What is Cyberpunk? – Neon Dystopia
What is Cyberpunk? – Neon Dystopia
Looking for a definition of 'Cyberpunk'? We keep the definition up-to-date as the genre and subculture continue to evolve. Read more here at Neon Dystopia!
Cyberpunk is now. Many of the things that were predicted in cyberpunk are coming to pass today. Improvements in prosthetics and brain computer interface have resulted in brain controlled prosthetics, a mainstay of cyberpunk. Corporations increasing dominate global politics, and influence culture creating a situation ripe for subversion. The poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer, creating a larger and larger divide. The cyberworld is ever merging with the real world through things such as the Internet of Things, social media, mobile technology, virtual reality, and augmented reality. Hackers have brought gangs, corporations, governments, and individuals to their knees. We have entered the cyberpunk age. Welcome.
Cyberpunk has spread to all forms of media, creating a subculture rather a simple genre. There are cyberpunk movies, television, comics, music, and art everywhere. All you have to do is look. Cyberpunk has influenced fashion, architecture, and philosophy. Cyberpunk has become much more than what it was when it began. And it will continue to evolve and become more relevant as we move further from the Cyberpunk Now into the Cyberpunk Future.
In my opinion, cyberpunk is a projection of social/economic/tech/etc trends of 70s and 80s into the future (with accent on dystopian scenarios), while post-cyberpunk is the same but for 2000s and later. Neither of those is now, obviously. But I think we're much closer to post-cyberpunk now - less freedom, more order, less horrors, more mundane
That's definitely true of cyberpunk as a science fiction genre setting — reality has turned out at least superficially far different from what the 70s and 80s cyberpunk authors predicted, although I'd argue under the surface it really is similar, and they had their fingers on the pulse — but as an ethos, and a set of themes, it's another story. There's still a place for antiauthoritarianism, anticapitalism, DIY, and radical freedom of self expression, as a means of surviving and fighting back against the all powerful corporate-state capitalist hegemony. There's also a place for understanding that tech can be, and is being, used to accelerate inequality, alienation, lack of autonomy, and all other corporate destruction of society. It's the ethos and themes this community is about, which unifies cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk.
Cyberpunk is futurology, from a 1980's American perspective. Everything derives from that seed.