It’s hard to do that Cyberpunk Genres feel fresh these days. After all, the proven principles of a dystopian future swamped with business and technology have been around for some time. Cybernetic implants are of course not Rigor So in the real world we can’t have any secret chainsaws on our hands, but we already have a lot of technology to help increase human skills. We can’t put a wire in our heads to send our consciousness into a computer for hacking, but many people can hack computers from all over the world without skull input. What does cyberpunk have to offer when so much of the genre is real?
The answer is of course Cyber dolphins.
Ironically, this most unique cyberpunk concept is not an innovative idea. It’s fully 40 years old after first appearing in a short story of Neuromancer Author and genre pioneer William Gibson. But the cyber dolphin really entered the zeitgeist in the 1995 film adaptation of the story: Johnny Mnemonic– what, as it happens, takes place on January 17, 2021. During Keanu Reeves Jones, the cyber dolphin, is possibly the film’s most memorable star and its true hero.
Why was a dolphin cybernetic enhanced? I am so glad you asked. Jones was forcibly recruited by the U.S. Navy, who equipped him with technology that enabled the aquatic mammal to remotely hack enemy submarine data by using infrasound scans of the submarines’ hulls can be cut up. Somehow he ended up with the LoTeks, a group of revolutionary / TV pirates who fought against the typical dystopian corporations that rule the world without exception in cyberpunk stories. Jones is a hacker and code breaker linked (maybe permanently?) To the insane interpretation of the internet in the movie, which is good for the good guys when Johnny Mnemonic shows up with 320 gig of data stored in his brain’s cybernetic storage drive downloaded before it kills him. Here the movie’s opening crawl explains everything clearly and concisely!
The data in his head includes the cure for the nerve weakening syndrome that people become involved in after spending too much time in the virtual reality of the internet. So it doesn’t go unnoticed, yeah Johnny Mnemonic takes place in a dystopian future ruled by companies where people spend their time on the internet and are exposed to a global pandemic … in the distant future of 2021. The first two details are gimmicks as they predate the Robert Cyberpunk Tropics Were A Longo-directed movie came out, but the plague is a supernaturally lucky guess. Still the fact Johnny Goddamn Mnemonic is the fiction that most accurately predicted that our current reality would feel less scary and incredibly irritating to me.
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PharmaKom Corporation –Which discovered the cure but has kept it a secret to continue to benefit from the treatment of the disease –HThe yakuza pulled the data in Johnny’s head with as much force as a PG-13 movie would allow. This is another reason Johnny needs the dolphin’s help in a rush. Lots of weird techno jargon is thrown around, Jones becomes a virtual dolphin for a while, Johnny has to “hack his own brain” for a moment, but eventually Jones saves Johnny and sends the cure to every TV (and probably every computer). in the world exposing PharmaKom’s villainy. So Jones becomes the mammal that really saves the day Johnny Mnemonic, but it’s not what makes it special.
There are a lot of things that set the cyberpunk genre apart from other science fiction films, including its roots in noir and its non-idealized protagonists and dystopian attitudes. As in the detective stories of the 30s and 40s, the emphasis is on the problems, challenges, and dangers of the real world, although that focus is usually on an action-packed, fun extreme. Cyberpunk does the same, which is why corporatocracy and an unhealthy overabundance of (and over-reliance on) technology are such mainstays of the genre. it just follows the trajectory of the last few decades to the utmost, but it is still often based on part of today’s reality.
This sense of realism, combined with the idea of science fiction, is what makes cyberpunk so important and compelling for me. Science fiction lamp Arthur C. Clarke emerged the well-known (among nerd circles) saying“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” But In front There is a thin line that advanced technology becomes magic – where the technology has advanced enough to appear nearly magical, but doesn’t become fantasy, in an environment that feels plausible, even if it’s not particularly likely. But in a world where cyberpunk pillars such as virtual reality, the internet and disruptively autonomous artificial intelligences are the order of the day, what idea does cyberpunk have to offer that is still imaginative and that theoretically feels like it is part of our future ?
Cyber dolphins, of course. Jones, the cyber dolphin, is as wild an idea as it was when Gibson first introduced him to the world in 1981. Animals used and trained for military purposes have a long and long history very real story til today. As Sarah Zhang reported on our sister site Gizmodo a few years ago:
Half a century ago, the Navy’s Marine Mammal Program began training an entire menagerie of dolphins, beluga whales, sea lions, and other marine animals for underwater tasks – even Sharks with military brain implants were considered, the latter only recently. Of course, it was the agile and intelligent dolphin who showed some of the most promising. In Vietnam, the navy had five dolphins patrolling the water around ships, alerting sailors to swimming enemies trying to plant a bomb.
The cybernetic alteration of dolphins to mentally hack the software in Russian submarines is a huge step towards the fantastic, something so wild that it appears to be an outright invention …except that Jones still has a fin that is firmly planted in reality, just enough to be felt possible even if it seems complete unlikely. Once you have accepted Jones’ premise, no additional disbelief is required to accept that the dolphin can connect to the internet to decrypt data and then send email (or whatever) Johnny MnemonicThe dolphin equivalent is) to the planet.
In reality, we don’t have USB sticks like Johnny Mnemonic in our brains. We don’t have cybernetic magnification like fingers with laser crimps inside. And corporations haven’t hired the mafia to assassinate threats to their profit margin (as far as we specifically know). But all of these things feel so close to reality, or at least the tropics we’ve seen so many times, that they’ve lost the attempted consciousness that makes cyberpunk and much of science fiction in general so compelling.
But for 40 years the cyber dolphin has been the perfect portrayal of the genre at its top – plausibly realistic, darkly cynical and such an imaginative concept that it almost seems magical … almost. And if this possibly insane shame hasn’t convinced you, Jones murders a cybernetic-enhanced assassin priest (played by Dolph Lungren) without leaving the dingy, disturbingly small aquarium he hangs in. Let’s see Rick Deckard Motoko Kusanagior manage Henry Case The.
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