Posthuman Blues

Online but off the grid - Japan's internet café homeless

In an example of interstitial existence that sounds like it leaped straight from the pages of a William Gibson novel, the Japanese government has announced that there are over 5,000 "internet café refugees" eking out a living at the bottom of the social strata, taking what temporary work they can and dossing down in 24-hour internet cafés in the absence of a home of their own.

This reminds me of a short-story I abandoned several years ago:

The thick medicinal waters of the creek below sloshed greenly onto the walkway, where vagrants retreated into the worlds behind their gaudy single-use only VR goggles or trawled cheap plastic mediaslates for even cheaper pornography. Black ivy clung to the surrounding walls in dense sheets that rustled in the warm, gusty air. Graham bit into the straw jutting from his coffee, eyes diverted. The rapidly scrolling slates glowed like pale fire; he thought he saw an iteration of breasts and genitals, rendered in resolution so precise it seemed he looked through distant windows.

Later . . .

The lamps, blood-red and glowing at half-capacity, dangled listlessly, swaying like carcasses in a meat-locker. Back on the street, bulbous, steam-puffing cars zipped by, windows mirrored against the glare of storefronts and the foundering neon of once-chic restaurants. Homeless people, many of them marred by cruel deformities, lined the defunct sidewalk, summoning vicarious charms from slates and projectors. A tiny naked woman with copious piercings writhed in mid-air, extremities flickering.