Techno-Prosthetic Romantic FuturismDigital ResistanceThe new hero is the hacker, at least in the scifi subgenre of cyberpunk. It's what Case does in Neuromancer, he hacks. He pits his wits and digits against an electronic corporate infrastructure of data storage and encryption. [1] The point is to liberate something of value, something to fence: information, access, code. But the Romantics did it before him, before there was an Internet. Textuality precedes cyberspace, but you can work it in a similar way. What did Blake do to Milton? Hacked him. What did Byron do to Wordsworth? Hacked him. What did Equiano do to Western writing? Hacked and hacked and hacked. [2] Notes1. William Gibson, Neuromancer (New York: Ace, 1984). 2. Consider Blake's, "Milton," The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blakeed. David V. Erdman, newly rev. ed. (Berkeley: U of California P, 1988), Byron's "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," Byron, ed. Jerome McGann (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995), Equiano's The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings, ed. Vincent Carretta (New York: Penguin, 1995). On the uses of hacking for criticism, see Alan Liu, Laws of Cool (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2004). Navigation |