The digital age will always be marked by the spirit of its first emergence, and the tension from the very first between corporate high-tech and the appropriation of information technologies by the counter-culture. "Cyberia" is an ideas-led, exuberant documentary written in 1994 about the converging strands of this new era, the empowerments of cyber-technology and the emergent hacker and cyber milieu. Mondo 2000 and Wired, smart drugs and nicknames that Warhol's factory crew would have killed for, fractals and issues of electronic privacy, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and raves. "Cyberia" is about the confluence of all these into an identifiable novum. The story grows out of conversations with the first "cyberians" - those who wrote the software, or cracked the sites, who took inspiration from complex maths and psychedelic drugs. Rushkoff's is a journalist's record, but with an infectious momentum borrowed from the birth of a new age. Whatever the mutations of global culture in a digital age, "Cyberia" will always serve as a benchmark of the first beginnings. This edition is supplemented by new material from Rushkoff's journalism on the subject since publication of the first edition. Also included is a new introduction by the author.
The digital age will always be marked by the spirit of its first emergence, and the tension from the very first between corporate high-tech and the appropriation of information technologies by the counter-culture. "Cyberia" is an ideas-led, exuberant documentary written in 1994 about the converging strands of this new era, the empowerments of cyber-technology and the emergent hacker and cyber milieu. Mondo 2000 and Wired, smart drugs and nicknames that Warhol's factory crew would have killed for, fractals and issues of electronic privacy, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and raves. "Cyberia" is about the confluence of all these into an identifiable novum. The story grows out of conversations with the first "cyberians" - those who wrote the software, or cracked the sites, who took inspiration from complex maths and psychedelic drugs. Rushkoff's is a journalist's record, but with an infectious momentum borrowed from the birth of a new age. Whatever the mutations of global culture in a digital age, "Cyberia" will always serve as a benchmark of the first beginnings. This edition is supplemented by new material from Rushkoff's journalism on the subject since publication of the first edition. Also included is a new introduction by the author.
Douglas Rushkoff is a regular columnist for The Guardian and is professor of Media Culture at New York University.
This heady report takes readers on a dizzying and dangerous guided tour through ``cyberspace,'' an unfolding terrain of digital information that, according to Rushkoff, is being tapped by a ``cyberian counterculture'' bent on redefining reality. In ``Cyberia,'' artists, scientists and hackers explore virtual reality using prototype computers with 3-D goggles, headphones and a tracking ball to move through real or fictional space without commands, text or symbols; Silicon Valley engineers and mathematicians attempt to unlock creativity via psychedelic drugs or fractal graphics mirroring our irregular world; urban neopagans access information networks and use witchcraft to promote planetary survival. Computer bulletin boards, cyberpunk comic books, interactive videos, cyber-rock dance clubs and the acts of eco-terrorists and of employees who use computers to subvert the workplace are part of a cyberian universe whose gurus, interviewed here by Rushkoff, include Terence McKenna, Timothy Leary and R. U. Sirius, editor of Mondo 2000 magazine. Souped-up prose marks this exploration of cyberpunk culture. $20,000 ad/promo; author tour. (Apr.)
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