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.These issues of impotenceand omnipotence are most acutely focused in relation to the PMC s stewardship ofthe technologies and discourses of information, simulation and cybernation.This,at any rate, is how the question is formulated in Gibson s cyberspace trilogy.Capital and Class in an Age of Cybernetic SimulationThe trilogy tells the story of the illegal conspiracy of two extremely advancedArtificial Intelligence systems to extract themselves from the control of theircorporate masters, the Tessier-Ashpool industrial clan, and to merge with oneanother, forming a single, hugely powerful entity.Gibson s narrative then tracesthe consequences of this union over a subsequent 14-year period.In the first volume,Neuromancer, the illegal union is brought about in the cyberspace matrix with thecrucial but largely unwitting assistance of Gibson s cast of punk technicians andstreet-smart mercenaries.In the second volume, Count Zero, set seven years on, welearn that since the union of the AIs occurred, the matrix has been inhabited bystrange shapes or sentient and self-conscious presences.These become manifest inthe form of voodoo gods or loa , and are dedicated to the task of reproducing andperpetuating themselves and the new entity of which they are traces.This requiresthe development of a revolutionary new technology, the immortality-endowing biochip.The AI entity that now inhabits and in some senses is the matrix,selects a brilliant but overreaching corporate scientist, Mitchell, to be the humanagent responsible for the practical realisation of the biochip, feeding him the 132 CAPITAL, CLASS AND TECHNOLOGY IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN CULTUREknowledge necessary to the completion of his task.However, the biochip becomesalso the object of the malign attentions of what remains of the Tessier-Ashpooldynasty, the demonic and megalomaniac clone Lady 3Jane, and of the decayingplutocrat Joseph Virek.For they also, of course, seek the ability to perpetuatethemselves indefinitely in order to retain personal control over their vast economicempires, and see the biochip as the means to achieve this.In the final volume, MonaLisa Overdrive, set a further seven years on, the AI matrix entity successfully securessole control of the biochip technology, thereby achieving total self-consciousnessand full autonomy from the dying remnants of the old capitalist class, again with theaid of a motley collection of punk outsiders, crooks and renegades.The AI entityrewards the most privileged of these human agents by integrating them into thematrix itself through the use of the new biochip technology.Here they are liberatedfrom their biological, meat selves and granted a form of electronically simulatedimmortality.It is finally revealed that in so attaining full sentience and autonomy,by successfully totalising itself, in effect, the matrix becomes aware of the existenceof another such sentient totality in another part of the galaxy.The trilogy closeswith the conditions set in place for another merger of AI entities on a larger scale still.We can begin decoding this complex and at times inscrutable narrative bynoting that, in the representations of both the Tessier-Ashpool clan and JosephVirek, Gibson s trilogy clearly sets out to dramatise the decadence and historicalobsolescence of a ruling capitalist class in the traditional sense of a dynastic andproperty-owning social elite.This is explicitly signalled when the AI Neuromancercomplains to Molly Millions in Neuromancer of how his creators and owners, theTessier-Ashpools, were always fucking him over with how old-fashioned theywere , annoying him with all their nineteenth-century stuff (N: p.215).Moreover,in Count Zero there is a sustained debate about the forms of capital, wealth andpower most appropriate to a post-human, transnational, cybernetic epoch.Arecurrent text-within-the-text device posits the paradox of individual wealth in acorporate age.The author of this text, we are told, maintains that both Virek andthe Tessier-Ashpools are fascinating anachronisms, and that things can be learnedabout corporate evolution by watching them.He said that Virek would be forced,by evolutionary pressures, to make some sort of jump . Jump was his word(CZ: pp.144, 196) [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.These issues of impotenceand omnipotence are most acutely focused in relation to the PMC s stewardship ofthe technologies and discourses of information, simulation and cybernation.This,at any rate, is how the question is formulated in Gibson s cyberspace trilogy.Capital and Class in an Age of Cybernetic SimulationThe trilogy tells the story of the illegal conspiracy of two extremely advancedArtificial Intelligence systems to extract themselves from the control of theircorporate masters, the Tessier-Ashpool industrial clan, and to merge with oneanother, forming a single, hugely powerful entity.Gibson s narrative then tracesthe consequences of this union over a subsequent 14-year period.In the first volume,Neuromancer, the illegal union is brought about in the cyberspace matrix with thecrucial but largely unwitting assistance of Gibson s cast of punk technicians andstreet-smart mercenaries.In the second volume, Count Zero, set seven years on, welearn that since the union of the AIs occurred, the matrix has been inhabited bystrange shapes or sentient and self-conscious presences.These become manifest inthe form of voodoo gods or loa , and are dedicated to the task of reproducing andperpetuating themselves and the new entity of which they are traces.This requiresthe development of a revolutionary new technology, the immortality-endowing biochip.The AI entity that now inhabits and in some senses is the matrix,selects a brilliant but overreaching corporate scientist, Mitchell, to be the humanagent responsible for the practical realisation of the biochip, feeding him the 132 CAPITAL, CLASS AND TECHNOLOGY IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN CULTUREknowledge necessary to the completion of his task.However, the biochip becomesalso the object of the malign attentions of what remains of the Tessier-Ashpooldynasty, the demonic and megalomaniac clone Lady 3Jane, and of the decayingplutocrat Joseph Virek.For they also, of course, seek the ability to perpetuatethemselves indefinitely in order to retain personal control over their vast economicempires, and see the biochip as the means to achieve this.In the final volume, MonaLisa Overdrive, set a further seven years on, the AI matrix entity successfully securessole control of the biochip technology, thereby achieving total self-consciousnessand full autonomy from the dying remnants of the old capitalist class, again with theaid of a motley collection of punk outsiders, crooks and renegades.The AI entityrewards the most privileged of these human agents by integrating them into thematrix itself through the use of the new biochip technology.Here they are liberatedfrom their biological, meat selves and granted a form of electronically simulatedimmortality.It is finally revealed that in so attaining full sentience and autonomy,by successfully totalising itself, in effect, the matrix becomes aware of the existenceof another such sentient totality in another part of the galaxy.The trilogy closeswith the conditions set in place for another merger of AI entities on a larger scale still.We can begin decoding this complex and at times inscrutable narrative bynoting that, in the representations of both the Tessier-Ashpool clan and JosephVirek, Gibson s trilogy clearly sets out to dramatise the decadence and historicalobsolescence of a ruling capitalist class in the traditional sense of a dynastic andproperty-owning social elite.This is explicitly signalled when the AI Neuromancercomplains to Molly Millions in Neuromancer of how his creators and owners, theTessier-Ashpools, were always fucking him over with how old-fashioned theywere , annoying him with all their nineteenth-century stuff (N: p.215).Moreover,in Count Zero there is a sustained debate about the forms of capital, wealth andpower most appropriate to a post-human, transnational, cybernetic epoch.Arecurrent text-within-the-text device posits the paradox of individual wealth in acorporate age.The author of this text, we are told, maintains that both Virek andthe Tessier-Ashpools are fascinating anachronisms, and that things can be learnedabout corporate evolution by watching them.He said that Virek would be forced,by evolutionary pressures, to make some sort of jump . Jump was his word(CZ: pp.144, 196) [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]