Have you ever uploaded your brain to a compuer? Did you ever have to fight to the death against your classmates? Have you ever had to determine whether or not someone you love is an android?
No?
Yeah, me neither. So that leaves the obvious question.
How do we know that we live in a cyberpunk dystopia?
- Self driving cars.
- Remember that time when we didn’t have handheld brains to augment the thinking that we do with our regular brains? Me neither. Let me look it up. Nope, that never happened.
- Corporations are people. One of the main precepts of cyberpunk is that big, evil corporations control, manipulate, or outright own the government. They run society and they don’t do a very good job of it. Well, shit.
- This thing. Because, of course, computers need their own weird blood. Ew.
- Drones are everywhere now. They’re always watching you, you know. Why not wave at the sky and let them know that you’re OK with it? No, wait, don’t do that. If they think you know, they’ll just, well, never mind.
- 4k flatscreen TVs. They’re awesome, but what’s the point of all those extra pixels? You can’t even get a 4k signal from anything. DYSTOPIA!
- A significant human-caused alteration of the climate and…
- A corporate-led denial of those alterations. Which is widely believed.
- No, I won’t link to evidence of those last two. It’s ok to make broad statements such as these and link to absolutely no evidence. That is, in fact, how we prefer to get most of our information.
- When I was a kid Garrison Keillor was some old guy my grandma listened to on the radio. Now? Thirty years later and he’s still on the radio doing the same show. The only answer: Robot Garrison Keillor. The Prairie Home Companion is propaganda, everyone. It’s there to convince us of the wholesome nature of our overlords at NPR.
- I’m willing to admit that last one hasn’t been fully vetted.
- Digital books. That’s so cyberpunk, man. We are SO living in the future. We don’t even have anything to do with all those rainforests we’re chopping down. I mean, we still chop them down, but still.
- Bitcoins are a real thing. We might as well call them creds and exchange them by knocking our phones together. Maybe we do that. I don’t know.
- Everything that the totally non-evil super benevolent Google Corporation (or Alphabet, I guess?) produces.
I think it’s pretty clear that we live in a cyberpunk world. Our society will now slowly slip into ruin and decay. Our best choice is to–wait, we don’t have any choices. That’s the idea.
Wait a second… Hold on.
*checks gas prices*
No, actually, never mind. We’re fine.
Make sure you share this in the social media hive-brain of your choice.