systemic power

in the hazy dreamland concept that i have of cyberpunk's descendants, i feel like im certain that the more interesting pieces consider the ways in which people in power (from bezos to VCs to congress) transmit their power through technology as part of the worldbuilding? which is interesting bc i had the hardest time actually thinking of or finding art that exemplified this specific focus, even though im so sure it exists?? i feel like i have memories of at least reading or seeing these things, but akira was the only think i could think of off the top of my head.

but maybe im looking in the wrong places? or maybe the people most likely to produce this art are actually just not in the US/the imperial core and so i'm ignorant bc im not very familiar with art or artists from non-western countries. if anyone has recs, though, feel free to share.

in the meantime, what i can point to is: janelle shane's the skeleton crew, which considers how tech demands that its ever-more-exploited remote workers contort themselves into v bizarre roles of pretending to be AI to prove that AI "actually works" and that totally human-free automation is a viable future worth spending time and money on.

the main cast of characters basically drone-operate a house thats marketed as a fully-automated haunted Smart House. people visit the house for the thrill of being scared, assuming that this haunted house is special because some unseen AI is predicting when, where, and how to best spook them. the story takes a kind of wild turn though when the house is invaded by white supremacists and the remote workers find themselves in a somewhat comical inversion of an “i have no mouth but i must scream” sitch where they need to stop an assassination but they only have mobile haunted house decorations (and a very useless help desk) at their fingertips.

i guess the story sort of breaks with what one might expect of cyberpunk, given a slightly cheery ending. spoilers, but: the assassination-target in question doesnt die and the supremacists get caught out. but im not so sure the workers are really much better off at the end of the story than at the beginning? maybe only insofar as theyre no longer working for someone interested in lying about their function. but who knows. dragonsulla, the workers’ at least temporary new boss and anti-fascist possible pop-star, might talk the talk but not walk the walk.

it's a little grim; they saved her life, but the story makes no mention of her seeking to change their circumstances substantially. instead, she recruits these underpaid workers to man the remote-controlled representation of death (ie skeletons) as backup dancers at her concerts. and that’s just....v dark, yk? systemic power still exploits, even if it’s exploiting for a “less-bad” reason.

on the other hand, porpentine's the shape you make when you want your bones to be closest to the surface is a game that considers the farther-future implications of neoliberal digital imperialism. or at least it makes mention of them. most of the game is, by her own admission, autobiographical, and is as focused on her own life and history as it is on the speculative ways technology might be used to pillage a person's mind and restrict her body. but in the specific chapter relevant to this conversation, the narrator is physically hooked up to some kind of internet-cable in the year 29XX. she rents out space in her psyche (to supernatural creatures but i feel like it's reasonable to imagine renting out parts of our brainbodies to voyeurs in the near future). and she remarks (as the invisible committee has also remarked):

It doesn't make sense for people to reap the benefits of the internet without becoming a citizen of the internet. You must have at least 90% of your financial, physical, and social assets integrated with the internet to become a citizen.

so. between these 2 stories, shane and porpentine describe how technocratic power invades and exploits everyone it touches. from coopting bodies to strut up the appearance of "smart systems" to delineating entirely new borders that also serve as points of surveillance. the invisible committee asks: what kind of registry will there be for people who reject these "citizenship" systems? what kind of people will even be allowed to participate in them at all?

it doesnt seem that outlandish to think that maybe the remote workers in shane's story also have to have "work visas" to do their remote work at all and that obtaining those visas means consenting to some employer or government plundering their lives for data on their eating habits, sleeping habits, eye movements, time spent on a computer and time spent away from a computer, etc etc etc. shane and porpentine have written two separate (and very different) stories but they're both extrapolated from realities in this present world. the stories might be separate but the many ways power can be honed through digital tech/deployed across all facets of human life are definitely not.

as with everything else lined up here, im not sure the cyberpunk descendants of interest give us any kind of answer abt what to do regarding these new forms of exploitation/expropriation. i dont really even think art...functions that way. as some kind of template for political action. i think the stories just kinda dredge up these feelings from some collective unconscious (more or less) and bring them to light for us to figure out what to do with.

which. speaking of bringing things to light.

i think the last and maybe most important thing for me (unsurprising lol given the whole vivisection-by-machine thing) that distinguishes cyberpunk and its descendants from speculative fiction in general is how everything ive outlined or described or discussed above struts up the heart of this particular kind of future-fixation: techno fetishism.