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What Was Cyberpunk? In Memoriam: 1980-2020 (2020)

I wish I could just download directly into your brain an entire history of how the cyberpunk genre started in the 80’s and the slow procession into what its become. I have read an embarrassing amount of sci-fi novels over the course of my life so unfortunately I’ve got some Opinions about cyberpunk as a genre. With the release of cyberpunk 2077, it feels like the perfect moment to weigh in on one of the few subjects I actually feel qualified to comment on. [Almost like how every time there’s ne...

Among dozens of other “sensitive topics” listed were the oil industry, China, Iran, Israel, Covid-19, home security, insurance, location data, religion, self-driving vehicles, telecoms and systems that recommend or personalize web content. One year earlier, in Zuckerberg’s first Mobile World Congress appearance, he’d introduced a plan to get loads of people online seemingly overnight: Facebook wanted to partner with telecom operators to offer them a free app that had access to a few services like Wikipedia and health information. But aside it not being an accurate depiction of the severity of the dystopia we ourselves live in, stuff too deeply steeped in neuromanticism often also fails to be an as INTERESTING or unique vision of the future as it could be, since cyberpunk has relegated itself to just being more of a established common background that always operates similarly in tech, aesthetic, and tone.

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