The Cybergypsies (Indra Sinha, 1999)

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2024-11-08 15:00:02

If you were to list the great popular historical books of the computer world, you’d probably hear The Cuckoo’s Egg, Soul of a New Machine, and then a smattering of books by Wired Magazine regulars, like Cyberpunks and Where Wizards Stay Up Late. Fire In The Valley maybe, though I imagine Cromemco gets less relevant every day. What I rarely see recommended, however, and what I think belongs on the podium along with Kidder and Stoll, is Indra Sinha’s The Cybergypsies.

The gibsonian flair of the first few chapters creates the impression of a novel, and I think this confused some readers. I had to check out several facts and, low and behold, they turned out true. Eventually I realized “Bear,” the narrator, was Indra, and it’s a memoir. Shades was a real place; you can see a YouTube video playing back a recorded (and very chaotic) session. What else confused people? The terminology is probably period, but it’s a period that was over when the book was published-it’s a story of the modem world and what we would now call BBSs running MUDs.

The characters are drawn with attention to their humanity. It would be easy to turn this story into a people zoo, but Bear never does, instead opting for empathy even when he’s relating outrageous behavior and hilarious drama. In a different era, with a different pen, it might have been delivered as a very long forum post. Nowdays, perhaps as the sort of YouTube essay Folding Ideas produces. Because it really gets to the heart of what it means to be terminally online. Sinha was terminally online before that was even a thing.