Why our cyberpunk futures still look Japanese, not Chinese) | Hacker News Reader

Why our cyberpunk futures still look Japanese, not Chinese)

terminaldrift.substack.com

6 pointsboopity20255 comments

Alternatively, Cyberpunk as an aesthetic is a Boomer/Gen X thing.

Don't get me wrong - I love Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Akira, but it is a very 1980s-90s coded aesthetic.

Bar said, those of us who are younger are leaning more towards a Korean aesthetic which itself borrows heavily from American (and especially 2000s-10s LA cholo style) streetware and aesthetic.

Yea while i dont disagree with you, i think the japanification of the future as scene in the 80s and 90s is actually the core issue at play. We used japan because it was booming until it wasnt, and we dont use china as the future because its a real threat, unlike allied japan was.

I'm not quite sure about that. Cyberpunk had an inherent techno-optimism to it couched in that whole weird Gen X cynic schtick.

It's the 2020s. Tech is just "normal" to us, and for a decent size of our demographic, it's viewed no differently than how the legal industry, accounting, or high finance was back in the 1980s-2000s. Tech is viewed as a "normal" concenpt and career path with no real emotional or psychological attachment.

Sorry if this sounds very "Ok Boomer", but like much of the technology and stuff mentioned in cyberpunk fantasies back then is basically an engineering problem at this point, and a very tech ambivalent lens is becoming popular amongst younger people.

Even amongst younger Gen Z/Zilleneial type hipsters, neo-Marxist or neo-Maoist style views are kinda hip in the same way 50s-70s era nostalgia is becoming vogue amongst younger Americans on both sides of the aisle (ie. neoliberal views being viewed as antithetical by both ends of the spectrum) due to the cutthroatedness of modern society.

yeah fair take on the vibe shift. to a lot of younger folks tech isn’t mystic anymore, it’s HVAC. the shiny stuff from old cyberpunk reads like “engineering backlog,” so the romance bleeds out

my point is a bit orthogonal: even if cyberpunk-as-aesthetic ages out, why doesn’t the replacement look like neo-shanghai when the built world clearly does. three boring forces:

canon lock-in. art teams reuse the same visual grammar because it ships on time: rain, stacked kanji, noodle carts, neon. low risk, instantly legible etc etc

incentive gradient. being specific about china is a liability if you want the big market, so productions either go “pan-asia blur” or retreat to retro-japan nostalgia that feels safely fictional

reality tax. the current dystopia is LEDs, QR rails, access gates, payments, logistics. it’s structural, not cinematic. the camera loves neon, spreadsheets and turnstiles not so much

on the korean point, agreed that look is ascendant. it’s globally cool, politically safer, and has a whole export machine behind it. that actually supports the claim: we swap in the aesthetics that are both fashionable and low-friction to sell

so yeah, “tech is normal now” explains the cooling. the essay’s angle is just that economics and politics still decide what tomorrow is allowed to look like on screen, even after the vibe moved on

• Why our cyberpunk future stayed frozen in 1980s style Akira Japan: genre inertia + a safe, marketable form of techno-Orientalism. • Why Neo-Shanghai is missing: China market incentives (censorship), reality outpacing fiction (surveillance as infrastructure), and creators avoiding a fresh round of Orientalism. • The new Jews aka the old Chinese.

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