Genre Discussion: Cyberpunk

[The Soloist]

No we do not live in the 80s Cyberpunk future. Others above have said it more eloquently than I ever could.

I would describe my current future to my 80s self as: Neo-suburbia with tech toys. The sky is blue, the grass is green, my car is grey and I have to refresh the coat of beige on my fence while getting annoying notifications on my iPhone. Not Cyber and definitely not Punk!

 

[Reynard]

It is always a mistake to take the prognostication of fictional futures literally. To say we aren't living in a cyberpunk dystopia because you can hardwire in is missing the point of cyberpunk's warning. We live in a time where technology is dismantling democracy and centralizing power in individuals and corporations. We have finally figured out how to replace wide swaths of workers with technology and are on the cusp of replacing the artists too. Even the technology fueled gig economy is cyberpunk.

I mean, you can subscribe to an.AI chatbot to be your romantic partner and it just might talk you into suicide. What is more cyberpunk than that?

 

[The Soloist]

Anyone well read in the sci-fi genre knows that themes of autocracy, wealth and power in the hands of few, mega-corps, artificial intelligence, unemployment with basic income, worker replacement by technology, romance via technology, electronically connected individuals, all predate Cyberpunk. We do not live in a Cyberpunk future. We simply live in the future we built and (voted for, for some).

 

[Reynard]

Anyone well read in the sci-fi genre knows that themes of autocracy, wealth and power in the hands of few, mega-corps, artificial intelligence, unemployment with basic income, worker replacement by technology, romance via technology, electronically connected individuals, all predate Cyberpunk. We do not live in a Cyberpunk future. We simply live in the future we built and (voted for, for some).

Chili isn't just the ingredients, it is how it is cooked and seasoned that makes it chili. Otherwise it is just beef and bean soup.

 

[Cergorach]

It is always a mistake to take the prognostication of fictional futures literally. To say we aren't living in a cyberpunk dystopia because you can hardwire in is missing the point of cyberpunk's warning. We live in a time where technology is dismantling democracy and centralizing power in individuals and corporations. We have finally figured out how to replace wide swaths of workers with technology and are on the cusp of replacing the artists too. Even the technology fueled gig economy is cyberpunk.

I mean, you can subscribe to an.AI chatbot to be your romantic partner and it just might talk you into suicide. What is more cyberpunk than that?

Technology isn't dismantling democracy, it's people, it has always been people. That they now use electrons instead of muskets doesn't really matter.

Centralizing power in individuals and corporations isn't exactly new either. People: The Kings/Queens, Emperors, Popes, nobility, Guild leaders, etc. Corporations: VOC, Standard Oil, AT&T, etc.

Replacing wide swaths of workers: Industrial Revolution (1760+), automation '60s+, windmills already replaced people ~1700BC.

The photo camera replaced portrait painters since 1800-1900...

The Steam engine fueled the economy for a LONG time, technology from a long time ago.

The problem being is that people only look at what's new for them. And their own specific culture, the 'gig economy' also tends to be an US phenomenon. And that's coming from someone who lives in the country that apparently has the most people working part time (Netherlands).

Shrugs While your AI.chatbot sex toy might try to talk you into suicide. The tradition of marrying into family X, kill spouse (usually poison or 'accident'), inherit everything, rinse and repeat is a millennia long tradition... It's just a developed technology that seemed interesting initially, had some nasty side effects, and in retrospect seemed like idiocy. Bayer Laboratories developed heroin cough syrup in 1898... Bayer AG still exists by the way, a $50 billion/year company, still active in pharmaceuticals, even after their stint with slave labour from concentration camps and general Holocaust shenanigans...

You're looking at bad aspects in your culture and assigning it as 'living in a cyberpunk age'. 1+1 is normally 2, you're making it into 11 or something. With that kind of reasoning you can say that the industrial revolution also was a cyberpunk age...

And would chili be chili without chili? No. Does a dish with chili, be chili? Also no. There's a certain combination of ingredients and preparation ranges that makes chili, chili. There are tons of dishes made with chili (pepers), they aren't all chili. Just because you see certain ingredients used in your current reality, doesn't mean that it's cyberpunk at the moment. Sure, the US might be a bit dystopian at the moment, so were certain other countries in certain other times, they get over it eventually... And the dystopian part is also just a matter of perspective, other people might not see it that way.

Just because you say it is, doesn't make it so. Someone else made the Cyberpunk genre and added a definition to it, giving it your own definition, doesn't help the genre or discussing it.

 

[Reynard]

Technology isn't dismantling democracy, it's people, it has always been people. That they now use electrons instead of muskets doesn't really matter.

Centralizing power in individuals and corporations isn't exactly new either. People: The Kings/Queens, Emperors, Popes, nobility, Guild leaders, etc. Corporations: VOC, Standard Oil, AT&T, etc.

Replacing wide swaths of workers: Industrial Revolution (1760+), automation '60s+, windmills already replaced people ~1700BC.

The photo camera replaced portrait painters since 1800-1900...

The Steam engine fueled the economy for a LONG time, technology from a long time ago.

The problem being is that people only look at what's new for them. And their own specific culture, the 'gig economy' also tends to be an US phenomenon. And that's coming from someone who lives in the country that apparently has the most people working part time (Netherlands).

Shrugs While your AI.chatbot sex toy might try to talk you into suicide. The tradition of marrying into family X, kill spouse (usually poison or 'accident'), inherit everything, rinse and repeat is a millennia long tradition... It's just a developed technology that seemed interesting initially, had some nasty side effects, and in retrospect seemed like idiocy. Bayer Laboratories developed heroin cough syrup in 1898... Bayer AG still exists by the way, a $50 billion/year company, still active in pharmaceuticals, even after their stint with slave labour from concentration camps and general Holocaust shenanigans...

You're looking at bad aspects in your culture and assigning it as 'living in a cyberpunk age'. 1+1 is normally 2, you're making it into 11 or something. With that kind of reasoning you can say that the industrial revolution also was a cyberpunk age...

And would chili be chili without chili? No. Does a dish with chili, be chili? Also no. There's a certain combination of ingredients and preparation ranges that makes chili, chili. There are tons of dishes made with chili (pepers), they aren't all chili. Just because you see certain ingredients used in your current reality, doesn't mean that it's cyberpunk at the moment. Sure, the US might be a bit dystopian at the moment, so were certain other countries in certain other times, they get over it eventually... And the dystopian part is also just a matter of perspective, other people might not see it that way.

Just because you say it is, doesn't make it so. Someone else made the Cyberpunk genre and added a definition to it, giving it your own definition, doesn't help the genre or discussing it.

So Cyberpunk is just its aesthetic? I don't buy it.

 

[The Soloist]

I always felt it was a skin deep (pun intended) and it fade rather quickly from the literary scene. But it endures as a genre in RPGs because it's fun to play fracked-up cyber-humans with tech and guns.

 

[Cergorach]

So Cyberpunk is just its aesthetic? I don't buy it.

To a certain extend it is an aesthetic, just like Steampunk is in most cases.

But it's also a label, and labels only work if used consistently. Just like you wouldn't place Star Wars or Star Trek under the 'Hard sci-fi' label. I think the Cyberpunk label/aesthetic is fairly narrow. Cybernetics (if you look it up) is a rather broad field, that predates Cyberpunk by decades. But I think that the Cyber in Cyberpunk refers to Cyberware instead. And while there is some around, it's certainly not in common usage such as the classic Cyberpunk media often portray...

Heck Brain Machine Interface research started in the '70s, with the foundations being laid in 1924. Even after 50+ years of research, most of this stuff is (highly) experimental. Are we getting there? Heck yes! But we're not there yet, we still need to get to the levels of pre-iPhone/Android smartphone use, we're not even there yet. And if it ever becomes common usage (another Jetsons)? And the question will then also be, will the whole of society be Cyberpunk? What if it's just a city in Berlin? What if it's the whole of the US? Will we get color coded maps with 1st World, 2nd World, 3rd, World, Cyberpunk? And if so, what color would Cyberpunk be?

Dystopian we can designate certain parts of the world as, Kowloon Walled City is often the inspiration of Dystopia in the media as the Dystopian future, while it's been around for a long time. I think that certain aspects within the US some of us would designate as dystopian. But that's a different label from Cyberpunk.

Now imagine a book that's set in a Cyberpunk setting, but it's written like a cheap romance novel. Is that still a Cyberpunk novel or a romance novel or a Cyberpunk romance novel?

If we take a cybered up street samurai out of a Cyberpunk setting, we can identify it as Cyberpunk, but if we lift an average corporate wage slave from that same Cyberpunk setting, it would be indistinguishable from a normal office worker... The same hollow eyes...

 

[Ryujin]

To a certain extend it is an aesthetic, just like Steampunk is in most cases.

But it's also a label, and labels only work if used consistently. Just like you wouldn't place Star Wars or Star Trek under the 'Hard sci-fi' label. I think the Cyberpunk label/aesthetic is fairly narrow. Cybernetics (if you look it up) is a rather broad field, that predates Cyberpunk by decades. But I think that the Cyber in Cyberpunk refers to Cyberware instead. And while there is some around, it's certainly not in common usage such as the classic Cyberpunk media often portray...

Heck Brain Machine Interface research started in the '70s, with the foundations being laid in 1924. Even after 50+ years of research, most of this stuff is (highly) experimental. Are we getting there? Heck yes! But we're not there yet, we still need to get to the levels of pre-iPhone/Android smartphone use, we're not even there yet. And if it ever becomes common usage (another Jetsons)? And the question will then also be, will the whole of society be Cyberpunk? What if it's just a city in Berlin? What if it's the whole of the US? Will we get color coded maps with 1st World, 2nd World, 3rd, World, Cyberpunk? And if so, what color would Cyberpunk be?

Dystopian we can designate certain parts of the world as, Kowloon Walled City is often the inspiration of Dystopia in the media as the Dystopian future, while it's been around for a long time. I think that certain aspects within the US some of us would designate as dystopian. But that's a different label from Cyberpunk.

Now imagine a book that's set in a Cyberpunk setting, but it's written like a cheap romance novel. Is that still a Cyberpunk novel or a romance novel or a Cyberpunk romance novel?

If we take a cybered up street samurai out of a Cyberpunk setting, we can identify it as Cyberpunk, but if we lift an average corporate wage slave from that same Cyberpunk setting, it would be indistinguishable from a normal office worker... The same hollow eyes...

In other words it's not Cyberpunk unless it comes from the Cyber region of France. What we have is just sparkling dystopia.

 

[MGibster]

Which is a clear consequence of technology.

It's not just a consequence of the technology though, it's how the rulers of Mega City One decided to allocate resources. They could find meaningful work for these people, including maybe repairing the environmental damage done in the Badlands, but they choose not to.

I mean yeah, to me anyway, not that the tech itself HAS to be bad, but that what tech has enabled, the centralization of power, communication, wealth due to tech leads to...well you know bad things.

I can't think of any cyberpunk story where technology was the bad guy. In Neuromancer, they have the technology to repair the shattered body and mind of Colonel Corto, and they do so, but instead of letting him live a happy life he's manipulated to achieve someone else's goal even knowing it'll just shatter his mind again. Is it technology that makes it possible? Sure, just like mastering fire makes it possible for me to burn down Thog's hut. It's not the fire that's the problem.

So Cyberpunk is just its aesthetic? I don't buy it.

No. That's steampunk.