Jon Lebkowsky writes, “EFF and EFF-Austin, working with the amazing Maggie Duval, put together this celebration of the 90s Internet and cyberpunk memes. On stage: Gareth Branwyn, Bruce Sterling, Cory Doctorow, William Barker (Schwa), Chris Nakashima-Brown, Aaron Jue from EFF, and yours truly. Thomas Fang is DJ, and Jasmina Tesanovic will sing her Hacker Hymn. We’ll have a cyberpunk scifi genre panel and a talk by Gareth, along with the release of his successful Kickstarter memoir book project, Borg Like Me. We’Cll also have projected visuals, memories of Mondo 2000, Boing Boing, Fringeware, 2600: The Hacker Quarterly, Schwa, etc. Event is open to SXSW badgeholders. Hang out with EFF at their event table, praise their great work, give them your money!”
Kata Sutra Beyond CyberpunkLed by moderator Jon Lebkowsky, our informal panel of literary cyberpunks, including Bruce Sterling, Cory Doctorow, Gareth Branwyn, and Chris Nakashima-Brown, will discuss how a science fiction subgenre bled into the real-world evolution of digital culture around emerging computer networks. What happened when the world caught up to its reflection in speculative fiction? How was science fiction transformed in a world where the future collided with the present? Who are the new cyborgs? Additionally, Gareth Branwyn will be reading from his forthcoming book, Borg Like Me (& Other Tales of Art, Eros and Embedded Systems). This, Gareth’s eighth book, is a collection of his best writing for such magazines, zines, and blogs as Wired, Mondo 2000, ArtByte, Boing Boing (print and online), MAKE, and Going Gaga. Borg Like Me also includes revealing new material about Gareth’s time at Wired, working on the seminal hypermedia project, Beyond Cyberpunk!, working on Billy Idol’s infamous “Cyberpunk” record, and his early life growing up on a commune. To fund the book, Branwyn held a successful Kickstarter campaign in July 2013 and is going to be publishing the book on his own imprint, Sparks of Fire Press. Borg Like Me is currently slated for release in mid- spring 2014. For the EFF/EFF-Austin party, Gareth will also be demoing the critically-acclaimed 1991 HyperCard stack (i.e. electronic book), Beyond Cyberpunk!, which he co-created with Peter Sugarman, Mark Frauenfelder, and Jim Leftwich and which featured contributions from Bruce Sterling, Rudy Rucker, Steve Jackson, Richard Kadrey, RU Sirius, Robert Anton Wilson, Jon Lebkowsky, and many others.
A Cyberpunk Retrofest presented by EFF/EFF-Austin:
An Official SXSW Interactive Evening Event
(Thanks, Jon!)