Technophilia

The concept I've been mulling over the last week or so is based on a William Gibson quote from the Paris Review summer '11 interview:

"...I take it for granted that social change is driven primarily by emergent technologies, and probably always has been."

He went on to say that the SF he grew up with did not agree that tech emergence was more of a random thing.  (Of course it was heroic individualism and resourceful red-blooded young men and all that.)  And, "Today we're more likely to feel that technology is driving us, driving change, and that it's out of control."

That is reflected more in SF and certainly in cyberpunk and its offspring.  In a way, though, the more negative reaction to steampunk highlights that in earlier eras feeling controlled by technological change rather than at its helm had a distinct standpoint aspect- class, race, gender... 

Some people have said steampunk and things like Maker culture (I think of Linux, Open Source, and Cultural Commons as well) are reactions to this type of disempowerment.  Steampunk and cyberpunk both have aspects that explore and deconstruct or oppose the alienation and disorientation that come with technological change. 

I think the confusing or frustrating thing for many people about these so-called movements is that progressive social change is not necessarily the focus and primary concern of many of these explorations of alienation and subjugation of people related to technological change.  Stories in these subgenres are often more like Gibson says of some of his stories, more like a tombstone rubbing than a prescriptive text.  The endless question about fiction, its legitimate purposes and its limits.

Anyway, that's what I'm mulling over, when not thinking about work or food, or mindlessly running.

...Coming back to this in the a.m., I'm not sure it makes so much sense.  An emergent thought.  Ideas take a lot of time to percolate in my brain, and they usually come out in bits and pieces and tangles...