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this post was submitted on 06 May 2025
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Cyberpunk
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What is Cyberpunk?
Cyberpunk is a science-fiction sub-genre dealing with the integration of society and technology in dystopian settings. Often referred to as “low-life and high tech,” Cyberpunk stories deal with outsiders (punks) who fight against the oppressors in society (usually mega corporations that control everything) via technological means (cyber). If the punks aren’t actively fighting against a megacorp, they’re still dealing with living in a world completely dependent on high technology.
Cyberpunk characteristics include:
- Dystopian city setting where mega-corporations rule
- Full integration of technology into society, featuring cybernetic implants
- Outsider protagonists (punks) who often are very familiar with the technology around them
- Hard boiled detective and film noir vibes and influence
- Themes dabbling in trans-humanism, existentialism, and what it means to be human.
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Elysium
Instead of a space station, the ultra rich will live in a giant gated city that has all the world's latest technologies and medical services.
The rest of us will work menial jobs to supply everything for the city.
The other one I was thinking of was Hunger Games .... 12 different regions governed over by one powerful region that controls everyone else with military power using all the latest most deadly and most invasive technologies humanity can imagine.
I don't remember all the details of the film series ... but a feature of it was in seeing genetically enhanced, augmented animals and insects used for warfare ... killer wasps, more powerful animals, birds eaves dropping and recording conversations (the mocking jay)
Imagine a world where genetic modification became unrestricted and used for warfare and used to enhance or modify humans, animals, insects or diseases or conditions.
A small correction: Jabberjays were the mutts used for surveillance and reconnaissance, mockingjays were what happened when Jabberjays interbred with wild Mockingbirds. Nature reclaiming its beast allowed for the districts use them as a tool for communication, an insult to the capital who was trying to strip power away from the districts, not give them more. This is why the Mockingjay became the symbol of the rebellion.
^Alita
Although an Akira crossover with Alita could be fun.
That movie was contemporary geopolitical commentary using a sci-fi metaphor. Same as District 9 (a refugee crisis). So you could argue that future is now, depending on your views.
Science fiction is usually about present issues. It puts them in a different context to offer a different perspective and enable consideration.
That's true. It's also a way of taking contemporary trends and extending them in a slippery-slope type analysis.
The Twilight Zone and Black Mirror have entered the chat.
I replied elsewhere but, yes, that's what they want. Peter Thiel is a proponent of the Network State and absolutely is working towards that end.
We can't get to Elysium, because we defunded all our health care R&D