Lecture Week 4

In today’s lecture we explored the meaning of Cyberspace a bit more and the meaning of Cyberpunk. William Burroughs was the forerunner, “grandfather” of Cyberpunk and wrote in a “beat” style. Punk music started in the late 70s with bands like the Sex Pistols, The Ramones and The Clash, it then morphed into the science fiction genre. Elements of Cyberpunk include a gritty aesthetic, high technology and a questionable morality. Examples of Cyberpunk fiction include William Gibson’s books such as Neuromancer and Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner. We watched a couple of scenes from the film Blade Runner in the lecture. One scene was the beginning of the film were they are testing a robot to see if he is a robot. The test is on emotion and that’s how they work out who is a robot and who isn’t because robots don’t have emotions. Professor Stockwell said that the machines were built to mimic humans, but how long until the technology improves beyond us? Will we all be robots one day?