ENGL 817AL - Field Notes: Neuromancer and the Visualization of Digital Space

My final field notes of the semester being put to use to talk about the final paper of my graduate program. Don't mind if I do!

As I explained in a previous post, my research paper this semester is focused on tracing the visualization of digital space through early science fiction films through to Neuromancer's "cyberspace" in 1984 and then beyond into other science fiction films.

I have done supplemental reading of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep? (aka Blade Runner) and watched many an old and new science fiction film. And, while my research has not been exhaustive, it has been enlightening.

My initial catalyst for this topic was that the description of cyberspace in Neuromancer was very reflective of the TRON film that came out in 1982; its grid patterning, abstract shapes, and structure of the computer-insides world. And interestingly, as I did my research reading articles and watching films, this result actually did not change too much - many of the films and visualizations stick to the grid-like imagery, with The Matrix (1999) surprisingly being the least equivalent example.

A lot of the scholarly research I conducted touches on the social, sociological, political, economic and post-human cultural aspects of Neuromancer, but I did manage to locate articles that touch on the visualization of digital space in one form or another even though it was not their primary focus. One interesting avenue of research I uncovered was a period in the early 2000s where scholars were focusing on how to map cyberspace as we knew it post-Y2K using the conventional tools of traditional cartography. This proved fruitful in the tracing of the visualization of digital space as it was relevant to the "how we see it" of cyberspace in a way that makes sense to what we already know.

While my focus is on tracing the visualization of digital space and its influence(s), I am also curious how in many cases the digital spaces I have read about and watched in film act as an intermediary or liminal space that transitions the reader/viewer/character from reality to a full-blow 'realistic' simulation. Examples of this are the simulations the A.I.s put Case into in Neuromancer in order to talk to him, or the translation of human particles from reality into the computer world in TRON and TRON: Legacy, and even the blank white 'space' of the construct loading program where Neo learns about the difference between reality and the matrix in The Matrix. This thread of inquiry would be a whole other research avenue in and of itself!

At the time of this post, I only have two films left to watch: The Matrix (1999) and Johnny Mnemonic (1995). But here is a list of what I have watched so far:

• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
• The Terminal Man (1974)
• Futureworld (1976) 
• Logan's Run (1977)
• Star Wars - A New Hope (1977)
• Blade Runner (1982) - this and BR 2049 will have their own post!
• TRON (1982)
• TRON: Legacy (2010)
• Ready Player One (2018)

I left Matrix and Johnny until the end because of their influence. The Matrix is considered an almost-adaptation of Neuromancer without actually being one, and Johnny Mnemonic is an adaptation of a short story of the same name that was written and published before Neuromancer. I feel these two films will give me the grounding and basis I need to move forward with my paper, but I left them for last so they did not taint what I was gleaning from the other films.

When I think about it, this class, and this paper, have been an interesting end to my program as I look at the future post-graduate program because this whole semester and this paper have been about looking at the past and future and technology and what it is and means to be a writer/author. It is making me wistful to contemplate by program is coming to a close with this paper that is all about tracing the visual influence of something through media of the past several decades. It is hard to express what I'm feeling... hmm...