# Are we cyberpunk yet?



## TomMazanec (Oct 28, 2020)

This world, from the viewpoint of the 1980s, features pocket supercomputers which you can hold up to get real world data (AR...I have an astronomy app like that I would use a *lot *more if Twinsburg had decent night skies) and which you can access, in real time, most of the world's knowlege and much of its population. We also have a nasty new pandemic which has put a Depression scale population out of work, and a society so divided that a new American Civil War is an imaginable near future.
Would the founders of Cyberpunk have called this cyberpunk?


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## Robert Zwilling (Oct 28, 2020)

No idea what they would have/are thinking about computer use for the publics access to information. Personally I think there is so much garbage mixed in with true facts that every article needs either fact checking, or labeled as entirely true, mixed, pure entertainment, or garbage. I would say John Brunner would be feeling horribly right at home right now. I suspect that originally the stories were warnings instead of adventure stories as to what could happen. Watching warnings turn into blueprints is going to discourage some people from staying inside the bubble of reality we have carved out for ourselves. Fantasy can act as harbor of safe refuge for reading and writing.

From what I can see, the general population has thoroughly embraced the idea of publicizing/recording everything being done under the sun and moon, under the umbrella of that's entertainment with unlimited world wide stage time. The phones went from being watchers and recorders of the establishments awkward, uncontrolled, you're not suppose to see these moments, into the equivalent of "travel papers" whose movements are recorded everywhere for some ones future use, as well as "secret files" that contain our entire medical/consumerist history. Ironically it is not governments that are using this information but corporations which seems to be very much cyberpunkish. Plus the phones can be used as passports to confirm that we are not harboring some fugitive virus so that we might be allowed to go somewhere or even anywhere.

While biological pressures may not be a big part of cyberpunk, in the real world, biology of the natural world has pushed us into a digital cocoon overnight. Whether we emerge as flying high in a new digitalized world, or come back out to the same old same old is a matter of big debate. 

If this brave new world isn't cyberpunk reality, it is at the very least a phenomenal science fiction adventure.

The use of technology to mass communicate has advanced light years under the guidance of corona. It was hoped that by the time we reached this level of exposure we would have had fantastic virtual reality experiences where the seams between the real world and the virtual world would have been seamless. This has not been the case, as evidenced by our zooming experiences, which seems more like tunnel vision through insect eyes. Still, a huge chunk of the population has gone digital overnight, for medical, educational, consumerist, financial, work, and entertainment functions, without stopping to check out any powerful downdrafts that could end up chaining us to anchors of our own making.


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## Vince W (Oct 28, 2020)

Cyberpunk portrayed the 80s pushed forward 40 years or so. There was also a vision that science, while exploited, has made certain things possible, i.e. neural interface, orbital colonies, true AI, etc. While it was certainly bleak for a large sector of the population it was still very much forward thinking. I don't think we're anywhere near the future those stories depicted. So no, this future could not be called cyberpunk.


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## kythe (Oct 28, 2020)

I think of cyberpunk as portraying a world where people are closely intertwined with technology, to a point that we are nearly one with it.  I grew up without a computer in my home, yet now I would be disabled in both work and school without one. We get around with GPS.  We rely on Google for instant information. 

Security cameras are everywhere. Individuals carrying cameras phones take pictures of anyone or anything.  Viral no longer only references disease, but the flow of online information reaching the entire world instantly.

We don't have "cyborgs" in the sci fi sense, but there are several types of electronic implants in use.  Pacemakers are electronically controlled.  There are medication implants like insulin and baclofen pumps.  Most medical machinery is computerized, as are patient medical records.

We may not live in a world indistinguishable from virtual reality, but we do have high quality computer graphics, photographic manipulation, and simulations.

I think sci fi authors from even the relatively recent past would be surprised at the levels of computerization throughout our world.


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## jd73 (Oct 28, 2020)

TomMazanec said:


> This world, from the viewpoint of the 1980s, features pocket supercomputers which you can hold up to get real world data (AR...I have an astronomy app like that I would use a *lot *more if Twinsburg had decent night skies) and which you can access, in real time, most of the world's knowlege and much of its population. We also have a nasty new pandemic which has put a Depression scale population out of work, and a society so divided that a new American Civil War is an imaginable near future.
> Would the founders of Cyberpunk have called this cyberpunk?



It's more like straight-up dystopia imo, whereas cyberpunk has more holograms, bigger Geissler tubes, badder-ass cycles, and better hair. There's still time though. Personally I'm hopeful that a cyberpunk-style knackered future is not so far off.


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## Vladd67 (Oct 28, 2020)

Well the new computer game is called Cyberpunk 2077 but the original RPG was called Cyberpunk 2020 so the finish line keeps moving.


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## Vince W (Oct 28, 2020)

I'm a Cyberpunk 2020 player from waaaaay back. I had the 1st edition box and many (most) of the supplements. There have been a number of delays on Cyberpunk 2077, but since Mike Pondsmith has been directly involved in the development of the game so I have high hopes. Even if the game is fifty-seven years further on there is a distinctly 80s vibe to the whole thing.


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## Toby Frost (Oct 30, 2020)

I think we live in a cyberpunk/dystopia hybrid, where cyberpunk-style methods are used for the dystopian control of populations. What we don't have on the dystopian side (in the West) is a genocidal dictator worshipped as a god, like Big Brother, Hitler or Stalin, but I see certain prominent figures as sociopaths who would have this as their eventual goal, so we will probably either move down this route or (I hope) deliberately reject it. 

On the cyberpunk side, one of the key ideas of cyberpunk to me is that of individuality, that a particularly good console operator or the like could achieve a huge amount on his own, and could exist without being forced to work for one company. I think the prevailing trend is against this. Occasionally, an individual does become the "face" of a movement, like Greta Thunburg, but I don't see that as cyberpunk.


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## Vladd67 (Oct 30, 2020)

Not cyberpunk, more like media savvy or maybe mediapunk.


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## .matthew. (Oct 30, 2020)

I think Kythe makes a great point, we may not be all the way there but we are close, with technology being very nearly there in terms of implantable technology and mind-controlled prosthetics.

Many places in the world will likely fall to a cyberpunk dystopia but I think the west is more likely to just keep plodding along under the delusion that we have our freedoms


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## BAYLOR (Nov 22, 2020)

I think that when Earth becomes the Borg collective,  we will then be Cyberpunk.  After all, Resistance is futile .


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## Vince W (Nov 23, 2020)

I wouldn't call the Borg cyberpunk, but I can see the reasoning that they are the logical end of social media taken to its obvious conclusion.


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## BAYLOR (Nov 23, 2020)

Vince W said:


> I wouldn't call the Borg cyberpunk, but I can see the reasoning that they are the logical reasoning of social media taken to its obvious conclusion.



Vince , thats'a very frightening thought.


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## Toby Frost (Nov 23, 2020)

_Homo Stultus._


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