a little intimidating when another party manages and appropriates itself of our “externalized memories” (2013, Part VII, Chapter XXVIII); the cloud is a memory, an artificial one that started with the first early web, and whose inspiration dates back to the setting up of books and cities, meaning information and urbanity. These are the cloud punks’ key-stones. Information and urban space, cloud links in Wi-Fi, are supporting the new digital life style. If it exists, it surely is in the cloud. In that case, how was it like to live before the cloud?
Cloud, City and Control
Cities have been altered by the “auto-mobile”, as erstwhile they were changed by the steam engine; they were also a target for modifications thanks to the usage of “mobile phones”, much as they were before with the Sony Walkman and the Apple iPod. What brings in closer the previously entitled “cyberspace” into the city is that the polis [30] inspired the virtual space during the 1980s and the 1990s. And secondly, the two first things to come up attached to the computer, besides videogames and control, were money through the ATMS of cash and the trading, much as the electronic music. By the time wireless connections appear there is already a full digital spectrum of “acoustic cyberspace” (Erik Davis in Elias, 2008) in cities, with layers of information well before there was Adobe Photoshop with image editing in layers, and wireless links with several layers of logins. Music and Wi-Fi changed cities, by occupying non visual space. William Gibson sustains the argument that the Walkman altered the way we regard the cities (2012, 13). The same thing happened with the cloud that changed urbanity and the information access by demanding constant connections, wearables datification and the empowerment of brands that today manage our information in the cloud.
Another relevant point regards how people transformed their cloud-enabled devices into self-reflexive devices. It reached a degree in which the whole cloud is pervaded by Selfies’ images and other self-control formats. In the old days, “cycling” through our apps was a manner of zoning-out. The person would flee from reality by swiping his/her own applications on the cell phone as it happened with casual games and Augmented Reality (AR). Yet, nothing came as close as music in terms of granting an easier flee-of mode, for music could be listened with headphones, while visual reality would be seen. AR is a second variation in terms of technology that allows one person to accomplish something on the cloud, while seeing information overlaid upon the real world, by means of camera or GPS. However, what once began with gaming, music, photography, wearables, soon became a datified space, of digital control in the cloud.
And let’s not forget that control is not just about corporate control, it also is about individual control, this means every individual is controlling himself, as it was the case of Selfies’ photographies and our consent in giving in data to the cloud in exchange of “free” apps. Sure! But, free thinking is extinct or perhaps it never truly existed. Additionally, as everything has a price the cloud punks became insurgent against this control of the Self; they are nostalgic of the free web and dream of the wandering of the original digital flâneurs [31]: the “hackers”. Presently, there are just a few people owning a computer. Information and knowledge are a luxury granted by the cloud. Cultural mediocrity was not eradicated with the vanished mass media and mass society, the latter have accepted control as it is exerted upon them in such terms that, and we may guess that if Orwell was alive, he would be horrified with this fact. What the writer did not predict was that in our obligatory future or present shock (Rushkoff, 2013) we, ourselves, would be the ones offering our data to corporations and using personal digital images as in a control check point. This cloud was also built with the consent of its users. Turkle’s patients assume that “you swipe your fingers through your music, your news, your entertainment, and ‘your’ people. You control this, own it. This is my zone” (2015, 85). It does not seem to be surprising that in the Age of dematerialization we still keep talking of “place”, “space” and our “mental zone”. Many science fiction writers, among whom William S. Burroughs stands out, have provided their intellectual contribution to the “place” issue; near the 1980s, Burroughs mentions the expression “Interzones” (for instance in his book, Naked Lunch). The cloud is the first global interzone, but especially one in which we ceased to have control since an early time. It all began in a smooth way with social media flowing in the first decade of the 21st century, when we aspired to take over control upon our connections, as if this fact would make out of us masters in relationships management. Connections and relationships are two distinctive things. It was the social media that increased our idea of control upon connections (Turkle, 2015, 85).
N OTES
PART 1.0
In This Future:
Online: controlled by or connected to a computer through Internet.
Offline: a disconnected state, opposite of “online”.
Media: plural of "medium"; the main means of mass communication as television, radio and newspapers regarded collectively.
Digital Media: digitized content which can be transmitted over the internet or computer networks. It includes text, audio, video and graphics. Even news from a TV network, newspaper, magazine or other presented on a Web site or blog can be included into this category.
Cloud (Computing): the practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet; "cloud" - with no frontiers, timeless, unlimited "place" where we can store, manage and process data without personal computer.
Hardware: the collection of physical parts of acomputersystem. This includes thecomputercase, monitor, keyboard, and mouse, plus all the parts inside thecomputercase, such as the hard disk drive, motherboard, video card, and many others;computer hardwareis what you can physically see and touch.
Software: the programs and other operating information used by a computer.
Emotional Computing: also known as "affective computing"; it is basically the capacity of emotional interaction between humans and machine.
Social Media: websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.
Cyberpunk: science fiction subculture focused on dystopia – high technology versus a decadent, low life in the future; combination of two words "cybernetics" and "punk"; referring to the rebel and politicized youth counterculture of late 1970s and early 1980s. The concept cyberpunk appeared in early 1980s in science fiction genre with authors such as William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, John Shirley, Pat Cardigan, amidst others.
Cloud punk: current expression for coining highly educated youth groups and experts in handling information on the cloud in order to share free culture increasingly reserved for elites; sophisticated evolution of the cyberpunk concept. Throughout this book are expressed the various actions of the cloud punks.
Yottabytes: a unit of information equal to one septillion 1024 or, strictly, 280bytes.
On Singularity :
Hackers: people who are computer experts; able to deal with the Internet; those who enjoy the details of programming and who manipulate information, both for good or bad purposes. Hackers can enter other people's systems to steal or manipulate important information.
Wiki rebels: it refers to people addicted to making or disclosing information on a very volatile and large scale.
