TouchCommercial5022 t1_j1kwhqa wrote
CYBERPUNK
Cyber = high technology. usually near future (rather than Star Trek sci-fi).
Punk = bad life. The belly of a metropolis.
Thus, Cyberpunk generally depicts stories of seedy criminals and/or ground-level cops/mercenaries in a high-tech (usually urban) setting of the near future.
and it's not even something futuristic it's something completely real;
Now there is a cyberpunk world. Just not as advanced as the popular media generally likes to make it out to be. But dig a little, you'll notice a staggering amount. Remember, high tech, low life. Now we have many all over the world.
Cyberpunk is dirty, overcrowded, urban, and almost invariably dystopian. Although I like cyberpunk stories, living in such a world would be absolute hell for me. No doubt he would end up as some kind of enemy of the state trying to demolish buildings and expose bare ground to light in order to replace the concrete and glass with green.
watch this;
https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-4989442be6c3a4f99bc1ea21610e8f0e
https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-72e486113512323a722160bdbd5d67ae-lq
https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-fe9a0b3e0da151a981da51d5f4f6b85c-lq
https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-30085a9af3c2d2dc6cc0057930da135e-lq
https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-6cebff05e33db8e75890ca51e3d7a2bf-lq
You still don't think we are in a cyberpunk world??? We don't even get into the subject of AI that is fashionable and debated these days, let's just focus on the most basic;
We have brought the world upon ourselves, we wanted it. Heck, I love my video games and social media and the distractions of reality as much as anyone. We see technological advancement as the inevitable march of progress towards the comfort and enjoyment of life. And yet with that march has come the pill-taking, detachment, and depression of modern society. A world in which Mildred's overdose asks us a terrifying philosophical question 60 years later: which is worse, being so disillusioned with life that you want to kill yourself, or being so detached from reality that you commit suicide without even realizing it?
cyberpunk is a dystopia and was created as a warning, which we are fully addressing, basically it is the warning of what could happen if we allow dystopian realities with corporate control
When was a cyberpunk future something to be desired? The problem, IMHO, is that it still fits too well.
Now we have the dystopian part, why not get all the cool tech, architecture and clothes?
however....
we are not close yet, but I do believe that we will be a 100% cyberpunk world in the next decades
There's some cyberpunk-ish stuff going on in the modern age, and we're making leaps and bounds around cybernetics, cybernetic augmentation, artificial intelligence, and the transhumanist movement is gaining ground. We are also developing high-tech stuff like Musk's “Nuerolink” and much more.
But we are pretty far from being a cyberpunk future like in science fiction movies.
Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction set in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to work in a "mix of low-life and high-tech", featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cybernetics, juxtaposed with collapse or the decline of society.
Corporations run cities, states and countries, and they are often dirty, politicians control much of the big picture and they are just as dirty, taking the world into a dystopian class divide. The technology is much more advanced than it is now, but as mentioned, it is juxtaposed with the decay, ruin, and problems of society.
One of the main aspects of cyberpunk is cybernetic augmentation and the combination of biomechanics and transhumanism. Mixing machinery with humanity. While modern science is developing such technology, we are still a long way from high-tech cyber breakthroughs.
We're just not there. for now
Technology isn't that fluid, government isn't that weak, corporations aren't that strong, and cities aren't that great/bad
You can see a clear difference between real life;
https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-cc17673ee0960181a68f0749bba99afc-lq
https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-830845b9e30c5b5c89cf52b660a829ed-lq
and cyberpunk;
https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-bab8fce5430bec39eda1f845f5763df9-lq
https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-21a0ce1e2839cc713981a63370c4b05b-lq
https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-ccdcc66c297d6a95ac388e5fc75d30f3-lq
but I don't doubt that it won't be long before we become more and more in a cyberpunk world
https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-b8917260c78e9cfeef8c6f879bb032a9-lq
When I first saw this image I thought it was a computer cyberpunk scene. It's actually a photo taken in Shibuya, Tokyo by photographer and Flikr user Guwashi999 in January 2012. All credits to the photographer.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/guwashi999/
We are right on the razor's edge of becoming those stories Gibson, Brunner, Ballard and Ellison warned us about and we show no signs of slowing down. As we race toward a bright, toxic, and violent future of technology and augmentation, perhaps we should do well not get lost in the process.
I'd like to live in a cyberpunk world If we stripped away all the technophobic, anti-urban, anti-foreign slant of old-school American cyberpunk and left the high-tech, social liberties, limited government, and super-dense cities, then yes, it would be all about that .
we are living a dystopian nightmare. I think a lot of us expected dystopia to happen as the result of a Mad Max-style apocalypse, but instead of one big catastrophe like global thermonuclear war or something, it's been a constant accumulation of a thousand smaller things. Like a frog in boiling water, we didn't realize it until one day we woke up to find everything on fire and almost half of our fellow human beings screaming “No! No! There is no fire! Fire is a hoax!" even when consumed by flames.
with the AI and its progress I imagine something similar to Psycho Pass with micromanaged behavior and also subscriptions for absolutely everything
This is already happening now with the protests and the AI art debate;
AI is a Pandora's box that cannot be closed. It sucks anyway, these protests won't do anything
Imagine a company that pays people to make artwork for a game, project, ad campaign, etc. Now, the AI can do it in seconds, basically for free. From a business perspective, it's not even a competition. The train of capitalism is moving full steam ahead and AI training is only going to get better. This will also extend to voice acting, 3D models, animations, etc. It's just a matter of time.
Maybe there are, for example, niche indie video games with "totally handcrafted human art" that can be sold to a niche audience, but 99% of consumers don't care about such things and just want the best possible product.
The rise of AI is going to suck for a lot of people. Watching everyone oust artists as a victim of progress will soon find her own balance in question.
How do you go on when something you've spent your life mastering can be replicated by a machine in an instant? We will lose the humanity of our own efforts.
I fear that one day we will live in a beautiful but empty world.
That's the sad/scary part for me. Seeing non-artists is generally not worth anything. I can't imagine how difficult this must be for many of them, and it will only get worse to multitudes every year.
I feel like many of you are missing the important part here. The new technology is cool and all, but the human beings who will be forgotten beneath it, and abandoned or crushed by capitalism in the process, are important. A responsible society can progress without ceasing to care for these people.
The fact that so many of you are smugly denouncing "cocky artists who felt they could never be wanted" is not seeing how this affects anything. We should make sure that workers in industries that become "obsolete" in business can get on without suffering.
With all the power we have in the modern world, it's sickening that we don't use it better.
It already feels like we're speeding into some cyberpunk hell where everything is homogenized and simplified for the sake of capital and people just ignore the red flags because it's convenient for them. High-end art already feels like it's out of the question due to the massive consumption of lowest common denominator media that is hugely popular, and the possibility of AI destroying it is very worrying
calbhollo t1_j1wsqwp wrote
The problem with the idea of cyberpunk is that it pretends that capitalism can keep on going at all, when AI is going to replace ALL work within the next decade or two. How can we have cyberpunk if there's literally no work left? On the one hand, that makes Cyberpunk overly cynical, as capitalism might end due to our inability to work. On the other hand, it might not be cynical enough, as those in control of the AI work to hoard all the production of the world, and let everyone else starve to death from the inability to produce under this new system.
I am worried too, but treating art as if it's the only thing that's going to be replaced is not correct.
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