I don't think anyone has legitimately claimed life is, or is supposed to be, a Utopia. Dystopia isn't simply 'not utopia', nor is it simply a dysfunctional utopia. It is the direct anti-thesis of Utopia, the demonic against the pastoral. By and large, life is somewhere in the grey area. We are not in hell, not in heaven, we're in between. Of course, if you don't define dystopia (which you haven't), you could say dystopia is anything at all.

By hopeful, I should differentiate it from faithful or dreamy. By hopeful, I mean someone who has concrete goals in the future he believes he can achieve. If someone knows a better word for that, I'll rely on that. Again though, I'm drawing on definitions used by someone else (in this case, Friedman again).

and here i thought that andy rooney had a sense of humor, in that he knows that his grumpy old man routine is funny (and funny is a very relative term imo).

dude, that's ridiculous. a handful of rice is not a big mac, and a hovel is not an apartment. currency exchange is one thing; you're talking about some kind of crazy exchange for standards of living. a person in Bangladesh who lives on $10 a day does not have the same purchasing power as a person in the US who makes $30k/yr. therefore, the person in Bangladesh is poorer.

Of course a handful of rice isn't a big mac. A handful of rice is more filling.

But more to the point, you have to compare what makes for a healthy meal. If I try to buy rice in Siberia, I'll probably find it is very expensive. That doesn't mean I'm poor because I have to pay $1 for rice while someone in China pays five cents, nor does it mean that I'm not poor because my $1 rice can buy something else nicer. I'm poor if I can't afford the staples of reasonable living, whatever those might be. To define it specifically in amount of rice, number of goats, number of dollars, etc. is a mistake. The big mac is used because its price does not shift as much due to local markets compared to things like dollars and goats, but relying solely on that too is a mistake. A meal is a reasonable thing to go on, appropriate shelter is reasonable. I could be making $40k in Siberia, but if I'm freezing to death, I'm impoverished, even though someone making $10k in Vietnam is relatively wealth.

Again though, don't get me wrong, I won't say even the majority of people have all of their needs cared for appropriately. I'm simply saying measuring it by the buying power of my salary is a mistake. There are people who live like kings, but have less global buying power than me simply because they use pesos or what-have-you instead of the American dollar, and as the value of the dollar goes down, we'll see the Euro has more buying power than the dollar. That doesn't mean a European is inherently less poor than me, or that his physical needs are met better, it just means he can buy more on the global marketplace.

I do apologize, I hadn't seen that. So let's go with that.
1) 'Free' populace is under control (presumably by the state or government)
2) Citizens are isolated
3) Wide gap between rich and poor
4) Widespread failure of moral integrity in the populace

I would certainly agree with #1 and #4. I don't agree with #2, in fact, #2 is very contrary to basically every dystopian book and movie I've seen. 1984, We, Brave New World, Farenheit 451 all emphasize that 'anti-social behavior' is bad, that everyone should be part of the greater community. I cannot think of a single example where people are encouraged to be on their own rather than part of the group. You could mean emotionally isolated and distrustful of their neighbors though, which I would agree with.

#3 is irrelevant, as I said before. As long as the poor can become rich, it's not dystopian. Additionally, most dystopian books make it clear the average person isn't doing all that poorly. Brave New World and Farenheit being the prime examples again. If you want me to accept #3, which seems to be the point we're most caught on, you'll have to justify it more strongly.

While the majority of the populace in dystopian societies in literature were relatively well-to-do, there still existed a large gap between them and those in power. And, maybe I'm mis-remembering, but I don't recall it being very likely or much within an individual's power to promote themselves above the average person.

The average man can have all his/her basic needs met, and even a slew of luxuries, yet will still be unhappy if their peers have substantially more of something than they do, and them without means of acquiring it. A wide gap between rich and poor isn't necessarily limited to hard, cold currency (I don't even remember a currency existing in 1984 or Brave New World). It could be any physical resource or object (high performance vehicles for instance), or an abstract concept like power or freedom.

In SR I get the impression everyone's basic needs are met, even the Squatters, but there are a lot of novelties that the upper class have access to that the rest of the population doesn't (such as non-synthetic food and alcohol).

it is a perfectly viable measure of general wealth. it loses some accuracy due to exchange rates and varying standards of living, but it is still a relatively stable measure of purchasing power to which the purchasing power of others can be compared. if we were comparing the purchasing power of the average american to the purchasing power of the average brit, then the differences in exchange and standard of living would be important. but we're not. we're comparing the purchasing power of the average american--and, more generally, the average first-worlder--to the purchasing power of the average subsistence farmer, the point being that there are orders of magnitude more subsistence farmers in the world than there are first-worlders. however you choose to measure it, the average first-worlder has thousands of times more purchasing power than the rest of the world. that makes the average first-worlder part of the world's rich elite.

there are different kinds of isolation. in 1984, everyone is isolated from each other by the fear of being reported to the secret police. any true relationship is tracked down and destroyed by the state. similarly, in Farenheit 451, the populace is encouraged to turn to fantasy and violence rather than each other; in Brave New World, they are encouraged to lose themselves in Soma rather than truly relate to each other. anti-social behavior is discouraged, yes--but real socialization with one's fellow man is, in all three cases, deemed to be anti-social behavior. it could be said that the state, in all three cases, wants its citizens to form only one relationship--that being with the state. any other relationships are forbidden.

i don't agree with that. the Neuromancer trilogy is classic dystopia, but it has several examples of the poor becoming rich. Molly Millions went from being a bunraku prostitue to being a high-end bodyguard; i think i remember Case ended up pretty rich; umm.... there was another example, but i can't remember it now. and, regardless, the poor can't become rich nowadays. poor people who live in the first world can become rich (which is to say, middle-class). but your average Tutsi isn't ever going to be rich, no matter how hard he tries. and there are a whole, whole, whole lot of Tutsis in the world (metaphorically speaking).

(I think the other example was the lady who looked like some sim star and was grabbed as a body double. Mona or someone.) I think we have to ask two questions. Firstly, does Neuromancer really espouse the idea of social mobility, or are the main characters, like most protagonists, an exception to the rule? (Keep in mind that in all the other dystopian books we have, the protagonist, through growth or just dumb luck, breaks one or more of the rules of the dystopian society, which causes the whole mess in the first place.)
Secondly (what you're arguing), is Neuromancer proof that dystopia doesn't include a lack of social mobility? If the second, I would argue that simply Neuromancer is the exception to the rule (if at all, see #1), and that something can be missing one of many elements without ceasing to be a dystopia, but that that element still is valid. The lack of social mobility does seem to be an established trait, repeated through many books that pre-date Neuromancer.

I really recommend you read Friedman's book, the World is Flat. I just finished it last week and would be happy to mail it to you even. But basically his claim is that ANYONE can jump social classes as long as he has n e-mail address. There are plenty of examples of individuals with little more than a good idea (doesn't even have to be great any more), an e-mail address and the willingness to do hard work jumping from being dirt poor to the middle class. With the $100 Laptop program, that's becoming even more reasonable. Granted, if you're running for your life or can't read you're probably still SOL (although HP recently had a project in Africa renting portable camera stations for $9 a month which made a few careers where before there were none, and required no literacy). But if you have $200 in capital and can read, you can be upwardly mobile.

I don't buy that line. I've heard it stated several times about Cyberpunk in general and Gibson's work in general that it isn't that the future is bad, its that it is complex.

We see ugly situations and often ugly people, but we don't necessarily see that the world itself is a bad place. I don't think that is ever shown or stated in clear terms.

In fact, if we were to read a book about modern america written through the POV of a recently released criminal hustling in the streets for the next big score we might think that life is fucking rough.

Yet I will still go home to a reasonably peaceful neighborhood in my nice, if cheap, car, I will surf the internet and exchange ideas with strangers thousands of miles away, and when I take a vaction early next year I just might chose to visit another nation.

Hardly distopian. And for all that I wouldn't trade my life with that of a subsharan subsistance farmer, the fact that these unfortunates can, and do, improve their lot in life through a variety of agencies (not limited to immigration to better nations), their lot can hardly be declared unabashedly dystopian either.

someone who has an email address is, pretty much by definition, not in the world's lower class. they may not make much money, but they obviously live in a developed area where they have more 'purchasing power' (even if only via means such as panhandling and soup kitchens) than much of the rest of the world. if anything, panhandlers with email addresses might possibly be best thought of as the real modern middle class. they really are right in the middle--they're not rich and powerful, but they're not poor and prospectless either. what we think of as the 'middle class' are really just the landed gentry.

the reason i'm making points on a global scale is because SR is presented as a global dystopia. i don't agree that it is a global dystopia, but that's how it's presented. so it doesn't make sense to me to compare the SR setting to the modern US--it's like comparing apples to chunks of apples. the US, or even the first world, is not the entire picture.

well, as i said before, i don't define dystopia as 'life sucks'. it has to suck in certain ways. on the subject of whether or not the modern world is a dystopia... i've said before i don't think it is, but honestly i'm kinda torn. it is disturbingly easy to present the modern world as a dystopia.

One of my roommates lived for 3 months in India four years ago. He spent ~400€ per month what bought him a decent hotel room, three meals a day, weed and lots of drinks every night. For the record: an unemployed person gets 400€ welfare money per month in Germany, what makes for a "lower-class" lifestlyle.

the group of people who don't have access to email is much, much larger than the group of people who do. and as far as world flatteners... not everybody can flatten the world. in the short term (say, any given ten-year span), the global economy is limited. in order to make money, you have to take it from someone else. that means that world flatteners are a very narrow ladder; only a few people can climb one at a time. Case and Molly had a world flattener too--a psychotic former specops colonel being controlled by an AI. unfortunately for the world of Neuromancer, psychotic former specops colonels being controlled by AIs are not a dime a dozen, so not everyone can get rich off them. email world flatteners are somewhat more common than psychotic former specops colonels who are being controlled by AIs, but they still have a) a high entry cost relative to the purchasing power of the average dirt farmer, and b) a limited number of uses before the opportunities they represent are used up.

this is one of the most basic points we disagree on. i don't believe that the existence of happy people makes the world non-dystopic. most of the non-savage people in Brave New World were happy. the fire chief in F451 was happy--he had a place in life, he had power, he had comfort. Richard Villiers is pretty happy.

Gah, I failed my opposed roll to avoid thread derailment.

Look... I'm actually a pretty big fan of Nine Inch Nails and all but...

1. The lyrics have always been like nursery rhymes. I mean, seriously, Reznor sang "I'll cross my heart and hope to die, but the needle's already in my eye" in his first single. I also doubt anyone will ever mistake Starfuckers or Big Man With A Gun for Shakespeare.

2. The problem isn't anger. Since his glory days, Reznor has battled alcohol and financial troubles; he's lost the rights to most of his own music and ended up suing his former friend and manager for defrauding him of millions of dollars. He's had plenty to be pissed about; the problem isn't that he's not angry, the problem is that the dude's like 40 and still angry about essentially the same shit, and he's not talented enough to make up for that. Throw in the fact that his audience (hopefully) has matured since his mid-90s rants and it's just a big messy recipe for irrelevance.

Damn, and I was hoping for some bloody stories of the daily fight between wardens and prisoners.

I think you are confusing warden (who is the big dude in charge of the prison) and guard (who does the day-to-day shit-kicking of the prisoners).

Indeed, I meant guards. Anyway, I'm sure Gambler isn't one them either.

iirc, one of them was a follow up of sorts to the other...

hmm, replicants as biodrones ridden by AI's, and what about pulling a akira, but with his friend being a toxic shaman?

Just curious, but why would you assume that? It's quite interesting, because I do think he is a guard (which I will readily admit is also an assumption ).

It was. In fact, Antonio Banderas's character name in Desperado was El Mariachi. And it was pretty much a straight sequel. El Mariachi was filmed independently by Rodriguiz for a reported $7500 bucks which he raised primarily by being a subject in medical experiments (so the story goes), and Desperado was a modestly-budgeted Hollywood film produced by Tarantino.

Back on topic, here we are debating the existence of utopias and dystopias, meanwhile the government of Burma is using military force to break up pro-democracy demonstrations, and according to the British Prime Minister they're censoring news reports so that the outside world doesn't know how many people have been hurt or killed so far. Granted, I'm not a expert on Burma (since I'm not sure I'm even spelling it correctly and it seems to me the name has been changed anyway), but that seems pretty dystopic to me.

Yeah, like they did 20 years ago when last the people tried this?

I'll go with that. I honestly wouldn't mind one of those signs at work, and sadly I can foresee the day when I would need it.