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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cergorach" data-source="post: 9759225" data-attributes="member: 725">Some random dude, back in '86, called Bruce Sterling coined it as "low-life and high tech".Maybe in the part of the world where you live it's now 'low-life', but certainly not where I live. And even in the US, the wealth distribution might have gotten more extreme, but not drastically so (1% from 23%=>35%, lowest 50% from 3.5% to 2.5%). That is not to say that is good, now, but that it wasn't significantly better in the '80s when most of the Cyberpunk was written, the 'low-life'was certainly there in the US during the '80s. And we've all seen the shocking news images of people living on the street. We had those back in the '80s as well...As for 'high tech', from a '80s perspective, sure. But what we mean by 'high tech' from an '80s cyberpunk perspective, most certainly not. We're getting there, sure, but that kinda tech isn't (commonly publicly) available yet. And I've seen promising DNI from 30+ years ago, it's now just instead of a big cable running from your head, it's some chip implanted that communicates wirelessly.The collection of Elon companies might be some of the most cyberpunk like companies out there, self-driving cars, DNI implants, colonies on Mars, but to date, it's just been empty hopes and promises from one man...People are not cutting off limbs to replace them with stronger versions. Drones are still essentially radio controlled toy aircraft and cars, sure there are military variants that do a LOT more, but military drones have been around for decades. The net is more widespread, there is more hacking, there is more cyberdefense. In all cases not at the levels of Gibson technology, we've just been progressing, faster in certain areas, far, far slower in others (see the Jetsons). The only real difference is that back in the '80s we were limited by newspapers and tv/radio news, today we (can) know a lot more about what's going on all over the globe, there is also a LOT more sensationalism and misinformation isn't as regulated... It was already bad in the early '90s if you ever followed the Gulf War and did so by watching/recording all news channels, in multiple countries, from all political views, plus many different news papers. If you were exposed to all the negativity in the world back in the '80s (beyond everything you already where), your outlook in the '80s would have been even bleaker.Also keep in mind that most of the early Cyberpunk was formed, made, and released during the Cold War, with the real possibility of WW3 looming, nuclear war, etc. Companies, multinationals are extremely powerful, sure. But are they more powerful then in the past? Again, most of the shenanigans you didn't know about due to communication limitations. And while working for a company in the US is often 'at will' employment, that is not the case in every country or continent. The powers of Asian companies in their home countries have been curbed by their governments, which in the '80s was the actual inspiration of the Mega corporations, not US companies... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Cyberpunk in many media try to distinguish them from the old '80s stuff, sometimes that feels extremely toned down (maybe a result of it wanting mass market appeal), or there are parts you recognize as Cyberpunk, but others not. It also doesn't help of course that everyone and their (cyber)cat gives their own 'meaning' to what Cyberpunk actually is... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />As such, Arcane (TV animation) is Steampunk, not Cyberpunk. Westworld, dystopian science fiction, but not necessarily Cyberpunk (haven't yet watched the later seasons).</blockquote>

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