Chen Qiufan: Reimagine Cyberpunk

Описание: As a subgenre of science fiction, cyberpunk has served as a projection of the information revolution in popular culture and aesthetics for half a century. The latest wave of this genre has reached China. The inherently Orientalist perspective of cyberpunk aesthetics has found new vitality in the more "Eastern" digitalized China after its journey through Japan, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia. This new form of cyberpunk in China is characterized by a shift from cyberspace to a temporal "root-seeking," the emergence of socialist cyberpunk and the aesthetics of mega-infrastructure, and the pervasive infiltration of big data and surveillance systems into the daily lives of individuals and collectives, practicing the logic of cybernetic feedback loops in various dimensions such as the body, perception, emotions, and social relationships.

I will expand on the viewpoints put forth in the 2013 New York Times article "China's Cyberpunk: Cyber Yes, Punk No" by drawing upon the trends in Chinese science fiction over the past decade, reflections on Orientalism, and observations of technological society. I propose that in China, cyberpunk has transcended the realm of popular culture aesthetics and entered the domain of epistemology. In the near future, it will likely undergo an "ontological" shift, leading to a cyberpunk mode of existence. I will also suggest potential paths for the co-evolution of humans and machines and explore how we can use cyberpunk narratives to seek imaginative solutions for transitioning from Cybernetic Society 1.0 to 2.0 or even higher versions.