Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century

by Mark Dery

Book Overview

An Unforgettable Journey into the Dark Heart of the Information Age

In Escape Velocity Mark Dery takes is on an electrifying tour of the high-tech subcultures that both celebrate and critique our wired world: would-be cyborgs who believe the body is obsolete and dream of downloading their minds into computers, cyber-hippies who boost their brainpower with smart drugs and mind machines, on-line swingers seeking cybersex on electronic bulletin...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080213520X
• ISBN13: 9780802135209
• Release Date: August 1997
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Slightly outdated, but still an excellent survey

Mark Dery does an excellent job in this book of presenting elements the post-industrial fringe culture to the reader. This is a bookshelf essential for those with an interest in cyberculture, robotics, trans-humanism, body modification, and cultural criticism. Some of the references are now outdated, but that is inevitable in the print medium, given the rapid advancement of technology.

Still applicable

I read this about 3+ years ago and I was just discussing it last night. This book presents "cyber-whatever" in a way that is not bound by your typical Newsweek-esque angle of "Boy genius makes millions, blah blah" or by the approach of overwhelming the reader with senseless techie watchwords and jargon that are made up to confuse and confound the reader into thinking that the subject is important because they don't understand it. Escape Velocity presents real people doing wierd things with more esoteric aspects of our accelerted culture. A man who attached his computer to the nerves in his arm to invoke spasms of thrashing and flailing, all the while injuring himself in the process of making performance art is a whole other realm from Bill Gates' pedestrian spreadsheet programs. Don't read this book expecting "Pirates of Silicon Valley" or "the Road Ahead" or whatever drivel Bill wrote. But DO read this book.

good job putting pieces together

His thesis hangs in mid-air, not fully articulated, but if you relax, it should wash over you. Well-written, flows nicely. Excellent job defining buzzwords/key concepts others don't bother to. I found his book to be the best on the topic I've found so far and invaluable in my own studies.However, he does get a bit redundant and didactic, keeps resorting to catch-all phrases to explain what people are trying to escape from, e.g. economic inequality, environmental pollution, yah-dah-yah-dah. I wish he had drilled down a bit here.Also, his groupings seems a bit forced, he seems to have dug himself a hole in his overall design. But it was probably a difficult project, so you have to forgive him that.

Sober observation of the hyperbole

An entertaining and insightful analysis of cyberculture from a man with the sense of detail of an archeologist and the wit of Voltaire.