igargoyle

Disney Distributing Cyberpunk?

The irony of Disney distributing a major motion picture whose secondary plot involves massive unilateral corporate control, propaganda, and monopolized consumerism is too juicy to ignore! The corporation's name, BNL, stands for Buy N' Large, and the consumers buy and get large.

I was inspired to write about Pixar's Wall-E by the fantastic blog, wiki, and forums at http://www.cyberpunkreview.com. Therefore, this synopsis focuses on the Cyberpunk themes of Wall-E's secondary plot, which is the story of humanity. The primary plot of Wall-E is an animated romantic comedy between robots, who have the ability to learn and have emotions. The secondary plot has computers and robots with a similar suggestion of machine intelligence that is very reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

In Wall-E, humanity has moved off a heavily polluted Earth, which travels in a space colony aboard a starship. The ship's captain receives all his information from the corporate-programmed computer, who then relays news to the society while reading a teleprompter. Like the talking heads of his passengers' video chats, these broadcasts are Orwellian in their framing and ubiquity. He is also controlled by information provided by a combination of a computer, recordings from a mashup of a Coprorate CEO/US President, and a HAL 9000-esque computer; replete with the same red, glowing eye. This cyclops is the ship's autopilot, provides spaceship status reports, and acts as First Mate. It mutinies against its human captain similar to HAL 9000 in 2001 and V.I.K.I. in I,Robot.

The BNL corporation that literally provides life support systems and educates humanity's youth. Their only semblance of face-to-face communication is screen-based, like a two-person holographic video chat. This Heads-Up Display mediated communication is used even by physically adjacent people. They don't touch or see beyond their screens. They don't see what is around them. They are seated and sated by convenience and the holograms, which reminds me of THX-1138 and The Matrix. Everyone is overweight because their only physical movements involve consumption; drinking meal shakes or buying into the latest trends, which are also broadcast from a central computer. The computer intervenes in the physical world through robots, and once triggered, secret automation routines are very difficult to override- even by the figurehead human captain, who is a corporate puppet. He discovers a secret recorded message that is also similar to 2001. Like I,Robot, Wall-E posits that rogue intelligent robots are not only prone to revolution against humans, but against themselves as well.

My original thoughts and members' comments are here:
http://www.cyberpunkreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=982

lolborgs: steve mann lol

I admit it. I love lolcats and lolgeeks. I told my friend Rich Gibson that I wanted to do lolborgs, making fun of this very geeky, very weird subculture I'm intoxicated by. Look what I got back:

Pls post moar geeky pix k thx!!!11!!

[ Linky, you kick azz Rich! More information on BCG's (Birth control glasses / Basic corrective glasses) here. ]

Crypto doesn't kill people, Bruce Schneier kills people.

"If Bruce Schneier wants your plaintext, he'll just squeeze it out of the ciphertext using his barehands"

"Bruce Schneier can straighten out an elliptic curve with nothing but his teeth"

"Bruce Schneier decrypted the Bible. The plaintext read, "Bruce Schneier"."

"Bruce Schneier always inhabits the soundness of error margin of your zero-knowledge crypto protocol"

[ Link via roadtrip, who is currently in the Black Rock Desert ]

i heart cyborgs

I admit it. I'm in love with cyborgs.

[ Link via Jess. Thanks Jess! ]

Internet Addiction

China thinks internet addiction is an epidemic. Stranger is that they think this Clockwork Orange like device will help them overcome it. Maybe they should just gouge out their eyes instead.

[ Link via /. ]

Violence is Awesome!

<Zybl0re> get on up
<Zybl0re> get up
<Zybl0re> get on up
<phxl|paper> and DANCE
* nmp3bot dances :D-<
* nmp3bot dances :D|-<
* nmp3bot dances :D/-<
<[SA]HatfulOfHollow> i'm going to become rich and famous after i invent a device that allows you to stab people in the face over the internet

Thanks Ash!