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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doctor Futurity" data-source="post: 8473405" data-attributes="member: 10738">You make an important point that the notion of humanity loss and cyberpsychosis is not something that appears universally in Cybperunk fiction and film. I think it is better to consider that the notion of humanity loss is specific to how Cyberpunk 2020 and CP Red model the possible future, by proposing that extremely invasive and sometimes lethal augmentation actually does have an erosive impact on humanity. It is definitely not the only way to model a cyberpunk future, and one which thinks we will be able to handle such modifications may be looked at as a more optimistic version of the genre....but I think Cyberpunk Red is very deliberately choosing to view the future in a more pessimistic light.From a real world perspective I think I can summarize it like this: if someone loses a limb as a soldier or in an accident and gains a prosthetic replacement, we have clear evidence that this is a good thing, and a great benefit to the person suffering the loss to help them return to a normal life. But the cyberpunk future is about people who live in a world where a sense of ownership of your own eyes, limbs, even your brain has already been culturally desensitized through corporate marketing and a cultural sea change to the point where you will go have a ripperdoc cut out the natural body part and replace it, willingly, with artificial parts purely for aesthetic/style reasons....and that's before even considering this is a society in which modding yourself into a lethal weapon is already considered a smart move by many for survival purposes. Cyberpunk Red depicts a universe in which the entire culture of thought has shifted to the idea that we're really all just "meat" and that removing the meat to replace it with something more lasting is both acceptable and makes you a smart consumer. That is nowhere near the world we live in today, but I can easily see how we could end up in that future.</blockquote>

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