Cyberpunk 2077

[gwathdring]

If we're going to get cyberpunk, let's have cyberpunk that is leveraging off present technology rather than drawing off yester years ideas as to what future will be.

I like it. I'd love a "new" Cyberpunk that does to the 2010s what Gibson did to the 1980s. What would that look like? What is the non-dystopian tech-dependent near future of 2010?

Part of the problem I have there is that I think Gibson was not only good at speculative fiction but lucky to boot--that is, a lot of what's in Neuromancer would be in my 2010 Cyberpunk update.

I think there would be moon and possibly mars colonies in addition to the low-orbit stuff, and I think we'd be realizing just how limited our capacity to effectively further those efforts is even as we achieve the dream to expand. Lot's of climate control technologies would be in place, and an emphasis on green engineering sort of like in Diamond Age

"But they did know that ecosystems were espectially tiresome when they got fubared so they protected the environment [the way] they designed overpasses and culverts."

Except I think we'd be coexisting with obvious signs of the limitations of those technologies and coping with some of the irreversible effects of climate change even as we designed the tools that could have helped us a lot more had they come earlier.

I like imagining a sort of weird juxtaposition between the rewriting of what is possible with technology and the discovery of more profound limitations than at any other point in history. A sense of stagnation next to the sensation of progress. I'd want to look at technology at a point when the processor industry is no longer able to adhere to Moore's law. When quantum computing exists in a robust form.

Just knocking around some ideas.

[Kadayi]

I like it. I'd love a "new" Cyberpunk that does to the 2010s what Gibson did to the 1980s. What would that look like? What is the non-dystopian tech-dependent near future of 2010?

Part of the problem I have there is that I think Gibson was not only good at speculative fiction but lucky to boot--that is, a lot of what's in Neuromancer would be in my 2010 Cyberpunk update.

I think there would be moon and possibly mars colonies in addition to the low-orbit stuff, and I think we'd be realizing just how limited our capacity to effectively further those efforts is even as we achieve the dream to expand. Lot's of climate control technologies would be in place, and an emphasis on green engineering sort of like in Diamond Age

"But they did know that ecosystems were espectially tiresome when they got fubared so they protected the environment [the way] they designed overpasses and culverts."

Except I think we'd be coexisting with obvious signs of the limitations of those technologies and coping with some of the irreversible effects of climate change even as we designed the tools that could have helped us a lot more had they come earlier.

I like imagining a sort of weird juxtaposition between the rewriting of what is possible with technology and the discovery of more profound limitations than at any other point in history. A sense of stagnation next to the sensation of progress. I'd want to look at technology at a point when the processor industry is no longer able to adhere to Moore's law. When quantum computing exists in a robust form.

Just knocking around some ideas.

I think one of the key things that’s generally missing with most dystopian visions is where stuff comes from. How do people feed and clothe themselves? Where’s all this future tech being manufactured and how are the raw materials being gathered? What kind of transportation systems are going to be in place, given present infrastructure and lifestyle is centred largely around the automobile.

I feel like I may be railing on some easy targets here, but if you take for instance the recent Total Recall film (which tbh I didn’t find that terrible as an action flick). Bar the UK & Australia the rest of the world is a toxic wasteland, which begs the question ‘how on earth is anyone feeding themselves?’ I’m not asking the question from the viewpoint of dismissal, I’m asking from the viewpoint of ‘if this situation existed how could they feed themselves?’. Same thing but on a larger scale with Judge Dredd and Mega City One really. How do you feed a population of 400 million people when you exist within a radioactive wasteland?

It’s easy to get into the nebulous and throw around terms like ‘fusion’ as buyouts to justify why the future is now, but with cooler stuff, lots of rain and more neon. However thinking about it from a more sober perspective of what’s actually likely kind of generates interesting ideas within itself. Climate change is a big issue, as is our dependency on diminishing fossil fuels as well as the steady migration of people of all cultures to the city. What kind of a world does that generate? Are we really going to have flying cars? Ala Blade Runner or The Fifth Element? Or is it more likely that energy consumption will be much more of a consideration and personal vehicles will be the exception rather than the rule? What about recycling and reuse? is conspicuous consumption still going to be god, or will actual ownership become less of a thing as more of what we engage with becomes virtual? What about privacy in an increasingly cramped world? And how do these changes impact cultural mindset?

Albeit it would be nice to envisage us reaching to the stars, unless there’s strong financial incentive to go it’s presently hard to see where the money is coming from save private enterprise that can see profitability down the road. I think the real challenge for us lies in stabilizing our growth, and moving towards sustainability before we can consider looking beyond ourselves.

[Heliocentric]

Albeit it would be nice to envisage us reaching to the stars, unless there’s strong financial incentive to go it’s presently hard to see where the money is coming from save private enterprise that can see profitability down the road. I think the real challenge for us lies in stabilizing our growth, and moving towards sustainability before we can consider looking beyond ourselves.

There are 2 kinds of inhabited planet, those who chose to go to space exploration, and those the first kind exploit/discover the ruins of. Staying trapped on one planet because moving off it is "not efficient" is.. Yeah, I can see mankind going out that way.

[TechnicalBen]

Could just as easily go out by spending too much (literally, the energy requirements are HUGE) on space exploration (not even money, could just be too much fuel spend).

It's damned if you do, damned if you don't. There is more fuel than you ever need here, but getting it up there is a massive task. Likewise it really is "empty" out there when you calculate fuel costs and travel times.

But space is still pretty. Just not useful.

[gwathdring]

There are 2 kinds of inhabited planet, those who chose to go to space exploration, and those the first kind exploit/discover the ruins of. Staying trapped on one planet because moving off it is "not efficient" is.. Yeah, I can see mankind going out that way.

I don't see space flight helping us at all except insofar as NASA (and similar agencies) being given the reigns always results in crazy-practical technology once it's yanked out of the various space crafts. The balance sheet for building an auxiliary civilization on Mars or the Moon just isn't sane. I'm sure we'll colonize the moon and Mars eventually, before we fade out forever. But ignoring the probable impossibility of light-speed for a moment here ... where else do we have to go? Where do all of our resources come from during this construction? How do we find the time and money to make Mars habitable or construct a civilization-sized bio-dome complex? What about geopolitical strife that's ongoing during this process? Can you imagine the ease of sabotage in a bio-dome type environment?

And so on and so on. Mostly it boils down to this: if we can't sustain ourselves here, we can't transplant successfully or even sustain part of ourselves elsewhere. I don't see us fixing all of our problems here, so I don't see colonization helping us. I see limited colonization happening. We love the idea too much. But I've never believed the Sci-Fi theory purported by Enchantress from the Stars. That we have to get off-world if we want to survive as a civilization in some profound way.

We do in a very simple way--our sun is going to blow and we don't have enough stuff here to last even that long. But could we move enough people far enough with enough stuff to make a difference anyhow? No matter how enlightened we are as a civilization I'm not sure that's sensible when it comes to the raw number crunching of it all.

[gwathdring]

I think one of the key things that’s generally missing with most dystopian visions is where stuff comes from. How do people feed and clothe themselves? Where’s all this future tech being manufactured and how are the raw materials being gathered? What kind of transportation systems are going to be in place, given present infrastructure and lifestyle is centred largely around the automobile.

I feel like I may be railing on some easy targets here, but if you take for instance the recent Total Recall film (which tbh I didn’t find that terrible as an action flick). Bar the UK & Australia the rest of the world is a toxic wasteland, which begs the question ‘how on earth is anyone feeding themselves?’ I’m asking the question from the viewpoint of dismissal, I’m asking from the viewpoint of ‘if this situation existed how could they feed themselves?’. Same thing but on a larger scale with Judge Dredd and Mega City One really. How do you feed a population of 400 million people when you exist within a radioactive wasteland?

It’s easy to get into the nebulous and throw around terms like ‘fusion’ as buyouts to justify why the future is now, but with cooler stuff, lots of rain and more neon. However thinking about it from a more sober perspective of what’s actually likely kind of generates interesting ideas within itself. Climate change is a big issue, as is our dependency on diminishing fossil fuels as well as the steady migration of people of all cultures to the city. What kind of a world does that generate? Are we really going to have flying cars? Ala Blade Runner or The Fifth Element? Or is it more likely that energy consumption will be much more of a consideration and personal vehicles will be the exception rather than the rule? What about recycling and reuse? is conspicuous consumption still going to be god, or will actual ownership become less of a thing as more of what we engage with becomes virtual? What about privacy in an increasingly cramped world? And how do these changes impact cultural mindset?

Albeit it would be nice to envisage us reaching to the stars, unless there’s strong financial incentive to go it’s presently hard to see where the money is coming from save private enterprise that can see profitability down the road. I think the real challenge for us lies in stabilizing our growth, and moving towards sustainability before we can consider looking beyond ourselves.

A quick note on the space part: I think you're right from a policy standpoint, but I foresee space travel jumping the gun. It's already trying to. I see orbital commercial ventures, maybe a bigger and better ISS, maybe more in addition to scientific outposts on the moon and mars. I see anything beyond scientific outposts on the moon and mars either failing or struggling along half-heartedly without ever quite dying.


As for the rest, I like the idea of starting at the beginning and working up to a new cyberpunk. Where does it all come from indeed. Similarly, what happens to the education system? As the population continues to explode, what happens in countries where immigration limits and population checks are not in place, in particular what happens to their ability to generate educated citizens capable of doing the higher level jobs necessary as lower-level jobs become increasingly automated? What happens to agriculture, manufacturing? What happens to the already strained relationship between the developing world and post-industrial nations? I would imagine the gap between these countries continues to grow, with the list of developing nations perhaps shrinking as some of them reach a nebulous status in between having the capability to support their populous with access to modern rights and technologies under stable governance ... and having the political, cultural and military sway to control their own economy and resources.

There are already huge problems with social safety nets in many countries that have them. What solutions will be found to those problems and how much will they succeed? How much of the welfare-subscribing world will abandon ship, how any will use population controls (birth limits, immigration limits), how many will cut access off for a new under-under class and how many will manage to pull things together and find the right balance (probably none :P ). We're probably going to see a population doubling between 2000 and 2030--while the doubling frequency has been dropping steadily over time, this is possibly going to be one of the lasts as we're not living in a sustainable enough way to support enough people for another doubling after that. The point though, is that with such insane population burdens on already strained resources, safety nets and systems of governance ... surely countries will have to start controlling population. It's easy to imagine that as a somewhat dystopian situation, but perhaps there are ways to deal with population that don't seem callous and unethical.

What happens to the nation-state structure that is already seeing cracks appear and alternatives digging at them? What happens to multi-national corporations and their just-beneath the surface efforts to create their own, cross-border commercial governing agencies? I suspect we'll see more regional control units coexisting or even replacing national governments. Semi-sovereign policy regions are already envisioned and are having enormous success in terms of environmental policy creation. Super-national units, on the other hand, are having a mixed bag of successes and failures (see the UN and EU) that put their potential to last a century or so longer to the question. I foresee overlapping policy regions--this one for watershed, this one for economic policy, this one for energy. It won't necessarily be better, but it will be more flexible and isn't terribly unlikely.

Some more thoughts to knock around.

[SirKicksalot]

I don't think production is the problem. Income is.
tl;dr version: automation will replace most factory workers and manufactures, agriculture will become almost exclusively automated, lab-grown and based on perfected GM strains (same goes for meat production). We will get better at extracting raw resources. Won't go as far as outer space mining this century, but we'll get a lot better at digging and processing matter.

If something requires automation, it's not utilising human intelligence.
What happens with all that intelligence?
Even with robots and improved resource yields making things cheap I don't see how an automated capitalist society can work. Perhaps employment should no longer be a necessity in order to live a good life.
Socialism and communism have better chances to maintain a working, healthy automated society than capitalism.

I wonder how a society focused on producing, consuming and rewarding creativity would work.

[gwathdring]

I don't think production is the problem. Income is.
tl;dr version: automation will replace most factory workers and manufactures, agriculture will become almost exclusively automated, lab-grown and based on perfected GM strains (same goes for meat production). We will get better at extracting raw resources. Won't go as far as outer space mining this century, but we'll get a lot better at digging and processing matter.

If something requires automation, it's not utilising human intelligence.
What happens with all that intelligence?
Even with robots and improved resource yields making things cheap I don't see how an automated capitalist society can work. Perhaps employment should no longer be a necessity in order to live a good life.
Socialism and communism have better chances to maintain a working, healthy automated society than capitalism.

I wonder how a society focused on producing, consuming and rewarding creativity would work.

Creativity will always be fine. As long as we have a system of economy, people will trade economic influence for entertainment. I'll have to think about how that could be the essence of an economic system though ... you'd need a perfect education system, for starters.

I don't see the decline of capitalism as automation occurs because there's a limit to how well that technology can expand. Look at just how much stuff we produce. Now automate all of it, systematically. That requires more people in positions of planning and management and engineering then we have. It's not going to happen cleanly and across the board, if it happens, then. It's going to happen in spurts and fragments and we're going to see more and more conflicts between nations of differing abilities in terms of automation and resource gathering.

There are things that even really good automation isn't good at unless we get true AI behind it. Tasks that humans are really good at without any technological aids--at the cost of a long development time including enormous educational requirements. So if true AI happen, perhaps more fundamental changes start to occur. At the end of the day, though, we're not going to out-mode ourselves or out-mode literature or out-mode creative and intellectual professions unless we go full-on Brave New World and just turn the whole civilization into biological automatons and be done with it. I expect to see the American version of the individual decay substantially, but I doubt it will decay to nothing. It's too against how we see ourselves and our world to form the basis of a society. We are not a hive and we would function poorly as one.

Similarly, the bigger we get the more risk-averse we get. We're already relatively risk averse and short-sighted as a species. I don't see full-blown automation taking over because it's such a big change and there are so many question marks. Businesses especially like to hold back and milk existing systems as long as they can no matter how problematic or unstable or even financially risky ... known risks feel inherently safer than unknown ones to us.

I'm not quite sure what to make of your comments about intelligence really because it seems out of sync with your statements about the instability of capitalism after the theoretical automatic revolution. What we lose in an automated world isn't the jobs that require a human mind but the jobs that require a human body. We lose skilled labor. Manual tasks that are valuable and sometimes quite complicated and technical ... but also repetitive and substantially physical. In the US we tend to call them "trades" or "vocations" and they are, sadly, looked down upon for no good reason what-so-ever. Dental hygienists are an example and even full-blown dentists are considered part of this category. It also includes a lot of things more typically thought of as blue-collar jobs. Fruit picking, welding, machining. Things like driving a delivery vehicle will be some of the lower priority tasks for automation--they might still go first because they're easier to automate, but it's less expensive to train a driver than a skilled dental hygienist so you don't save as much money. All in all, the upper ends of capitalism continue to function just fine. People working in jobs that require substantial education (such as designing and maintaining and operating all of these robotic systems--being the surgeon behind the robotic scalpel), will remain intact for a long time. We'll always find new such jobs, because the very existence of automation implies a refinement process that requires research and education which tend to perpetuate themselves by leading to new discoveries.

The big question mark, then, is what happens to the already unemployed. Or to the unskilled, uneducated laborers: the high school students working check out counters who are already being replaced by self-checkout stations. What happens to the families who experience generational poverty, get left behind by the education system, and then rely on welfare in a cycle that makes them care less about the missing resources that put them in that situation to begin with. That's where we start to see and already see capitalism break down. And frankly, I'm not sure other economic systems really offer a good alternative. Better, perhaps in some ways, but not good. We can only evolve so much as a species without actually undergoing biological evolution to our own benefit ... and human society doesn't really allow for that. Instead, we evolve the technological and intellectual world around us of our own volition, but that requires solid education which requires time, resources ... things that are scarce and only getting scarcer as our populations get big.

A capitalistic society could exist in a world of perfect automation ... just not with nearly so many people unless we had a crazy paradigm shift in the way we thought about economies and employment--and not just adopting old, sporadically successful economic ideas simply because they've always been alternatives to capitalism. Less capitalistic sub-sectors of the global economy are having plenty of problems, too. We need new economies for a new world--what they could look like is another matter I'm still mulling over and would love input on. I'm sure world leaders would, too. :P


I agree with you that we'll get better at synthetics and matter manipulation. I don't know how good we'll be as implementing those technologies. I think we'll have a lot of trouble with barriers of varying economic and political development around the world. Look at how much of the world still doesn't have robust electrical grids, transportation systems, communications networks ... the technological developments of 150 years ago still haven't made the rounds. Any future-scape has to take into account that infrastructural changes become exponentially less possible as civilizations get bigger. Imagine the United States, for example, trying to fix it's horribly inefficient power grid. We're the third largest nation on the planet and we have a relatively well connected highway system. The sheer quantity of pavement .... heck, the sheer quantity of URBAN pavement, urban water-pipers, urban electrical infrastructure ... re-fitting all of that with new tech is a nightmare. Think of all the cars on the American road way. Enter automatic vehicles ... well, how do we make all of them, distribute all of them, and recover the old ones in an efficient and feasible manner?

So much that we're capable of won't happen for decades or even centuries simply because the scope of consistent change isn't feasible. There's going to be inequity--and in some ways that's good. There will always be places and jobs where unskilled workers can go. Just not in the wealthiest, most high-tech nations. And that's a big social problem ... one that would make for some great fiction. And it's one of many reasons why I mentioned in my other post that I foresee at the very least a wild escalation of existing threats to the nation-state system.

[Tei]

I don't think production is the problem. Income is.
tl;dr version: automation will replace most factory workers and manufactures, agriculture will become almost exclusively automated, lab-grown and based on perfected GM strains (same goes for meat production).

Do you think we can continue much forward in this direction without a huge economical crisis?

If robots do the labor, what the people do?. You will need very few jobs. So most people will be unemployed. Who buy that stuff, if most people is unemployed. Continuing that road will just show the insanity of capitalism... a unsolved problem.

I am very pessimist about the future. Best case scenario, in 60 years we will have longer battery life for our smartphones (about 2 or 3 more hours)... and not much else will change (TV will still exist).

[c-Row]

I am very pessimist about the future. Best case scenario, in 60 years we will have longer battery life for our smartphones (about 2 or 3 more hours)... and not much else will change (TV will still exist).

Given the countless versions of possible future dystopias, I wouldn't call that pessimist.

[byteCrunch]

Do you think we can continue much forward in this direction without a huge economical crisis?

If robots do the labor, what the people do?. You will need very few jobs. So most people will be unemployed. Who buy that stuff, if most people is unemployed. Continuing that road will just show the insanity of capitalism... a unsolved problem.

I am very pessimist about the future. Best case scenario, in 60 years we will have longer battery life for our smartphones (about 2 or 3 more hours)... and not much else will change (TV will still exist).

People will have to change and adapt. This is the reason science, maths and engineering are so important, you have to become the person making robots, software etc, rather than the grunt being replaced. Its not really any different than the industrial revolution, the issue however is made worse by the population increase that always comes as a side effect, and the already existing population issue born out of the industrial revolution 200 years ago.

[deano2099]

Hmm.

I get what people are saying, that's a trailer that's notably not showing a strong woman at that moment in time. But that's sort of the point. You see bullets bouncing off her, you see scythes out of her arms and dozens of people dead, but then you zoom out and she's collapsed on the floor, surrounded and vulnerable. Which to me seems to be the point of the trailer: that she has all this power but that still leaves her vulnerable. It's sexualised a little in order to make that point more strongly but not by a huge amount.

And if I had scythes that came out my arms I probably wouldn't wear baggy clothes either.

[gwathdring]

And if I had scythes that came out my arms I probably wouldn't wear baggy clothes either.

I would. Light, mobile fabrics designed to allow flexibility and to slice easily when necessary. Martial Arts 101: don't wear tight leather. Also paint fences or something.

[NathanH]

Being cool 101: Wear tight leather.

[gwathdring]

Being cool 101: Wear tight leather.

[thermal regulation joke]

I was not discounting the cool-ness of it. I just thought maybe the poster meant "I wouldn't want baggy clothes that got caught on my scythe arms."

If what was meant is "I wouldn't want un-cool clothing distracting from the awesomeness of my scythe arms" then by all means hit up the tight leather.

[TechnicalBen]

Do you think we can continue much forward in this direction without a huge economical crisis?

If robots do the labor, what the people do?. You will need very few jobs. So most people will be unemployed. Who buy that stuff, if most people is unemployed. Continuing that road will just show the insanity of capitalism... a unsolved problem.

I am very pessimist about the future. Best case scenario, in 60 years we will have longer battery life for our smartphones (about 2 or 3 more hours)... and not much else will change (TV will still exist).

Replace "robots" with "tools" or "sanitation" and you have the same conversation. If it's under 100% automation, there are jobs enough to balance the production (supply/demand balance I guess). If it hits 100% automation, then why worry (providing everyone has at least 1 robot).
But either of those are sci-fi from what I can see. :)

[Kadayi]

I don't think production is the problem.

Production might not be a problem but resource supply will be. We've a global economy largely built around a fossil fuel transportation system that isn't sustainable in the long term. Most goods are made using components and materials that aren't found locally, but are brought in from elsewhere. Remove large amounts of oil from the equation (which is also the cornerstone of the entire plastics industry as well) and getting your minerals out of the earth and shipped about becomes much more of an issue.

We will always be able to generate electricity that's for certain, but we're not in the position to be able generate enough to remotely replace the amount of energy dollars consumed daily by every petrol driven vehicle/device on the planet. Right now we're enjoying a degree of energy expenditure per person that our descendants will marvel at in many ways.

If anything we should expect a contraction of movement by people in the long term, in that people will look to work nearer to home to reduce travel costs etc, and there would if not be a move away from globalization then a degree of regionalization. Presently most of the worlds clothing is made in China, but I'd fully expect to see those manufacturing companies start to set up operations in other countries in order to reduces overheads as transportation costs and supply become more and more of an issue. I wouldn't be surprised to see the City state emerge again as regional power comes more to the fore Vs national control. I don't foresee government disappearing. It's still going to be important from the world perspective, but less dictatorial over things that can be addressed by regional governance.

Population certainly is an issue. Albeit we seem capable so far of continuing to increase in number and just about feed everyone, there is the big question as to what all these people can do. I think we're a long way off from complete automation , and certain jobs do require human input. However I wouldn't be surprised to see other countries beyond China start to look seriously at population control, especially when it comes to those beneath the poverty line.

Will address further points later on during the week (been busy today)

Also. At the end of the day everything is speculation, the let's not forget that the purpose is to think about how such futures could be used to generate a modern Cyberpunk.

[gwathdring]

If anything we should expect a contraction of movement by people in the long term, in that people will look to work nearer to home to reduce travel costs etc, and there would if not be a move away from globalization then a degree of regionalization. Presently most of the worlds clothing is made in China, but I'd fully expect to see those manufacturing companies start to set up operations in other countries in order as transportation costs and supply become more and more of an issue. I wouldn't be surprised to see the City state emerge again.

I was thinking similar. I think a modern Cyberpunk would definitely involve a break-down of the nation state and a power surge for cities, possibly all the way down to city-states cropping up. Local policy, state policy allegiances, localization of resource management as much as possible, the abandonment of certain regions that rely over much on imports unless they reach a critical mass of some other commodity production that doesn't require raw materials--cultural products like films are a good example.

[Kadayi]

I was thinking similar. I think a modern Cyberpunk would definitely involve a break-down of the nation state and a power surge for cities, possibly all the way down to city-states cropping up. Local policy, state policy allegiances, localization of resource management as much as possible, the abandonment of certain regions that rely over much on imports unless they reach a critical mass of some other commodity production that doesn't require raw materials--cultural products like films are a good example.

Indeed , it opens up the opportunity for much more renaissance style scenarios. Hijacking of goods trains from different regions etc. Etc, rather than this kind of hackneyed Vs the corporations thing. Not to say that Corporations aren't going to be around, but more that they're likely to be localized.

[gwathdring]

Indeed , it opens up the opportunity for much more renaissance style scenarios. Hijacking of goods trains from different regions etc. Etc, rather than this kind of hackneyed Vs the corporations thing. Not to say that Corporations aren't going to be around, but more that they're likely to be localized.

I think we'll see corporate entities that expand across city state borders. Corporations have a rich history of managing divisions and sub-divisions and brother companies and daughter companies. Corporations just might end up being the biggest, broadest organizational schemes left, I think. Not the only ones or the most powerful. I don't see globalization going away, especially not with the Internet intact--these city states will need to have rich interconnections, more so than even the city-states of the Renaissance which were fairly well connected themselves. And some of those interconnections will jump across the globe haphazardly while others will spread wide contiguous nets and some will be more localized.