Brooders

A couple of weeks back I got the chance to fill out the Abebooks legal agreement and integrate it into NeoScholar.

Their API, while a slightly different response format to parse allows for cool things like currency setting, which is useful for people like me who are NOT in the USA, which most seem to assume.

I am not sure of the final integration implementation, I only link through to one book at the moment. Abebooks.com has a variable shipping cost depending on where you are shipping to. Amazon and Alibris make things easier by forcing a fixed shipping cost onto booksellers. I have seen through Abebooks prices from $6 USD to $13 USD to ship to Australia. A big difference in determining the best price for a book.

Comparing the integration to Alibris into NeoScholar , there wasn’t a lot of difference in the effort. However, I don’t think there is a way to tell if a book is new or not with Abebooks. Alibris has two different search API’s, one for new and another for used.

All in all to get Abebooks working within a Perl module took a few hours. Not too bad …

The worst of human emotions produces in tears. Loss, sadness, isolation, fear. Cyberpunk recognises this metaphor. In those who are wired, we see references to the removal of such bodily functions to become stronger, however, in the near-human replicant we also see the philisophical understanding of tears.

Roy Batty, Bladerunner

All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
Time to die.

This is arguably the most poetic line delivered in a cyberpunk film, during the realisation or irony of his humanity right before he dies.

Conversly, we see the “street samurai” who embrace hard technology within their own being deny their body of tears.

In Neuromancer, Molly is asked:

`How do you cry, Molly? I see your eyes are walled away. I’m curious.’
His eyes were red-rimmed, his forehead gleaming with sweat. He was very pale. Sick, Case decided. Or drugs.
`I don’t cry, much.’
`But how would you cry, if someone made you cry?’
`I spit,’ she said. `The ducts are routed back into my mouth.’

And finally in Hardwired:

He is lost in his memories, and it looks as though he is trying to cry; but his eyes are lubricated with silicon and his tear ducts are gone, of course, along with his dreams.

Here we see recognition of humanity and emotion, being lost in a past that no longer exists.

We have several examples, scattered accross the 1980′s from both Film and Literature, showing the humanity that shines through tears. I am curious to find out how many other films or books use this metaphor as well.