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"The Street finds its own uses for technology." -- William Gibson

Excitement and danger await your induction to tracer duty! As a tracer, you must rid the computer networks of slimy, criminal data thieves. They are tricky and the action gets tough, so watch out! Utilizing all your skills, youll either get your man or youll get burned! -- advertising for the computer game "Tracers"

I have sacrificed time, health, and fortune, in the desire to complete these Calculating Engines. I have also declined several offers of great personal advantage to myself. But, notwithstanding the sacrifice of these advantages for the purpose of maturing an engine of almost intellectual power, and after expending from my own private fortune a larger sum than the government of England has spent on that machine, the execution of which it only commenced, I have received neither an acknowledgement of my labors, not even the offer of those honors or rewards which are allowed to fall within the reach of men who devote themselves to purely scientific investigations... If the work upon which I have bestowed so much time and thought were a mere triumph over mechanical difficulties, or simply curious, or if the execution of such engines were of doubtful practicability or utility, some justification might be found for the course which has been taken; but I venture to assert that no mathematician who has a reputation to lose will ever publicly express an opinion that such a machine would be useless if made, and that no man distinguished as a civil engineer will venture to declare the construction of such machinery impracticable... And at a period when the progress of physical science is obstructed by that exhausting intellectual and manual labor, indispensable for its advancement, which it is the object of the Analytical Engine to relieve, I think the application of machinery in aid of the most complicated and abtruse calculations can no longer be deemed unworthy of the attention of the country. In fact, there is no reason why mental as well as bodily labor should not be economized by the aid of machinery. -- Charles Babbage, Passage from the Life of a Philosopher

So we get to my point. Surely people around here read things that arent on the *Officially Sanctioned Cyberpunk Reading List*. Surely we dont (any of us) really believe that there is some big, deep political and philosophical message in all this, do we? So if this `cyberpunk thing is just a term of convenience, how can somebody sell out? If cyberpunk is just a word we use to describe a particular style and imagery in sf, how can it be dead? Where are the profound statements that the `Movement is or was trying to make? I think most of us are interested in examining and discussing literary (and musical) works that possess a certain stylistic excellence and perhaps a rather extreme perspective; this is what CP is all about, no? Maybe there should be a newsgroup like, say, alt.postmodern or something. Something less restrictive in scope than alt.cyberpunk. -- Jeff G. Bone

"The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray." -- Robert G. Ingersoll

"Data is a lot like humans: It is born. Matures. Gets married to other data, divorced. Gets old. One thing that it doesnt do is die. It has to be killed." -- Arthur Miller

The evolution of the human race will not be accomplished in the ten thousand years of tame animals, but in the million years of wild animals, because man is and will always be a wild animal. -- Charles Galton Darwin

I would have promised those terrorists a trip to Disneyland if it would have gotten the hostages released. I thank God they were satisfied with the missiles and we didnt have to go to that extreme. -- Oliver North