Cyberpunk Sunday 水

December 5, 2021 Article 696 words 4 mins read

This article evolved into something more serious.

The System, centuries-old, exists on principles that no longer stand up to scrutiny, a System that has changed little since its conception.
The System is wrong.
The System must impose its truth upon us so that it can rule. The government needs us to follow it blindly. For this reason, we live in an informational eclipse. When people can only acquire information from the government, they cannot distinguish right from the wrong. So the lie becomes a truth – truth, fundamental to everything else. Thus, leaders control with lies and ordinary people have no notion of what is true and follow the government blindly, trusting it.
We fight for freedom of information. We fight for freedom of speech and press. We fight for the freedom to express our thoughts freely, without being persecuted by the System.
Even in the most developed and ‘democratic’ countries, the System imposes misinformation. Even in the countries that pretend to be the cradle of free speech, misinformation is the System’s primary weapon. A weapon they use very well. A Cyberpunk Manifesto by Christian A. Kirtchev

Trying to define Cyberpunk is a difficult task. In short, however, Cyberpunk refers to both a culture and a genre.

Cyberpunk is a sub-genre of science fiction that features advanced science and technology in an urban, dystopian future. On one side you have powerful mega-corporations and private security forces, and on the other you have the dark and gritty underworld of illegal trade, gangs, drugs, and vice. In between all of this is politics, corruption, and social upheaval.

Cyberpunk and futurism

There are no normal people — just look at your relatives, the people that you are in a position to know best. They’re all weird at some level below the surface. Yet conventional fiction very commonly shows us normal people in a normal world. As long as you labor under the feeling that you are the only weirdo, then you feel weak and apologetic. You’re eager to go along with the establishment, and a bit frightened to make waves — lest you be found out. Actual people are weird and unpredictable, this is why it is so important to use them as characters instead of the impossibly good and bad paperdolls of mass-culture. Rudy Rucker, A Transrealist Manifesto