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Reuben Hoggett’s ↑cyberneticzoo.com is a true treasure trove of the ‘history of cybernetic animals and early robots.’ via ↑entry at the ↑clockworker … Continue reading
Monthly Archives: February 2012
‘↑Captain Nemo was a technical anarcho-terrorist.’ wrote Bruce Sterling (1991: 39) about the main protagonist of ↑Jules Verne‘s ‘↓20,000 leagues under the sea‘ (1870). The same can be said about the character Robur appearing in Verne’s ‘↓Robur the Conqueror‘ (1886) and its sequel ‘↓Master of the World‘ (1904). By way of his submarine ‘Nautilus’ Captain Nemo rules the oceans. Robur rules everything above through his vessels, the ‘Albatross’ and the ‘Terror.’ Just recently I learned that around the same time yet another literary ‘technical anarcho-terrorist’ appeared: ‘↓Hartmann the Anarchist‘ by Edward Douglas Fawcett (1893): ↑A sensational tale of the evil … Continue reading
zeph’s pop culture quiz #14 Who shot whom in the scene depicted above? If you recognize the movie from which the screenshot was taken, and if you have watched that movie carefully, you’ll have no problems in answering the question ;-) Just leave a comment with your educated guess—you can ask for additional hints, too. [Leaving a comment is easy; just click the ‘Leave a comment’ at the end of the post and fill in the form. If it’s the first time you post a comment, it will be held for moderation. But I am constantly checking, and … Continue reading
Last Wednesday, 01 February 2012, ↑Angelo Dundee died age 90. He was the famous trainer of world’s greatest, ↑Muhammad Ali, who just recently ↵turned 70. When I heard the news of Dundee’s passing away, immediately pictures from a comic book filled my mind. As a kid I for the first time heard of Dundee via the album ‘Superman vs. Muhammad Ali’ (O’Neill & Adams 1978). The above is a part of page 32. O’NEILL, DENNIS AND NEAL ADAMS. 1978. ‘Superman vs. Muhammad Ali’ [comic book]. New York: DC Comics. … Continue reading
Under the menu ↵cyberpunk—↵motion pictures I added the page ↵short films. Very much work in progress as the whole collection, but with direct links. More entries will follow as soon as possible. Above that I added and corrected quite something in all the other cyberpunkish artefacts listings. Nothing is perfect yet, though. … Continue reading
Paul Kent Alkon, professor emeritus of English and American literature, author of ‘Origins of futuristic fiction’ (1987), and ‘Science fiction before 1900’ (1994), in 1997 has published a ↓wonderful article on ↑Winston Churchill‘s relation to the writing and thought of ↑H. G. Wells, science fiction and dystopia in general. More recently Alkon covered the issue even more in-depth in his chapter ‘Imagining science: Churchill and science fiction’ (2006: 155-176). What struck Bruce Sterling the most is Churchill’s premonition of drone warfare: Have we reached the end? Has Science turned its last page on them? May there not be methods of … Continue reading
When, ↵like recently, I am talking about the historical significance of cybernetics for contemporary culture and society I more often than not mention that in the process of marking itself off from mechanistic visions (Ashby 1957 [1956]: 1-6), cybernetics quite early emphasized a whole array of concepts: networks, complexity, self-organisation, reproduction, adaptation, cognition, aiming at and maintaining goal-states, purposeful behaviour (or action?), and autonomy. This line-up implicitly leads towards a vision of cybernetic systems as independent actors, maybe even gifted with ‘free will’. Therefore it is not astounding that a hypothetical analogy emerged early on: ‘mind to body’ is like … Continue reading
Above these apparent hieroglyphics was a figure of evident pictorial intent, though its impressionistic execution forbade a very clear idea of its nature. It seemed to be a sort of monster, or symbol representing a monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive. If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it was the general outline of the whole which … Continue reading