Diary #34
1980s: Blade Runner and the world of cyberpunk
I can’t begin to describe how the 1982 Blade Runner movie changed my life as a child, after watching it on VHS, introducing me to the world of cyberpunk.
It got me thinking about aesthetics, human life, space exploration, a possible dystopian future, and many other issues.
More importantly, the movie alerted me early on to the role of visual memories in forming human consciousness. A decade later, when I joined the Revolutionary Socialists, I was intrigued to learn that Trotsky described the revolutionary party as the “memory of the class.” In the years to come, I sought to find a way to visualize such memory and spread it to the widest audience possible, hoping to rewrite our history from below and encourage dissent.
Science fiction films, novels, and comics have influenced my views on organizing logistics and countering hegemony.
In pursuit of the domino effect
The Egyptian revolution, which flared from early 2011 to mid-2013, is usually presented in the media (and some academic circles) as a “Facebook Revolution” or at least as one gigantic event that was ignited and organized online. The truth is slightly different.