

What happened to cyberpunk? - dtm1
http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/6/5/what-happened-to-cyberpunk--2

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bgalbraith
Speculative science fiction is not so much a window into the future, but
rather a reflection of the present in which it was written. By drawing on
current trends, authors can extrapolate a future. The cyberpunk aesthetic
arose around the same time as the personal computer, early Internet, 80's
corporate greed, continuing urban sprawl, the Japanese economic bubble leading
to property purchases all over the world, etc. -- inspiration for many themes
that appear in cyberpunk works. Many of these things have cased to be novel
(in the same way) or exist at all. For instance, computers and connectivity is
ubiquitous now, massive conglomerate corporations haven't totally taken over
for governments (depending on who you ask, at least), China has somewhat
replaced Japan, and the world has moved on. Unless they were just writing
genre fiction, authors like Gibson would not keep cyberpunk going because the
world today is very different from the one that spawned it.

Another thought is to compare it to the other famous "-punk" style, steampunk.
Steampunk benefits from the fact that all the technological foundation (steam,
mechanical, analog) it is based on exists. I'd argue that the genre can thrive
because a well-defined foundation exists from which to create. With cyberpunk,
some of the foundations exist (computer hacking and espionage), but many are
still left as future speculation (synthetic organs, cybernetic implants). It
becomes harder to have a consistent foundation when there are still moving
targets. I guess we can still have trench coats and mirror shades ;)

I really enjoy the cyberpunk aesthetic, and I wish it had more of a footprint
in current music/film/TV. It may be though that true cyberpunk is really a
product of the 80's. The spirit of what drove it, technology-driven dystopia,
continues to this day.

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veidr
I agree; I think the main thing happened is that a good chunk of the cyberpunk
world arrived, and we found out that it sounds way more interesting on paper
than it ends up being in the real world.

Chinese kids sell their organs to buy iPads -- sad, but predictable, not some
novel dystopian problem.

The CEO of IBM holds a meeting in a virtual world via avatar -- sure, a shitty
pixelated avatar in a ho-hum world kind of like the one my Sony PlayStation 3
boots into

Hunter-killer robot drones swooping out of the sky to kill citizens (and
nearby children) with no regard for law or constitutional rights -- ugh,
again? Change the channel.

It's not all here of course; if Chinese black ice could kill me through my
computing terminal, that would still be pretty interesting. But by now we're
all familiar enough with the matrix to know that it can't really kill me,
except maybe through a heart attack induced by annoying popup Flash ads for
erectile dysfunction pills. Boring.

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margold
Chinese kids selling their organs to buy iPads is straight out of a cyberpunk
novel, as you say many things we read about 10-20 years ago are already here,
but it's human nature to find the present the most boring place to be.

But as the article duly notes, -punk is about counterculture, and
counterculture is timeless. And when you look at how many people still code in
neon green on black background, or read those books, there still seems to be a
need for these topics. The conversation is not over yet.

I'm a fan of the daydreaming induced by cyberpunk novels, although I don't
understand why, since it's something we experience daily already anyway (and I
can take or leave the leather coats, shades, matrix rain, and all other visual
hallmarks of cyberpunk). But I think a modern cyberpunk work of fiction can be
done, and I hope we will see it done someday.

