Today's Quackcast will be on the cyberpunk genre, which we discuss in detail…

But it occurred to me that while it was HUGE back in the 90s and even the early 2000s, it's sort of faded away now.
There was a videogame called “cyberpunk” and a promo anime on Netflix based on it but they were like weird retro greatest hits versions on the theme.

Cyberpunk changed from its very gritty origins (the “punk” part of the name), into something much cleaner and more technical and sleek before it lost traction.

I think that what happened was that reality caught up with it and it wasn't sci-fi anymore?

From what I've read cyberpunk stuff moved more into the enhanced reality, virtual world stuff that companies like Meta are working on (Charles Schloss is big on that), because that's where “cyber” is going rather that meta-humans jacking directly into computers via crude cables, but it's just not that popular now.

I wonder if Digimon, and Isekai stuff like Sword Art Online and Log Horizon and stuff could be considered the new cyberpunk?

I think that Cyberpunk was a sum of different things that were cool in the 80s but are not directly related: e.g. the cybermodifications are not directly related with stuff about virtual reality and disenbodiedness of coscience (AIs and people who “surf” the web), and neither is is directly related to the sort of social collapse somehow implied in most cyberpunk stories.

But then, on the other hand, it is also possible that we are already living in cyberpunk and this is why the genre died: are we living in a social collapse period? Society changes constantly and so there is allways someone who is crying for collapse, but in the west there is often a feeling of negative expectations towards the future.

Internet is now an integral part of everybody's lives, though not in the ways it was imagined in the 80s.

Cyberstuff is not really common, alas.

EDIT: ——————

Maybe what changed is how we imagine social collapse: in the 80s there was the fear of microcriminality, and the fear of rising corporation power (also a tad of fear of foreigners because of the economic boom in Japan).

Earlier there was fear of a nuclear war.

Now we have - fear of climate change? I don't see many SCI-FI stuff about it. What about movies like Elysium (I liked it) or Hunger games (I didn't read/watch it)?

Maybe cyberpunk could now be a vintage alt-hist genre like steampunk. Our world didn't turn out that way but here's a setting and world where it did.

Or you could have it be a world setting for an Interstellar story. Here's the Enterprise visiting this cyberpunk planet.

Ungol is supposed to be kind of cyberpunk setting but all the body modifications are internal, unobtrusive and simple like a pair of glasses or a wrist band. Vera actually has a communication system hard wired into her brain. It's never mentioned because it's just part of the world. It's like someone on their Bluetooth. People take it for granted but it's still dark with the femoids and virtual slavery.

I think the real core of cyberpunk was that it was about the intergeneration of computer tech into society and how it changed things. Most of the other stuff was just aesthetics- societal collapse was simply a plot device for a particular story.
The rise of Japan in early cyberpunk was because at the time Japan was seen as leading the world in technical innovation- people thought that's where the future was happening.

You are right Marco- in that the tech really IS part of our word now so we ARE really living in a cyberpunk world now.

Bravo, I'm not sure what Ungol is but that's a good take on body-mods.

——-

While the real world has overtaken a lot of the Cyberpunk stuff, we still haven't got to the idea of full on “diving” into cyberspace. Virtual reality is as far as we go.
And Robotic body additions are still too expensive and experimental on offs… There are special glasses, that enhance reality, experimental robotic eyes, experimental exosuits and artificial limbs but nothing that people can reliably even buy.
We do have some medical implants like pacemakers, insulin pumps, and carious other weird and very specific things, but we're a long way for integrating mechanical tech into our bodies and a more real and visceral way than that.
————————

The closest Ive seen actually though was the Australian performance artist Stelarc. Back in the 1990s he did a couple of things- had a robotic arm spliced to his own ar that performed all the same movements of his real arm as he did them, so it was twinned.
He also had a series of giant robotic multi-legged platforms made the control of which was connected to to his brain when he stood on them to ride them.
That's the closest I've seen anyone go with transhumanisim. -Rather than consciously controlling these devices they were a “part” of his body and controlled by his body without thought.

Ungol is the setting for my current comic Interstellar Battle Girls.

You know that performance artist was using cutting edge prosthetic technology in the 1990s. A lot of that stuff is standard in the prostheses used for amputees now. Except that it is often supposed to be unobtrusive so the person can live a normal life. Except those who decide to extraordinary things to prove that loss if a limb is not a disability. True to cyberpunk tropes it makes them more than human. We already have a real transhumanism and we just don't see it any more than those ear buds or Bluetooth. It crept up on us and already past what the authors forecasted and we barely noticed and just take it for granted.

bravo1102 wrote:
We already have a real transhumanism and we just don't see it any more than those ear buds or Bluetooth.

I still don't think we really do. Artificial limbs just have simple mechanical controls as far as I know- not even steampunk, that's more like Bronzepunk haha!

Bluetooth ear-buds are still us interacting with external devices, no different that any other. Because they just deliver sound to the ears, no different to headphones or speakers, they're just closer.

You COULD have an argument for that with a Cochlear implant though. That and pacemakers, and insulin pumps and devices that give direct nerve stimulation for pain issues -stuff that actually invades the body and replaces or enhances functions starts to do this.



With devices like bluetooth headphones though, really that category includes any external machine, like a forklift, gun, computer, hair-drier etc. You can make a trans-humanist argument with that stuff but it's fuzzier… Like cars enhance our function by making us have the ability to travel much faster and crary more weight with us, and smartphones enhance our brains by giving us access to all the knowledge, communication, and computational power- but then a similar argument applies to an abacus or a book.

I don't think anybody is having implants if not to cure illnesses, which is not what transumanists claimed. Otherwise not only everyone with a pacemaker should be considered a cyborg, but even people with a beg leg or an hook instead of a hand, so cyberpunk actually started in prehistory.

Ozoneocean wrote:

bravo1102 wrote:
We already have a real transhumanism and we just don't see it any more than those ear buds or Bluetooth.

I still don't think we really do. Artificial limbs just have simple mechanical controls …

Myoelectric prostheses are a thing. Muscle and nerve tissue are grafted so the body's electrical impulses moves the prostheses. Various hearing and sight implants are directly connected to the nerves. The research is advancing.

There are also all kinds of microprocessor controlled prostheses that are basically computer controlled limbs. Only a short step to having them directed and powered directly by the body itself.