Cyberspace as it Affects Concepts of Distance

Neuromancer is a surprising piece of fiction in that it is predictive of issues relating to technology that could only be guessed at before. Through Case's obsession with jacking into cyberspace and the world therein Gibson creates an arena in which he explores the question of the affect of technology on physical and psychic distance. Characters in the novel travel from Japan, to the Sprawl of the United States, Turkey, to the space stations of Zion and Freeside. The actual physical locations are of little import, for in a world where technology allows remote access to information from anyplace a character such as Henry Dorsett Case finds more intrigue in Cyberspace than in the physical realm.

From the novel's opening we see reality through the lense of technology, with the words "The Sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel" (4). Reality is a sort of fiction to Case and others, as he interacts with and describes the world in terms of the digital in order to evoke substantive feeling. The world of cyberspace bleeds into the world of the real to such an extent that the "artificial" characters of Wintermute, Neuromancer, and even McCoy Pauley/The Dixie Flatline often blur the lines between the physical reality and the psychic reality.

Wintermute cannot actually interact with the characters without assuming the form of another character they have met in their lives. His personality is diffuse and relies on accessing the memory imprints of people and places from others in order to actually have access to the world outside a computer. Similarly  Neuromancer is able to call upon the dead memories of others (i.e., Linda Lee) and develops them in a way that Wintermute cannot. Rather than merely accessing the form and familiarity of a character Neuromancer can evoke them in all of their complexities while maintaing an actual separate consciousness from them. As contrasted by the two AIs central to the story this separation of the mind from the body either representing it or a fundamental part of it is reflective of the greater issue of man's separation between the realm of the mental and the physical as shown by Case.

Case routinely decries his own seemingly foolish actions as resulting from "meat" and exalts a form of union with technology in which he is psychically distant from his own body. There is a sort of rebuttal against this desire to severe yourself wholly from the realm of the physical. Before I forget I should address the character of McCoy Pauley as presented through the construct The Dixie Flatline. Dixie or Dix is a remnant of the deceased mentor to Case who suffered from a fatal case of "black ice" when he was probing into the AI Neuromancer's security features. Dix appears dissatisfied with his position as a sort of cyber-ghost, a remnant of a man confined to a computer. His existence does not appear enjoyable. He routinely expresses his desire to be erased as a payment for completing his one last job, which makes sense considering his position: he was literally comodified by a corporation as he now exists in state of pure spirit in the matrix and is solely defined by his role as a hacker. This case of actual psychic and physical severing through Dix's remaining as a cyber imprint whose continued existence is contingent on his role as a hacker shows a fatalistic end to Case's addiction to the realm of the purely psychic.

As real as unreality can get.

Physical places take on traces of the digital to display Case's fundamental disinterest and removal from the realm of the physical. Even when he returns to his home "BAMA, the Sprawl, the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis" from his two-year exile to Chiba city Gibson's narration denies us a stark physical description of the place. Instead the cities and places of the Sprawl are described in the abstract concept of data exchange. The place is not determined by its physical description but rather by how much abstracted information passes through the city.

~“Program a map to display frequency of data exchange, every thousand megabytes a single pixel on a very large screen. Manhattan and Atlanta burn solid white. Then they start to pulse, the rate of traffic threatening to overload your simulation. Your map is about to go nova. Cool it down. Up your scale. Each pixel a million megabytes. At a hundred million megabytes per second, you begin to make out certain blocks in midtown Manhattan, outlines of hundred-year-old industrial parks ringing the old core of Atlanta...” (40)

Digitizing the real.

Plugging in: Futuristic Labor Opportunities in "Nova" and “Sleep Dealer”

Both Nova and “Sleep Dealer” introduce a novel new system of labor: humans as part of the machines they work with. In both the book and the movie, workers are implanted with “nodes” or “sockets” that interact directly with their nervous systems, allowing them to control larger machines by literally plugging themselves in and engaging in what I understood to be a sort of virtual reality interface. What I found striking, however, was the difference in the way each work describes the societal impact of the two nearly identical technologies.

In Nova, Katin explains the introduction of neural plugs as a psychologically beneficial method of labor, developed by psychologist cum pseudo-deity Ashton Clark in an attempt to reverse the mental damage wrought by the labor practices we, the 21^st century readers, consider modern. He explains,

There was no direct connection between where he worked and how he ate and lived the rest of the time…Ashton Clark pointed out how psychologically damaging this was to humanity. The entire sense of self-control and self-responsibility… was seriously threatened… He [Man] must exert energy in his work and see these changes occur with his own eyes. Otherwise he would feel his life was futile (195).

On the other hand, in “Sleep Dealer”, the “plug-in” system seems to act as the ultimate distancing agent. Not only are workers hired without knowing what job they’ll be doing, they don’t even need to reside in the same country as the machine that they’re controlling. The surreal nature of this sort of work takes a dangerous turn when it becomes military. Working from his distant controls to a soundtrack of canned applause and supportive commentary, Rudy is so removed from the death and destruction he is causing that it is not until coming into direct contact with Memo’s story that the video game-like illusion is broken and his actions begin to feel real.

While these two presentations oppose each other, I personally do not believe that the effects of the plugs are that black and white in Nova vs. “Sleep Dealer”. Despite Katin’s words, the neural plugs in Nova are not without negative consequence. Although the work seems more direct than in “Sleep Dealer” (the workers remain in the same location as the machine, and seem to choose their own work rather than being assigned a position), the ease with which workers can slip into and out of jobs seems to limit ambition, at least in the working class. Without the need to dedicate themselves to learning a chosen trade, the crew members that Lorq recruits have grown up to be somewhat listless, even apathetic. While they have their chosen individual pursuits (Katin’s novel, Mouse’s instrument, etc.), these pursuits never graduate from hobby to vocation. This state of mind leaves the crewmember ripe for the picking when Lorq recruits them, ready to be swept off, unquestioning, into the grayish power games of the wealthy and powerful. Ashton Clark may have intended to restore a “sense of self-control and self-responsibility” with his new method of labor, but the crewmembers’ willingness to drop everything to blindly follow Lorq suggests quite the opposite.