Our dystopian life now… Which high tech, low life story will we write today?
Live life differently, stay on the edge, be… who we want to be!
This week’s quote reminds us of exactly how the world acts around us. The systems meant to box us in are all around us and present an ever-present force upon our lives.
Redefine society with individuality. We are unique, we are not the boxes and/or groups society wants to place us into!
Our dystopian life now… Which high tech, low life story will we write today?
Image at bottom presented here by courtesy of, and with many thanks to, the CD Projeckt Red Press Center under Agreement. Many, many thanks and much praise to CD Projekt Red!
We’ve got our copy ordered, and we’re watching the clock…
If anyone still has yet to order and want all proceeds to go straight to the folks building the game, check out the direct buy option for CD Projeckt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077. That’s where we got our copy. Not sponsored, just love the work and worthy of sharing.
Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait another week for our character study on Project 2501 from the Ghost in the Shell Manga series. In the meantime, we have a peace offering. As this past Thursday was Thanksgiving in the States, we are chomping at the opportunity to share out some great cyberpunk eats!
For those of you who love noodles as much as we do, please make sure to check out the opportunity to DIY. For the 35th anniversary of Blade Runner, the Nerdist put out a great recipe for Blade Runner inspired noodles with a special add-on for the dish unique to the story. Please check out the article.
For those who just love Blade Runner like we do and just want another level to explore, Food & Spirits Magazine did a great job of exploring all the food highlighted in the original Blade Runner.
Check it all out, enjoy and we’ll see you back here next Sunday for the next step in our Character Study Series!
While much is made by Haraway of the contemporary links regarding social justice across a number of issues, most notably reproduction, there is a much deeper heart in the essay. The construct of life and the organization of society itself should and will be tested as technological advance becomes life itself.
For us high-tech, low lifers longing to see the integration of machine to the full level of a cyborg, we should begin to ask ourselves how does this affect our lives, the relationships we possess, and the possibilities for not only our own individual futures but those of humanity itself?
Just pondering the possibilities of this retail holiday of Black Friday gone haywire in 2020. What do we all think about this? What do we think a cyborg future means for humanity and the individuals that comprise it?
We thank you for joining our CyberZen Fridays, and hope you come back soon for more great content! To discover more pure inspiration and entertainment to keep us passionate about our tech lives, check out our Cyber-Play page.
Good Monday Morning! So yeah, we’re messing with the schedule again. But, for good reason! As Thanksgiving is approaching in the States, that and seeing as how we just started an amazing project that we can’t help but continue to share out, we thought we’d mix it up again!
This coming Saturday, we’ll bring our slate back up-to-date with a release of our Cyber Wealth Dividend-Payer blog post along with the video. And, next Monday we’ll have that jump-start into next month with our T3TB for December 2020.
Anyone Else Pushing Their Own Individuality? Image presented here by courtesy of, and with many thanks to, the CD Projeckt Red Press Center under Agreement.
For now though, as we just released our intro video to our Project Cyber Rider, we thought we should take a moment and say thank you to CD Projekt Red, Mike Pondsmith, William Gibson, and the entire Cyberpunk Universe for all the incredible work that has been done to build a world of infinite tech possibility, even if it is low-life styling. Oh, who are we kidding, that’s why we love it!
In any case, we thank you Cyberpunk Universe! A special thanks to all those hard-working folks at CD Projekt Red for going above and beyond in their drive to make sure we get the game world we’ve all been dying to lose ourselves in!
In combination with CD Projekt Red’s Cars_beautyshots kit, we just had to share out our favorite selections. This is one of the initial inspiration kits we are using to start stylizing our own Project Cyber Rider!
Images presented here by courtesy of, and with many thanks to, the CD Projeckt Red Press Center under Agreement. Many, many thanks and much praise to CD Projekt Red!
One last time, thanks to all you who make the Cyberpunk Universe the kind of amazing we all love! For all you Cyber Wealth lovers, we’ll see you Saturday morning and hope you take a moment in thanksgiving with us and make sure to charge yourselves up in prep for Cyberpunk 2077!
Our dystopian life now… Which high tech, low life story will we write today?
Unfortunately, as mentioned yesterday, our character series is taking a small break. This Sunday we will be introducing another kind of character instead: the Cyber Rider Project.
However, we love the Puppet Master and Ghost in the Shell so much that we just had to share another quote from him in our graphic this week. No hidden meanings, just a great quote!
Not to fear, Sunday the 29th we’ll be back with that character study on the Puppet Master. For those of us always looking to cyberize ourselves and self-determine our worlds, not to mention determine our own identity as well, the portrait of the Puppet Master we’ll be exploring can be found in found in Ghost in the Shell, Volume 1 Kodansha Comics Print Edition by Shirow Masamune (#CommissionsEarned).
We thank you for joining our CyberZen Fridays, and hope you come back soon for more great content! To discover more pure inspiration and entertainment to keep us passionate about our tech lives, check out our Cyber-Play page.
Drawn to a mysterious figure at the start of the film Alita: Battle Angel, audiences are introduced to a young woman as the remnants of another. Torn into a half a body and left on a trash heap, one that Dr. Dyson Ido (a cybersurgeon who caters to cyborgs) discovers as being still alive despite other appearances.
Alita is a character that may be down in the dumps, quite literally, but one that holds great potential, nonetheless. As Ido holds a partial body, upper torso, and head, he stares into her face, and the pullback shot the film treats the viewer to, reveals two individuals coming face to face and unveiling the central theme of the story to come.
In his next line, Ido states “what are you dreaming little angel.” Despite her humbling initial entry, Alita is given a new opportunity at a powerful, impactful life. We, the audience, are invited into the classic journey of discovering who we are through the big, bright eyes of an incredible young woman and the oft-dualistic nature of the choices we face: trash/angel, and so much more. Ultimately it is where trial meet failure combines with the interminable spirit that Alita can push herself forward into discovering who she genuinely wants to be.
While the opening act juxtaposes the wonder and awe of discovering the world with the potential harshness is has to offer, Alita is pulled toward a physical strength she has yet to fully discover. The character development found within pushes Alita toward a mechanical ability and increased physical prowess from the outset.
For instance, in a competitive game of pick-up Motorball, a tech-enhanced form of roller derby, Alita is pushed as another competitor plays rough knocking her down. Alita responds quickly with a demonstration of her own enhanced physicality and force.
Not to be outdone, this is character arc is repeated several times. When Alita follows a suspicious Ido, Alita discovers that Ido is a bounty hunter looking to save young women in the harsh streets of Iron City from being killed by roving cyborgs. Quickly the tables are turned on Ido though as he finds himself in trouble from a trio of cyborg villains. A hidden Alita must come to the rescue. As she continues to uncover the knowledge she has regarding martial arts, she repeatedly moves to test her abilities in such capacities. This continues until Alita becomes a bounty hunter.
Entering a bounty hunter bar with a smirk, she seeks to gain allies in her quest against one particular cyborg that has been killing women in the streets; one that nearly had Ido conquered earlier in the story. Alita is quickly rebuked and again turns to force as she quickly disarms and defeats one of the loudest in the bar. She tries again to ask for allies but instead fights the whole bar in a typical action-movie style!
Things are only broken up when Ido appears again and threatens, “no more free repairs” if they don’t stop fighting, Things are shaken up though when Grewishka, the cyborg Alita is seeking allies against, shows up to confront and take Alita as a hostage for an unknown master. A skirmish ensues and for the first time, Alita is shown to be vulnerable in a fight.
Alita is sliced into pieces by the massive mech warrior. A flashback ensues and Alita is forewarned that her true enemy lies beyond this experience. Torn in two again, reflecting the dualistic nature of her character once again and bringing us full circle to the opening scene, Alita’s battle with Grewishka, demonstrates the limits of rage and violence, not to mention lesser tech and her physical prowess at that time. Nearly killed, Alita with one arm tears out Grewishka’s eye and is saved when Hugo, a boy she met in her first explorations into the world, and Ido, come to her aid with another bounty hunter from the bar.
Following this scene, Alita is finally given a body that unites her with her former identity as a specialized warrior. Ido claims to have joined “warrior spirit with warrior body” but reassures Alita that the choices of bad and good are up to her. We are told that Alita has “found” her identity and she now knows who she is, fully armored with nanotechnology. Stronger, faster, and more powerful, she claims that it feels, “more me.”
It is here where we see still more willing to push her world headlong a test of her own character. Instead of pushing the physical, technological side as she had multiple times before, she turns to her human side. This is the first instance where we see a push back against the technological. In a very human moment being with Hugo, they share their first kiss. Only when exposing her apparent vulnerability, that she is not completely human, Hugo tells her that she is the “most human person (he) has ever met” and she is able to push further in understanding that she is the one who will choose who she is going to be; fighting against the dualistic nature of choice in our lives.
Running headlong into another experience, the Alita style, she offers Hugo her heart if it will aid his quest to get to Zalem, a mysterious city in the sky that is all that still stands of a long off war that Alita’s former life had been engaged in. But again Alita, with the help of Hugo, finds that there are alternate ways and many gray areas in life. Instead of pushing her abilities toward violence, or self-sacrifice, yet again, the two decide that they can earn their way to Zalem if Alita becomes a champion in motor-ball and they work together in their dedication to each other.
During the competition, Alita is taken off track, and both Hugo and Alita are confronted by cyborgs. In the ensuing fight, Hugo nearly dies. He can only be saved when Alita removes Hugo’s head with the help of Ido’s ex-wife, and Ido adds a cyborg body.
In racing to a close for the film, Alita confronts Nova’s henchmen in Iron City and destroys them through violence, but in doing so has exposed Hugo. In a call from Ido, she learns that as Hugo has learned that Zalem’s forces are coming for Hugo and in response, he has decided to use his new cyborg body to attempt to make his way into Zalem itself. Racing after him, Alita catches up and in convincing him to return to Iron City, Hugo is knocked off the cables holding the city in place in the air by the city’s defense mechanisms. Alita catches him but is ultimately presented with the most character-defining situation she faces, one where there is no choice. At this moment, she must face the loss of the one she loves in combination with complete powerlessness to be able to stop it. Hugo is killed and Alita is left with no choice but to return to their plan and win their way to Zalem. Alita’s choice is to become the underdog champion of Motorball and continue her journey toward destroying Zalem in honor of her relationship with Hugo.
Throughout the film, Alita continually chose to push against the dualistic nature of her character, which makes her most human. Her new life was continually thrust against the remnant of the old. In each she is given the choice to decide who she is going to be; ultimately it is the cumulative effect of all those choices that leaves her with no choice and all and yet the most character-defining moment in the whole story. Despite great defeat and failure, Alita pushes forward with a relentlessness of spirit that defines her character; it is what she has chosen. Alita, despite the outside world pushing back on who she is to be, chooses to never surrender and become something more than either human or machine.
For those of us always looking to cyberize ourselves and self-determine our worlds, not to mention determine our own identity as well, the portrait of Alita found in Alita: Battle Angel (2019) (#CommissionsEarned) offers a unique opportunity for analysis and self-reflection as we digitize our worlds.
We thank you for joining our Cyberpunk Character Study on Alita, and hope you come back soon for more great content! To discover more pure inspiration and entertainment to keep us passionate about our tech lives, check out our Cyber-Play page.
Remember this Sunday we return to our Character Studies Series in Cyberpunk and we take on Alita: Battle Angel. In exploring the world around her, Alita slowly develops an understanding of who she “was,” what the world expects of her now, and who she decides to be. Alita, the character, symbolically stands for identity itself and the conflict that it creates within our lives.
For those of us always looking to cyberize ourselves and self-determine our worlds, not to mention determine our own identity as well, the portrait of Alita found in Alita: Battle Angel (2019) (#CommissionsEarned) offers a unique opportunity for analysis and self-reflection as we digitize our worlds.
We thank you for joining our CyberZen Fridays, and hope you come back soon for more great content! To discover more pure inspiration and entertainment to keep us passionate about our tech lives, check out our Cyber-Play page.
The world of Cyberpunk (CP) narrative offers a great deal of potential insight into the exploration of technology in our lives. One of the most unique aspects of those stories includes an analysis and evaluation of what makes us human in the first place. Join us in the weeks and months ahead as we explore a unique set of stories and offer our Cyberized take on well-known characters and archetypes regarding how they can inform our journey to self-define our own identities in a tech-fueled world!
To Be Cyberized on 11.22.20
Forgive us as we chose to flip the script and offer the community, even more, this week. We’d been planning a character review of Alita but since we were also scheduling The Puppet Master from Ghost in the Shell to come as a follow-up anyway we couldn’t help ourselves when it came to the comparative opportunitiy between the two. This way, when you tune in next week for Alita, you can read our analysis with the combined excitement that the following week we are coming at ya’ with more AI character intensity and retrospective exploring Identity in all-new digital constructs in the following week’s edition!
From Emotive Alita to Cerebral Project 2501, we Cyberize the Script and drop a review that creeps inside the identity of AI itself.
Enter the Puppeteer
We are pleased to announce the third in our series on cyberpunk characters: Project 2501 (AKA The Puppet Master, AKA The Puppeteer). For another character with multiple iterations, we turn to the creation of one of our heroes Masanori Ota, more popularly known by his pen name Masamune Shirow. Where Alita took us into the emotive and exploratory concepts of identity as reflected upon through digital intelligence, we flip now to explore the intellectualized self-identification of an AI as a life form in the Puppet Master created by Ota.
For those of us always looking to cyberize ourselves and self-determine our worlds and determine our own identity, the portrait of The Puppet Master we are exploring can be found in The Ghost in the Shell Vol. 1 (Paperback copy for our review above; as for the link here – #CommissionsEarned) offers a unique opportunity for analysis and self-reflection as we digitize our worlds.
