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.This includes control of theculture industry which it manipulates to its own ends through Continuity, theentertainments corporation SenseNet s central computer intelligence, in Mona LisaOverdrive.Thus, capital itself survives the extinction of a specific socially embodiedcapitalist class.So too does the class that services capital, the professional managerial class.Thecyberspace trilogy in this respect re-enacts a central and recurrent science fictionfantasy scenario in which the PMC (in particular its technical scientific wing)becomes at last the universal class, victoriously bearing its ideologies of rationality,meritocratic technocracy, and socially objective expertise to the centre of thehistorical stage.But the problem with asserting this view is that the trilogyconstantly undercuts the fantasy by making the PMC s universality a condition ofits comprehensive incorporation into the reproductive logic of capital and of itssubservience to capital s inherent need to expand and totalise itself.The most 140 CAPITAL, CLASS AND TECHNOLOGY IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN CULTUREobvious figures for the PMC within the trilogy are the professional corporateexecutives known as sararimen or zaibatsumen , but these are unquestioninglysubordinate to capital s demands, literally indentured to the corporations they serveand represented as de-individualised, lifeless conformists, anonymous behind perfect corporate mask[s] and eager to trade their independence for materialsecurity and access to the technologies of social reproduction (CZ: p.100).Asdescribed by one of the characters, these professionals are extremely talented men.However, They are also.servants (CZ: p.102, author s ellipsis).Here theuniversality of the professional managerial class is shorn of its utopian associations,becoming instead the symptom of the class s living death by incorporation.Given such a negative prognosis of utter incorporation in a fully cybernated socialsphere, then, Gibson has to displace and project the positive aspects of PMC identityand social agency in two opposing directions at once: downwards on to theunderclass/working class, and upwards on to capital itself in the form of the AIs andthe matrix.This contradictory transference suggests precisely the ambiguity of thePMC s social position between labour and capital and implies that, politically, theclass can incline either way in times of crisis.14In the cyberspace trilogy, underclass figures tend to be mobilised as surrogatesfor the PMC virtues of professionalism and selfless dedication to the pursuit oftechnical excellence.Such selflessness as it is connoted, is a literal fact for consolejockeys such as Case or Bobby Newmark who in jacking in to the matrix achievea state of ecstasy, in the full sense of the word, that is both addictive and representedas the ultimate reward for the perfection of one s skills.At the climax of Neuromancer,as he secures the union of the two AIs in cyberspace, Case, we are told, attained alevel of proficiency exceeding anything he d known or imagined.Beyond ego,beyond personality, beyond awareness, he moved.grace of the mind bodyinterface granted him.Similarly, Bobby s desire in Count Zero to turn himself into a stone professional culminates with his permanent ascension into the etherealneverland of the matrix (N: p.309; CZ: p.303).15Professionalism here becomes the mode of entry into an exclusive cybernetictechnological sublime in which loss of self is experienced as the ultimate in individualmastery and expressiveness.It is also a means of attaining a vision of immortalitythat is no different from that identified by Baran and Sweezy as an attribute of thecorporation and enjoyed by capital in the cyberspace trilogy in the form of both thezaibatsus and the matrix entity.Fears about the disappearance of selfhood in abureaucratic, corporate milieu are, in this gesture, simultaneously articulated andresolved, while the sublimation of competitive individualism necessary toprofessionalism is managed.16 However, the selflessness attributed to professionalismis in the process exposed as just another form of selfishness
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