Formable Fluidity: The Key Consequence of Information Flow in Cyberpunk Fiction
Keywords:
cyberpunk, fluidity, information, capital, occupational, temporalAbstract
Cyberpunk is one of the most recent subgenres to emerge in science fiction. In the represented world of this subgenre, information is the constituting element of all the flows, frameworks and interactions. Within the cyberpunk world, information exercises both fluidity and formability in its manipulations. The fluidity occurs when information manipulates different aspects of the represented world through commodifying and simulative operations, and the formability and containment of the fluidity occur when the conventional conceptualizations of aspects such as time and labor resist losing ground to simulations and its various informational manipulations. As a result, an uneasy coexistence of formability and fluidity is materialized in various aspects of the cyberpunk world, a coexistence which the present study will address as formable fluidity. Through reviewing some key works in the subgenre, the present study investigates the impact of the formable fluidity on the temporal and the occupational aspects of the presented world in cyberpunk fiction. The study assumes that due to the highly fluid and speculative nature of information in cyberpunk fiction, time loses its durational historicity. This subgenre also favors modalities of ownership, capital and labor which have the highest level of mobility and networking, with the commitment to conventional fixities and centralities in the occupational aspects becoming contingent, unstable and temporary.
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