A Cyberpunk Manifesto
A Cyberpunk Manifesto
By Christian
As. Kirtchev (circa: 1997)
We are the ELECTRONIC MINDS, a group of free-minded rebels.
Cyberpunks.
We live in Cyberspace, we are everywhere, we know no
boundaries.
This is our manifest. The Cyberpunks' manifest.
I. Cyberpunk
1/ We are
those, the Different. Technological rats, swimming in the ocean of information.
2/ We are
the retiring, little kid at school, sitting at the last desk, in the corner of
the class room. 3/ We are the teenager everybody considers strange 4/ We are
the student hacking computer systems, exploring the depth of his reach. 5/ We
are the grown-up in the park, sitting on a bench, laptop on his knees,
programming the last virtual reality. 6/ Ours is the garage, stuffed with
electronics. The soldering iron in the corner of the desk and the nearby
disassembled radio- they are also ours. Ours is the cellar with computers,
buzzing printers and beeping modems. 7/ We are those that see reality in a
different way. Our point of view shows more than ordinary people can see. They
see only what is outside, but we see what is inside. That's what we are -
realists with the glasses of dreamers. 8/ We are those strange people, almost
unknown to the neighborhood. People, indulged in their own thoughts, sitting
day after day before the computer, ransacking the net for something. We are not
often out of home, just from time to time, only to go to the nearby radio
shack, or to the usual bar to meet some of the few friends we have, or to meet
a client, or to the backstreet druggist... or just for a little walk. 9/ We do
not have many friends, only a few with whom we go to parties. Everybody else we
know we know on the net. Our real friends are there, on the other side of the
line. We know them from our favorite IRC channel, from the News-Groups, from
the systems we hang-around: 10/ We are those who don't give a shit about what
people think about us, we don't care what we look like or what people talk
about us in our absence. 11/ The majority of us likes to live in hiding, being
unknown to everybody except those few we must inevitably contact with. 12/
Others love publicity, they love fame. They are all known in the underground
world. Their names are often heard there.
But we are
all united by one thing - we are Cyberpunks.
13/ Society
does not understand us, we are "weird" and "crazy" people
in the eyes of the ordinary people who live far from information and free
ideas. Society denies our way of thinking - a society, living, thinking and
breathing in one and only one way - a clichc. 14/ They deny us for we think
like free people, and free thinking is forbidden. 15/ The Cyberpunk has outer
appearance, he is no motion. Cyberpunks are people, starting from the ordinary
and known to nobody person, to the artist-technomaniac, to the musician,
playing electronic music, to the superficial scholar. 16/ The Cyberpunk is no
literature genre anymore, not even an ordinary subculture. The Cyberpunk is a
stand-alone new culture, offspring of the new age. A culture that unites our
common interests and views. We are a unit. We are Cyberpunks.
II. Society
1/ The
Society which surrounds us is clogged with concervacy pulling everything and
everybody to itself, while it sinks slowly in the quicksands of time. 2/
However doggedly some refuse to believe it, it is obvious that we live in a
sick society. The so called reforms which our governments so adeptly use to
boast, are nothing else but a little step forward, when a whole jump can be
done. 3/ People fear the new and unknown. They prefer the old, the known and
checked truths. They are afraid of what the new can bring to them. They are
afraid that they can lose what they have. 4/ Their fear is so strong that it
has proclaimed the revolutional a foe and a the free idea - its weapon. That's
their fault. 5/ People must leave this fear behind and go ahead. What's the
sense to stick to the little you have now when you can have more tomorrow.
Everything they must do is stretch their hands and feel for the new; give
freedom to thoughts, ideas, to words: 6/ For centuries each generation has been
brought up is a same pattern. Ideals is what everybody follows. Individuality
is forgotten. People think in a same way, following the clichc drilled in them
in childhood, the clichc-education for all children: And, when someone dares
defy authority, he is punished and given as a bad example. "Here is what
happens to you when you express your own opinion and deny your teacher's
one". 7/ Our society is sick and need to be healed. The cure is a change
in the system...
III. The System
1/ The
System. Centuries-old, existing on principles that hang no more today. A System
that has not changed much since the day of its birth. 2/ The System is wrong.
3/ The System must impose its truth upon us so that it can rule. The government
needs us follow it blindly. For this reason we live in an informational
eclipse. When people acquire information other that that from the government,
they cannot distinguish the right from the wrong. So the lie becomes a truth -
a truth, fundamental to everything else. Thus the leaders control with lies and
the ordinary people have no notion of what is true and follow the government
blindly, trusting it. 4/ We fight for freedom of information. We fight for
freedom of speech and press. For the freedom to express our thoughts freely,
without being persecuted by the system. 5/ Even in the most-developed and
'democratic' countries, the system imposes misinformation. Even in the
countries that pretend to be the cradle of free speech. Misinformation is one
of the system's main weapon. A weapon, they use very well. 6/ It is the Net
that helps us spread the information freely. The Net, with no boundaries and
information limit 7/ Ours is yours, yours is ours. 8/ Everyone can share
information, no restrictions. 9/ Encrypting of informattion is our weapon. Thus
the words of revolution can spread uninterrupted, and the government can only
guess. 10/ The Net is our realm, in the Net we are Kings.11/ Laws. The world is
changing, but the laws remain the same. The System is not changing, only a few
details get redressed for the new time, but everything in the concept remains
the same. 12/ We need new laws. Laws, fitting the times we live in, with the
world that surrounds us. Not laws build on the basis of the past. Laws, build for
today, laws, that will fit tomorrow. 13/ The laws that only refrain us. Laws
that badly need revision.
IV. The
vision
1/ Some
people do not care much about what happens globally. They care about what
happens around them, in their micro-universe. 2/ These people can only see a
dark future, for they can only see the life they live now. 3/ Others show some
concern about the global affairs. They are interested in everything,in the
future in perspective, in what is going to happen globally. 4/ They have a more
optimistic view. To them the future is cleaner and more beautiful, for they can
see into it and they see a more mature man, a wiser world. 5/ We are in the
middle. We are interested in what happens now, but what in what's gonna happen
tomorow as well. 6/ We look in the net, and the net is growing wide and wider.
7/ Soon everything in this world will be swallowed by the net: from the
military systems to the PC at home. 8/ But the net is a house of anarchy. 9/ It
cannot be controlled and in this is its power. 10/ Every man will be dependent
on the net. 11/ The whole information will be there, locked in the abysses of
zeros and ones. 12/ Who controls the net, controls the information. 13/ We will
live in a mixture of past and present. 14/ The bad come from the man, and the
good comes from technology. 15/ The net will control the little man, and we
will control the net. 16/ For is you do not control, you will be controlled.
17/ The Information is POWER!
V. Where are
we?
1/ Where are
we? 2/ We all live in a sick world, where hatred is a weapon, and freedom - a
dream. 3/ The world grows so slowly. It is hard for a Cyberpunk to live in an
underdeveloped world, looking the people around him, seeing how wrongly they
develop. 4/ We go ahead, they pull us back again. Society suppressses us. Yes,
it suppresses the freedom of thought. With its cruel education programs in
schools and universities. They drill in the children their view of things and
every attempt to express a different opinion is denied and punished. 5/ Our
kids grow educated in this old and still unchanged system. A system that
tolerates no freedom of thought and demands a strict obeyance to the reules...
6/ In what a worlds, how different from this, could we live now, if people were
making jumps and not creeps. 7/ It is so hard to live in this world, Cyberpunk.
8/ It is as if time has stopped. 9/ We live on the right spot, but not in the
right time. 10/ Everything is so ordinary, people are all the same, their deeds
toos. As if society feels an urgent need to live back in time. 11/ Some, trying
to find their own world, the world of a Cyberpunk, and finding it, build their
own world. Build in their thoughts, it changes reality, lays over it and thus
they live in a virtual world. The thought-up, build upon reality: 12/ Others
simply get accustomed to the world as it is. They continue to live in it,
although they dislike it. They have no other choice but the bare hope that the
world will go out of its hollow and will go ahead.13/ What we are trying to do is
change the situation. We are trying to adjust the present world to our needs
and views. To use maximally what is fit and to ignore the trash. Where we
can't, we just live in this world, like Cyberpunks, no matter how hard, when
society fights us we fight back.14/ We build our worlds in Cyberspace. 15/
Among the zeros and ones, among the bits of information. 16/ We build our
community. The community of Cyberpunks.
Unite!
Fight for your rights!
We are the ELECTRONIC MINDS, a group of free-minded rebels. Cyberpunks.
We live in Cyberspace, we are everywhere, we know no
boundaries.
This is our manifest. The Cyberpunks' Manifest.
February 14, 1997
Christian As. Kirtchev
Public Domain Dedication
This work is dedicated to the Public Domain.
Brought to you
by
Translation by Illian Batanov Malchev, 1997
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