You Needed A New Pancreas (Neuromancer D.A.R.E Review part 3: Reflect)

Why has my life come to this?

         Hello and welcome back to the only blog to start itself off with two low-effort Chris D. Funk centric memes in a row. I am your apologetic host, and today at the Reader in Yellow, we're talking Neuromancer again. If you've not read the title, subject of the day's reflecting, relating, and all the fun words that start with R. Like reading, which you probably are doing to this here post right about now. It'd be weird if you weren't, to be honest. So without further adieu, let's begin the madness.

         To be completely fair, I find it semi-difficult to relate to most Cyberpunk stories because the entire premise of cyberpunk is based on a prediction that, for me, was only half-correct. Said prediction is that we'd have robot limbs in the future that are worth chopping a human limb off for, that there'd be a LOT of crime in the future to the point where nearly everyone's a criminal of some sort, and three, that mega corporations would control nearly every aspect of our lives. Given none of my limbs are metal and shoot lasers (yet), and that the biggest crime I've committed is unknowing piracy once-upon-a-time, you can kind of guess which of the three turned out correct. Especially if you're living in the present day.

        The genre itself aside, the fact that a LOT of humans in the Neuromancer mistrust AI to a point is pretty reminiscent of plenty of folks I've dealt with before. There's quite a few misconceptions about AI that are honestly a little hilarious once you get over how annoying things like that tend to be. Even I'm not free of misconceptions, though my reaction to them is rarely negative. 

        Within the plot of the Neuromancer, there's also a moment that I could relate to on a metaphorical level, though it probably wasn't meant to be construed in this way. At some point in the plot, Case, the protagonist's liver is replaced by an augmented piece of technology which prevents him from getting high from a drug that was slowly killing him. Eventually he ends up falling onto harder drugs because he's still an addict, in spite of his inability to get high, and the overdose nearly kills him. Hilariously, I found that as a parallel to distance learning, where I could no longer properly disrupt the class with snide commentary or doodles in my notebook, but because I'm aware that I'm still a problem student, in spite of my attempts to fix that, I fell into a hard loop of procrastination and memeing on a superintendent I've never even met. Not the greatest metaphor for my life, but I still saw the parallel.

        To be honest, I would have preferred the robot limbs.

 

 

 

 

Update: A small correction, it turns out it was Case's Pancreas, not his liver, I kind of forgot that. Sorry.