Vivian Sobchack Beating the Meat/Surviving the Text, or How to Get Out of This Century Alive 205 Anne Balsamo Forms of Technological Embodiment: Reading the Body in Contemporary Cuhure 215 Robert Rawdon Wilson Cyber(body)parts: Prosthetic Consciousness 239 Kevin McCarron Corpses, Animals, Machines and Mannequins: The Body and Cyberpunk 261 Index - 275 fijlW« Jtio* I ty***$*^ Cultures, t f yicÍM#(o form of (««biological humanity can be achieved within the nm fifty yean. If the increasing acceptance by consumers o( cosmetic surgery and other associated technological interventions to modify the body (Balsamo, this volume; see also Featherstone, 1982; Glassner, 1995) over the last decade are at all indicative of future trends, then the next 50 years will see ever more radical plastic surgery, computer-chip brain implants' and gene splicing become routine. It is suggested that the implications of this for self-identity will be profound (sec Rawdon Wilson, this volume). A glimpse of the problems which arise when humans are blended with machines is provided by the contributions from Holland and Landsbcrg, who draw upon movies such as Robocap, Terminator, Total Recall and Blade Runner, The most obvious dilemmas occur in the case of the technologically rebuilt human body, in which the residues of the human self struggle to assert themselves against the 'product violation' programming designed into the cyborg - the theme of the Robocop movie. Less obvious are the problems of designing adequate fusions from 'the other end', as is the case with the replicants in the film Blade Runner, who arc artificial constructs designed to function and pass as human beings. Here the problem is one of inserting duplicated human memories into the replicants to enable them to generate credible 'human' emotional responses. Memories, then, are an important resource for the generation of identity which enable credible actions and responses to be formed. The approach of films such as Blade Runner is to introduce doubts and complexities into what is, all too often, a dualistic approach in which the (good) human mind heroically struggles against the invasion of the (bad) technological body. In addition to continuing to bolster the human/machine dualism, which reinforces the mind/body dualism still influential in everyday life, there is generally a strong gender-coded male/female dualism evident in the films. Males are near invincible soldiers with hyper-male bodies; little attempt is made to explore or cross gender boundaries. There is little sense that the new technology, especially the computer, might ultimately benefit women more than mcn.The latter case is argued by Sadie Plant in her contribution to the volume, which draws on Donna Haraway's (1991) argument that the new technologies allow an escape from the conceptual dualisms of culture/nature and mind/body to open up a host of post-gendered possibilities. Following Haraway's lead, Plant (1993:13) has suggested that the relationship between women and machinery is beginning to evolve into 'a dangerous alliance', in which '[s]ilicon and women's liberation track each other's developments'. Plant discusses the way in which the new technology offers spaces for disguise, concealment and masquerade. Spaces which, although cultures ot l ecnnoiogtcai Ľtnoouímem ■ a constructed by men following the imperatives of increasing their rational control through technological domination, are at the same time female and dangerous. Plant here, then, is exploring the implications of technologies which do not alter the human body per se but allow it to be transcended - technologies that promise, literally, a new world in which we can represent our bodies with a greater degree of flexibility. Technologies which have collectively become known as cyberspace. Cyberspace The literature on cyberspace is rapidly becoming a significant element in popular culture.*' Following Sterling (1990), cyberspace is best considered as a generic term which refers to a cluster of different technologies, some familiar, some only recently available, some being developed and some still fictional, all of which have in common the ability to simulate environments within which humans can interact. Other writers prefer the term computer-mediated communication (CMC) fjones, 1994) to refer to much the same set of phenomena. We can now discuss some of the main variants: Barlovian cyberspace; virtual reality (VR); and Gibsonian cyberspace. Barlovian cyberspace - named after John Barlow,1 a founder of the political action group called Electronic Frontier Foundation (Sterling, 1990:54) - refers to the existing international networks of computers. The seemingly ubiquitous Internet is now a 'ragged... world spanning electronic tangle' (Sterling, 1990:5-1) consisting of some 30 million people. In a sense, such a simple form of cyberspace is little more than an extension of existing telephone systems, simply substituting text and some icons for voice. Indeed, for Barlow cyberspace 'is where you are when you're talking on the telephone' (Rucker et al., 1993:78). Clearly, both telephones and computer network systems rely upon only a limited range of human senses and (although interactions via these mediums can be extremely rich [Stone, 1991; Rheingold, 1994; Wiley, 1995]) they are perhaps no substitute for 'face-to-face' (ftf) interactions where all participants arc co-present. Tnis is so because contemporary social life still tends to operate with an implicit physiognomic notion that the face and the body are the only 'true' sources which can reveal the character of a person (Featherstone, 1995a, 1995b). Thus, other, more advanced forms of cyberspace attempt to simulate such interactions more vividly by the use of co-ordinated multi-media systems, such as virtual reality, which stimulate our other senses. The term 'virtual reality' (VR) was first coined by Jaron Lanier/ the former head of VPL Research Inc. in California, and has recently been defined as 'a real or simulated environment in which the perceiver experiences telepresence' (Steuer, 1992:76-7; see Heim, this volume). It is a system which provides a realistic sense of U m v.UTi.i|üL^.\.n^hiiii!;^ LKiupuilP, being immersed in an environment VR is »computer-generated visual, audible and tactile multi-media experience. Using stereo headphones, head-mounted stereo television goggles ('eyephones') able to simulate three-dimensions, wired gauntlets fdatagloves') and computerized clothing ('datasuits'), VR aims to surround the human body with an artificial sensorium of sight, sound and touch. VR systems are also truly interactive in the sense that the computer which produces the simulated environment in which a person is immersed, constantly reconfigures that environment in response to body movements. As yet, (he technology is relatively crude. There is sometimes a lag between movements of the body and the reconfiguration of the environment, graphics resolution is relatively low and many environments rely upon line-drawings and/or cartoon-like iconic representations. Nevertheless, all the indications are that the level of realism attainable will improve dramatically towards the end of the century (Lanier and Biocca, 1992). VR, then, is a medium which simulates a sense of presence through the use of technology - hence the term resence in its definition. Gibsonian cyberspace, as defined in Neuromaneer and the inspiration for the generic term, is characterized in an oft-quoted passage as A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operátori, m every nation, by children being uught mathematical concept!___A graph«: representation of dau abnracted from the bank of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lin« of light ranged in ihe nonspacc of the mind, cfuilen and constellations at data. like city I'gtiu receding. {Gibson, 1984:51) In this fictional world, cyberspace is a global computer network of information which Gibson calls 'the matrix', which operators can access ('jack-in') through headsets ('trodes') via a computer terminal ('cyberspace deck'). Once in the matrix, operators can 'fly' to any part of the vast three-dimensional system of data coded into various colourful iconic architectural forms laid out beneath them like a vast metropolis (Bukatman, 1993a: 103-8): a city of data, a Borgesian library of vast databases containing all a culture's deposited wealth, where every document is available, every recording playable and every picture viewable. Once a particular location has been selected, it is possible to zoom in so that one moves inside the three-dimensional representation of the data in order to scan particular areas. Gibsonian cyberspace also allows for highly 'realistic' interactions between iconic representations of operators (what Stephenson [1992] in Snow Crash terms 'avatars' or what we might term 'cybcrbodics') so that co-presence can be simulated within a myriad of different highly vivid environments. A range of other 'intelligent' entities can also 'exist' in cyberspace which do not have a human referent 'outside' the system. Some arc previously downloaded personality constructs of humans, while others arc autonomous post-human artificial intelligences (Als) which live in telep *_unuic»ui ictiiiKMugiuiLmiAiumicm ■ i cyberspace 'like fish in water' (Sterling, 1990:54). Essentially, then, Gibsonian cyberspace represents an imagined merger between the internet and VR systems. This imagined merger is given its most detailed rendition in Stephenson's (1992) Gibsonian-inspired Snow Crash through his description of the 'Metaverse'. Cyberpunk The term cyberpunk was first used in a Bruce Bethke short ston' called 'Cyberpunk', published in the November 1983 issue of Amazing Stories (see the discussion in the article by McCarrun in this volume). It has since been used to describe writers such as William Gibson, especially Neuromaneer (1984), Pai Cadigan, Bruce Sterling, Lewis Shiner and Greg Bear. What is interesting is the way in which cyberpunk has been taken up as a useful resource for social and cultural theory in comprehending the alleged shifts towards a new epoch. For Fred Jameson (I991:419n), for example, cyberpunk and the work of Gibson in particular, represents 'the supreme literary expression if not of postmodernism, then of late capitalism itself'. Indeed, the work of Gibson has been held up as the prime exemplar of postmodern poetics (McHalc, 1992a, 1992b). This might well be so but, for others, cyberpunk represents much more than even this. Perhaps the most extreme claim made for cyberpunk comes from Timothy Lear)' who declares that Gibson: has produced nothing leu than the underlying myth, the core legend, of the nest »age of human evolution. Hcis performing the philosophic function that Dantedid for feudalism and that writer* likeMann,Tobtoy[and]Melville...didforthcindustrialagc.{leary.citedin Kellner, !99*:?9S| Only marginally less extreme is the claim by Sandy Stone (1991; 9S) that the work of Gibson represents the dividing lin e between different social epochs based upon different modes of communication. For Stone, the publication of Neuromamer crystallised a new community.... [It] readied the backers.. .and.. the technologically literate and socially diulfected who were searching for social forms that could transform the fragmented anumic that charactcriicd lilt in.., electronic industrial ghetto*.... Gibson'* powerful vision provided for them the imaginal public sphere and rcngurrd discursive community that esiabmhrd the grounding for the possibility of a new kind of social inunction___f ItJ is a massive textual presence not only in other literary productions ... but in technical publications, conference topics, hardware design, and scientific and technological discourses in the large. (Stone, 1991:95i Other writers, clearly not just influenced by the fictional world of cyberpunk, but by the actuality of technological change itself, have begun to construct a sociological agenda to explore the realities of what some have termed cybersoaety (Jones, 1994). Even so, and as Stone notes in the above quote, the cyberpunk 8 ■ CyberspKc/Cybcrtwdiei/Cybapunk literature remains 'a massive textual presence* in even the most atheorctical and empiricist explorations of the internet and virtual reality. However, while cyberpunk has a radical and dystopic edge to it, much of the work on cyberculture more generally has, hitherto, been overly Utopian. This utopianism is a theme explored in the present volume in the contribution by Kevin Robins. There are some striking parallels between the utopianism of much of the current phase of technological development - the construction of the so called 'information superhighway' - and the construction of the interstate highway system in the USA. First, at the level of individuals, it was the father of Vice-President Al Gore- one of the greatest political advocates of the new technologies - who was instrumental in the development of the federal highway system. Second, at the level of motivation, in both cases it was the US miliary who provided the initial rationale for the construction of both systems (Jones, 1994:10). And, as in the previous period, the Utopian hyperbole surrounding the new technologies may come to be viewed as representing little more than the politically interested discourse of the organic intellectuals of a new class - a 'virtual class' compulsively fixated on... technology as a source of salvuion from the reality of a lonely culture and radical disconnection from everyday life... fa virtual class of] would-be astronauts who never got ihe chance io go in the moon [driven by the] will lojunualiiy. (Kroker and Weinstein, 1994:4-3) Much of what has been claimed for cyberculture ú overly Utopian. Nevertheless, despite the hyperbole and the mythology surrounding it, it is still possible to decipher within its literary concomitant, cyberpunk, a theoretically coherent vision of a very near future which Is, some argue, about to collapse on the present (Csicsery-Ronay, 1991:186; Kellner, 1995; Rucker et a!., 1993). Whether William Gibson intends it or not (Gibson, 1991), his fiction can be systematically read as social and cultural theory, in that it not only paints 'an instantly recognizable portrait of the modern predicament', but also shows 'the hidden bulk of an iceberg of social change' that 'now glides with sinister majesty across the surface of the late twentieth century' (Sterling, 1986). Indeed, for Doug Kellner (1995), cyberpunk fiction is a far more insightful and dynamic analytic resource for coming to terms with the postmodern than is the recent work of cultural critics such as Baudrillard. While for Mike Davis (1992:3), one of the major analysts of the contemporary urban condition, the work of Gibson provides 'stunning examples of how realist "extrapolative" science fiction can operate as prefigurative social theory, as well as an anticipatory opposition politics to the cyber-fascism lurking over the next horizon'. Although they do much else besides, the chapters included here by Sadie Plant, Nick Land and Anne Balsamo, all, in different ways, provide exemplars of such prefigurative social theory, in terms of both form and content. t_UUUfOUI :i'.iii!i'ii'[i".]LiuiM\.....i", v t Thus not only has the seemingly ubiquitous Gibsonian concept of cyberspace begun to transmute into a tangible reality - his technological vision has fed back into both computer and information systems design and theory (Benedikt, 1991b; Biocca, 1992a; McFadden, 1991), financially underwritten hy the likes of the Pentagon, Sega, Nintendo and various other global corporations - but many of Gibson's fictional perspectives on cultural, economic and social phenomena have / begun to find their way into social and cultural analyses as viable characterizations of our contemporary world. Reading cyberpunk as social theory tends not to be a unidirectional activity. The relationship between cyberpunk literature and social theory is, if anything, recursive. Cyberpunk and sociological analyses which draw upon it have a 'habit' of 'folding into' each other in a recursive relation between the fictional and the analytic which might be described as an instance of a hyperreal positive feedback loop. For example, issues of public space and urban surveillance are themes taken up by Gibson throughout his work, but most fully in Virtual Light (1993). It is a book profoundly and explicitly influenced by Davis's (1990) influential analysis of Los Angeles, City of Quartz, which is itself adorned by a quote from Gibson which suggests that, as a work of contemporary analysis, it may well be more 'cyberpunk' than Gibson's fiction (Bukatman, 1993a: 144). This rccursivity continues in Davis's (1992) Beyond Blade Runner: Urban Control - the Ecology of Fear, where an explicitly 'Gibsonian' map of the contemporary urban condition is presented. A map instantly recognizable in Virtual Light and, in a much more extreme form in Stephenson's Snow Crash (1992), Kellner (I99S) also recognizes a recursivity between cyberpunk and postmodern social theory: cybcrpunlc icience fiction can be read as a wn of social theory, while Biudrillard's futuristic postmodern jodal theory can be read in turn u science union. This optic also suggesu a deconuruction of sharp oppositions between literature and social theory, showing that much social theory contains a narrative and vision of the presem and future, and that certain types of literature provide cogent mappings of the contemporary environment and. in the case of cyberpunk, of future trends. (Kellner, 1995; 299) He goes on to add that at the very moment when Baudrillard dropped the theoretical ball, losing his initiative, Gibson and cyberpunk picked it up, beginning trteir explorations of the new future world which Baudrillard had been eiplonng. (Kellner, 1995; W) The relationship between postmodernism and cyberculture is the central theme of the chapter by Mark Poster, while issues of recursivity, although explored throughout the volume, receive their most explicit treatment in the chapter by Nigel Clark. Gareth Branwyn (Rucker et a!., 1993:64-6), writing in Monda 2000, provides a 10 ■ CybmpKc/Cybcrbodin/Cybcrpunii useful description of cyberpunk as both a literary perspective and Vi an actual worldvicw which gives a clear indication of its major concerns: The future has imploded onto the proem. There was no nude« Armageddon. There's too much ml estate to lose. The new battle-field is people's minds— The mejKorps *rr the new governments— The U.S. ti t big bully with lachlutier economic power.... The world it splintering into a trillion subculture! and designer cults with their own language, code* and lifestyles.... Computer-generated info-domains arc the next frontiers.... There ň better living through chemistry----Small gioupi or individual 'console cowboys' can wield tremendous power over governments, corporations etc— The coalescence of a computer 'culture' is «pressed in telf-aware computet music, art, virtual communities, and a hacker/street lech subculture... the computer nerd image is passe, and people ate not uhimed anymore about the role the computer has in this subculture. The computer is a cool tool, a friend, important human augmeniation— We're becoming cyborgs. Our tech it getting smaller, closet to us, and it will soon merge with ui. These themes were first given expression in Gibson's novels which derive from a wide range of cultural antecedents (McHale, 1992a, 1992b). Kadrey and McCaffery (1991) suggest the following influences: classic novels such as Frankenstein and The % Sleep; the literary avant-garde represented by William S. Burroughs (see also the influence of this style on the paper by Land in this volume), Thomas Pynchon and Kathy Acker; the science fiction of Philip K. Dick (sec the discussion by McCarron in this volume), Michael Moorcock and J.G. Ballard (sec Sobchack's discussion in this volume); the cultural analyses of Marshall McLuhan, grandly described as being 'to the 1960s what Baudrillard, Kroker and Cook, and Deleuze and Guattari are to the postcyberpunk era* (Kadrey and McCaffery, 1991:18); the Situationist International's analysis of contemporary society (Plant, 1992); the music of the Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, the Talking Heads, mid-1970s David Bowie, Brian Eno, Laurie Anderson and, crucially, the Sex Pistols and The Clash (see McCaffrey, 1991:382-3, for a fuller listing); films such as Cronenbcrg's Videodrome, Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth and, especially, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner -Itself based upon a novel by Dick (see the discussion by Landsberg and Holland, this volume; Bukatman, 1993a: 373-4, for a full filmography); MTV and its'youth TV'emulators; and, finally, one might also add the IBM PC and the Macintosh computer, the cultural and representational impact of which was at least as great as its economic and technological importance (sec Lupton, this volume).5 Cyberbodics Cyberpunk takes the twin themes of technological body modification and the notion of cyberspace and allows them to intersect in various urban settings. The world of cyberspace is itself an urban environment - 'a simulation of the city's Cultures of Technological Embodiment ■ II / information order', in which the 'city redoubles itself through the complex architecture of its information and media networks' (Davis, 1992:16) - a digitized parallel world which from 'above* might appear as a rationally planned city (Le Corbusier's metropolis) but from 'below' reveals itself as a Benjaminesque labyrinthine city, in which no one can get the bird's eye view of the plan, but everyone effectively has to operate at street level, with limited knowledge based on different amounts of information about, and practical understanding of, how to move around in a world which is rapidly being restructured and reconfigured. This digitized urban hyperreality connects in various ways with the technological 'reality' of the street, not least in the way in which the socio-geography of the digitized city mirrors that of the built city. Davis (1992:16) notes, for example, how the imploding 'communities' of Los Angeles are 'a data and media black hole'; an 'electronic ghetto within the emerging information city'. The intersecting of the digital domain with the technology of the street produces a complex continuum of human-machine fusions (Tomas, 1989, 1991; Balsa mo. this volume). At one end we have 'pure' human beings and at the other fully simulated disembodied post-humans which can only exist in cyberspacefAh' in Gibson and the less spectacular [UNIX-inspired] 'Daemons' in Stephenson). If we move out from the all-human pole, the first category of interest is one concerned with die aesthetic manipulation of the body's surface through cosmetic surgery, muscle grafts and animal or human transplants, which blur the visual cues for distinctions between humans and non-humans as well as gender differences (Rawdon Wilson, this volume). The second category is concerned with more fundamental alterations and enhancements of the functioning of the inner body. Here we have a range of alternatives to replace organic functions, such as biochip implants, upgraded senses and prosthetic additions. Both categories enable the body to be disassembled and reassembled with a high degree of functional specialization. In both cases, these bodily modifications find collective expression in social groupings which have some striking similarities with Michel Maffesoli's (1995) description of 'postmodern tribes' - groups which form and reform on the basis of temporary modes of identification. Moving along the continuum, the next category is what Tomas (1991:41) refers to as 'classical hardware interfaced cyborgs', which exist in cyberspace. These are the operators who move around in cyberspace whose bodies are wired up to computers for input and output flows of information. This final category again gets its clearest expression not in Gibson but in the form of the avatars, the iconic representation of the bodies of people logged into the Mctaverse, in Snow Crash by Stephenson. They represent examples of what has been seen as the 'decoupling the body and the subject' (Stone, 1991:99; Lupton, 12 ■ Cybírspace/Cybcrbodics/Cybcrpunk [his volume; McCarron, this volume). Although contemporary reflexive self-identity increasingly relies upon an ability to transform the body, with the potential development of the parallel world of cyberspace, the range of ways in which one can represent one's embodied subjectivity becomes much more varied and flexible, surpassing the 'horizons of the flesh' and constraints of the 'physical' body (even with radical medical enhancements). Despite the persistence of embodied physiognomic notions of the 'true self in contemporary social life, there is some evidence to suggest that the new technology is opening up the possibility of radically new disembodied subjectivities (see the chapters by David Tomas, Michael Heim, Deborah Lupton, Samantha Holland, Nick Land, Anne Balsamo and Kevin McCarron). In Gibson (1984:12) there exists 'a certain relaxed contempt for the flesh', which is regarded as 'the meat' by those addicted to 'life' in the 'matrix'. Although some regard such claims as unfounded and the new identities being created as banal (Robins, this volume), the cyberpunk vision is one in which we are approaching an epoch within which a self-identity derived from 'real', 'authentic', 'embodied' experiences is unable to compete with ones derived from the 'erotic ontology' (Heim, 1991) of 'hyperreal' 'simulated' 'disembodied' cyberspace (but for a critique see Sobchack, this volume). Technology and Public Space The cyberpunk view of the world is also one which recognizes the shrinking of public space and the increasing privatization of many aspects of social life. Close face-to-facc social relationships, save those with kin and significant others within highly bounded locales, are becoming increasingly difficult to form. As patterns of both social and geographical mobility increase the fluidity of social life they undermine the formation of strong social bonds. The spectacle of consumerculture, especially as manifest in the «unmodified 'simulation' of the shopping mall as authentic public space, although providing a forum for the display of self-identity and the outcomes of associated body projects, in the end only results in the construction of a 'lonely crowd'. The headlong relreat of the seduced into their increasingly fortified, tcchnologized, privatized worlds away from the increasingly remote and ungovernable spaces occupied by the repressed, to use the distinction made by Bauman (1988), only serves to further close off the more proximate 'social' sources of self-identity. For many all that is left is technology. As F.Iwes (1993:65) views it: cornpmrr technology was developed 10 promoce and speed up global communication and yei somehow ihe effect ii one o( disconnection and distance. Individual! are increasingly locked into the isolation of their homci (it isn't safe to go out) and the)' only make contact with the outside Cultures of Technological Embodiment ■ 13 world through telecommunications and networked computer-information systems. Not so much distance learning as living at a distance. For Lanier Cahforniaiithcwomexample... .Individuals don't even meet on sidewalks anymore... we live in this constant son of fetal position where we ate seated in a soft chair looking at the »»rid through a glass square, be it the windshield of I he at or the screen of a television or computer. It's sonfif constant, and we're in * little bubble. (1-anier and Biocea. 1992:157) The privatized retreat into television and video - essentially passive, non-interactive mediums - has been followed by engagements with increasingly interactive technologies: camcorders, multi-media interactive CDs, computer games and so on. Technology is beginn ing to mediate our social relationships, our self-identities and our wider sense of social life to an extent we are only just beginning to grasp. The portable telephone, the portable fax, the notepad computer and various other forms of electronic human augmentation have become 'essential' for social life in the 'densely networked centres of the global cities' (Lash and Urry, 1994:319) and, increasingly, beyond. The seemingly ubiquitous camcorder endlessly records not just the 'spectacle' but also the 'mundane' to such an extent that 'lived experience' in and of itself becomes secondary to gaining a taped 'representation' of it for later 'consumption' ä la Sex, Lies and Videotape!" The contemporary decline of our sense of 'publicncss' has been coupled with the spread of electronically mediated communication from primarily workplace settings to the private sphere. Those who proffer cyberpunk as social theory, would see the social preconditions for the creation of a new cybcrculture as being firmlv established as we increasingly use mediated forms of communication such as the telephone, the fax, the modem, the video, BBSs and the forthcoming VR systems. Some would claim that by using these new media of communication we are beginning to create new 'on-line' or 'virtual communities', new forms of social relationships, new disembodied modes of interacting and, (or some, as we have seen, embryonic Gibsonian cyberspace itself (Rheingold, 1994; for a critique see Robins in this volume). Theorizing Beyond Stable Systems It should, perhaps, come as no surprise to us that, in an increasingly hypcr-aesthetictzed everyday life (Feathcrstone, 1991), it is through various fictions that we endeavour to come u> know ourselves. While we have argued that various strands of contemporary social and cultural theory have been parasitic upon the cyberpunk tradition, it may well be the case that, m the longer run, greater importance will be accorded to the impact of writers such as De Landa (1991,1992, 14 ■ Cybcrspacc/Cybcrbodies/Cybcrpunk 1993; sec discussion m Land, 1995), who take up the methodological implications of the cyberpunk vision and attempt to think through systematically some of the consequences for the human sciences. De Landa not only draws upon many of the themes inherent to cyberpunk (robots, cyborgs, Artificial Intelligence, non-human agency, and so on) in his work, but also utilizes many elements of the aesthetics of cyberpunk in his everyday practice. He is a computer graphics designer working outside of the academic mainstream, who draws upon an eclectic range of the human and physical sciences in order to construct a radical and compelling vision of what he terms 'the emergence of synthetic reason' (De Landa, 1995). He cogently argues that the human sciences are so fettered by many of their domain assumptions that they are simply unable to provide any useful analytic handle on the contemporary condition. By drawing upon a materialist non-metaphorical reading of Dclcuzc and Guattari (1982), he has outlined a theory of 'stratification' in which the complementary operations of 'sorting out' and 'consolidation* are shown to be behind many (physical and social) structural forms. De Landa concludes that the future of social theory will be in the construction of new 'epistemological reservoirs', based upon complex computer simulations of cultural, social and economic processes in cyberspace. Those of us familiar with the analytic insights afforded by popular simulations such as Sim City 2000 (Friedman, 1994) will have' had a glimpse of the sort of thing De Landa has in mind, even if the social science opcrationalization of such approaches is still far from convincing/ The methodological 'purging' involved in the project is profound. First, De Landa suggests that wc must once and for all do away with ideal typical analytic thinking and begin to take seriously 'population' thinking. Rather than conceptualizing phenomena as more or less imperfect incarnations of some ideal essence, wc must recognize that it is only variation which is real - a complete inversion of the classical paradigm. There is, then, for De Landa, no such thing as a pre-cxistent collection of traits which define some phenomena (biological, physical, social or cultural), rather, each trait develops along different ancestral lineages and accumulates in a population under different selection pressures; selection pressures which are themselves dependent upon specific and contingent histories. Traits accumulate through the operation of a 'searching device' (which results from the coupling of any kind of spontaneous variation to any kind of selection pressure), and are the product of a more or less stable solution in relation to the various contingent affordances found within a given environment. Drawing upon developments in artificial life (AL) research, especially work on genetic algorithms, De Landa suggests that such points of stability arc likely to be multiple rather than unique. But if there is no Darwinian survival of the fittest (the unique solution), Cultures of Technological Embodiment ■ 15 what is the source of stability (however brief) in systems? The answer to this question leads De Landa to call for a second 'purge' - this time against notions of equilibrium thinking in the human sciences. The importation into the human sciences of notions of stabilít)' from equilibrium thermodynamics premised upon the idea of 'heat death' - that stability was some function or other of all useful energy being transformed into heat - has had a orfnd effect upon modern social thought. It has underpinned our conceptualization of closed systems within which some static socio-economic solution can be derived. Most obviously, our conceptualization of markets, within which the operation of the laws of supply and demand generate a unique and stable solution in terms of prices and outputs, has reverberated throughout the social sciences via game theory, exchange theory, functionalism and systems thinking more generally. De Landa suggests that this closed and static notion of (physical and socioeconomic) stability has been superseded by the new science of 'dissipative' systems, based upon an understanding of the continual flow of energy and matter. The importation of ideas derived from the science of such systems - nonlinear dynamics - into the human sciences, fundamentally alters how we must conceptualize the world. Most important is the idea of 'deterministic chaos', in which 'stability' within the processual flux o! dynamic systems is conceptualized as an 'attractor', and the transitions which transform one attractor into another are conceptualized as 'bifurcations'. The most striking feature of this attractor/ bifurcations framework is the manner in which the notion of an 'emergent property' is revealed not as a metaphysical device, but as a real material process. It is quite possible, indeed very common, to find systems 'stabilized' in such a wav that the properties of the population system as a whole are not manifest by the individual members of the population in isolation. Examples of such synergistic interactions include long waves of capitalist economic development (Kondratieff cycles), neural networks, the emergence of organizational cultures and so on. De Landa suggests that, by combining the insights of both nonlinear dynamics and anti-ideal typical population thinking, 'we get the following picture: the evolutionary "searching device" constituted by variation coupled with selection ... [which explores] a space " p reorganized" by at tractors and bifurcations' (De Landa, 1993:798-9). Such insights can only be explored by constructing cyber -spatial virtual environments within which such processes can be examined. It is only through the simulation of such processes that the complexity of systems can be examined. Clearly, if we arc to take the study of emergent processes seriously, an analytic approach that categorizes a population into its components will lose sight of those properties generated by the configuration of the individual elements prof 16 ■ Cylwrspacc/Cyberbodics/Cybcrpunk within the system. Computer simulations thus provide us with a tool within which we can synthesize rather than analyse systems. This entails a radical shift in the constitution of social theory. Many academics would baulk at the prospect of understanding social processes by staring at simulacra on a computer screen. They would not be seduced by the prospect of the generation of new forms of poit-symboltc communication, where the presentation of information in new configurations, using the visual dimension which gives a strong sense of immediacy, transparency and vividness (i.e. show me, don't tell me), will allegedly supersede the interpretive l&oscncss of written language. The attraction of such speculations is that the modelling is constructed in closer proximiry to the data and everyday life. The danger is that it merely continues the dream of reason, with its quest for total control, order and pure unsullied communication. At the same time, these new theoretical tendencies resonate with the more general shift over the last decade which has been associated with postmodernism, globalization and the body. This is the move away from systematic large-scale theory-building towards taking into account a greater range of difference, complexity and disorder. We are rediscovering again that the boundary between the social and human sciences is a fluid one. It is, therefore, fitting that a journal such as Body & Society, which has been designed to traverse and explore this border space, into which the investigation of the human body inevitably takes us, should devote its first special issue to the study of cyberspace/cyberbodies/ Cyberpunk. Not» 1. FordUtuisionsDfilKsocii!jndLuliuralpoiiibiliiicsofboihp!iiiiciun;e'yindbiochipimpliniiin the cyberpunk literature ice Tom« (1989,1991) and Feaiherstone0995b). 2. The concept now even has IB very own 'for beginners' volume (Buiilt and Jpvifc. 1995) published in the time month as Postmodernám for Beginnen (Appigninesi and Garratt, 1995), a good indication ol iu growing significance. 3. Barlow is an interesting figure in the history of contemporary technological developments. He is a Republican rock lyricist for the 1960s rock group the Grateful Dead. 4. Sterling (1990:54) claims that 'Lanier is aware of the term "cyberipacc" but considers it too "limiting" and "compuicry". A* will be apparent, following Sterling (1990), Bertedikt (1991a) and Rhcmgold (1994). we prefer to treat 'cyberipacc' as a generic term and 'virtual reality' as one important c*amplcofit. 5. As is well known, Gibson wrote Neuromanier without much knowledge of the contemporary rtality ofcompuiing technology. In convention with McCaffcry (1991:270) he remarks: 'It wasn't until I could finally afford a computer of my own that 1 found out there's a drive mechanism inside - this little thing that iptns around. I'd been expecting an exotic crystalline thing, a cyberspace deck or something, and whai 1 got was a little piece of a Victorian engine that made noises like a scratchy old record player. Thai noise took away some of the mystique for me___My ignorance had allowed me to romanticize Cultures of Technológia! Embodiment ■ 17 them.' For a discussion of this relationship between the technology which produces fiction and fictional rrpresentationi of tcchnolugy see Bukaiman (1993b). 6. The analysis offered by the Situationist International in the late 1960s, on the emergence of 'the society of the spectacle' haj recently been recognized as the crucial antecedent to Baudrillard's dhcussion of hyperreality, simulacra and related contents (Plant, 1992; Rojek and Turner, I99J) 7. Set in particular Gilbert and Oman (1994) xnd Gilbert and Come (1995). Referfticfi Appigninesi, R. and C. Garratt (1995) Postmodernism for Begmntn. Cambridge: Icon Books. Bauman, Z. (1988) Ftetdom. Milton Keynes: Open University Pre». Benedikt, M. (ed.)I(l99la) Cyberspau: Fint Slept. London: MIT Press, Benedikt, M. (1991b) 'Cyberspace: Some Proposals', in M. Benedikt (cd.) Cybtnpj«: Fint Stepi. London: MIT Pre«. Berger. P. (1966) Invitation to Socro/ogy. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Biocca, F. (1992a) 'Communication Within Virtual Reality: Creating a Space for Research', hamal of Communication 42(4). Biocca. F. (1992b) 'Virtual Reality Technology; A Tutorial', foutnd of Communication *2(4) Buick, J. and Z. Jevtk (1995) Cybenpaeefor Beginners. Cambridge: Icon Books. Bukaiman, S. (1993a) terminal Identity. London: Duke University Press. Bukaiman. S. (1993b) 'Gibson's Typewriter", in M. Den- (ed.) Flame li.fi' Ihr Dncoune of Cyberxuhurt. London; Duke University Press. Criaery-Ronay, I. (l99l)'Cybcrpunk and Neuromanticiim', in L. McCaffery (ed.) Sionmngthe rWilr Studio. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Daris, M. (1990) Ciiy of Quam, l-ondonI Verso. Davis, M. (1992) Beyond Blade Runner: Vrbsn Control, the Ecology of Fur. Westficld. NJ: Open Magaiine Pamphlets. Dciuh, J. {1992) Pott Human. Amsterdam: Idea Books. De lands, M. (1991) Wat in the Age of Intelligent Matkina. New York: Zone Books. De Landa.M. (1992)'Non-Organic Life'.inJ, Gary andS. K»intcr(cds) 7.one6- Incorporation). New York: Zone Books. De Lamb, M. (1993) 'Virtual Environments and the Rise of Synthetic Reason', in M. Dm (ed.' Flame Wan. Durham. NC: Duke University Press. Delcuae, G. and F, Guattari (1982) A Thousand Plateaus. London: Athlone Press, Etwa, C (1993)'Gender and Technology', Vjiiinf 15. Feathmione, M. (1982) "The Body in Comumcr Culture', Tfieorv, Culture 6 Soorfr 1(2); reprinted in M. Featherstone, M. Hepwonh and BS. Turner (eds) (1991) The Body. pp.1/0^96. londim: Sape, 1991. Feaihcrsionc, M. (1991) The Aestheticsaion of Everyday Life', pp.65-82 in Consumer Culture .mi Poitmodemitm. London: Sage. Featherstone. M. (1995a) 'Personality, Unity and iheOrdcredLifc'. in UndotngCnlture: Post moderním, Clobalizalwn and Identity. London: Sage. Featherstone, M. (1995b) 'Post-Bodies, Ageing and Virtual Realjiy'. in M, Featheriionc and A. Wcrmck (eds) Image* of Ageing. London: Routledge-Friedman, T.(l994)'MakÍngSenscof Software: ComputerGamesand InteractiveTexiualiiy". in S.Jone» (ed.) Cybenociety. London: Sagt Gibson. W. (1984)Ne«f)mjncer, London: Harper Collins. Gibson, W. (1991) 'Academy Leader', in M. Benedikt (ed.) Compare: Fint Stepi. London: MIT Pre«. Gibson, W. (I99J) Virtual Úgbt. London: Viking. 18 ■ CybiRpacf/Cybcrbodiö/Cybcrpunk Gilbert, N. and R. Contc (eds) (1995) Artißiul Societies: The Computer Simulation of Social Life, London: UCL Press. Gilben, N. ind J. Donn (eds) (1994) Simulating Societies: The Computer Simulation of Social Phenomena. London: UCL Pre«. Glissner, B. (1995) In die Nunc of Health', fa R- Bunion. S. Nettleton and R. Burrow» (eds) Toe Sociology of Health Promotion. London: Routledge. Hinway, D. (1991) Symuni, Cyhorgi and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books. Heim, M. (1991) The Eroiic Ontology of Cyberspace', in M. Benediki (cd.) Cyberspace: Fust Steps. London: M IT Press. Jameson, F. (1991) Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Imc Capitalism. London: Ver». Jon», S. (ed.) (1994) Cyrenooerr, London: Sage. Kidnry, R- and L McCaffcry (1991) 'Cyberpunk 101: A Schematic Guide io Storming the Reality Studio', in L McCsffery (ed.) Storming the Reality Studio. Durham, NC: Duke University Pre« Kellner, D. (1995) 'Mapping the Present from ihc Future: From Baudrillard to Cyberpunk*, in Media Culture. London: Routledge. Kroker, A. and M. Weinstein (1994) Data Trash: The Theory of the VirtualClass. Montreal: New World Perspectives. Land, N. (1995) 'Machines and Technoculture Complexity'. Theory, Culture 6 Society l?(2). Lanier. J. and F. Biocca (1992) 'An Insider'« View of ihe Fuiure o( Viruial Reality', journal of Communication 42(4). Laih. S. and J. Urry (1994) Economies of Sigm and Spate. London: Sage. Maf (noli, Michel (1995) The Time of the Tnbti. London: Sage. McCaffrey, L. (ed.) (1991) Storming the Reality Studio. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. MtFadden, T (1991) 'Notes on the Structure of Cyberspace and die Ballistic Acton Model', in M. Benedikt (ed.) Cyberspace: First Steps. London; MIT Press. McHalc, B. (1992a) 'POSTcyberMODERNpunklSM', in Ccmunicting Postmodernám. London: Routledge. McHale, B. (1992b) Towards a Poetics of Cyberpunk", in Cmstruamg Postmodernám. London: Routledge. PUnt.S, (1992) The Most Radical Gesture: The Situational International in a Potimodem Age. London: Routledge. Plant, S. (1993) 'Beyond the Screens: Film, Cyberpunk and Cyberfminiim', Uirwnt 14. Rheingold, H, (1991) Virtual Reality. London: Mandarin. Rlieingold. H. (1994) The Virtual Community: Finding Connection m a Computerized tt'orW London: Seeker and Warburg. / Ro|ek, C. and B.S. Turner (eds) (1993) řbrgrf oWn'/W London: Routledge. Rucker, R., R.U. Sirius and Mu Queen (eds) (1993) Mondo 2000: A User's Guide to the New Edge. London: Thames and Hudson. • Stephenson, N. (1992)Snow Crash. New York: Bantam Books. Sterling, B. (1986) Mirnnhades: The Cyberpknk Anthology, New York: Arbor House. Steriing,B.(1990),Cyberspice0ni)',/nieno«4l. Sieur, J. (1992) 'Defining Virtual Reality: Dimensions DeicrTmningTekpresewe'./ojmu/ij/'Cominw'ii- ulNMi42(4), Stone, A.R. (199l)'Will use Real Body Please Sund Up?: Boundary Stories about Virtual Cultures', m ni Benedikt (cd.) Cyberspace: First Steps. 1-Ondon: MIT Press. Tjuumi.T. (l99t)The Japanese Reflectionof Mirrorshades'.in L McCaffery (ed.) Sromiing řAe fifí/iiy Studio. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Tomas, D. (1989) The Technophihac Body', Nete Formation! %. Cultures of Technological Embodiment ■ 19 Tonus, D. (1991) 'Old Rituals for New Space', in M. Benedikt (cd.) Cyberspace: Fir» Steps. London: MIT Press. Wiener, N. (1948) 'Cybernetics', Sarniißc American 179:14-19. Wiley, J. (1995) 'No BODY is "Doing It": Cybmcxuality as a Postmodern Narrative*. Body (t Societ) 1(1): 145-62. Mike Fe/themonc teaches Sociology at the University of Teessidc. Hit latest book is Undoing Culture Globaliration. PoUmademim and Identity (Sage). Roger Burrows now works at the University of York. He was previously a Reader at the University of Tcesiidc. His latest book is Soaology oj Health Promotion (Routledge).