CY8ERPUNKS

Timeline

Era 4 · 1992–1996

Cypherpunks, Wired, the Declaration

  1. 1992

    The Cypherpunk mailing list launched

    (Sept 1992), organized by out of Bay Area gatherings. The list is where the cryptography-as-liberation argument is hammered out. This is CY8ERPUNKS' true home mailing list, spiritually.

  2. 1992

    Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

    The , "avatar" in its modern sense, burbclaves, franchising, and a very different (Asiatic/ meme-hazard) theory of what information does to minds.

  3. 1992

    Mondo 2000: A User's Guide to the New Edge

    (eds. R.U. Sirius, Queen Mu). The magazine as a book — the anthology-as-manifesto move.

  4. 1992

    Bruce Sterling, The Hacker Crackdown

    The Sundevil raids from the inside; also famously released free online.

  5. 1992

    Aphex Twin, Selected Ambient Works; Atari Teenage Riot founded (Berlin)

    "digital hardcore," anti-fascist, Delete Yourself.

  6. 1993

    Wired 1.01, January 1993

    Founded by ; early backing from Charlie Jackson and Nicholas Negroponte (MIT Media Lab, who wrote the back-page column for six years). Cover: Bruce Sterling. First issue covered military simulations, Japanese otaku (Karl Taro Greenfeld), and listed contributors' email addresses. Distributed free at CES 1993. (Sources: Wired's own oral history, Wikipedia.)

  7. 1993

    Time cover story on cyberpunk

    Design by Mondo 2000's (per Wired's retrospective). Cyberculture goes mainstream in a single year.

  8. 1993

    Billy Idol, Cyberpunk

    The mainstream's arrival, and a useful marker of the exact moment the word became a product.

  9. 1993

    Eric Hughes, "A Cypherpunk's Manifesto"

    (March 9, 1993). "Cypherpunks write code." Privacy as a defensive necessity; cryptography as the only tool that doesn't require asking permission.

  10. 1993

    Vernor Vinge, "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era"

    (VISION-21 Symposium, NASA Lewis Research Center & Ohio Aerospace Institute, March 30–31, 1993). Vinge had already written True Names (1981). This is the hinge where cyberpunk's attention turns toward superintelligence.

  11. 1993

    NCSA Mosaic

    ** (Dec 1993). The web becomes graphical; gaming becomes network-native.

  12. 1993

    CTheory

    Begins (1993, Arthur & Marilouise Kroker, online journal). Theory goes online-native.

  13. 1994

    Gibson, Virtual Light

    (1993 UK / 1994); Tim May, The Cyphernomicon (1994); Kevin Kelly, Out of Control (1994); Douglas Rushkoff, Cyberia and Media Virus (1994); Timothy Leary, Chaos & Cyber Culture (1994).

  14. 1994

    HotWired

    (1994) — the magazine becomes a website; its sub-zine ** (1995) is one of the first great web-native voices.

  15. 1995

    Richard Barbrook & Andy Cameron, "The Californian Ideology"

    (1995). the "bizarre fusion of the cultural bohemianism of San Francisco with the hi-tech industries of Silicon Valley" into a faith that the free market + technology = liberation. CY8ERPUNKS must read this as self-criticism, not as an enemy text. It also correctly predicted that Wired's libertarianism would paper over welfare cutbacks and deregulation. (Sources: Wikipedia, monoskop PDF, Sterling's Medium repost.)

  16. 1995

    Ghost in the Shell

    (Mamoru Oshii). The AI/mind/ network question in its best visual form. Then ** (1995) — the pure-pop version.

  17. 1995

    Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital

    (1995); (1995); Netscape IPO, the dot-com era opens.

  18. 1996

    John Perry Barlow, "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace"

    (Feb 8, 1996, Davos). Commissioned for 24 Hours in Cyberspace. "Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel... I ask you of the past to leave us alone." — and, importantly, an argument about self-governance, not just about markets. (Sources: EFF, Wikipedia.) - Note: this is also the text most often dismissed as naive. The honest editorial position is that it was right about the possibility and wrong about the durability — and asking why is CY8ERPUNKS' founding essay.