This thesis examines the ways in which cyberpunk science fiction novels and
short stories reflect our cultural relation with technology, a series of
relationships predicated on the way that corporate control of knowledge
industries increased during the 1980s. The document begins by locating the
means of corporate control in the increasing de-skilling of knowledge
workers, a de-skilling similar to that experienced by craftsworkers in the late
19th century. This process as undertaken by corporations leads to several
responses by these workers, making their relationship with technology a
complex and ambiguous one - they earn their living using it, but they also
find themselves being squeezed out of the core programming tasks that
defined the profession in its beginning. This thesis uses theoretical texts by
Karl Marx, John Cawelti, and James Beniger to provide a basis for the
discussion.
This fear of corporate control and the ambiguous relationship with
technology that high technology workers experience is reflected in cyberpunk
science fiction. In texts by Bruce Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Greg Bear, the
subcultural work of expressing these anxieties is done, with Artificial
Intelligences becoming fictional characters who seek different means of
finding freedom within this controlling environment. Gibson's Necromancer
trilogy describes these cultural anxieties most clearly, as its heroes eventually
escape to cyberspace with the help of a liberated Artificial Intelligence.
Unfortunately, that cyberspace is physically located on the back of a robot
that is endlessly tramping through the wastes of New Jersey, and it is
dependent upon the life of the battery strapped to the robot's back.
The thesis finishes with a discussion of Donna Haraway's review of the
impact of this desire to escape into cyberspace. For Haraway, escape is a
deadly fantasy, one that continues to relegate those unable to access
cyberspace to the increasingly dystopic physical world. Her view is
expressed in texts by several female cyberpunk writers, Gwyneth Jones,
Melissa Scott, and Pat Cadigan. The cultural anxieties that these writers
illustrate demonstrate our culture's increasingly complex relationship with
technology, and also illuminate possible means of future subversion. / Graduation date: 2000
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/33211 |
| Date | 02 June 1997 |
| Creators | Scott, Ron |
| Contributors | Lewis, Jon |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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