*Huh. That's the best interview with Ken I've ever seen.
http://transhumanity.net/articles/entry/an-interview-with-r.u-sirius
(...)
RACHEL: Do you think that most cyberpunks “grow out of it?”
R.U.: I think I grew out of it before I started with it. I can only remember two people during the ‘90s who actually called themselves cyberpunks and one of them was moonlighting for the NSA (which I guess can be pretty cyberpunk in its way.) So there’s that whole question of too seriously adapting a subcultural identity. I don’t know. I may just be too meta for that sort of thing. In my idealized fantasy, my relationship to cyberpunk would be sort of like Malcolm McLaren’s relationship to the Sex Pistols.
Seriously though, I think, even as something that escaped from Science Fiction into the real world, cyberpunk was more a genre than a subculture. You’d go to events that had a cyberpunk vibe or you’d publish (as in my case) a magazine that sometimes labeled itself cyberpunk, but when you’d go home, you probably wouldn’t look in the mirror and thing, “Hey, I’m a cyberpunk!” I guess maybe some outlaw hackers could legitimately have been said to have been cyberpunks. Anonymous is a great cyberpunk fantasy come to life.
I do think that — in the sense that cyberpunk projected this sort of macho tough guy/tough girl image and attitude, most people do “grow out of it” as they’re forced to acknowledge vulnerability (of course, one can always be delusional instead). From a broad perspective, all human beings are more or less equally vulnerable. A tiny virus will put down the big shot Nietzchean strongman as fast as the presumably wimpy philosophical moderate. The anti-environmentalist who thinks of himself (or herself) as a tough guy realist will get brought down by cancer or a tidal wave just like anybody (or perhaps, everybody) else. I would think, particularly, if we’re imagining the posthuman or enhanced human, one major enhancement would be to overcome our material vulnerability. So it ought to be obvious to anyone thinking in those terms that from the perspective of the posthuman, all current humans are more or less equally vulnerable, equally weak, equally stupid and so on. So where cyberpunk or transhumanism starts to drift into superiority trips, it’s kindergarden sandbox bullshit. And I do think people tend to grow out of that too as they get older.
RACHEL: What would you say to young fringe culturists following in your footsteps?
R.U.: Don’t do it! Seriously though, I don’t know...
