A Cyberpunk Manifesto

[Baloogan]

We are those, the Different. Technological rats, swimming in the ocean of information. We are the retiring, little kid at school, sitting at the last desk, in the corner of the class room. We are the teenager everybody considers strange. We are the student hacking computer systems, exploring the depth of his reach. We are the grown-up in the park, sitting on a bench, laptop on his knees, programming the last virtual reality. Ours is the garage, stuffed with electronics. The soldering iron in the corner of the desk and the nearby disassembled radio - they are also ours. Ours is the cellar with computers, buzzing printers and beeping modems. We are those that see reality in a different way. Our point of view shows more than ordinary people can see. They see only what is outside, but we see what is inside. That's what we are - realists with the glasses of dreamers. We are those strange people, almost unknown to the neighborhood. People, indulged in their own thoughts, sitting day after day before the computer, ransacking the net for something. We are not often out of home, just from time to time, only to go to the nearby radio shack, or to the usual bar to meet some of the few friends we have, or to meet a client, or to the back street druggist... or just for a little walk. We do not have many friends, only a few with whom we go to parties. Everybody else we know we know on the net. Our real friends are there, on the other side of the line. We know them from our favorite IRC channel, from the News-Groups, from the systems we hang-around: We are those who don't give a shit about what people think about us, we don't care what we look like or what people talk about us in our absence. The majority of us likes to live in hiding, being unknown to everybody except those few we must inevitably contact with. Others love publicity, they love fame. They are all known in the underground world. Their names are often heard there.

But we are all united by one thing - we are Cyberpunks.

Society does not understand us, we are "weird" and "crazy" people in the eyes of the ordinary people who live far from information and free ideas. Society denies our way of thinking - a society, living, thinking and breathing in one and only one way - a cliche. They deny us for we think like free people, and free thinking is forbidden. The Cyberpunk has outer appearance, he is no motion. Cyberpunks are people, starting from the ordinary and known to nobody person, to the artist-techno maniac, to the musician, playing electronic music, to the superficial scholar. The Cyberpunk is no literature genre anymore, not even an ordinary subculture. The Cyberpunk is a stand-alone new culture, offspring of the new age. A culture that unites our common interests and views.

We are a unit. We are Cyberpunks.

I don't know where i got this from, found this floating of my harddrive, now on baloogan.com... so what do ya think of it and if you know where this was first written i would like to have a name so it does not like i am pilfrifing

[ 10-26-2001: Message edited by: Baloogan ]

[Parias]

[Menchise]

Parias, I believe the correct quote is "insect, cease your meddling...", not "stop what you are doing" (unless you're referring to the floppy disk version)!

System Shock is #1!