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Comment by keiferski | Hacker News Reader

I have been working on an essay for awhile that explores the "appeal" of supposedly dystopian cyberpunk worlds. The summary is: I don't think they're actually dystopian and in fact they have a lot of attributes that are lacking in today's world, specifically: a larger tolerance for experimentation on the body and in architecture, and an extreme urban density found almost nowhere on Earth today. It's the same reason why Kowloon Walled City was so intriguing. Calling people "dumb" just because you don't understand them isn't very insightful.

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Dystopian cyberpunk worlds are usually described as hollowed out by corporations or a similar power structures to the point that it's every person for themselves. Some people have the resources to fight back, but most do not. That's what makes them dystopias in my opinion, that if you are not part of the privileged class there is no opportunity to change anything about your situation.

I feel like anarcho-capitalists fall into this same trap, believing that a stateless world ruled by the individual will lead to the most freedom. When it reality it will almost certainly lead to the worst kinds of tyranny and oppression imaginable (as Chomsky observes). In my very experience, the very people who pine for an ANCAP future reality would be the ones most crushed under its boot heel.

Authoritarians similarly tend to assume they will be the ones wearing the jackboots.

And as the meme says, the tech is cool bro.

Do the people who want to make cyberpunk real mean they want to make corporatocracy real or they think VR videogames would be fun? And aren't there degrees of "bad" to cyberpunk novels?

Yeah, I don’t think most of the world presented in the Sprawl trilogy is all that dystopian. Maybe a bit overly-unequal, but also with more space for freedom. There are a lot of fascinating places in those novels that would never be permitted in our world today – a hydroponic garden covering the entire floor of a skyscraper, for example.

I'm sure if you asked Peter Thiel why he pumps the blood of young men into his body he'd say something similar, so maybe it's just one man's dystopia is another person's power fantasy?

The recurrent theme in all cyberpunk media is the lack of humanity we're left with. This isn't something to strive for.

All of your needs are commercialized. Relationships are reduced to tubes you can jerk off into while watching a gyrating hologram for $1.99 a minute.

I respect your attempt to be nuanced but you're really missing the point of cyberpunk itself. The neon lights and wild fashion aren't glamorous, they're artifacts of the desperation of attention-seeking systems attempting to stand out by being more over-the-top than everything around them.

Every sense is exploited to death, and when that's not enough, we'll sell you body augmentations in exchange for your mortal soul (cyberpsychosis' technical debt).

It's a body-shaming, soul-sucking hellscape. Being You is pathetic. Anyone who isn't able to be a perfect corporate drone is generally a low-level criminal of some type, subsisting off of carbs and sodium while living in a squalid apartment the size of a cargo container. Nobody ever "makes" it. You're born rich and live forever or you live and die with rats.

Every protagonist quickly finds themselves with a 5-star wanted level and has a hypermechanized cybermilitary force pursuing them over dumb shit like delivering a package or picking up the wrong passenger. The bureaucracy of justice is impenetrable; I've never seen a cyberpunk Phoenix Wright, only variations of Judge Dredd.

You exist to be exploited, and the minute you stop being useful you're thrown into a literal meat grinder of some form. You don't hear about cyberpunk prisons, just execution squads.

The world is already working or headed this way. To want this future, you really do have to be a fool, a sociopath, or wealthy.

It’s a genre of literature. People have different interpretations of it than you do. I don’t think something like Neuromancer or Count Zero is dystopian at all, but as I said, have spaces for more exploration and experimentation that our world today doesn’t allow for. I wouldn’t call it utopian, but to insist that someone who finds it slightly appealing is a sociopath is to miss the point entirely.

I’m not sure what is so difficult to understand about this.

> I’m not sure what is so difficult to understand about this.

I understand you just fine. You see a shiny prospect. I'm not denying its appeal.

I'm just warning you, Icarus-- you're staring at the sun. Look away. It's not worth it.

> I'm just warning you, Icarus-- you're staring at the sun. Look away. It's not worth it.

Over 2000 years have passed. We've since invented sunglasses, and rivets, and composites, and UV-B blocking sunscreen. We can deal with sunshine.

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