Living in a cyberpunk dystopia is weird. Most of the time we don’t even realize we are. We forget because it’s become so mundane, but we live in a highly connected online society largely influenced by giant corporations, and not for the better.
Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a “combination of lowlife and high tech”, featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cybernetics, juxtaposed with societal collapse, dystopia or decay.
…
Cyberpunk plots often center on conflict among artificial intelligences, hackers, and megacorporations, and tend to be set in a near-future Earth, rather than in the far-future settings or galactic vistas found in novels such as Isaac Asimov’s Foundation or Frank Herbert’s Dune. The settings are usually post-industrial dystopias but tend to feature extraordinary cultural ferment and the use of technology in ways never anticipated by its original inventors (“the street finds its own uses for things”).
Wikipedia: Cyberpunk
It’s important to understand that “cyberpunk” as a genre and a concept got its start generally in the late 1970s/early 1980s, and enjoyed a popular heyday through the ’80s and early ’90s. Many—most—stories were written before much of the internet and everything that spun out of that even existed (things like wifi, webpages, smartphones, social media, and so on). William Gibson wrote Neuromancer without ever having used a computer; cellphones weren’t even invented yet.
Go back and read some of those early works. Stylistically they are terrific, conceptually brilliant when done right, but much of the technology, extrapolated and imagined, well, it can be quaint.
The point being, the online, near-future, “cyberspace” technologies imagined in most of those defining cyberpunk stories were for all intents and purposes surpassed in the mid-aughts. The cyberpunk “near future” is our “now future.” We’re living it.
With that in mind, scroll back up and re-read that description again. We can pretty much tick every box. Artificial intelligence? Check. Hackers? Check. Megacorporations? Check. Extraordinary cultural ferment? Check.
These don’t all look exactly like what was described in the books, of course. Instead of cyberdecks we have tablets and laptops; in lieu of cybernetic brain jacks, we have smartphones and wifi. But let’s face it: we’re living in a science fiction genre.
And yes—dystopia? Check. Our day to day experience may not seem particularly dystopic, but taking a step back and looking over the big picture, there are definitely elements of a slow motion dystopia in action that come into view. Consider climate disaster, the creeping rise of fascism, the influence wielded over society by billionaires and corporations, the erosion and active suppression of individual freedoms, privacy, and education… Small pieces that we just live with, rather than the overarching dystopian societies of the genre, but still present.
It’s a strange time, and just to top off this post and emphasize how weird it all really is, I asked ChatGPT to write a paragraph on this very subject:
As we enter the year 2023, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the real world we live in is starting to resemble the dystopian cyberpunk futures that once only existed in fiction. From ubiquitous surveillance and the erosion of privacy, to the increasing influence of mega-corporations and the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor, the signs are all around us. The world feels both familiar and alien at the same time, with strange new technologies and societal norms emerging faster than we can keep up. It’s a world where people are more connected than ever, yet more isolated and disconnected from each other. The pace of change and uncertainty is dizzying, and it’s hard to know what the future will hold. It’s a strange and surreal feeling to be living in a world that seems so out of step with the one we once imagined.
There you have it.