From: kcalder@blueyonder.co.uk   
      
   In message <1108083657.424352.265170@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>, mpa   
    writes   
      
   >hysterical Europeans in the mid 90's   
      
   I think I posted while intoxicated a few times during that decade, but   
   never while i the grip of hysteria!   
      
   >nostalgia   
   >for an improbably bleak yet interesting future   
      
   I've lost much of my teenage enthusiasm for CP, and can't find much of   
   it to read (though incidentally I am enjoying the new series of ghost in   
   the shell) but I'd still say that I have a lot of nostalgia for the cp   
   movement's particular brand of dystopia.  I put it down to the heady   
   cocktail of intoxicants and hormones coursing through my blood stream   
   during the tender years in which I read most of the cp cannon.  I   
   thought that other people probably felt the same way about whatever they   
   read when they were young, be it Wuthering Heights or something by Terry   
   Pratchet.  This seemed to be confirmed for me when I went to university   
   to learn about what makes for "good" literature, as many of the CP   
   novels I cherished started to look poorly written and shoddily   
   constructed, and I began to think of them as books that weren't very   
   good, but which I liked anyway.  In my final year I studied postmodern   
   literary theory which rather blew the whole idea of assessing the   
   "quality" of works of literature by objective means out of the water.   
   Nowadays I look at it in subjective terms; the fact that I enjoy these   
   books means that for me, they are as good as it gets. Anyway, I'm   
   rambling now, but I wonder if nostalgia is something that is built in to   
   the cp aesthetic?  Perhaps from cp literature you get an echo of the   
   author's lament for the decline of beat-culture, or maybe just a lament   
   for the passing of whatever transitory culture you happened to find   
   yourself in when the world "speeded up".   
      
   >So, what's on topic and off topic these days?   
      
   If I get my way almost nothing is off-topic!  The few people who hang   
   out in alt.cp still love to argue about almost anything and hopefully it   
   will stay that way, at least until usenet gets "modernised" and turned   
   into a big web-based forum with emoticons and a moderator who deletes   
   your posts seemingly as the mood takes him\her.  The "new" internet   
   seems to me to be a bit like "the nothing", from the neverending story.   
   Usenet seems increasingly to be making strange creaking noises as though   
   it were gradually falling in about us, collapsing under the weight of   
   blogs, instant messages, social networking hubs, and web-forums that are   
   being endlessly constructed on the surface.   
      
   Anyway, I'm rambling again.  I've taken up an interest in philosophy   
   (particularly epistemology and ontology) and the good denizens of alt.cp   
   have indulged me in sprawling OT debates and never complained once, so   
   I'd say anything goes these days.   
      
   >Is Intelligent Design Theory cyberpunk?   A Faith-Based Future?   
      
   I don't know enough about them to say.  Is IDT the theory that refutes   
   evolution on the basis that some "evolved" natural systems exhibit   
   irreducible complexity?  If it is then that is the sum total of   
   everything I know about it!  Even if its ot, I, for one would love to   
   discuss it.  Fancy giving us an intro?   
      
   cya,   
   --   
   Kevin Calder (still pleasing to shoot, but er, ah, fuckit)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)