Cyberpunk

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"High tech, low life."

"The street finds its own uses for things."

We all know the quotes and the books. But cyberpunk is more than a neon-soaked, cybernetic aesthetic, or a gritty dystopian science fiction genre. It is a subculture composed of two fundamental ideas: PUNK, and CYBER.

The PUNK: antiauthoritarian, anticapitalist, radical freedom of expression, rejection of tradition, a DIY ethic.

The CYBER: all that, but high-fuckin'-tech, ya feel? From DIYing body mods to using bleeding edge software to subvert corporate interests. It's punk for the 22nd century.

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. It's a place for 'punks from all over the federated Net to hang out and swap stories and meaningful content (not just pictures of city nightscapes).

Welcome in, choom.

founded 1 year ago

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What is Cyberpunk? – Neon Dystopia (www.neondystopia.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[–] unpop0 2 points 1 year ago

Cyberpunk is futurology, from a 1980's American perspective. Everything derives from that seed.

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