Douglas Coupland wrote early on both social media and AI
A collection of Microsoft employees Decision – they are no longer planning to slaughter on Bill’s Farm. They go south to happiness in Silicon Valley. They go together in a charmless villa from the middle of the century and work in the garage with their startup.
No, it is not another documentary about the first year of Apple. Neither the field for the HBO series “Silicon Valley” or a season of “Stop and Catch Fire”. It is a novel, written long before Dave Eggers “The circle” or Thomas Pynchons “Bleeding Edge”.
“MicroSlavs” from Douglas Coupland Started as a report on only Microsoft programmers in the first issue of the Wired magazine in 1994. The extensive new version was released in June 1995. 30 years later, a trillion was lend/stolen in it. Strange – or appropriate – probably the only adjustment of “MicroSlavs” is an audio book with some pickled music. On cassette. Read by Matthew Perry From “friends”.
The stories themselves tell “then” writes diary notes about his portable Mac. About girlfriend Karla, the brilliant Michael, the secret homosexual bug (with fairly large traces of Coupland himself), Ethan, Susan and others in a growing gang.
They develop oop! – A game with great similarities with Minecraft. At the same time, life happens in 180 knuckles – people get cancer, come out, go crazy, losing and regaining contact with family members. But they keep the code and love for the computers together.
The first book by Douglas Coupland – Generation X – had the subtitle “Tales for a accelerated culture”. In “MicroSlavar”, Coupland continues to investigate what it is to be human being amidst technical acceleration. When everything moves very quickly, big things happen. In both society and in the soul.
The German Sociologist Hartmut pink Ten years after Coupland, “social acceleration – a theory of modernity”. Rosa’s book can be read as the academic version of “MicroSlavs”. Rosa believes that technological acceleration (read: social media, AI, etc.) makes our beliefs and experiences a very short best before date. Old truths appear to be useless quickly. Alienation occurs, we are groping for fixed points to hold.
The MicroSlavians also grab. Coupland embodies it with the pain in their backs that causes other than the hours before the screen. Karla gives shiatsumassage, she says: “Our bodies are like floppy drives.” Failure, sadness, illness, death are stored in us. Her tactile touch, without eye contact via a protective T-shirt, is a decent level of proximity for microslavs.
The rescue of MicroSlavs is their context – Hartmut Rosa calls it “resonance”, a feeling of being in contact with itself, others and the world. In another time, another generation, they could have gathered around God or the United States. But now the code becomes their Bible verses, the garage their church. Karla and Susan start Chyx, a feminist association for female programmers spread over Silicon Valley. (Placked: “Free tampons on Apple!”). When Abe comes out, the friends are there and plays CDs (New Stuff 1993) with Bessie Smith. When Ethan gets cancer, hold him and takes care of his wounds (of course on his back).
Coupland’s Nerd Collective In the house in Los Altos Hills, the tech-brug-toxic masculinity that penetrates too many technical contexts. Cause: “microSlavs” is being played for The internet broke through.
Internet Internationalized and Commercialized Geek Culture – for good and evil. Even young web agency slaves from Mälardalen could read Coupland and travel to Silicon Valley. But everything had changed (it took a while before the Swedish translation came to the bookstore in Köping). The novel of Coupland became my guide. I visited all places, tried to feel all the emotions. But when I got into the villa from the middle of the century in Los Altos Hills, then, Karla, Bug and the others were not there.
The book states that the only programmers do not talk, “death, wages and options”. But when I arrived there, the internet economy had already started replacing the beautiful nerds with young stripes. They spoke about nothing but stock options and that they knew someone who knew a venture capitalist on Sand Hill Road.
Death was The most now. The Bomplan from Moffett Field appeared from the Blauw -shimmering swimming pool in Los Altos Hills. On the golf course next door, the military-industrial technical complex went a round with the adult version of Dan, Karla and Bug.
Minecraft has now been sold to Microsoft. The internet is a corpse – stiff, swollen and smelly. In reissions on American Magazine articles, now – 2025! – A murderous hunt for Swedish cultural sites: “Who killed Bambi”?! Was it ticktok ?? Or maybe that chatpete?!
But please. Our digital community became personalization data in a gigantic advertising system long ago. In “MicroSlavar” – from 1995! – Coupland saw it coming; Social media and AI drives as a future spirit. Coupland knows where the real enemy lives: “Beware for the invasion of the companies of the private memories,” writes in his absolutely not in the cloud -disturbed diary. Later: “Post machine” makes a countless millions of people overnight stay overnight “.
With Willem Dafoe in Venice
15:08
