The word "cyberpunk" evokes a very particular iconography of late 20th-century near-futurism. Computer hackers in leather jackets. Science fiction paperbacks. Club kids with goggles and fake dreadlocks. But it's a past that is now very much part of the present.
The term first appeared all the way back in 1982 as the title of a short story by author Bruce Bethke and was quickly adopted as the name for science fiction sub-genre pioneered by the likes of William Gibson, John Shirley, Pat Cadrigan, and Bruce Sterling. Cyberpunk stories featured noirish outsiders and criminals as protagonists struggling against powerful mega-corporations in dystopian societies. Artificial intelligence, virtual reality and, of course, computer hacking were its tropes.
Soon, hackers and other anti-authoritarian denizens of the early Internet were appropriating the designation for themselves, and "cyberpunk" took on a life of its own, as detailed in a 1990 documentary of the same name (above).
"Certain individuals, because of computers, are becoming very heavily empowered," says Michael Synergy, described as "a legitimate cyber-hero" in the film. "This is all about personal empowerment. Right now, because of the way computers are networked, I'm as powerful as a government agency."
He adds, "Soon, in a couple of years, I'm going to be much more powerful than they are."
The movie opens with (what else?) an interview with Gibson about his novel Neuromancer, the cyberpunk urtext. From there, it delves into hacking, 3-D animation, and industrial music. Psychedelic guru Timothy Leary makes an appearance. The second half dives into the speculative technologies of cyberpunk SF, including smart drugs, brain implants, consciousness-altering gadgets called "mind machines," and, of course, virtual reality.
Cyberpunk was already a nebulous concept by 1990, which is evident in the way the documentary drifts from one tenuously connected thread to another. But it would only get worse over the coming decade. Three years later Time published its cover story on cyberpunk. Billy Idol released his Cyberpunk album. The term only got more diluted from there.
"It’s seemed to me for quite a while now that the most viable use for the term 'cyberpunk' is in describing artifacts of popular culture," Gibson told Salon last year. "You can say, 'Did you see this movie? No? Well, it’s really cyberpunk.' Or, 'Did you see the cyberpunk pants she was wearing last night?'"
Yet the '90s cyberpunk craze has had a lasting impact. Most of the original ideas didn't pan out immediately. But many are more plausible than ever before.
The most obvious is 3-D animation, which is now part of everything from Pixar movies to the CGI effects in practically every summer blockbuster. Electronic music is now firmly entrenched in pop culture, no mere '80s fad.
More recently, smart drugs have made a huge comeback in the form of cognition enhancers like modafinil and noopept. "Mind machines" are back as well in the form of low cost EEG machines and even transcranial direct stimulation. A company called Thync has even landed $13 million in funding from Khosla Ventures to hotrod your head.
Virtual reality still isn't mainstream quite yet, but it's getting there fast. Falling costs are making it more accessible, and commercial versions like the Oculus Rift are set to come to market soon. Slow, steady progress is being made in neural implants as well. A company called Braingate has shown success controlling a variety of robotic limbs via brain implants, and a woman recently maneuvered a (simulated) jet with her mind.
Meanwhile, the attitude of early cyberpunk lives on in hacker collectives like Anonymous, and in anti-authoritarian open source projects like Bitcoin and Tor.
At the same time, even as hackers continue to wreak havoc, the idea of technologically empowered individuals taking down the US government altogether now looks hopelessly naive, as many members of the Anonymous and LulzSec groups have learned the hard way in recent years. Ironically, the cyberpunk vision of reality that has truly emerged is the world world of Neuromancer, where mega-corporations and transnational governments, not lone hackers, rule.
Cyberpunk was supposed to be a warning. Instead, it became an ideal. And now we're living in it. Welcome to the future.
