What do you think?
Rate this book
Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century
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tour of the high-tech subcultures that both celebrate and critique our wired would-be cyborgs who believe the body is obsolete and dream of downloading their minds into computers, cyber-hippies who boost their brainpower with smart drugs and mind machines, on-line swingers seeking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 boards, techno-primitives who sport "biomechanical" tattoos of computer circuitry; and cyberpunk roboticists whose Mad Max contraptions duel to the death before howling crowds.
Timely, trenchant, and provocative, Escape Velocity is the first truly critical inquiry into cyberculture-essential reading for everyone interested in computer culture and the shape of things to come.
In Escape Velocity Mark Dery takes is on an electrifying tour of the high-tech subcultures that both celebrate and critique our wired would-be cyborgs who believe the body is obsolete and dream of downloading their minds into computers, cyber-hippies who boost their brainpower with smart drugs and mind machines, on-line swingers seeking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 boards, techno-primitives who sport "biomechanical" tattoos of computer circuitry; and cyberpunk roboticists whose Mad Max contraptions duel to the death before howling crowds.
Timely, trenchant, and provocative, Escape Velocity is the first truly critical inquiry into cyberculture-essential reading for everyone interested in computer culture and the shape of things to come.
400 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
14 people are currently reading
352 people want to read
About the author
Mark Dery
24 books97 followersFrom http://markdery.com/?page_id=130
Mark Dery is a cultural critic, essayist, and book author who has taught at NYU and Yale. He coined the term “Afrofuturism,” popularized the concept of “culture jamming,” and has published widely on American mythologies and pathologies. His books include Flame Wars (1994), a seminal anthology of writings on digital culture; Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century (1996), which has been translated into eight languages; The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink (1999), a study of cultural chaos in millennial America; and the essay collection, I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-by Essays on American Dread, American Dreams (2012). His is the author, most recently, of a biography, Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey, published by Little, Brown in 2018.
Mark Dery is a cultural critic, essayist, and book author who has taught at NYU and Yale. He coined the term “Afrofuturism,” popularized the concept of “culture jamming,” and has published widely on American mythologies and pathologies. His books include Flame Wars (1994), a seminal anthology of writings on digital culture; Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century (1996), which has been translated into eight languages; The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink (1999), a study of cultural chaos in millennial America; and the essay collection, I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-by Essays on American Dread, American Dreams (2012). His is the author, most recently, of a biography, Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey, published by Little, Brown in 2018.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
April 23, 2018
“Escape velocity is the speed at which a body…overcomes the gravitational pull of another body,” begins Mark Dery in his non-fictional amalgamation of the current state of computer culture, Escape Velocity. Dery uses the concept as a metaphor for what is happening to the many memes–concept viruses–of the on-line and turned-on and their relation to the greater society (mainly American, although some service is given to Japan and Europe). Like the emergence of the Internet (and the ‘net concept of on-line connectivity) into the mainstream, the ideas of body sculpting, merging with machines (either virtually or prosthetically), and transhuman growth, among others, are just below the cultural surface, according to Dery.
To be a cultural historian to the fast-paced world of computers is a difficult one, because the cyberculture, far more so than any subculture before it, is as varied in its parts as it is separated geographically. It exists on change. In ways, the myriad differences in the cybercrowd is what makes it a culture rather than a cult–it encourages the free range of expression from left to right, and all the fringes top and bottom, and there is no single authority to consult. Mark Dery’s job, therefore, was to piece together a picture of a living community that is less than 30 years old and is more malleable than one of his favorite images, that of the T-2000 liquid-metal android from the movie Terminator 2. He assembled this jigsaw by grabbing at the outward manifestations of the culture–its art–rather than focusing on the nuts and bolts of how it came and stays together. Dery’s goal was to achieve a focus on where cybernauts and cyberpunks are headed, rather than where they have been. Within the cybernetic expressions in print, screen, music, body art, performance, and philosophy lie the seeds of a cultural revolution that began with the home computer, according to Dery.
Any cultural representation requires a polymath to untangle the multitude of threads that bind it together. When that culture is the front end of the runaway train of technology, the examiner must also be moving at the speed of information. Dery, for the most part, rises to the challenge, able to quote both fiction writers and art critics, social commentators and “hackers” within the same page. His profiles of those on the fringe and those with the mainstream are balanced, except when he pauses to regroup his thinking at the end of each chapter and his own impressions slip in. One of the most rewarding aspects of Dery’s compilation is that he went beyond the most visible proponents of cyberculture (William Gibson, Mark Pauline of the Survival Research Laboratories, Hans Moravec) to also get the equally important contributions that have not engendered cultish followings (in fiction, for example, Dery quotes the work of Pat Cadigan and John Shirley as well as that of Gibson and Bruce Sterling), as well as progenitors to the culture (again in fiction, the work of Philip K. Dick and J.G. Ballard).
As a document of fact about what happened and is happening in the computer subculture, Escape Velocity is hard to fault. But Dery’s goal was to portray where the culture is headed (in his eyes into the larger mainstream), and it is herein that trouble lies. To extract the future of society from this mismatch of ideas would be like portraying the future of cinema in the 1960s by examining both Easy Rider and La Dolce Vita. Yes, these movies had a profound effect on the cinematic culture at large, but it was subsumed into the larger whole. Dery quotes Gibson’s oft-touted refrain, “The street finds its own uses for things.” Just so, the mainstream often finds its own uses for the street, as evidenced in the music business by the commercialization and marketing of punk, rap, and grunge, each a thriving subculture at one time.
Escape Velocity is an intriguing volume, and Mark Dery is to be commended for attempting to achieve a cyberculture gestalt. For those interested in what is happening “in there,” Escape Velocity is a one-stop shop, a veritable sourcebook of cyberdom.
To be a cultural historian to the fast-paced world of computers is a difficult one, because the cyberculture, far more so than any subculture before it, is as varied in its parts as it is separated geographically. It exists on change. In ways, the myriad differences in the cybercrowd is what makes it a culture rather than a cult–it encourages the free range of expression from left to right, and all the fringes top and bottom, and there is no single authority to consult. Mark Dery’s job, therefore, was to piece together a picture of a living community that is less than 30 years old and is more malleable than one of his favorite images, that of the T-2000 liquid-metal android from the movie Terminator 2. He assembled this jigsaw by grabbing at the outward manifestations of the culture–its art–rather than focusing on the nuts and bolts of how it came and stays together. Dery’s goal was to achieve a focus on where cybernauts and cyberpunks are headed, rather than where they have been. Within the cybernetic expressions in print, screen, music, body art, performance, and philosophy lie the seeds of a cultural revolution that began with the home computer, according to Dery.
Any cultural representation requires a polymath to untangle the multitude of threads that bind it together. When that culture is the front end of the runaway train of technology, the examiner must also be moving at the speed of information. Dery, for the most part, rises to the challenge, able to quote both fiction writers and art critics, social commentators and “hackers” within the same page. His profiles of those on the fringe and those with the mainstream are balanced, except when he pauses to regroup his thinking at the end of each chapter and his own impressions slip in. One of the most rewarding aspects of Dery’s compilation is that he went beyond the most visible proponents of cyberculture (William Gibson, Mark Pauline of the Survival Research Laboratories, Hans Moravec) to also get the equally important contributions that have not engendered cultish followings (in fiction, for example, Dery quotes the work of Pat Cadigan and John Shirley as well as that of Gibson and Bruce Sterling), as well as progenitors to the culture (again in fiction, the work of Philip K. Dick and J.G. Ballard).
As a document of fact about what happened and is happening in the computer subculture, Escape Velocity is hard to fault. But Dery’s goal was to portray where the culture is headed (in his eyes into the larger mainstream), and it is herein that trouble lies. To extract the future of society from this mismatch of ideas would be like portraying the future of cinema in the 1960s by examining both Easy Rider and La Dolce Vita. Yes, these movies had a profound effect on the cinematic culture at large, but it was subsumed into the larger whole. Dery quotes Gibson’s oft-touted refrain, “The street finds its own uses for things.” Just so, the mainstream often finds its own uses for the street, as evidenced in the music business by the commercialization and marketing of punk, rap, and grunge, each a thriving subculture at one time.
Escape Velocity is an intriguing volume, and Mark Dery is to be commended for attempting to achieve a cyberculture gestalt. For those interested in what is happening “in there,” Escape Velocity is a one-stop shop, a veritable sourcebook of cyberdom.
December 28, 2022
El recorrido completo analiza las implicaciones éticas, morales, filosóficas, ontológicas y prácticas de la relación entre la humanidad (como especie y como individuos) con la tecnología y en específico sobre la cibercultura, sus alcances, sueños y puntos ciegos.
Los temas tratados van desde los mitos, coincidencias e influencias new age en nuestra relación con la tecnología, hasta la música, las artes plásticas y el cuerpo y su política. Gran libro.
Los temas tratados van desde los mitos, coincidencias e influencias new age en nuestra relación con la tecnología, hasta la música, las artes plásticas y el cuerpo y su política. Gran libro.
June 17, 2013
Un imprescindible en mi estantería. Repasa y hace una crítica inspiradora, desde el punto de vista académico, de la cibercultura. Evidentemente muchas perspectivas han quedado obsoletas, fue escrito hace 20 años, y la cibercultura y la sociedad digital ha ido cambiando paulatinamente, pero la base de todo lo escrito pro Dery sigue siendo de gran referencia para hoy en día.
September 7, 2020
Temo que no estaba del todo hecho para mí. Tenía interés sobre la traslación de los postulados de la ciencia ficción a la subcultura cyberpunk del mundo real (aunque estuve tangencialmente en contacto con ella hasta una década después de escrita esta obra), pero yo he cambiado y ahora lo veo todo como si fuera un catálogo de una incomprensible exposición de arte contemporáneo donde prima el discurso florido en detrimento de todo lo demás.
En general percibo un marco en el que encapsular las propuestas de autores del subgénero cyberpunk como Bruce Sterling o William Gibson junto a otros de la ciencia ficción más ortodoxa (si tal cosa es posible) como Vernor Vinge o incluso los que destacaron más por otro tipo de extremos como William S. Burroughs. Después pasa todas las propuestas por un filtro en blanco y negro muy malo, las adorna con excesos de drogas y un miedo tremendo al Sida (explicado por la época en la que se escribió), y de la proyección saca a unos cuantos artistas musicales o no musicales con los que explicar un movimiento que nunca fue de masas, nunca fue agradable, y ahora está muerto en su mayoría.
Mención aparte la maravillosa edición de Siruela en papel satinado y con una composición bastante cómoda (aunque hubiese movido las imágenes al final de los capítulos para no interrumpir el texto).
Pero no hay nada que se haya incluido, más allá de los contextos históricos y algunas figuras particulares, que me haya hecho disfrutar o encontrar interés en lo propuesto. Es probable que, si me hubiera pillado más joven, lo hubiera vivido con más fuerza.
En general percibo un marco en el que encapsular las propuestas de autores del subgénero cyberpunk como Bruce Sterling o William Gibson junto a otros de la ciencia ficción más ortodoxa (si tal cosa es posible) como Vernor Vinge o incluso los que destacaron más por otro tipo de extremos como William S. Burroughs. Después pasa todas las propuestas por un filtro en blanco y negro muy malo, las adorna con excesos de drogas y un miedo tremendo al Sida (explicado por la época en la que se escribió), y de la proyección saca a unos cuantos artistas musicales o no musicales con los que explicar un movimiento que nunca fue de masas, nunca fue agradable, y ahora está muerto en su mayoría.
Mención aparte la maravillosa edición de Siruela en papel satinado y con una composición bastante cómoda (aunque hubiese movido las imágenes al final de los capítulos para no interrumpir el texto).
Pero no hay nada que se haya incluido, más allá de los contextos históricos y algunas figuras particulares, que me haya hecho disfrutar o encontrar interés en lo propuesto. Es probable que, si me hubiera pillado más joven, lo hubiera vivido con más fuerza.
May 29, 2021
It's 2021, and I just finished a book from 1995 about Cyberculture at the end of the millenium. Slowly making my way through my "to read" list...
This book holds up remarkably well given it's age. It kind of misses the social media and mobile trends, but otherwise much of it is still relevant +25 years later. This is mostly attributed to it focusing on techno-arty culture types rather then the engineer aspects of technology.
This isn't an easy book to read and the blurbs comment about it being a "highly accessible book" is laughable. This is a typical sentence:
"The growing tendency to conceive of computer-mediated interaction in a spiritual as well as spatial terms revives the Telihard de Chardinian dream of reconciling metaphysics and materialism in a science tinged with mysticism and charged with faith."
Lots of insights, but I'm also relieved to be done with it.
This book holds up remarkably well given it's age. It kind of misses the social media and mobile trends, but otherwise much of it is still relevant +25 years later. This is mostly attributed to it focusing on techno-arty culture types rather then the engineer aspects of technology.
This isn't an easy book to read and the blurbs comment about it being a "highly accessible book" is laughable. This is a typical sentence:
"The growing tendency to conceive of computer-mediated interaction in a spiritual as well as spatial terms revives the Telihard de Chardinian dream of reconciling metaphysics and materialism in a science tinged with mysticism and charged with faith."
Lots of insights, but I'm also relieved to be done with it.
November 7, 2025
This book examines nineties cybercultures. It is filled with cultural references that I largely do not understand, having missed these niche subcultures from three decades ago (a situation I likely would have faced regardless). Each subculture is presented using disturbing images. The author seems to prioritize shocking the reader over demonstrating the utility of these cultures.
April 20, 2009
So how about it, ladies--would you rather be a goddess or a cyborg?
"Escape Velocity" examines our changing relationships to our bodies, minds, spirits, and especially the technology in which we currently float, twist, and dream. Who else but Mark Dery would draw such elegant parallels between bodybuilders and cyberpunks, or between cyborg technology and James Brown's "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine"?
Dery wrote this book over 15 years ago, and some of his subjects, such as certain performance artists whose work he goes into in great depth, no longer feel relevant. But tons of other content here does, from the discussion of early versions of cybersex on the online bulletin boards of the mid-1990s to his examination of the links between punk music and cyberpunk science fiction.
Notable also for Dery's ultra-clear, and useful, applications of critical and literary theories to unexpected subjects. Normally I'd run screaming from a paragraph about "post-structuralism," but Dery breaks it down painlessly and actually makes it do work.
This is a denser and somewhat more difficult read than Dery's Pyrotechnic Insanitarium, but it's full of fascinating insights about where technology is leading us, and vice versa.
"Escape Velocity" examines our changing relationships to our bodies, minds, spirits, and especially the technology in which we currently float, twist, and dream. Who else but Mark Dery would draw such elegant parallels between bodybuilders and cyberpunks, or between cyborg technology and James Brown's "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine"?
Dery wrote this book over 15 years ago, and some of his subjects, such as certain performance artists whose work he goes into in great depth, no longer feel relevant. But tons of other content here does, from the discussion of early versions of cybersex on the online bulletin boards of the mid-1990s to his examination of the links between punk music and cyberpunk science fiction.
Notable also for Dery's ultra-clear, and useful, applications of critical and literary theories to unexpected subjects. Normally I'd run screaming from a paragraph about "post-structuralism," but Dery breaks it down painlessly and actually makes it do work.
This is a denser and somewhat more difficult read than Dery's Pyrotechnic Insanitarium, but it's full of fascinating insights about where technology is leading us, and vice versa.
April 13, 2022
Empecé el libro hace años. Desde entonces lo he amado, pero los últimos dos capítulos (que con casi la mitad del libro) fueron en particular fascinantes. El recorrido completo analiza las implicaciones éticas, morales, filosóficas, ontológicas y prácticas de la relación entre la humanidad (como especie y como individuos) con la tecnología y en específico sobre la cibercultura, sus alcances, sueños y puntos ciegos.
Los temas tratados van desde los mitos, coincidencias e influencias new age en nuestra relación con la tecnología, hasta la música, las artes plásticas y el cuerpo y su política. Gran libro.
Los temas tratados van desde los mitos, coincidencias e influencias new age en nuestra relación con la tecnología, hasta la música, las artes plásticas y el cuerpo y su política. Gran libro.
March 26, 2010
Here's a Romanian review on my blog: http://tesatorul.blogspot.com/2010/03...
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews