Please - Include the Infamous Jude Milhon
Hello and Good Evening,
Years ago, almost 20 I suppose, in a decade called the 90's, when Slick Willy was ruling America with an iron fist and an open fly, Cyberpunk had slipped out of the 80's and into the age of 14.4 kbps modems, America Online, and the general public awareness of something Al Gore had pushed through the halls of Capitol Hill and into your home... something called The Internet. A fascination was born, and cyberpunk had a brief run at mainstream - from the arrest of Kevin Mitnick to the delightful comedy Hackers, starring Johnny Lee Miller & Angelina Jolie.
During that time period, a few technogeeks saw opportunity. They were starving, having spent all of their hardearned money on the latest components - a quarter-gig of hard drive storage space, two megs of ram - and they realized "Lo, these people seek the wisdom of Cyberpunk - let us elucidate them, for the betterment of mankind, and for some money."
Jude Milhon - who I hope at least one of you will know as St. Jude - became a good friend of mine in those years. She partnered with the verbose and obnoxious RU Sirius to write the end-all-be-all of parody manuals - The Cyberpunk Fakebook - before the duo released an exploded post-novel called How To Mutate and Take Over the World. St Jude was also an editor to the now defunct 'zine (that's a precursor to blogs, for all you young kitlings) called Mondo '2000, and a contributor to boing-boing which still exists today. She would have loved what we've all done with the internet, the way social media has us communicating, and sharing on a scale never before seen in human history. And she would have hated what we've all done with the internet, but I won't get into that part right now.
She was my friend, and she changed the way I thought about the world. She showed me the ropes, in the early days, before broadband. It was not in spite of our age difference, but because of it, that she took me under her wing. I was in those impressionable teenage years, and she told me the secret of how a digital world would embiggen even the smallest man. Within a few years, cable modems were in every home, and it was all happening like she said it would. I went off to college, and we didn't talk enough - but sometimes, sometimes we'd catch up late at night when I was up on the internet and looking for answers. She was my friend, and I loved her like a second mother.
In July of 2009 at the age of 64 - an appropriate number to her hacker sensibilities - she passed away, a victim of cancer, beloved by many, and with a beautiful legacy behind her. And in front, because I am a disciple of Jude Milhon, and many people still around have felt her influence.
I tell you this story, and I couple it with this plea - if ever there was a place for a memorial, it's in this game. I don't know why, but in watching the debut video I felt it. Jude was one of the original cyberpunks - a founding cipherpunk - coined the term, according to some - and unarguably one of the foremost girl geeks
So please, CD Projekt, give her a nod. An achievement or a trophy. A ghost in the machine - some email, or sage advice to an in-game character, signed simply St Jude. She deserves it. She literally wrote the manual on cyberpunk.
Hello and Good Evening,
Years ago, almost 20 I suppose, in a decade called the 90's, when Slick Willy was ruling America with an iron fist and an open fly, Cyberpunk had slipped out of the 80's and into the age of 14.4 kbps modems, America Online, and the general public awareness of something Al Gore had pushed through the halls of Capitol Hill and into your home... something called The Internet. A fascination was born, and cyberpunk had a brief run at mainstream - from the arrest of Kevin Mitnick to the delightful comedy Hackers, starring Johnny Lee Miller & Angelina Jolie.
During that time period, a few technogeeks saw opportunity. They were starving, having spent all of their hardearned money on the latest components - a quarter-gig of hard drive storage space, two megs of ram - and they realized "Lo, these people seek the wisdom of Cyberpunk - let us elucidate them, for the betterment of mankind, and for some money."
Jude Milhon - who I hope at least one of you will know as St. Jude - became a good friend of mine in those years. She partnered with the verbose and obnoxious RU Sirius to write the end-all-be-all of parody manuals - The Cyberpunk Fakebook - before the duo released an exploded post-novel called How To Mutate and Take Over the World. St Jude was also an editor to the now defunct 'zine (that's a precursor to blogs, for all you young kitlings) called Mondo '2000, and a contributor to boing-boing which still exists today. She would have loved what we've all done with the internet, the way social media has us communicating, and sharing on a scale never before seen in human history. And she would have hated what we've all done with the internet, but I won't get into that part right now.
She was my friend, and she changed the way I thought about the world. She showed me the ropes, in the early days, before broadband. It was not in spite of our age difference, but because of it, that she took me under her wing. I was in those impressionable teenage years, and she told me the secret of how a digital world would embiggen even the smallest man. Within a few years, cable modems were in every home, and it was all happening like she said it would. I went off to college, and we didn't talk enough - but sometimes, sometimes we'd catch up late at night when I was up on the internet and looking for answers. She was my friend, and I loved her like a second mother.
In July of 2009 at the age of 64 - an appropriate number to her hacker sensibilities - she passed away, a victim of cancer, beloved by many, and with a beautiful legacy behind her. And in front, because I am a disciple of Jude Milhon, and many people still around have felt her influence.
I tell you this story, and I couple it with this plea - if ever there was a place for a memorial, it's in this game. I don't know why, but in watching the debut video I felt it. Jude was one of the original cyberpunks - a founding cipherpunk - coined the term, according to some - and unarguably one of the foremost girl geeks
So please, CD Projekt, give her a nod. An achievement or a trophy. A ghost in the machine - some email, or sage advice to an in-game character, signed simply St Jude. She deserves it. She literally wrote the manual on cyberpunk.
