems. Both structural systems have the structural support elements visible from the outside, unlike many postmodern architecture buildings where most structural elements are hidden in the interior. The braced systems have strong exterior columns connected by "heavy" cross bracing elements. The diagrid system consists of a lattice of "light" diagonal elements and horizontal rings forming triangles, without vertical columns.

Goals

High-tech architecture attempts to embody a series of ideals that its practitioners felt were reflective of the "spirit of the age". Concerns over adaptability, sustainability, and the changing industrial world drove a shift in the way that many architects around the world approached the challenge of designing buildings. Norman Foster's HSBC Building was specifically designed to be built over a public plaza, so as not to take up more land in space conscious Hong Kong. Minoru Yamasaki's World Trade Center had centered around a five-acre, raised public plaza, completely devoid of cars, so pedestrians could walk freely through the complex. Additionally, the World Trade Center had led to the construction of a brand new PATH station, serving the rail commuters coming from New Jersey into New York. This approach to building, with the architect having just as much responsibility to the city surrounding their building as the building itself, was a key theme of many structures designed in the high-tech style. The appropriate utilization and distribution of space is often an integral component of high-tech theory, and as such these ideals are often found in concert with practical concerns over habitability and practicality of design.

The Original World Trade Center in New York City, by Minoru Yamasaki. The Twin Towers had completely open floor plans, with zero internal columns.

At the core of many high-tech buildings is the concept of the "omniplatz". This is the idea that a building and the spaces within it should not necessarily be absolutely defined, but rather perform a range of desired functions. As such, a room in a high-tech building could be used as a factory floor, a storage room, or a financial trading center all with minimal re-distribution of structural elements. The external services of a high-tech building, in this understanding of the style, exist solely to make the central space habitable and do not define its function. This can lead to an effect wherein the maintenance elements of a building can be understood and interpreted without issue, but the function of the interior space is difficult to guess. The Lloyd's building is an excellent example of this, wherein its service towers quite clearly communicate their function but the usage of the central atrium is difficult to determine from the exterior.

While the goal of many high-tech buildings is to honestly and transparently communicate their form and function, practical considerations may prevent the absolute expression of this principle. The Centre Pompidou, for example, has several elements that are built up or covered over due to concerns over fire safety and structural soundness. In many cases high-tech buildings exhibit compromises between radical honesty in design and considerations of safety in implementation. High-tech architecture balances art and engineering as its primary themes, and as such incurs trade-offs between the aesthetics of the two disciplines.

Sainsbury Centre in Norwich, by Foster and Associates

High-tech architecture has generated some criticism for its forays into home building and design, an issue it shares in common with Modernism. Many of the houses designed by high-tech architects were never inhabited by anyone other than themselves or their close relatives. Many outside observers found the high-tech style's focus on industry and expression of services to be antithetical to comfort and home living. Norman Foster's housing at Milton Keynes was never particularly popular, and other high-tech designs were seen as uncomfortable or awkward to live in.

High-tech architecture was most commonly employed in the construction of factories, corporate offices, or art galleries, all spaces that could effectively leverage the aesthetic of industry and find good use for the flexible spaces the style created. The application of technological themes throughout high-tech buildings intends to convey an ethos of science and progress. While transparency and honesty of materials is heavily valued, high-tech designs strive to evoke an ever dynamic sense of movement and change. Adaptability, flexibility, and openness are all key aims of the high-tech style. To obviously and creatively display the functional nature of service elements and to clearly communicate the changeable nature of the spaces created inside them are important goals of the vast majority of high-tech buildings.

Use–mention distinction

The use–mention distinction is a foundational concept of analytic philosophy, according to which it is necessary to make a distinction between using a word (or phrase) and mentioning it. Many philosophical works have been "vitiated by a failure to distinguish use and mention". The distinction can sometimes be pedantic, especially in simple cases where it is obvious.

The distinction between use and mention can be illustrated with the word cheese:

The first sentence is a statement about the substance called "cheese": it uses the word "cheese" to refer to that substance. The second is a statement about the word "cheese" as a signifier: it mentions the word without using it to refer to anything other than itself. Note the quotation marks.

Grammar

In written language, mentioned words or phrases often appear between single or double quotation marks (as in "The name 'Chicago' contains three vowels") or in italics (as in "When I say honey, I mean the sweet stuff that bees make"). In philosophy, single quotation marks are typically used, while in other fields (such as linguistics) italics are much more common. Style authorities such as Strunk and White insist that mentioned words or phrases must always be made visually distinct in this manner. On the other hand, used words or phrases (much more common than mentioned ones) do not bear any typographic markings. In spoken language, or in absence of the use of stylistic cues such as quotation marks or italics in written language, the audience must identify mentioned words or phrases through semantic, pragmatic, and prosodic cues.

If quotation marks are used, it is sometimes customary to distinguish between the quotation marks used for speech and those used for mentioned words, with double quotes in one place and single in the other:

  • When Larry said, "That has three letters", he was referring to the word 'bee'.
  • With reference to 'bumbershoot', Peter explained that "The term refers to an umbrella".

A few authorities recommend against using different types of quotation marks for speech and mentioned words and recommend one style of quotation mark to be used for both purposes.

In philosophy

The general phenomenon of a term's having different references in different contexts was called suppositio (substitution) by medieval logicians. It describes how one has to substitute a term in a sentence based on its meaning—that is, based on the term's referent. In general, a term can be used in several ways. For nouns, they are the following:

  • Properly with a concrete and real referent: "That is my pig" (assuming it exists). (personal supposition)
  • Properly with a concrete but unreal referent: "Santa Claus's pig is very big." (also personal supposition)
  • Properly with a generic referent: "Any pig breathes air." (simple supposition)
  • Improperly by way of metaphor: "Your grandfather is a pig". (improper supposition)
  • As a pure term: "'Pig' has only three letters". (material supposition)

The last sentence contains a mention example.

The use–mention distinction is especially important in analytic philosophy. Failure to properly distinguish use from mention can produce false, misleading, or meaningless statements or category errors. For example, the following sentences correctly distinguish between use and mention:

  • "Copper" contains six letters, and is not a metal.
  • Copper is a metal, and contains no letters.

The first sentence, a mention example, is a statement about the word "copper" and not the chemical element. The word is composed of six letters, but does not contain any kind of metal or other tangible thing. The second sentence, a use example, is a statement about the chemical element copper and not the word itself. The element is composed of 29 electrons and protons and a number of neutrons, but not any letters.

Stanisław Leśniewski was perhaps the first to make widespread use of this distinction and the fallacy that arises from overlooking it, seeing it all around in analytic philosophy of the time, for example in Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica. At the logical level, a use–mention mistake occurs when two heterogeneous levels of meaning or context are confused inadvertently.

Donald Davidson told that in his student years, "quotation was usually introduced as a somewhat shady device, and the introduction was accompanied by a stern sermon on the sin of confusing the use and mention of expressions." He presented a class of sentences like

Quine said that "quotation has a certain anomalous feature."

which both use the meaning of the quoted words to complete the sentence, and mention them as they are attributed to W. V. Quine, to argue against his teachers' hard distinction. He said that quotations could not be analyzed as simple expressions that mention their content by means of naming it or describing its parts, as sentences like the above would lose their exact, twofold meaning.

Self-referential statements mention themselves or their components, often producing logical paradoxes, such as Quine's paradox. A mathematical analogy of self-referential statements lies at the core of Gödel's incompleteness theorem (diagonal lemma). There are many examples of self-reference and use–mention distinction in the works of Douglas Hofstadter, who makes the distinction thus:

When a word is used to refer to something, it is said to be being used. When a word is quoted, though, so that someone is examining it for its surface aspects (typographical, phonetic, etc.), it is said to be being mentioned.

Although the standard notation for mentioning a term in philosophy and logic is to put the term in quotation marks, issues arise when the mention is itself of a mention. Notating using italics might require a potentially infinite number of typefaces, while putting quotation marks within quotation marks may lead to ambiguity.

Criticism

Some analytic philosophers have said the distinction "may seem rather pedantic".

In a 1977 response to analytic philosopher John Searle, Jacques Derrida mentioned the distinction as "rather laborious and problematical".

Operator (computer programming)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operator_(computer_programmin...