Main Points

At the end of The Hacker and the Ants it is apparent that in Rucker's cyberpunk world everything is connected. This is especially evident with the DTV or digital television, that the ants use to evolve and eventually enter the real world and cause havoc. 

In this Digital world, which eerily resembles our own, everything is connected and interchangeable, and because of that, everything is vulnerable. This is represented by the ants evolving and leaving the virtual world to enter the real world.

This Digital world has strong effects on its inhabitants as is clear in the court room scene. The society has become so engulfed by media that the jury is unaffected by oral accounts, and is only influenced by a visual demonstration. 

Furthermore, in class on September 23rd, we went over some similarities that were noticed in both The Crying of Lot 49 and The Hacker and the Ants.

• Paranoia: The Hacker and the Ants leaves Jerzy (and the reader) wondering when things are real and when they are ‘virtual’. For example, Jerzy gets trapped in a Dark Dream where he sees himself killing Gretchen. For a moment, he (and us) believe it is real, and then it’s revealed to just be the work of Riscky. Or… is the entire novel a dark dream?
• The Detective Novel motif
• Funny names (a common occurrence in most post-1950’s literature)
• Underground societies: both novels are predominately based within the realms of off-the-radar groups of people or obscure microcosmic societies functioning within the mainstream world (i.e. hacker society, VR world, Inamorati Anonymous).   
• Riscky functions as a sort of ‘Tristero’ figure who likes to keep things interesting. Entropy.
• Metaphor is important in both novels.
• Media Systems: Media plays an important role in both novels; however, in the Hacker and the Ants, media systems become characters onto themselves (i.e. the ants). Media extends beyond the control of humans into relative self-replicating autonomy.

Passages

     Machotka had prepared an incredibly realistic cyberspace mock-up of the crimes as he thought they had happened. His simulation held a space-time continuum surrounding Jose Ruiz's block of White Road for the crucial three minutes, and he could observe the running of his world from any position in it-he could pick any space-time trajectory he pleased. He could even speed up and slow down time, or run time backward-he was the master of space and time.

     As we in the courtroom watched a big Abbott wafer display, Machotka flew us through his world. First he showed Studly standing on the picnic table and me standing next to him talking to him. Jose Ruiz was visible in his house, watching us out of his window. The words Ruiz attributed to me appeared on the bottom of the screen like subtitles: "Yes, Studly, now send in the ant viruses!" Then Dutch the dog came running out of Ruiz's house and I fled, calling back to Studly. Ruiz's quote of my words: "Studly, kill that dog!" It was quite convincing. Machotka flew us through his world four times, from four different angles. Members of the jury kept glancing over at me and looking away (238).

     Rucker emphasizes the influence and control that media has on people through this passage of Machotka's opening statement. The virtual display can represent the mass media we see today, including television and magazines (media with visual pictures). People tend to believe many things that they see in the media, not realizing that outlets as "reliable" as the news are biased and skewed. The presentation shows that the jurors are easily swayed by the images and projections that surround them. Likewise, the omni-presence of the media in today's world shape what people find real and true.

     This scene also relates to the fact that everything is interconnected. The technology that enables Machotka to sway the jurors already infiltrate their lives. They are familiar with such media and this familiarity breeds a sense of trust and safety in the presentation. The fact that technology can influence a person's emotions and throughts is also a smaller theme in this passage. The presentation uses techniques such as repeating the message four times and creating simulations that can draw the audience in makes this an effective tool for the D.A.

Jack and Jill, the jolly jock hackers, were on one of the machines, laughing excitedly and looking at their new program. The screen showed a box-shaped room that was full of tumbling three-dimensional boxes. The boxes were translucent and inside each box were more boxes, also translucent, and also with boxes inside them. It went down for as many levels as the screen resolution could handle. (173)

     While gizmos aren't important to the plot of the novel, Rucker's implementation of this imagery adds to the overall atmosphere of the novel. By surrounding the environment with electronic devices, Rucker is synthesizing a world that has been consumed by new technology. In addition, the use of 'techno-babble' aids the realistic POV-lens of the novel -- through computer hacker Jerzy Rugby's eyes. Since he's interested in technology, it would only make sense that the novel would focus on this (to some extent).

Terms

DTV - Television broadcasting in which the video and audio are transmitted as electronic signals represented by binary numbers that are decoded by a device in or attached to the receiving television set ("digital television").

imipolex resin - "Donar Kupp. He died last year. He patented a method for incorporating three-dimensional electronic circuits into solid lumps of thermosetting imipolex resin" (Rucker 258). This is a literary allusion to Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.

performative language - "In his famous work, 'How to do Things with Words,' J. L. Austin outlined his theory of speech acts and the concept of performative language, in which to say something is to do something" (Cline)

Uncanny Valley - The uncanny valley is a hypothesis about robotics concerning the emotional response of humans to robots and other non-human entities.

(image and definition courteousy of wikipedia)

Also, I just had to post the video of the Big Dog robot. It demonstrates the Uncanny Valley effect.

WWMS? (What Would McLuhan Say?)

About Artifical Life?

     It's a further amputation of ourselves. Instead of merely disassociating our bodies, artifical life forms are an extension of humanity itself. Roger Coolidge demonstrates how his robots function as a projection of humanity; he becomes utterly fascinated and numbed by these projections, and this subsequently leads to his demise.

About Virtual Reality

V.R. is the reworking of the body in technological world. In V.R. a person is given a new body in cyberspace that represent and acts like their real body. A physical body is not necessarily absolute.

What is the message of Artifical Life (the medium)?

That humans are no longer necessary. The robots (thanks to Rugby's program) can evolve and mutate -- essentially improving themselves over time in a seemingly organic process much like humanity. 

What is the message of Virtual Reality (the medium)?

Visual stimuli further seperates and delineates the senses. People have an overt fascination with the visual over the oral (i.e. need for visual re-enactment of the alleged crime for the trial over an oral synopsis). VR allows for the creation of personal identities outside that of the real world. In turn, oneself becomes an conglomeration of multiple identities both real and "imaginary". Perhaps, a lose of connection with the non-VR world.  

Furthermore, McLuhan might see VR as a way of re-integrating our physical bodies with the new technological world. For example, the Wii makes us use our limbs, and even offers physical feedback (like the controller shakes). 

Code as a medium

Code is a language like any other, but it's far more abstract than the phonetic alphabet, because humans are unable to read binary (at least, not on the fly -- it requires a lot of concentration). Machines, on the other hand, function solely off of binary language (a system of 1's and 0's). The message of this code is language, and, of course, the message of language is thought. The code, in essence, is a programmers thoughts abstracted in an incredibly simple structure.

Links

• TV Tropes Wiki Page on Media - very interesting compilation of various forms of media. It even has a page "New Media Tropes"
• There's a short inisght into VR on the website for the Virtual Reality Lab at the University of Michigan.
• Genetic Algorithm Viewer: Cause if you want to create a group of ever-evolving robots, you may need to figure out the right mathematical formula to that. Besides that,  just some interesting tid-bits about the potential role of genetics in robotics including an applet about ANTS.
• A geek-tastic BINARY TRANSLATOR.

Citations

Cline, Andrew R. "Speech." Rhetorica. 23 Sept. 2008 <http://www.rhetorica.net/speech.htm>.

"digital television." Webster's New Millennium™ Dictionary of English, Preview Edition (v 0.9.7). Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. 23 Sep. 2008. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/digital television>.