Noah Smith writes an article talking about how growing up he was influenced by the Cyberpunk genre, and how as he grew up he realized we are bring this world in line with a cyberpunk dystopia. It's a very introspective post that asks a lot of difficult questions, with few answers. And makes you feel before long we won't have to play a cyberpunk game to be immersed in that type of world, as we'll be living it. Here is a snip, let us know your thoughts in the comments, is he right or not?
William Gibson once declared that “Science fiction is never about the future because it can't be, because that's impossible. It's only really about the moment in which it's written.” But it can also be about the past, and the paths not taken. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is a little like the 1930s retrofuturist fantasy that intrudes on people’s subconscious in Gibson’s 1981 story “The Gernsback Continuum”, but updated for the neon future Gibson himself was imagining at the time.
That vision, part real present and part retrofuture, has now essentially crystallized — “cyberpunk” aesthetics and plots will look essentially unchanged from Pondsmith’s vision when 2077 rolls around. Like Tolkienian fantasy and space opera and the zombie apocalypse, cyberpunk is now one of our standard forms — a comfy, familiar fantasy universe that we can slip into like an old sweater.
The real question, as I see it, is what the next future is. In the 80s and 90s, the vision of a world dominated by information technology and capitalist inequality infiltrated our collective conscious. But what vision is seeping in and assembling itself now?