A Cyberpunk World

The world, this new world, this information crazed world is full of them. Cyberpunk describes a technology and future driven rebellion/attitude movement in the world today. This movement involves discovery, new technologies, and individualistic views of the non-conformist. Before reading Philip Elmer-Dewitt’s “Cyberpunk” and Timothy Leary’s “The Cyberpunk: The Individual as Reality Pilot” and “Evolution of Countercultures”, I had no idea what a cyberpunk was or described. After my reading I realized that the world today thrives on cyberpunks. Cyberpunk describes the world we live in today.
Stewart Brand, editor of Whole Earth Catalog expressed cyberpunk as “technology with attitude”. It is an “intersection of the future and now,” said Jude Milhon, a cyberpunk journalist. A “fusion of humans and machines” is what Rudy Rucker, a mathematician who also writes science-fiction books, described cyberpunk as.
Science-fiction goes along with cyberpunk. The term cyberpunk was used in the late 1980’s to describe a group of science-fiction writers. Cyberpunk is seen through literature to performance art such as the Blue Man Group to movies. The movies I-Robot and Artificial Intelligence involve the cyberpunk visions of machines, technological advances, and futuristic themes. As does the recent film Gamer where humans are controlled by other humans through mind-control technology.
Cyberpunk exists today with cyberspace. It is a medium of connection with others seen through social networks and dating sites. Cyberpunk and cyberspace are non-physical, global, and fast. We are an information society thus the internet is vital to us. People today live on their computers. Take college students for instance, the next generation that are or are evolving into cyberpunks. College students go to their computers to take classes, shop, email, or check their facebook. Facebook or surfing the internet sometimes distracts students from doing their work which can represent a punk or rebellious mind-set.
Cyberpunks have their own way of thinking from the norm. They like to stay ahead of the game which leads to their futuristic views of things.
Leary describes cyberpunks as people who think for themselves. They explore the possibilities of the future and collect information for they have a high-curiosity. They take part in innovation and change. Cyber means pilot. Cyberpunks use all available information to think for themselves and pilot their own lives. They are a “resourceful and skillful individual who accesses and steers technology and knowledge toward private goals.” Cyberpunks seek independence, not control over others. Inventors, free-agent scientists, hackers, and media explorers are examples of cyberpunks. They “steer their ideas out there where no thoughts have been.” They are open-minded people. In today’s society “creativity and mental excellence are the ethical norm” and will continue to be. The world continues to be “complex, dynamic, diversified, and cross-linked.”
Cyberpunks are driven by technology and the possibilities of tomorrow but are independent. They have control over their lives. As Dewitt put it, “...they realize if you don’t control technology, it will control you.” Nobody wants the Terminator movies to go from science fiction to reality.