The Shockwave Rider

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I continue to watch for disclosures about peak oil. Nothing so far, but apparently we’ve only seen a small part of what is to come. Already there have been revelations about the U.S. climate change strategy in Copenhagen, and Saudi influence on U.S. climate policy. Is our society on the right lines when of of its most gifted people can find no better career than crime unless literally millions per year of public money are lavished on him? In an age when we have more choice than ever before, more mobility, more information, more opportunity to fulfill ourselves, how is it that people can prefer to be identical?” I'm proud of it. Apart from marking the first occasion when I used my talent on behalf of other people without being asked and without caring whether I was rewarded--which was a major breakthrough in itself--the job was a pure masterpiece. Working on it, I realized in my guts how an artist or an author can get high on the creative act. The poker who wrote Precipice's original tapeworm was pretty good, but you could theoretically have killed it without shutting down the net--that is, at the cost of losing thirty or forty billion bits of data. Which I gather they were just about prepared to do when I showed up. But mine...Ho, no! That, I cross my heart, cannot be killed without DISMANTLING the net.”

The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner | Goodreads

Dani Cavallaro (2000). Cyberpunk and Cyberculture: Science Fiction and the Work of William Gibson. Athlone Press (London). p. 11. ISBN 0-485-00412-7. I find no evidence for believing that I matter any more than any other human being who ever existed or who ever will exist. Nor does any of them matter more than I do. We’re elements in a process that began in the dim past and will develop through who knows what kind of future.” Haflinger's, we see that the author is not one to be content with the realities that may be a possibility in the future of technology. Though it turns out here they only use that as an occasional abbreviation for the more usual 'tapeworm'. About this future America-- damn if he was not prescient! Most people live what is called a 'plug in' lifestyle, willing (and forced) to move all the time to new occupations and places; hence, most accommodations are standardized, as seem to be most personality traits. There are fringes of people who resist and resort to 'tribalism', warring among themselves for no real reason. Strange religions flare up and die; unminded by the powers that be (PTB) as they serve to provide an outlet of frustration/anger not directed at the government. Again, most people resort to some type of medication (can you say soma?) to keep themselves together.That this is a rich planet. Therefore poverty and hunger are unworthy of it, and since we can abolish them, we must. I keep re-reading it, not to compare it against current tech, but because I always feel that I may be old enough to like it this time. I like most Brunner, and Stand on Zanzibar is a masterpiece. But although I continue to admire it and insist that it is a significant book, this wasn’t that time either. Oh well. There's far more to it than this, and though the ending wraps things up a little too neatly (I'm afraid the bad guys would almost certainly have won), this remains a brilliant net-based SF novel. One man has made it his mission to liberate the mental prisoners. to restore their freedom in a world run mad. He had straightened as he spoke. Now he was arrow-rigid, and his voice boomed in huge resounding periods like the tolling of a death bell.

The Shockwave Rider (Literature) - TV Tropes The Shockwave Rider (Literature) - TV Tropes

This is indeed the father and mother of a tapeworm. It’s of a type known as parthenogenetic. If you’re acquainted with contemporary data-processing jargon, you’ll have noticed how much use it makes of terminology derived from the study of living animals. And with reason. Not for nothing is a tapeworm called a tapeworm. It can be made to breed. During the early eighties, after the brothers Miley moved out of our 1134 W. Chase apartment in East Rogers Park, Chicago, Jim moved in, staying a few years. Jim, an artist, later an author, was an aficionado of the bizarre, of conspiracy theories, of the democratic potentials of new technologies and of all that Michael Miley had called "high weirdness." Primarily self-educated, he was an ever-enthusiastic source for new ideas and controversial opinions, introducing me to quite a lot during our years together. John Brunner was born in Preston Crowmarsh, near Wallingford in Oxfordshire, and went to school at St Andrew's Prep School, Pangbourne, then to Cheltenham College. He wrote his first novel, Galactic Storm, at 17, and published it under the pen-name Gill Hunt, but he did not start writing full-time until 1958. He served as an officer in the Royal Air Force from 1953 to 1955, and married Marjorie Rosamond Sauer on 12 July 1958 How can an Australian open-pit coal mining project unequivocally denied by a joint review panel as well as two courts of appeal still be regarded as an “advanced coal project” by Alberta regulators?

Teenagers join “tribes” that commit real mayhem, burning down territories. There are parts of cities that are no-go areas. There are game shows on TV where people are maimed and killed, and there are live circuses broadcast that have gladiatorial games and real deaths. It is also one of the first books to ever describe the internet (although the book calls it the data-net) as something prevalent in everyone's everyday life. If you read it when it came out, you might have trouble understanding why the threat to destroy the data-net is taken as almost the ultimate threat. Today, it is pretty easy to realize the economic and other disasters that would happen. In this world of confusion are also companies specialising in psychological intervention. One such is Anti-Trauma Inc. which is hired to "normalise" children in a process akin to deprogramming, the (often violent) attempt to force people to renounce their association with groups perceived as cults. Anti-Trauma does significant harm to its charges, although as so often happens in Brunner's interconnected society, it also spends much money and time covering up its failures.