wizard academy

so here's this paper i wrote a while back.

As we moved into our study of cyberpunk, I found myself wishing that I too could “jack in” and ride hack programs into fortresses of code or dismember an adversary in the most exclusive club on the metaverse. I would even settle for goggles instead of my monitor so that I might be able to increase my interface with my machine. Then I set Snow Crash down, put on my headset (headphones and microphone), logged into World of Warcraft, a popular massive multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG), and killed a rabid bear with nature magic while talking to a friend in Paris. Four months ago, this series of events would not have given me a moment’s pause, but the course of our reading has given me a new lens to view this situation. I am the beginning of the realization of the cyberpunk’s prophecy. What does this mean for my generation? After all, we are the generation that straddles the time before internet and the internet-riddled present. Those older than us can throw their hands up and shrug, claiming to be incapable of understanding the intricacies of the web. Those younger than us are now learning how to easily surf the web shortly after they progress from liquid to solid foods. That leaves us, the generation that was something before the proliferation of the internet and now, in our vulnerable years of definition, we are forced to ask ourselves just who we are with the addition of this technology. Perhaps this is why I keep noticing the pattern of identity questioning in the cyberpunk’s work. Who are these characters and how do they define themselves and more importantly, what role does technology play in these character’s definitions of themselves?
In Neuromancer, the character Case serves as one of our studies for the redefinition of identity directly involved with technology. He makes delineations between meat, drug flesh, jacked in, and simstim. These four categories provide two schools of comparison. Meat and drug flesh exist within his own body and value is attached to each. Meat experience is the ultimate low for a cowboy who is use to experiencing the world within the Matrix. Case only uses it to refer to his life without the ability to jack in and contrasts it with his drug flesh. When in drug flesh he seems to not mind the mundane corporeal existence. Perhaps this is due to the heightened sensory experiences being like that of the Matrix. He chooses ups for his drug in an attempt to push past the boundaries of “meat” and experience more than what the world has to offer. Are these drug experiences actually his own or are they the chemical’s? Can he say, “I did this” or if he were interested in accuracy would he be forced to admit “Betamphetamines did this.” If one’s identity is based on his experience then would Case be able to say that he did and was all the things that occurred while up or would he need to refer to himself as two separate entities (meat and drug flesh) as Gibson has him do? This question is taken further with the inclusion of another form of experience. Jacking in is the only thing Case misses about life and seeks it above all other forms of consciousness. In this form touched only with the mind, keyboard, and monitor, he is truly comfortable and confident. Is this then who Case really is? Is he just a bit of information within an even greater web of information? Case’s physical form had two separate entities and his information self posses two as well with the simstim contrasting the jacked in. If being jacked in were equivalent with drug flesh then Case’s simstim experiences would without a doubt be on par with the level of meat. Case is hesitant to leave the world of information for empirical experience through flipping into Molly’s consciousness. It is a return to the gritty world of human experience even though it is like existing as a true to life action hero(ine). Are these experiences Case’s own? Did he lose miserably to Hideo in Straylight Run? Was his leg broken as he was fighting with the Guards of Sense/Net? Is Case perhaps an odd cocktail of all these experiences; Meat, Drug Flesh, Jacked In, and Simstim?
Molly serves as another form of altered identity. Hey physical self exists as the housing of various cybernetic enhancements that function to alter her body’s ability to receive and process stimulus. One must recognize the situations she encounters because of these nonorganic alterations shape her reality and identity. If we accept Case’s technological experiences as part of his identity, then we must also permit Molly’s. This stretches this concept to a more physical/personal level. Case’s altered experiences required the aid of machines as do Molly’s , but Molly’s machines are hidden inside and part of her flesh, tucked away from the naked eye so that it is easy to see Molly’s situation as more “natural.”
In Snow Crash, the internet/metaverse has been made available to the masses. One can access the ‘verse from public terminals, cellular connections, laptops, or even equipment strapped to the body in the case of the gargoyles. No longer is the technological experience for the elite few for in Stephenson’s mind he can see the ease and accessibility that will come from a system such as this. Both Hiro and Y.T. are familiar with the navigation of this system, but in the case of Hiro, the Metaverse is the basis of his identity. He is better known there than in reality and prefers to spend his time there as Y.T. admonishes him several times to stop being a “goggle head” and spend some time in the real world. However, Stephenson draws a strong separation between the metaverse and the actual world. Hiro laments the fact that he could jump into speakers that are playing Vitaly Chernobyl and travel back to LA by wire but he is bound by his corporeal form. There is not the same possibility to exist as a collection of data as there is in Neuromancer.
As technology progresses, the limitations of the human body are in some cases removed completely, allowing us to participate in things completely outside of our normal realm. Is a person’s character on World of Warcraft actually an extension of themselves, allowing them to experience events they otherwise would be unable to? Am I actually not just Jared Dawson but a level twenty six night elf druid as well and if so how am I to mesh those experiences with my own into my own cocktail of consciousness? While jacking in, simstim, the metaverse, and experiencing the alternate universe of an artificial intelligence while brain dead may seem like impossible ideas, they are really just extensions of what is occurring in our day and time. We have Second Life, World of Warcraft, Maple Story, and countless other MMOs that allow us to transcend this world of flesh and live out another existence full of relationships, commerce, responsibility, and etiquette. The question is not how far this will go but will it ever stop in progression and how do we as humans define ourselves as we move into a time of identity that has a diminished reliance on our physical selves?