edgerunneralexis

I've been following Haiku OS off and on since I was 10 (I'm 21 now) and it's been really nice to see it actually progress in a substantial and noticeable way since I first found out about it.

Lawrence Person positions postcyberpunk as the natural and perhaps even rightful successor to cyberpunk, the thing that not only is replacing it, but deserves to replace it and should be celebrated in doing so, primarily because it is more mature in some sense — more calm and staid and optimistic, less alienated and angry and nihilistic:

Postcyberpunk uses the same immersive world-building technique, but features different characters, settings, and, most importantly, makes fundamentally different assumptions about the future. Far from being alienated loners, postcyberpunk characters are frequently integral members of society (i.e., they have jobs). They live in futures that are not necessarily dystopic (indeed, they are often suffused with an optimism that ranges from cautious to exuberant), but their everyday lives are still impacted by rapid technological change and an omnipresent computerized infrastructure.

Postcyberpunk characters frequently have families, and sometimes even children... They're anchored in their society rather than adrift in it. They have careers, friends, obligations, responsibilities, and all the trappings of an "ordinary" life. Or, to put it another way, their social landscape is detailed as detailed and nuanced as the technological one.

Cyberpunk characters frequently seek to topple or exploit corrupt social orders. Postcyberpunk characters tend to seek ways to live in, or even strengthen, an existing social order, or help construct a better one. In cyberpunk, technology facilitates alienation from society. In postcyberpunk, technology is society.

Cyberpunk tended to be cold, detached and alienated. Postcyberpunk tends to be warm, involved, and connected.

The problem is that, looking around at the world we live in today, I don't think that postcyberpunk is actually more relevant than cyberpunk to the sociopolitical and technological landscapes we're facing. Maybe, to give Lawrence his due, this wasn't true in 1999 when he wrote this essay — maybe there was more cause for optimism — but whether that was true or not there's certainly no cause for optimism now.

For instance, millenials (and soon generation Z as well) have found themselves in a position where it is nearly impossible to get a steady career job, have kids, own a home, and become a part of the middle class like Lawrence talks about. Economic forces beyond our control have made that dream impossible for most of us, and we are doomed to forever remain to some degree on the outside of "the system" compared to the postcyberpunk protagonists that Laurence lauds as more realistic and mature. Likewise, the social isolation and atomization of our times, our lack of community and friends and real social fabric, has been extensively documented in study after study, affecting even the older generations.

Meanwhile, corporations have only extended their control over every aspect of our lives. Nearly everything we do and have is now partially owned and controlled by corporate overlords, to a degree those of the 80s and 90s could only have dreamed of, from subscription services to allow you to use your car's full capabilities to EULAs and data collection. Not to mention how those same corporations have, with vast reptilian intelligence and depthless patience, bent our entire political and economic system to their monomaniacal will.

Postcyberpunk's view of technology and social reform seem far less in tune with reality as we've experienced it in the last twenty years than cyberpunk's as well. Postcyberpunk seems like a return to the belief that the inevitable march of technological progress will eventually bring us to a point where society has been changed — or at least can be changed — substantially for the better from within the system, by reform and liberal notions of progress. I would argue that cyberpunk's view of technology as a fundamentally amoral, neutral force which can just as easily be put to oppressive uses as liberatory ones and which, therefore, will only serve to accentuate and hyperaccelerate whatever hierarchies and systems already exist is a far more realistic one.

Even if, for example, we eventually create the technology to enter a truly post-scarcity fully automated luxury communist world, if the systems and hierarchies that are in place when that happens are capitalist ones, then it is capitalists that will own such technological means, capitalists that will possess the intellectual property that allows you to create them, and capitalists that will own the materials, and so they will view it as just a means of reducing their production costs to nothing, while keeping their prices the same. Nothing will change radically but an increase in the centralization of power. It will take some radical leaking the intellectual property, and then a huge movement of people making such production machines and refusing to stop — even in the face of the police officer's baton — to break capitalism's hold. And what does this sound like?

Cyberpunk characters frequently seek to topple or exploit corrupt social orders.

We cannot dismantle the master's house with the master's tools.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. Cyberpunk as a genre is fundamentally capable of being more radical, and sees the nature of our now more clearly, than postcyberpunk can. Postcyberpunk is a reformist, humanist, optimistic genre that is fundamentally a return to the Asimov philosophy of science fiction with the tools, but not the insight, of cyberpunk. That's not to say that all cyberpunk is so — only that cyberpunk has more of a capacity to be, that good cyberpunk is. There's always the derivative fluff.

This might be old news to most of you, but I still think this is a good explanation of what the Flipper Zero is, and it's definitely worth knowing about for those of you who don't already.

It's the same as the city, Sarah knows, the same hierarchy of power, beginning with the blocs in the orbits and ending with people who might as well be the fieldmice in front of the blades of the harvester, pointless, countless lives in the path of a structure that can't be stopped. She feels the anger coiling around her like armor. The chance to rest, she thinks, was nice while it lasted. But right now another fragment of time must be survived.

For me, I'm not sure.

I love synthwave like GUNSHIP and PYLOT and Essenger as much as the next cyberpunk, but besides a few particular GUNSHIP and Essenger songs, they don't feel quite right.

Neither does straight up punk rock or metal, which is the other stuff I listen to.

The cyberpunk music I want needs to be a blend of the two I think — the atmospheric sounds and use of synths and technological effects from synthwave, and the overt rage and message and aggressive, imperfect rock sound of punk rock and metal.

Edit: I'm liking industrial so far!

cyberpunk

!cyberpunk@dataterm.digital

A place for like-minded punks to gather from all around the federated Net, dedicated to the cyberpunk genre and its ethos as a whole. From DIY body mods to using bleeding edge software to subvert corporate interests.

This is a community dedicated to discussing anything cyberpunk, be it books, movies, or other art that falls into the genre, or real life tech, projects, stories, ideas or anything else that adheres to these ideals.

The ideals being both punk — anti authoritarianism, anti capitalism, radical self expression and freedom, anti traditionalism, and the DIY ethic — and cyber — all the stuff I said before, but high-tech.

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.

I may not be particularly inclined toward religion or spirituality, but I did really find this essay interesting and attractive.