Topic Nine

Lecture- This week’s lecture was focuses on Cyberpunk.
Cyberpunk is a sub branch of the Science Fiction Genre and concentrates mainly on the possibilities of computers, genetics, body modifications, mutation, and corporate developments in the near future.
It is a little different to Science Fiction, because Sci-Fi digs mainly into the far off future, concentrates on outcomes that are very likely to be unrealistic.
Cyberpunk places somewhat realistic restrictions on the story, explaining outrageous or unpredictable events on the technology that human kind has developed, developing or will develop.
There’s more to it than that though. It reveals thoughts about how everybody can use machinery and technology for their own purposes, which in Cyberpunk is more for destructive reasons.

Tutorial- The tutorial is to distinguish between MSN and 3D worlds.
MSN mainly concentrates on speech between two or more people, who wouldn’t necessarily be titled “Players.” It is not simple to separate MSN as conversation and 3D worlds as games, because in a way, IM can be a basis of MUD games, according to J. Murray (1997). These types of games (for want of a better word?) are constructed by those speaking. For example, one person who might be called A could speak to person called B.
A says to B- I am kissing you.
B replies- I push you away and slap you.
This scenario is displayed between both involved, but only in their IMAGINATION. If you simply describe something in MSN, the other person might imagine something entirely different from what you’re imagining.
3D worlds, which might necessarily be games, might take this same scenario into account, except that it has become visual on the screen. A might kiss B, and B might slap A, but they can only do those actions if the 3D world allows it. Also, with 3D worlds, you can explore and see the same things that others could see.

Reading- The reading was called Burning Chrome, the last chapter of a book of short Cyberpunk stories of the same name.
I found the reading confusing and went from place to place easily. Its likely that I completely misinterpreted what the story was about. Chrome, a powerful woman that had connections, was said to use technology to create some weird and dangerous things, but she was burnt by two computer programmers. One of them used woman as a way to decide what was coming in the future, the other was a one armed man with a cybernetic arm who stumbles across a form of digital storage that contains some very powerful viruses which they use to rip off some very powerful people.