This article just tied together everything that shaped me as an adolescent, and I had no idea they were all tied together. Starting with the soil that these seeds need to grow, an unhappy, lower class youth sub-culture. The progression from an angry withdrawal into ones own society into more thought provoking forms of art such as Philip K Dicks novels.

 It starts like this, Dad pays son a visit in small Albertan town, hands him a Never Mind The Bollocks cassette and tells him he may identify more with this than the christian rock his mother gives to him. Before you know it every other confused adolescent in town has a dubbed copy and the local newspaper cant seem to go a week without being vandalized in some way. That music had a way of resonating with pissed off caucasian youth in a way that nothing else will, even the punk music that came out of California in the 80's.

 On the comic book and sci-fi front i was a little off, reading the more conventional comics and reading Robert Heinlen opposed to Dick. After reading this I've already checked out Mobius and will be hunting that down. 

The little detail I have found to be increasingly important with the birth of these movements is entrepreneurship. Malcolm McClaren's clothing shop gave him a source of income that was somewhat separate from the labour crisis in london, this made him free from the economic burdens of society and allowed him to launch his ideas. The same can be seen with Fela Kuti's movement in Nigeria, as he owned a Nightclub, and also with The RZA, as he allegedly used the method of gun running to supply the birth money for Wu-Tang, though he was never incarcerated for those charges.  Entrepreneurship is the most important facet of any free people, and needs to be in place as a support for any artistic movement.

The interesting transformation seen in the punk movement is the eventual embrace of technology.  I imagine Pink Floyd was hated due to its over use of synthesizers, yet Kraftwerk relied completely on digital recording equipment. So it must be the attitudes behind the use, Pink Floyd is using synthesizers to tell you how to feel, in an emotive sense, especially with "Learning to Fly" where Kraftwerk is doing this in the bleaker punk sense, promoting the ideas behind dystopia. Personally I don't put  Detroit Techno or the different House genres on the same level as the German industrial music, but only on the subject of post-punk and the ideas behind music. Unlike punk and its seedlings, Detroit Techno,Chicago House and Garage House are genres of music based solely around nightlife, there is no political or conscious rebellious energy in this music. However, I collect Chicago House and Garage House on vinyl, and prefer its use of  samples to the cold industrial feel of techno. 

 The whole concept of the post-punk movements and cyberpunk all fall in to Mcluhan's statement "technology is an extension of ourselves" or something close to that I hope... The digital age has made communication possible for almost anyone, since the 80's the sounds of the oppressed and pissed off have been exported to the otherwise ignorant around the world. My favorite personal example is when I first heard Wu-Tangs 36 Chambers, or better yet, when my Dad did, the anger and the rawness of that album appealed to him, in his 50's.  Its too bad Wu-Tang eventually started wearing leather suits, and making music videos dressed up as the Flinstones(Gravel Pit), brutal.... I guess everyone goes soft eventually, Shepard Fairey got a clothing company, Jim Jarmusch made Broken Flowers, Ice-T plays a cop on a terrible T.V show, and I went back to school. Shit.