The next evolution of cyberpunk?
Posted by PsychochildFeb 24
I’m heading to a conference for the “day job” part of my life next week, so I might not have time to post. So, I’ll leave you with an open-ended question to discuss: what’s the next step in cyberpunk?
I think the obvious first step is to update the technology. Wireless technology, for example, has changed things tremendously. A lot of 80s cyberpunk assumed wires would be the order of the day. Some modern stories (and current versions of game settings like Shadowrun) have taken this into consideration.
As I’ve also written before, geopolitics have to change. The old world order doesn’t stand anymore. But, I still think the themes of older superpowers loser their luster to newer (old) players on the global stage is still an interesting concept.
So, what do you think? What has to change to modernize cyberpunk? Let’s see some discussion!
3 comments
Comment by Rampant Coyote on February 24, 2011 at 1:14 AM
I was just reading today about the first functional millimeter-scale computer… a tiny, tiny little system. Made me think cyberpunk almost immediately. So consider these (which are more of just extensions of existing cyberpunk conventions):
1. Ubiquitous computing & communication. RFID on steroids. When computing costs mere pennies and can provide so much feedback, makers of everything from shoes to cigarettes will be installing millicomputers on everything. Think of how, for example, Facebook games are gathering metrics on just about every click, every action you make in the games. Now imagine companies doing the same thing with real life.
2. Likewise – as privacy is rapidly becoming a thing of the past in our real world, put that on fast-forward. All that data collecting taking place among thousands and thousands of companies and government agencies makes it possible – if extremely difficult – to get very exact information about anyone in the world who doesn’t take great pains to stay off the grid. So while that can of Diet Coke you bought this afternoon may not know exactly who bought it, it knows exactly where you bought it down to the GPS coordinates, how much you paid for it, what the temperature was when you bought it, how quickly you drank it, and maybe even your approximate body mass index. Somewhere out there, someone else has information about where your credit card was used to buy the drink. Someone else has imagery from one five thousand tiny personal, company-owned, and government-run cameras that were active in a four-block radius that probably caught pictures of you. The information is all out there – it’s just expensive to hire someone to pull all those needles out of the haystacks.
3. Hey, maybe all that radiation going from all these communication devices is making sterility a real problem. Being able to afford to have a child takes on a whole new meaning, as the chance of having children naturally as opposed to test-tube babies is increasingly rare.
4. A lot of the genre fiction of the past theorized a world where the corporations took over, with major world governments of the era being reduced to basically ineffective third-world powers still trying to be relevant. I think what we’ve seen more of in the West over the course of the last 20-30 years is more of a case of western democracies cozying up more and more with big money — corporations, labor unions, and other special interests. So rather than having a future where the government has been steamrollered by private interests, a more modernized cyberpunk society would illustrate more of an uneasy alliance where regulation and oversight by the government is merely polite fiction, but really the only thing keeping a giant conglomeration’s power in check is the competing factions within.
Comment by unwesen on February 24, 2011 at 3:56 AM
I’d add to the list events currently unfolding in North Africa and the Middle East. It’s become pretty clear that instant and effective communication has been made available to everyone, to the point where special interest groups (to phrase things neutrally) can organize enough to overthrow governments.
My hunch would be that there’s a tipping point; if megacorporations or governments abuse their power too much, the above will come into effect sooner or later. So Rampant Coyote’s idea of having an uneasy alliance between megacorporations and governments seems more sensible than the older cyberpunk ideas of corporations running the world all on their own. I would, however, add the people as a third party in that uneasy alliance.
The upshot is, though, that some relatively minor problems aside, most people will enjoy “just enough” wealth and comfort, or there’d be an uprising. That takes away a lot of the cyberpunk themes right there.
So the only alternative I see is that somehow this ease of communications is strongly curtailed. I’m not sure how that would happen, other than through some form of catastrophe that distracts people enough for some group to seize power over it. At which point you can go with all the other cyberpunk things again…
Comment by anarchotoads on February 27, 2011 at 9:49 AM
Like everything ‘punk,’ I feel as if cyberpunk ignored a lot of race boundaries, so addressing that sort of thing rather than avoiding it with cyberisation might be interesting. I suppose GitS did it best with cyborg/human relations, but I think that a racial and financial divide between the first and third worlds would be interesting, and show a side to cyberpunk which maybe doesn’t get addressed often (I think Gibson makes a few passing references to Africa?) Certainly there are enough… idiosynchretic regimes in Africa to inspire writers.