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An unforgettable journey into the dark heart
of the Information Age, Escape Velocity explores
the high-tech subcultures that both celebrate and critique
our wired world: cyberpunks, cyberhippies, technopagans,
and rogue technologists, to name a few. The computer revolution
has given rise to a digital underground -- an Information
Age counterculture whose members are utilizing cutting-edge
technology in ways never intended by its manufacturers.
Poised, at the end of the century, between Tomorrowland
and Blade Runner, fringe computer culture poses the
fundamental question of our time: Will technology liberate
or enslave us in the coming millennium?
Mark Dery takes us on an electrifying tour
of the high-tech underground. Exploring the shadowy byways
of cyberculture, we meet would-be cyborgs who believe the
body is obsolete and dream of downloading their minds into
computers, cyberhippies who boost their brainpower with
smart drugs and mind machines, on-line swingers seeking
cybersex on electronic bulletin boards, techno-primitives
who sport "biomechanical" tattoos of computer
circuitry, and cyberpunk roboticists who Mad Max
contraptions duel to the death before howling crowds.
Most "cyber-" titles are a breathless
mix of New Age futurism and gadget-happy cyberhype. Escape
Velocity stands alone as the first truly critical
inquiry into cyberculture. Shifting the focus of our conversation
about technology from the corridors of power to disparate
voices on the cultural fringes. Dery wires it into the power
politics and social issues of the moment. Timely, trenchant,
and provocative, Escape Velocity is essential reading
for everyone interested in computer culture and the shape
of things to come.
Mark Dery (markdery@well.com) is a cultural
critic whose writings have appeared in Wired, Rolling
Stone, the New York Times, and the Village
Voice. He edited Flame Wars, a collection of essays
on cyberculture that Wired called "essential
reading."
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