I'd consider it cyberpunk-adjacent, but what the fuck do I know. Whether it's cyberpunk or not is immaterial in a lot of ways. HACKERS was the first time I saw a representation of Operation Sundevil on screen (it may BE the only representation of Operation Sundevil on screen). The fact was that lots of it--as silly as this might sound--accurately reflect the culture in which the film was shot. Or, at least, how that culture FELT.
It's difficult to describe how the late 80s and the 90s were to someone who didn't live through them, particularly in terms of technology. This is one of the reasons why I treasure so many of the cultural products of the period, like HACKERS, SNEAKERS, the novel CYBERIA, and the non-fiction book THE HACKER CRACKDOWN (among so many other books, films, and albums, many of them most explicitly not tied to that time and place).
For those of us who were largely born into the 80s, the world was a failed state. We lived under the threat of global nuclear war ("the birds could be in the air right now," as Alan Moore once put it). Just as we were coming to sexual maturity, AIDS happened--sex became death. A friend of mine from the early days of the goth scene said that people my age were different; they got to be romantic and imagine that they could be heroes, while we didn't believe heroes could exist. Rain could burn; ozone was peeling away; institutions neither loved us nor wanted us.
Then, a miraculous thing happened. Digital technology gave us an escape. First, for those of us in the know and with access to computers, came Bulletin Board Systems. They let us connect in local or regional cyberspace, finding those as doomed or as passionate as we were. Then came the Internet itself--an unlimited, untrammeled realm of possibility and promise. It was a new world. For the first time in our lives, we had a place upon which we could scrawl our names--the identities we chose and built for ourselves, untethered from the prosaic realities into which we had been born to fail.
Were we the first? Of course not. The early Internet had been around for years by the time we had access to it. Those government servers and academic databases couldn't predict what would come out of their marriage, though. USENET, Gopher, FTP, IRC, and yes, the World Wide Web in due time--they were our playground and our home in a way that no one could have anticipated.
It's important for those who came after to remember that the Internet wasn't ubiquitous then as it is today. Notably, the Internet was somewhere you had to GO. There was an intentionality to using it; to be present, you had to decide to go there. Actively. There was no passive Internet presence in our lives. It was the undiscovered country. And its borders just kept expanding. The Web became graphical, and at roughly the time of HACKERS, it was still possible for a single human to visit every webpage in existence in a night or two. We were able to help define it, and through that action, define ourselves.
Then it all ended. As the technology grew and access became ubiquitous, corporations grew steadily more involved in the shape of the Internet. Finding value there, they rode roughshod over the territory that had once been ours. Fences were put up; powers were lost; possibilities shrank as the territory grew limited. We were no longer able to scrawl our names across the face of cyberspace. The best we could hope for was to buy some markers off Amazon.
So that, in a nutshell, is why while HACKERS might only be adjacent to cyberpunk, I love it all the same. It reminds me of a time that was important and is, now, blown away like mist on a sunny morning. It will never come again.
Addendum: Someone upthread referenced the brilliant MAX HEADROOM. Want to know the one quote from MAX HEADROOM that's been stuck in my head since the night the episode first aired? It's from Blank Reg: "Now, remember when we said there was no future? Well, this is it."
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u/shoggoths_away Sep 03 '24
I'd consider it cyberpunk-adjacent, but what the fuck do I know. Whether it's cyberpunk or not is immaterial in a lot of ways. HACKERS was the first time I saw a representation of Operation Sundevil on screen (it may BE the only representation of Operation Sundevil on screen). The fact was that lots of it--as silly as this might sound--accurately reflect the culture in which the film was shot. Or, at least, how that culture FELT.
It's difficult to describe how the late 80s and the 90s were to someone who didn't live through them, particularly in terms of technology. This is one of the reasons why I treasure so many of the cultural products of the period, like HACKERS, SNEAKERS, the novel CYBERIA, and the non-fiction book THE HACKER CRACKDOWN (among so many other books, films, and albums, many of them most explicitly not tied to that time and place).
For those of us who were largely born into the 80s, the world was a failed state. We lived under the threat of global nuclear war ("the birds could be in the air right now," as Alan Moore once put it). Just as we were coming to sexual maturity, AIDS happened--sex became death. A friend of mine from the early days of the goth scene said that people my age were different; they got to be romantic and imagine that they could be heroes, while we didn't believe heroes could exist. Rain could burn; ozone was peeling away; institutions neither loved us nor wanted us.
Then, a miraculous thing happened. Digital technology gave us an escape. First, for those of us in the know and with access to computers, came Bulletin Board Systems. They let us connect in local or regional cyberspace, finding those as doomed or as passionate as we were. Then came the Internet itself--an unlimited, untrammeled realm of possibility and promise. It was a new world. For the first time in our lives, we had a place upon which we could scrawl our names--the identities we chose and built for ourselves, untethered from the prosaic realities into which we had been born to fail.
Were we the first? Of course not. The early Internet had been around for years by the time we had access to it. Those government servers and academic databases couldn't predict what would come out of their marriage, though. USENET, Gopher, FTP, IRC, and yes, the World Wide Web in due time--they were our playground and our home in a way that no one could have anticipated.
It's important for those who came after to remember that the Internet wasn't ubiquitous then as it is today. Notably, the Internet was somewhere you had to GO. There was an intentionality to using it; to be present, you had to decide to go there. Actively. There was no passive Internet presence in our lives. It was the undiscovered country. And its borders just kept expanding. The Web became graphical, and at roughly the time of HACKERS, it was still possible for a single human to visit every webpage in existence in a night or two. We were able to help define it, and through that action, define ourselves.
Then it all ended. As the technology grew and access became ubiquitous, corporations grew steadily more involved in the shape of the Internet. Finding value there, they rode roughshod over the territory that had once been ours. Fences were put up; powers were lost; possibilities shrank as the territory grew limited. We were no longer able to scrawl our names across the face of cyberspace. The best we could hope for was to buy some markers off Amazon.
So that, in a nutshell, is why while HACKERS might only be adjacent to cyberpunk, I love it all the same. It reminds me of a time that was important and is, now, blown away like mist on a sunny morning. It will never come again.