Cyberpunk and the dematerialisation of the ocean

I have always hated sci-fi! Accordingly, I wasn’t too thrilled when last week's studies for New Communication Technologies included Ridley Scott’s cyberpunk film, Bladerunner. Yet, I found the dystopian society presented in the film and the underlying message, a question of what it truly means to be human, resonated strongly in my context of climate change, technological advances and social existence via internet networks. 

While researching the gloomy future presented in Bladerunner, I came across the informative essay by Christopher Connery, ‘There was No More Sea: the supersession of the ocean, from the bible to cyberspace’, which argues that Scott's cyber punk vision, “where California meets Tokyo through a disappeared Pacific”(p. 497), reflects attempts in society by postmodern networked capitalism, to “annihilate the ocean”(p. 497). Connery supports his argument by referring to a 1990 Merrill Lynch advertisement that included a photograph of a scene in the open sea and the caption, ‘for us, this doesn't exist,’ which he claims dematerialises the ocean by portraying the open space as a burden and “a meaningless materiality transcended by instantaneous information flow” (p. 497). The ad generally makes no sense, as throughout history the ocean has functioned as an “optimum space for connectivity”, and finance capital relies on the “unification of the globe” (p. 497) for trade, thus Connery claims that such acts which dematerialise the ocean are “linked to the long project of capital's concealment of its spatial and social character”(p. 497-498). 

Ms. Virtue 

Reference list

Connery, C 2006, ‘There was No More Sea: the supersession of the ocean, from the bible to cyberspace’ Journal of Historical Geography, vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 494-511.

Scott, R 1982, Bladerunner, film, Warner Brothers