By: XEONIQ [ Instagram | Tumblr ]
As part of a conversation on literacy I had with a friend on Instagram’s direct messages, he put forth the question to me: “is cyberpunk getting more real today”? Below is an edited transcript of my response that I felt that some SHELLZINE readers may enjoy.
Is the William Gibson-esque vision of cyberpunk more relevant now than when his books were initially published? Certainly not, in my opinion. Gibson’s most oft-cited work in the genre, Neuromancer, was written at a time when he professed to not understand how a personal computer even worked1. It belongs far more in the fantasy genre than it does in science fiction, despite it’s near future setting, and was born during an era when there was a Western fear of Japanese industrial and political power. Neuromancer, and the dozens of referential genre texts that followed it, was based on projections where consumer technology would be developed to enhance individual ability and efficacy; with companies locked in hyper-competition to deliver performance-based results in an increasingly unfettered laissez-faire market.
But none of this came to pass. Japan was economically hobbled by severe earthquakes that destroyed billions in real-estate and then a series of market crashes and recessions that, when combined with a rapidly ageing population, effectively neutered it as a threat to the ongoing protectionism, the exact opposite of a free market, inherent in American hegemony and its coming technological dominance via practical ownership of the Internet and smart phone industries.
Of Gibson’s work, perhaps the most relevant futurist ideas at the time could be found in the Bridge Trilogy, where characters like Colin Laney interpreted “nodal points” as a kind of techno-psychological form of prognostication, which did seem to develop into what we understand today as machine-learning “Big Data” analytics. While Neil Stephenson did coin the term “Metaverse” for the virtual reality system described in Snow Crash, Gibson’s Virtual Light, detailed a more realistic, albeit underwhelming, application in a pair of augmented reality glasses.
80’s and 90’s cyberpunk as a genre was very much about resistance, both physical and virtual, to large corporate and state collectives and the triumph of individualism in subverting technology to overcome all odds in David vs Goliath scenarios. They were inspiring for readers, who imagined themselves as Cayce Pollard, Johnny Mnemonic and Molly Millions, and they dreamed of new technology produced for them as consumers that would empower them in similar ways against a rapidly encroaching and intimidating future reality. But that was naïve to think that corporations or states would want this kind of reality to manifest, and instead these powerful entities focused on creating consumer dependence on pay-to-play subscriptions, watching, and learning from our collective moves, and removing features or sometimes complete products in the interests of user safety.
So no, an accelerated progression of technology that prioritised individual capabilities did not manifest in our now third decade of the 21st century. The way consumer technology actually developed has been in using cultural conditioning “lifestyle” marketing techniques together with the evolution of virtual “eco-systems” to tribalise, divide and fracture consumers to create network effects to drive big profits at the expense of, rather than the advanced of, personal efficacy and autonomy. In short: a capitalist-driven, centralised corporate media and surveillance state was created to both capture user data and mentally condition users into controlled patterns of consumption. An ideal example of this can be seen in the contrast between how Nokia or any of the Japanese smart phone manufacturers were developing personal communication technology in the 1990s and 2000’s versus how Apple and its Google Android competitor eventually took over the industry – and thus the market trajectory of technological development for the brunt of consumers.
Does this mean that “cyberpunk” in its various forms is not relevant or “real” today? Again, no. In 2025, with the ongoing resurgence of cyberpunk, its themes of technological oppression, environmental degradation, the erosion of “developed” society, and the rise of the East are more apt than ever. Further, the mainstream media, where the original cyberpunk texts were born out of traditional publishing houses, is so censored and gatekept that commercially distributing content that falls outside of very narrow pro-system norms is effectively silenced and demonetised. A “cyberpunk” author attempting to critique the system or establishment today would not be able to earn a living from it in the way Gibson and his contemporaries were able to. While less regulated publishing platforms like Substack exist, the independent cyberpunk authors that may publish there are as fractured and atomised as the readers they hope to reach. Their ability to form a cohesive evolution of the genre, or even the ability to stay true to its defiant, radical punk roots, is thus greatly obstructed.
Outside of media, we live in an age when private military contractors can use modified grenade-equipped civilian drones both on the battlefield and in clandestine operations around the world. Bustling underground darknet markets for drugs and illicit media thrive where the consumers of it are as likely as the distributors to earn life sentences depending on their jurisdiction2. Mere teenagers are earning millions of dollars in elaborate social-media amplified cryptographic virtual currency trades online. In Shenzhen, the city is trialling active low-altitude flying police cars and delivery drones3 straight out of Ridley Scott’s 1982 Blade Runner. While law-abiding consumers in the West are left with over-priced and under-performing Apple virtual reality devices 4, equally ineffectual hypebeast logowear peddled as cutting edge fashion, and crumbling 20th century infrastructure, there are those living far differently, some outside the law and playing dangerous, technologically-enhanced, high-stakes games against not only their competitors, but an increasingly omnipotent, AI-driven system.
Cyberpunk is certainly “now”, just not in the same easily-digested, consumer-inclusive trappings that it was presented in to readers decades ago. The mainstream reboot of cyberpunk media is limited to those decades-prior aesthetics and thus is more retro than it is a hard-hitting critique of the system. But even IF cyberpunk as a style, cyberpunk as a genre of currently on-trend media, or cyberpunk as an ideology of understanding politico-corporate oppression and means of resistance, appear fake to some, the threats inherent in cyberpunk’s narratives are very real, and in fact, since the 1980’s, they have only gotten much stronger.
If you liked the cyberpunk-themed reality images in this set, you can see more of my photography on Tumblr or Instagram.
References
- Gibson, W. (2020). ‘I was losing a sense of how weird the real world was’. (S. Leith, Interviewer)
- Burgess, J. (2025). Dozens arrested in global hit against AI-generated child abuse
- Deng, I. (2024). Shenzhen to invest US$1.7 billion in economy for flying cars, drones by 2026.
- Mitchell, A. (2024). Apple’s Vision Pro flop: Company scales back production of $3,500 VR headset amid lackluster sales, customer complaints