The Cultural Significance of Cyberpunk

Patreon: / cuck
Twitter: / philosophycuck
The music is from the soundtrack of Serial Experiments Lain (1998)
Movies shown:
Blade Runner (1982)
Johnny Mnemonic (1995)
Class of 1999 (1990)
Lawnmower Man (1992)
Ghost in the Shell (1995)
Hackers (1995)
Recommended readings:
On "cyber-theory" in general:
M. Featherstone, R. Burrows - "Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk - Cultures of Technological Embodiment" - www.amazon.com/Cyberspace-Cyb...
D. Kellner - "Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and Politics Between the Modern and the Post-Modern" - www.amazon.com/Media-Culture-...
By Donna Haraway:
D. Haraway - "A Cyborg Manifesto" - people.oregonstate.edu/~vanlon...
D. Haraway - "Simians, Cyborgs, and Women" - monoskop.org/images/f/f3/Hara...
By Fredric Jameson:
F. Jameson - "Archaeologies of the Future" - libcom.org/files/fredric-jame...
F. Jameson - "Cognitive Mapping" - www.rainer-rilling.de/gs-villa...
By Sadie Plant:
S. Plant - "Zeroes and Ones" - monoskop.org/images/d/d1/Plan...

[@Culden1]

We're all cyber and no punk. The very systems that could have been our liberation were subsumed at their outset by their state and corporate origins. Cyberpunk exists now only as an aesthetic because the present is essentially that vision of the future stripped of any aesthetic. And so Cyberpunk joins the milieu of nostalgic futures which haunt us in a present that can't escape a past smeared out into eternity, which can't imagine new futures to finally break the tension.

[@abhinandandutta2079]

"Ironic " - Sheev "the Senate" Palpatine.

[@mischkin3588]

Adam Curtis. all watched over by machines of loving grace.

[@w1ck3dz0d1ac]

If you read William Gibson's Zero History, what he said here becomes much more apparent.

[@automatwinslaytracks]

Cybercuck

[@natheria4933]

And this is why the world must end.

[@proskub5039]

becoming a god in vr might not be possible, but becoming an anime girl is

[@TheStasdwd]

Communism is everyone being an anime girl in VR while machines do all of the work to keep the servers running

[@kidkangaroo5213]

@@TheStasdwd I think you just created the perfect mix out of dystopia and utopia. good job

[@toddberkely6791]

@@TheStasdwd Reality is an impotent middle class all becoming anime girls while the elites larp as hunter gatherer cyborgs and the remaining 90% are sucked dry of capital receiving drone bombings as early morning alarm bells.

[@sabian8700]

Cringe.

[@empiricalmiracle8592]

And what generally happens to anime girls?

[@willowhunt4657]

cyberpunk's not dead, it's just real now. dress for the dystopia you're in

[@willowhunt4657]

@kevin willems lol you are on some serious basic boomer shit if your idea of high cyberpunk fashion is a leather trenchcoat google health goth please

[@OlegUstimenko]

@@willowhunt4657 kind of ironic considering health goth is a trend that is dead as shit

[@tonegoober]

where are the cyber punks? i dont see them in any meaningful way

[@PhantasmPhoton]

society is composed of layers that mostly cant see each other. If you aren't seeing cyberpunks you aren't on that layer.

[@yufengliu836]

Agree

[@baffi8247]

You've already vaguely touched upon this in the hauntology video, but I like to think of the Vaporwave phenomenon that happened a few years ago as a strong reaction to or revival of cyberpunk. A lot of what that movement grips back on, the aesthetics, the obsession with japan, the music itself, all of it is nostalgia to a time when the future wasn't cancelled, even though the future seemed bleak even then. Vaporwave as well as cyberpunk had some explicit capitalist dystopia themes, the main difference being that while cyberpunk is inherently prospective and had what you call an utopian impulse, vaporwave was in my opinion retrospective and deeply defeatist. Probably telling of the times.

[@Torus2112]

That idea feeds into something mentioned in Just Write's video "Blade Runner, Altered Carbon, and the Relevancy of Cyberpunk". He mentions how traditional cyberpunk can feel dated for essentially the reasons given in this video, but that Blade Runner 2049 feels fresher because it's more informed by the current context, namely pessimism about things like the environment and economic inequality. This becomes clear when you compare 2049 to the original; noticing that while the first movie was fairly pessimistic, 2049 basically takes that pessimism and says "that's cute, now check out how bad things can really get". To my mind observing the differences between the two movies will in a nutshell tell you everything you need to know about the difference between 1982 and 2017.

[@andrewsmiker]

Check out Daniel Lopatin's music. He might have invented (or at least popularized) vaporwave under the name Chuck Person, then went on to make cyberpunk new age music as Oneohtrix Point Never. The album Replica is one of my favorites: it sounds like a reassembled past and is soulful in some way

[@abhinandandutta2079]

Thomas Bredhoft's comment on Gibson's gernsback continuum sums it up well "Cyberspace functions as the embodiment of the past's utopian dreams; entering cyberspace, then, is entering a dream of the past" en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gernsback_Continuum

[@jobba3632]

@@Torus2112 It does sound like an interesting comparison to experience, i think i'll do just that, thank you for the idea

[@normnord9830]

The future can't be cancelled forever though can it? I mean change is the only constant of life, something's got to give eventually.

[@nicecupoftea7102]

Not only we already live in a dystopia, but it's a boring dystopia as well

[@usefulidiot2842]

At least the video games are entertaining and some tv shows if you want exciting work a job that never lets you afford rent by ur self and u eventually become homeless seems like a better use of my time then working for pay that never allows me to afford the basics

[@VinceroAlpha]

I've never thought about it like that, but it's awesome to look at it that way but waaaaay more insidious. A regular dystopia can be recognized and fought. But a boring one slowly sets in quietly and takes hold of society before anyone recognizes what happened.

[@usefulidiot2842]

Read some of the people that have ruled over you for a few hundred years now the fabians invented the modern dystopian that we live it’s a slow creation over generations

[@nicktod6117]

we live in pre mr robot

[@usefulidiot2842]

Correct all of the dystopians were pretty much right there and those dystopias are created to make people get normalized to the future

[@ferencmartinovic6267]

“You teach them very little?” “Why should we? It only leads to trouble and discontent. We amuse them." Its incredible how accurate was HG Wells in his "sci-fi" predictions, especially in the social relations

[@arcanaobscura3519]

Ah, may I ask from which of his work this passage is from? Always wanted to look into Wells' work

[@atortarr]

The most interesting and depressing video yet. Nice work on this one.

[@catcatcatcatcatcatcatcatcatca]

I am not whole without my smartphone, thus google has the property rights to part of myself. They can sell me piece by piece, and auction room in my mind for advertisers. This channels videos are part of me too. No matter if I just opened my mind to the idea of self as a cyborg, it still is part of my persona in this moment. I truly am part of internert, part of real life - if one can even draw such boundaries anymore. My future food is bits in my bank-account, my books are files on computer. My words are comments on a webpage. None of those are any less real for me than physical food, books or words. They keep me fed, interessed and expressing, just like "real" food, books and talk. They are not not real, merely different. And these aspects blur the boundaries between my body and mind, your body and mind, and things that have no body nor mind.

[@ScribblebytesWorldwide]

Oh my gawd, are you in my head! I feel what you're saying. It used to be that the Internet wasn't real and we'd be like "wanna meet irl?" But now people get convicted and they lose their jobs for sending private messages on their phones. We are it, now.

[@bottomtext]

This fucking comment alone made me feel like I now understand Serial Experiments Lain, oh my god

[@anadice9489]

This reminds me of something I thought about, external memory/knowledge. Before internet even, you could put your memories into a journal, put your knowledge into books, and then others can partake in that and know those things. With internet, that access becomes vast; I can access memories and knowledge of billions of people, living and passed. Where we used to be able to build off of the knowledge of others if we could find some books, now we can do a few clicks and pull from so much. Back from that tangent, though, all of that external knowledge is tied to us; we effectively know those things, and the act of "recalling" is the act of looking something up, either in a physical library or in an online database. Honestly it can go even further back than the invention of writing; we transcended the extent of our bodies the moment we started using tools, and we transcended the extent of our minds the moment we began to communicate our thoughts.

[@kaita2292]

@@anadice9489 exactly! Op's comment immediately made me think about how we, as humans, ARE technology. Technology has modified us on a neurological level, it affects the way we think and feel, it's not only part of us, it IS us. Talking about technology as making us "less human" or dehumanizing us, as if it was something distinct and separated from humanity itself doesn't really make sense from this perspective.

[@cecavjestica]

I find it interesting that when we imagine future, we imagine it looking badass, alternative, with styles inspired by technology and chaos, the thing that at the time both amazes us and scares us, while in reality it gets more minimal as the "future" approaches. I don't know if it is the outcome of us rejecting and denying the clutter and overwhelming influence of technology and social media influence or the alienation from the complexity of our inner worlds, just trying to suppress the anxiety that both the present and the future give us.

[@evrensaygn1017]

No, companies introduce the similar generic bland aesthetic to protect earnings. And people wear them to be socially acceptable.

[@sameerdodger]

you could be right, or it could be the way art/culture trends. i believe the minimalism era is slowly coming to an end, we're going back to maximalism soon folks - i hope you like neon.

[@Waaaghster]

Maybe there is no point in imagining some faraway future. There has been a steady contraction of the time that SF has looked ahead, from hundreds to multiple hundreds of years in the late 1800s to just decades or years in cyberpunk. The problems of our world are immediate, and the whole nostalgia thing maybe gets reinforced by the steadily increasing awareness of how screwed things are at this point. It is a kind of crisis mode, the house is on fire, and we're not imagining anymore which piece of furniture is going to catch on fire next and what color the flame is gonna be, but how to put out the fire that's already going on. And I would argue that the world Gibson and his peers predicted has come to pass, except it is much more mundane and boring to look at from the inside. But there is everything: general cyberfication of everything, automated house appliances, killer drones, ubiqitous surveillance, hacker groups attacking anything from personal bank accounts to national infrastructure, wars over water instead of oil, mass refugee streams due to climate change and failed policies in the economically strong countries, and if you look deep enough into the web, you can even hire an assassin to get rid of your spouse so you can cash in the life insurance and move to the bahamas. The world of neuromancer would probably have looked very banale and boring for the average joe living in it too.

[@TallicaMan1986]

Insta Goat Neuromancer is easily 30 years from now. The tech we have now that are in the book are very very primitive. We don't even have a drug that undeniably makes you smarter yet.

[@tonydouglas7870]

Baudrillard looks like Danny DeVito in the episode of Its Always Sunny when he fakes being an art critic

[@danny5035]

He kinda is tho

[@ScribblebytesWorldwide]

😂 😂 😂 Now I can't get that image out of my head!

[@randomrfkov]

Ongo Gablogian

[@lilym7395]

How derivative

[@sandman45]

The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet. -william gibson

[@kenm3ng121]

Old, but gold

[@getthecandies]

"Cyberpunk's quick decline" Bro, have you ever considered that cyberpunk fell off because we now live in a post cyberpunk age? Think about your smart phone; 35 years ago it was some fantastic prop in an outlandish vision of the future. Now it's so banal, your grandparents navigate it. What can cyberpunk tell us that we're not already living? Cyberpunk literature went from being Gibson and Stephenson to the Post and the New York Times.

[@ZenobiaofPalmyra]

I agree with though, though I would also say it still has the potential to be empowering. The fact is that we live in a cyberpunk world without the presentation of what is revolutionary about it.

[@getthecandies]

@@ZenobiaofPalmyra I really enjoyed this video and I think it makes some great points, I would just content that cyberpunk didn't dissolve or fail, we're doing it, right now. The great irony being that visions like the world of Blade Runner looks optimistic from here.

[@juvedoo99]

Also because during the peak of cyberpunk it was truly the "information age". We live in what I refer to as "post-informatiom" age. It renders cyberpunk obsolete, since we already have the information, and possibly too much of it for our own good. We're possiblity approaching a new "reformation" age, that is to say we have established a great chunk of modernity and what a "modern" and "post modern" society/person is. Now it comes down to synthesizing all of that and reformatting it in a new way. That's why, I think there is such a huge unrest politically. Different factions want that ability to reform society and the collective consciousness that I believe will set the foundation for whatever new age comes along.

[@teamgb692]

The mainstream media has become as slapstick cyberpunk as 2000AD magazines telling of the Burger Wars. A corporate civil war waged by megacorporations for supremacy.

[@certs743]

I would argue we are literally living in a cyberpunk origin story or a prequel complete with riots and police brutality.

[@kushspatel]

i think a updated version of this video would be cool. specifically with the addition of the Metaverse along with the acceleration of multinational corps being more important in our day to day lives with the covid era coming to a second year.

[@ferrisffalcis]

This video aged better than cyberpunk did. The release of cyberpunk 2077 just goes to show a massive corporation can't produce cyberpunk without becoming a parody of itself

[@sameerdodger]

just to be 'that guy'.. CDPR are not a 'massive company'. the gitches and unfinished release of the game were due to the production company pushing for a release too soon, because they wanted money, because capitalism. people can make cyberpunk, idk if you played it but they did. there's plenty of cyberpunk ideas in the game, have you done the quest with the 'sentient' vending machine? i didn't play it on release, in fact i only bought and finished it 2 years after. its really not as bad as people make it out to be, if you like cyberpunk as a genre its a good way to get your fix. the game heavily critiques big corporations, are you trying to say you can't critique society whilst being part of it? if anything there are definitely digs at their parent company placed in by the developers. its as punk as you can get without burning down a building and shitting in a bucket.

[@evanphillips2126]

Gosh, first the piece on Hauntology/Fisher and now a video on Cyberpunk/Jameson? Hell yes, fantastic work.

[@Dorian_sapiens]

I like the idea of authentic communities being made up of people who only have in common their choice to belong to the same community, rather than some common underlying "nature". Solidarity on the basis of difference, not sameness. I think that's still a valid or accurate vision of the future.

[@Aurelius511]

Wow, you used the font I designed a zillion years ago, so strange to see it here! Awesome essays, man, subbed.

[@tylerjordan9474]

Oh wow, I'm doing a finishing film paper on the genre right now. Good timing

[@user-fl8qo4mn5n]

I understand the logic behind embracing cyborgness but I look on this topic from a different perspective. The main problem IMO lies in whether technology is free or proprietary, is it connected to a "cloud" (and remotely controlled from it) etc. All our communication is already controlled and moderated by large capitalists. Currently there is a trend towards IoT, smart-devices etc (like amazon-controlled smart-locks), which means corporate control of our personal physical space. I imagine that only after that "smart" body implants would gain momentum which in turn could mean that our bodies' existence would be totally dependent and potentially rip off our ability to revolt. Technical abilities to counteract these trends already exist, but as time goes by it would only dwindle. There is free software, there are decentralized communications platforms, which could be self-hosted by anyone, but they don't have widespread adoption. I've been thinking a lot about how this could change and it brought me to two approaches. First, decentralized communication has to be technically superior, which is impossible, because: a) corporations use all the good things that open source software could offer to cut their expenses and build their proprietary tech on top of it; b) the sheer amount of resources, effort and time that corporations could put in their projects vastly outnumber the time and effort that that could be put by developers of decentralized communications platforms, large part of latter ones do all their work related to such projects during their spare time; c) no money on advertisement; d) increased difficulty - you have to choose a platform, and a server, you have to put some effort in setting things up in client software - this is not a one-click experience, and there is nothing that could be done at the moment. On the other hand decentralized platforms could be superior in the sense that they could offer for free some abilities that in corporate products you can only get by purchasing premium. Second approach is much more important IMO - there must be a community behind such platforms. This would counteract lack of advertisement, increased difficulty of use comparable to corporate services and offer an ability to keep administrators in check. But you have to go offline for that! This couldn't been accomplished with random people from the internet because the lack of trust. As time would pass our ability to migrate to some non-corporate platform would dwindle because technology gap would only increase (there is a lot of free software but only a handful of open hardware platforms), community-building pace couldn't match advertisement-driven adoption speed, and possible extra steps for Joe Average would also increase (you have to manually set up your smart device, even if it supports free software at all, instead of just bying it and connecting it to the internet) and with all that we will be less and less able to protest. So, returning to 'cyborgisation' my conclusion is that it is not inherently 'bad', because there are ways to make it work for the people, but going this way requires from us to reclaim our offline sociality, which could be interpreted as a return towards innocence in some way. This is not the case at the moment, so becoming more and more 'cyborg' in accordance to the current trends looks very grim and shouldn't be embraced.

[@abdooshewy7921]

Great reply

[@sameerdodger]

Cyberpunk isnt about glorifying technology and 'being a cyborg'. It makes it look cool on the surface but then shows you how it really is just a tool to make you miserable in one way or another.

[@thehedgehogsdilemma9478]

“The Net is vast and infinite.” - Motoko Kusanagi

[@empiricalmiracle8592]

"Heaven's net is wide, but lets nothing through" -Yoshimitsu, Soul Calibur III

[@12onin_Gypsy]

Alone I walk, commiting no sin, with few wishes

[@19peter96]

Love the video but I don't think it's fair to group Blade Runner 2049 with other media pushing detached 80s aesthetics to profit off nostalgia and our cultural stagnation. I thought the story was very true to the cyberpunk tradition while progressive in exploring how capitalism deteriorates or pushes the limits of what we understand as social relationships, questions of group and self identities etc. If a weird loner desperate to feel part of a greater narrative - in possession of a holographic waifu - isn't a fitting tale for our times I don't know what is.

[@thyetyeyryeretyery]

19peter96 Seconding, IMO it was not Cheesy like other new cyberpunk media.

[@jonsnor4313]

Its a great movie with philosophical questions about humanity, and what being humans, or even choice means, or love. Add that with themes of thechnology and society and you got, tada, the quintessenz of cyberpunk. If its decently clever written, which the new bladerunner is.

[@ar_xiv]

It’s still a revival of a dead vision of the future, even if it’s a good one

[@cromcourtney5639]

It is a good movie, but I left the theater feeling that it played around with cyber punk theories rather than add anything new or substantial to them. The idea of building a robot that would then become a consumer and would go on to buy more of your product (a fake girlfriend) is an inherently interesting idea, but was left mostly unexplored. Overall, I thought that Her did a better job of depicting a relationship based on technology and consumerism.

[@abhinandandutta2079]

I think as a sequel it was definitely a great movie that does not tarnishes anything from the previous movie and adds more to its setting. Specially if one considers MrBTongue's post colonial analysis of the original. As something new, not much but then personally I love this movie

[@carlosdumbratzen6332]

Thank you for using the Serial Experiments Lain Soundtrack as background music

[@vagrant9414]

Loving all your content up to date Can't wait to see what's in this gem

[@Incrediblefatslug]

*Beep beep* Nothing is wrong. Return to your desk, wage jockey. *Boop*

[@ScribblebytesWorldwide]

Slaves.

[@arty7542]

Wagie wagie get in cagey.

[@Th3EnterNal]

@UFHoee lmao ,did u ever read on what the profit margins of multinational companies are?u fukin shits divorced of reality.

[@ObjectiveMedia]

Wage slaves

[@ObjectiveMedia]

Th3EnterNal shut up u salty fascist bitch

[@jsbart96]

interesting point about cyberpunks popularity coming from the fact that cyberspace in the 90s wasn’t yet touched by capital, it was for a couple years free and open.

[@maximeteppe7627]

for those who could afford the computers.

[@Grstearns]

@@maximeteppe7627 Fair. The book Hackers does a decent job of highlighting the techno utopia of Stanford and MIT in the late 60s and that their digital commune was only possible through massive DoD grants. But I would like to back up the point that the computing community (especially those born from the mini and micro (personal) computing) had a very strong anti-capitalist bent. You can still see it in the Open Source movement.

[@maximeteppe7627]

@@Grstearns certainly. I just mean that the circumstances meant that as anti capitalist as they were, they were also upper middle class pleople, which, as computing became highly commodified opened it To the current right wing libertarian tech bro. its not a unique divide either : lots of anti establishment counter cultures exist primarily in the highly educated classes, as most anti capitalist movements art inspirés by academia and such.

[@rodneythundercock]

So cyberpunk, allegedly a critique of capitalism and corporate power, was super-popular in an age where corporate power hadn’t yet touched cyberspace? Perhaps. I feel it’s sort of the opposite. It’s a warning against the obsession with technology, and the dehumanizing and deleterious effect it has on people. (The obsession, not the technology.) Think about the big names in cyberpunk as a genre. Bladerunner, and “electric sheep”: mostly exploring the nature of humanity as opposed to synthetic life. Cyberpunk: people are so obsessed with modifying their bodies that they will go into debt, and visit back-alley “rippers” to get pieces of themselves swapped with chrome. People sell their personal experiences to people who want to experience them, implying people are seen as somewhat interchangeable. People will whore themselves to corporations to feed this addiction to technological advancement. If we even look into the origins of the genre, it was always meant to examine the effects of technology, drug culture, and the sexual revolution, avoiding the urge to fall into Utopianism like classic sci-fi

[@bungorogers7067]

Wow - thank you so much for this! You articulated ideas I could feel but haven't been able to put into words.

[@jmalmsten]

Oh, and you got a new subscriber... These topics fascinate me to no end.

[@elenablancoesquivel5201]

I feel like my brain has to grow before coming back to your channel. i know this is brilliant i just cant process it all right now

[@syystomu]

I genuinely think solarpunk has potential to be the utopian response to the dystopian cyberpunk. As long as we can radicalise the genre, that is. I do think it's a good idea to have the utopian alternative right now because I feel like people have gotten so cynical, hopeless and just tired that dystopian fiction kind of creates a numbing effect. Well, depends on the person of course.

[@syystomu]

@The Spoiled Commie Yeah, I agree

[@cossaizy6309]

@The Spoiled Commie i think the most likely prelude to solarpunk would be an environmental disaster or a cataclysm, i dont know why but i always get the feelimg that solarpunk is a post-apocalyptic utopia

[@thomasjardine2108]

Personally, I think Solarpunk doesn't account for the obstacles that humanity places in front of its self. Cyberpunk does. I am always skeptical of when people try and make utopianism viable, tbh, it isn't. Cyberpunk was a critique on that thinking since the Golden Age sci-fi based on capitalism and liberal realism's belief that egalitarian and democracy will always be triumphant.

[@daPawlak]

Solarpunk is 21st century post-cyberpunk. It is already radicalized and in your face ideological, and yet i doubt it will ever get out of it's anarcho-nerdy niche.

[@aaronborok8398]

I haven't heard of solarpunk, what would be an example of that exactly?

[@juliansandes]

Just discovered the channel. Amazong work you're doing here! Thank you so much!

[@Aaron-mp7tg]

Loving the content of your channel more with every video.

[@klinischbrot]

Sir, this is a well crafted and researched video! Thank you!

[@KayAndSkittles]

"Cyberpunk today is not so much alive as undead" Bro BROOOOOOOOOOO.

[@ThisGuitarPlayerGuy]

Excellent video! Always excited when I see you've uploaded.

[@Analysis_Paralysis]

The good thing about Cuck Philosophy videos is that I can come back to older ones and still enjoy them / be enlightened. This is still as interesting as the first time I watched it. :)

[@gunzdelarose2633]

LETS ALL LOVE LAIN !

[@jacob_ian_decoursey_the_author]

Present day. Present time. Hahahahahahahaha!

[@mikuhatsunegoshujin]

yes

[@user-vs6oe8fl3m]

Everyone's connected.

[@user-vs6oe8fl3m]

I had no idea someone would reference Lain!

[@nelsonjanusson7278]

Suicidal cult mare up of weebs lol Srsly tho fucK of

[@evezina96]

As a native french speaker, i find that you pronounce Beaudrillard's name pretty decently tbh ;) Great video, Cyberpunk is one of my fav genres!

[@jonasceikaCCK]

Thank you! I think I improved over time

[@CodyKendall1]

Would it be bad to pronounce his name in Canadian/Quebec french with a more guttural sound?

[@ThePhantomRenegade]

Thanks for a great video =) Sorta places my interests in cyberpunk in some new perspectives, which is very interesting and also somewhat thought provocative. Cheers!

[@kamalpreetsingh1686]

i was trying to find this kind of videos on KZbin, luckily i found your channel..... great work, thanks for sharing your knowledge

[@mattgilbert7347]

New CP upload, my morning just got a lot better. I remember being at uni during those heady days of the emerging dominance of cultural postmodernity, reading Gibson and his literary/philosophical influences and feeling a sense of giddiness and terror that accompanied this "breaking down", not just of borders, but of almost everything we had regarded as stable, normative, and essential. Now, looking at the sterile aesthetic of my facebook page, it all feels like a strange, lost dream.

[@donaldviszneki8251]

Really? I feel as if everything in cyberpunk is truer than ever, except maybe that its protagonists have become the villains.

[@anonymousalias.5059]

Haha I read "cp" as something else

[@donaldviszneki8251]

Thought about it a bit and tmi realized the protagonist is often assimilated by some more powerful force to some degree.

[@Cheesus333]

Exquisite video - feeling, appropriately enough, like a eulogy for the movement. Seeing the aesthetic conventions of cyberpunk de-radicalised and bastardised into toothless, commercially-viable triple-A entertainment is heartbreaking in a way that's difficult to encapsulate, but I think this video completely nails it.

[@abhinandandutta2079]

I think this one of your best video so far. Keep making such insightful videos for layman like me.

[@Felipe-xt4id]

Good video and good topics of cyberpunk to discuss. It's good to see someone go beyond the shallow aesthetic of cyberpunk as "big neon city" so props to you. One book you didn't mention but that I think anyone that really wants to know more about what goes inside the hood of cyberpunk philosophy and history is one by Dani Cavallaro by the name of "Cyberpunk and Cyberculture: Science Fiction and the Work of William Gibson. The book is very good and the author goes deep at showing the influences that cyberpunk got from many places (like the medieval gothic framework and punk sensibility). He uses the work of Gibson to explore many of the ideias talked in this video and the book is worth even if you just want some cyberpunk literature recommendations becase he talks about many books, articles and magazines derived from cyberpunk culture. Keep it up.

[@vishmonster]

So much of "cyborg" theory is just footnotes to Heidegger, the 'tool'-ness of our relationship to the world is already inherent. The machinic aesthetic is not the starting point, it only makes this aspect of our relation to the world obvious.

[@lepistanuda]

I like this take partially but don’t you think the arguments Haraway made that are discussed in this video basically deal with this potential gap in perspective that’s sometimes made?

[@vishmonster]

@@lepistanuda A fair question. Unfortunately, it's been so long since I watched this video that I can't answer honestly (and I'm not going to watch it again), but what I can say is that my position on technology and humanity has only grown deeper. Following the maxim 'first man shapes his tools, thereafter they shape us' I have come to believe that we can't regard technology as an invasive force but rather an intimately co-creative element of humanity's development.

[@natyfop]

That's really interesting... I wonder if there's even a possibility for a new cultural movements with the same level of social analysis and critique that cyberpunk had, because nowadays it seems that "the system" watches us and controls us everywhere we go. It produces literature, music, movies, etc. for profit, making it hard to trust a work of art as something authentic, with actual thought put into it.

[@natyfop]

@Jon Goat I wasn't really expecting anything out of the internet specifically, but... I'm pretty sure I can't find cassette tapes or indie books phisically here where I live. It's a poor region of a poor country after all (there's not even a theater here). Only mass-produced commodities reach some places. That's an even bigger problem from the current situation of the culture industry.

[@maryam-mp5ow]

i have been trying to get into the philosophy behind cyberpunk for a long time now but i just never knew where to start. so this video was extremely helpful. thank you!!

[@hunterrogersmusic]

I love your video essays!! Thanks so much.

[@abhinandandutta2079]

Thank you very much for making a video on cyberpunk. Now I can tell people that it is more than just aesthetics.

[@MideoKuze]

Honestly the internet still contains enclaves of liberation outside of capitalism. The fediverse is an interesting experiment, at least, although is increasingly coming to resemble already existing social media in spite of its radical advertiser-unfriendliness (perhaps because its only aim thus far has been the reproduction of existing forms rather than radical experimentalism). Briarpatch is really cool, as its aim is the creation of social spaces in the dark web. There are a number of smaller projects as well. What baffles me is our present atmosphere of powerlessness is largely self-imposed. Our empty future more a failure of imagination than the result of any particular material constraint. Neoliberalism is already in decay. We live in the cyberpunk dystopia perpetually on the brink of collapse, and yet we are as depressive and dejected as the people in the old novels, when much like them, we are only blind to the transformative potential of the present. Why are the fascists creeping in? Because we are still asleep.

[@FeedOnTheWeak]

your french has improved a lot actually :) as a french speaker that beaudrillard (bo-dree-arr) was really on point

[@toritwopointoh]

thank you for another just incredible video. i look forward to your videos more than any other form of media out there

[@wayfarerzen3393]

Science Fiction has always, and will continue to, map out our potential futures better than any other medium has been able to.

[@antivalidisme5669]

I knew i would like this one but Holy cow I LOVED it. Thank you so much man! On another hand maybe it's the 45 years old RPG addict who's speaking but I think you miss a whole point of what Mike Pondsmith created when he wrote Cyberpunk in the very early 1980s Cyberpunk is about heavy guns and super mutants though more about mega-corporations and the struggle of the working class against the utterly corrupted meritocracy they have to survive in, the same creations you can find in movies like Jin-Roh, or games like Deus Ex or what represents the Caldari in EvE-Online. And what better place than Pittsburgh to settle such a dystopian world. As the filial follow-up of K.Dick or Bradbury visions Cyberpunk genuinely redesigns and rethinks what humanity is or is supposed to be. Is an altruist, sensitive and even more concerned about planet or species survival AI less human than someone born of flesh and blood, caring only for his own survival at the expense of anything else? I have to admit I'm not a native English speaker as you must have guessed but if I had to share some videos from fellow scientists on this matter, I'd happily refer you the videos of Science4all (some are in English) in this particular field. I guess I'm heavily biased on this matter because Mike Pondsmith has been a beloved figure for me since I was a teen like Joe Dever, Garry Gygax or Steven Jackson in a different way, but still I have a hard time not thinking this whole concept is way more subtle and disturbing than a younger audience or even some contemporary philosophers could think. Anyway thank you for your chan, more than ever when all the alt-right brainwashers seem to be everywhere. Take care sir

[@ByddinRhyddidCymru]

Love the Johnny mnemonic clips in the background

[@iadros10]

I just wrote an entry for a posthuman dictionary on Cyborg! Happy to see this theme in your great channel!

[@rizziequeen5253]

Damn, as an artist I don't know how to feel right now. I mean this video gave me a new goal, but it also is such a callout on what artists need to do to actually build a revolutions.

[@briankoontz1]

From climate science in the 1950s and 1960s culminating in popular acceptance in 1968 that humanity would go extinct prior to escaping Earth to Fukuyama's "The End of History?" in 1989 to the rise of Metal and the video game Doom in 1992 and Gregg Araki's Teen Apocalypse trilogy in the mid '90s to the Insane Clown Posse, Cyberpunk existed within not only a dying world, but one in which humans are fully aware of our approaching extinction. Cyberpunk never considered how humanity would survive into the future but rather *what* would survive into the future, if anything. Nowadays, it seems as if humanity has no long-term future in any form, however mechanically assisted. We now believe that only artificial intelligence will survive past the next several decades, and even that is dependent on the extent to which human ingenuity can develop it prior to human extinction. A dying species that has no future can only look either forward into the void, experience a frantic, empty, orgasmic present, or look backward to happier times, and in fact besides a greater distance from extinction the past was not happier. The road to extinction was long, beginning in 1610. The Society for Creative Anachronism, born with the baby of the popularization of understanding approaching human extinction, gazed pre-1610, explicitly rejecting modern technology and industry that led us to extinction, and JRR Tolkien was popularized through the same cultural force.

[@avs6362]

Just found your channel, it's awesome! Thank You.

[@sylvechevet9108]

Great video as always! One reference that could be added: the theory of the extended mind of Chambers, which would continue the Cyborg argument

[@gerudo849]

For a long time, I've been an advocate for some kind of evolution in the Cyberpunk genre. I love the genre, and I'm glad it's making a resurgence (albeit a retro-nostalgia resurgence) because I hope someone will be inspired to update the aesthetic (and I have some ideas about what that means). Like you said, the average person knows that the 1980s-rainy-dark-neon vision of the future doesn't reflect our contemporary world and fails to provide a a compelling projection of the future. The future we will have now has a lot of cleanliness, efficiency, and human appeal. But the Cyberpunk we need now is one that reflects climate change (Automata with Antonio Banderas), corporate humanism (Black Mirror, parts of Psycho-Pass), cleanliness and efficiency (some aspects of the Avengers movies). There are some interesting ideas going on in r/solarpunk as well, pertaining to a new futuristic genre with a streak of ecocentrism. If someone could put these aspects together in a mass-digestible form, it could be very successful. But it takes some serious imagination, so whoever does it successfully will probably be considered one of the world's great sci-fi artists among the ranks of H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley and William Gibson.

[@whatthe42]

This was an excellent analysis. I study the issue of refugees, and there is an urgent need to imagine a way to recreate the boundaries of nations and of nation states and develop ideologies for new forms of solidarity, empathy, and inclusiveness that can be used to help us accept and assist the "other" in need and to imagine a future where we live together in peace despite various differences. Watching your video made me consider the ideas of Harroway and cyborgs as a possible theoretical move to frame difference as precisely the reason to form bonds of solidarity. Thus, avoiding the dangerous nostalgia of conservative and nationalist ideologies, or of the cooption of radical alternatives by the same. Thanks again for the video. Analysis tries to imagine new boundaries of states and nations is being done by some in the field of migration/ refugee studies if you are interested. Here are some works by more philosophically oriented Anthropologist/sociologist researchers: "Borderlands" by Michael Agier (an anthropologist often cited by Zygmunt Bauman); "Life" by Didier Fassin (drawing heavily on the work of Foucault); "Trans" by Rogers Brubaker (exploring the issues of trans-gender and trans-nationalism). I know I'm not a patron but would love to see a video on nationalism, the nation-state, refugees, and the possibility of open borders. Sorry for the long comment.

[@Kodaemon]

Appreciate the use of music from Serial Experiments Lain :)

[@DacLMK]

One of the best anime I've ever seen. The writer Chiaki J Konaka is one of my favorites. That guy knew how to write complicated, confusing and f*cked up shows.

[@forfreedomssake4315]

Love this. It's the first video I watch from your channel, and I guarantee it's not gonna be the last. Thank you. Great Content.

[@bluethomas3021]

Someone needs to tell me what 'Making Oddkin in the Chulucene' is my god

[@yp77738yp77739]

Staying with the trouble is the title, in case you never found it. Most of such outputs are generated under large doses of amphetamines, sometimes eloquent but intentionally nonsensical prose. My take is that they are generated in jest, to see which muppets they can persuade to read them before people realise the king has no clothes.

[@HahnenschreidesPositivismus]

So when's a video on Nick Land coming?

[@mojibake.]

Oh boy! I guess I'll have to re-watch this one several times as well, very interesting. Could you talk about acelerationism some day as well?

[@PythonSnake]

Hey man this is the video I've always been looking for and wish had made myself. Immidiate subscribe!

[@JackoNorm]

Digging the Serial Experiments Lain soundtrack by the way

[@illegalaryan8400]

The Wild West era of the internet was great. Even during the days of AIM, you could reach out and make a genuine connection with someone halfway around the world. Once it became streamlined and corporatized everything became superficial and vapid. Now people are online for self centered reasons. It’s no longer a new frontier. It’s a cyber mall. Even now, all the intriguing and fun places on the internet are slowly being censored, removed, or commercialized.

[@InlovewithDamonA]

I'm currently bingewatching your videos so you may have already discussed that without me knowing (sorry if it's the case), but this one particulary makes me think of Simondon's 'individuation', and i would love you to make a video on this subject, as your finesse would surely do it justice ! Thank you for all this great work.

[@InlovewithDamonA]

like i would be enthusiastic about the idea of thinking Haraway and Simondon together !

[@ExiliusGallant]

This is such a heavy video but it is so awesome, I need to rewatch it at least 10 times!!!!

[@postalday]

The death of cyberpunk is not as depressing when you see how much it affected the theoretical framework in such a short time. what is interesting is to try to imagine what the next enclave of critical thinking will be.

[@postalday]

@Whizper2me meh

[@Realkeepa-et9vo]

The death of Cyberpunk, in my opinion, is due to a lack of genetic engineered Catgirls in most Cyberpunk storys.

[@no.prophit]

I’ve been on that Xenofeminism bit lately. Also, check out General Intellect Unit for a great podcast by “cybernetic Marxists”.

[@googleuser9624]

"As for the qualities of which you may know, 'These qualities lead to dispassion, not to passion; to being unfettered, not to being fettered; to shedding, not to accumulating; to modesty, not to self-aggrandizement; to contentment, not to discontent; to seclusion, not to entanglement; to aroused persistence, not to laziness; to being unburdensome, not to being burdensome': You may categorically hold, 'This is the Dhamma, this is the Vinaya, this is the Teacher's instruction." Buddha

[@just_matt214]

Cyberpunk didn't really die, it just became real life.

[@milkbiscuit7196]

So glad I turned notifs on

[@iamcarpetpython]

Excellent video and analysis. I would like to see an analysis video on 80's Japanese cyber-punk anime, and the cultural significance and motivation behind it specifically in Japanese society. (similarly how Japanese kaiju films for example in the 50's and 60's were a parable for nuclear warfare and manmade technology vs. the power of nature in an era of industrial changes...)

[@timetuner]

Oooh. Busting out the Serial Experiments Lain Cyberia Mix for the title card. This is gonna be good.

[@alhesiad]

Love your channel; I disagree with many, if not most of your conclusions, but you bring a lot of new perspectives with good research.

[@toritwopointoh]

alhesiad whats your disagreement with this video in particular?

[@DemagogueBibleStudy]

@@toritwopointoh probably some right wing civility nerd

[@Naurto58]

You could you know, actually type what you disagree on, or refer to other perspectives if you yourself are not equipped to do so, but hey, it's easier to dismiss work when you are not expected to do the work yourself.

[@alhesiad]

@@Naurto58 Because discussing in KZbin comments is a waste of time, as in shown by the fact that I am already getting insults for just insinuating a disagrement.

[@no.prophit]

Cyber is alive! I was first exposed to this concept through the experimental club music scene and Mark Fisher’s related writings. Lately I’ve been into the Xenofeminism trend as it seems fueled by a generation of Harraway readers. I also highly recommend the General Intellect Unit for a podcast by two “Cybernetic Marxists”. Any recommendations for other current sources for related content?

[@LisaEverette]

This is exactly what I was I was looking for. Incredible. Well done. Loved seeing Hackers. Thank you

[@wrighterandsoldier837]

You always do very good work, I hope you're feeling better by now.

[@PatternistSlave]

I'm still pissed off I never got the zeiss ikon eyes I was promised. :- ( - somewhere in the Sprawl I got accused of plagiarism in first year Composition in college for describing Sci Fi as "the study of human society and human psychology under fantastic circumstances, or conditions." My professor admitted he didn't know where I got it from, but he was sure I got it from somewhere. He even suggested it might have been through "osmosis." I dropped that class. Ironically, the paper was on the inspiration for Blade Runner, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

[@EggBastion]

I'd be too scared to have 'em installed but I'm still mad they don't exist *_: /_*

[@PatternistSlave]

Punished Zach Just get a neural cutout for the surgery. No worries.

[@andsoooo]

William Gibson actually got me back into reading with Fragments of a Hologram Rose. Just started Mona Lisa Overdrive. I'm totally hooked.

[@adrenochromedreams5993]

Please tackle Ray Brassier in a video sometime.

[@adrenochromedreams5993]

@Matthew Frazier True dat. I'm working my way through Nihil Unbound, but it's going ever so slightly right past my head. I'd LOVE a break down of his work, Peter Wolfendale's work has given me a better idea of the general drift and how they propose to save realism from it's Kantian slumbers.

[@Naurto58]

@Matthew Frazier Is it possible for you to link it here, so people who are interested, like myself, could watch them as well?

[@3Rlink]

Great, fascinating work as always

[@misterbaghead]

Great stuff. Gives me a lot to think about.

[@jonsnor4313]

I dont think cyber punk dead, it just lives on in good genre mixes. I love person of interest, which has various story mixes, including a religious psychopathic hacker played by amy acker and a very human super ai basically merging in a relationship and both becoming more human and stronger. Till they really become sort of one in roots worldview. And there is a huge emphasis that humanity has lots of faults, through the super ai, who has a very touching quote that death is not the end, because we leave our footprint and have realationships with others , no matter how small, that he die but do we really die if he had any effect whatever in the world, that we leave something behind and that the moment that cwowns our life, is our last. I like that take on maschines and ais aand governments. That humans can commit terrible things and good things, but everyone deserves a chance to make their choices, that everyone matters. They also have a super ai doing creepy stuffand being practically a ruthless god. Good series. But it has an empathis that everyone matters and there is always a way, something to mke the world better or to help someone. Its also a bit batman. Cyber punk will live on in genre mixes and incooperated in shows like agents of shield with their matric arc. But if cyberpunk is dead, it has a legacy.

[@karl1799]

What do you think about Traditionalism, as viewed through the lens of Frederic Jameson's aesthetic of cognitive mapping? One possible faultline with this model on the traditionalist worldview and ideology is that is doesn't take into account the "original" utopian impulse through making the world a better place through progress in a futurism (I'm paraphrasing Evola here, who viewed human history at large and especially modernity in a regressive sense), but rather contain this desire in the very action of return to a glorified world of Tradition, Order and Truth/Right

[@stephenyoshida9966]

This has to be my favorite video of yours to date. Watching for the fourth time now. Not even exaggerating.

[@reid.7680]

6:39 favorite line from Kusanagi's soliloquy in Ghost in the Shell "Hakuna Union given legendary Tammany. Whoa. Whoa Rikuo, Okinawa no ICU."

[@DouglasZanini]

Technology has become the gateway to unlimited power. But in retrospect with our own recent history of wars, povety and environmental destruction, it begs the question: "should we wield that power ?" At some point someone inquires: "What happens if we do?" Cyberpunk is just that. Visions of nations clashing to maintain their own identity in a connected world, limitless technological potential and humanity's unchanging morality, evolved into a different interpretation of the late 20th century futurism: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." And with that, William Gibson, among others, pioneered a hyper vision of a future which prophesized with haunting precision many conflicts of our modern society. Cyberpunk, as it turns out, was not a vision of the future. It was the sudden awareness of humanity's capacity for detatchment, automation, destruction and apathy, translated into culture.

[@ZenobiaofPalmyra]

To be entirely fair to 2077, CD Projekt have straight out said that the game is fundamentally about the breaking down of boundaries, and given everything seen in the promo material they fundamentally understand what the genre is about. Hell, even the choice to make the game first person was to capture the aesthetic of bodily modification and vr. It may not be some new revolutionary critique of modern culture, but it does fundamentally preserve the essence of the genre. The genre still has revolutionary potential in my opinion, exactly because reality is becoming more and more cyberpunk in substance, except the revolutionary potential is completely stripped the narrative. Hell, I would say it's 'undeadness' is both true and false. There is an entire new generation interested in cyberpunk that was far too young/not alive to experience the genre that are now getting into it, so I would hardly say it is dead.

[@Naurto58]

I would have to agree on that is more 'undead' than dead right now, however it doesn't really change the reality that as a already known concept used by the masses stripped of its revolutionary concept, it will maintain its role as a capital.

[@sutyerator]

Cyberpunk 2077 and CDProjekt are the Elon Musk of video games.

[@ZenobiaofPalmyra]

@@sutyerator Truly the hottest take since Thanos. Not excusing CD Red's stance towards unions/overworking, but it's hardly the worst in the industry. Also, at the very fucking least the CEO doesn't take full fucking credit for the work of hundreds/thousands of people and doesn't have a personality cult built around him. Also, most importantly, that comment implies David Cage isn't the Elon Musk of video games, so fuck you to fucking hell you piece of shit.

[@exu7325]

I sure hope you're right. I'd fucking hate it if 2077 is a centrist status-quo garbage. Oh, and CDProjekt *IS* the Elon Musk of gaming. Praise Geraldo.

[@ZenobiaofPalmyra]

​@@exu7325 Honestly? I don't see how CDProjekt is like Elon Musk, mostly because they lack everything that makes Elon Musk so shit. While the fanbase exists, at the least they actually release [good] products for the most part. Meanwhile the only reason Space X is profitable is because neolib politicians shove money up his ass because NASA doesn't have to compete with the scary reds, so why not privatize the god damn space race. Yeah Poland does finance some of the company, but really it's one of the few industries that isn't completely in the shitter after the libs broke away from the Eastern Bloc, so 'economic growth is economic growth. Also no cult of personality (long live the great helmsman Xi Jinping thou). Musk can't even be compared to Thomas Edison, because at least "Edison's" inventions actually were useful. All Musk has done is literally shit anyone else could do if they cared, other than bloody car batteries (he can't even make a profitable business out of tesla lul).

[@drawingdownthestars]

Was not familiar with Donna Haraway before and am definitely picking up her book now. Her ideas raise so many questions, she seems to be denying any commonalities in women's experiences. Thanks for sending me off down the rabbit hole.

[@donkassadin2014]

Thank you so very very much for this video! It is great and sad at the same time to see cyberpunk in its undying state. Great for we get to experience it and understand its beauty, but sad because it has now turned completely against what it previously stood for. Instead of it exploring the new, it relishes on gorging off on the narrow perspectives of the old.

[@aboxintheblack9530]

I recommend the book Feed to anyone who likes Cyberpunk.

[@empiricalmiracle8592]

If any of you nerds are interested in science fiction theory/poetics more generally, the best place to start is with Darko Suvin's "Metamorphoses of Science Fiction". Highly recommended. Jameson also has a great book on science fiction called "Archaeologies of the Future". Because I'm on the topic of Marxist SF theorist territory, also check out "Critical Theory and Science Fiction" by Carl Freedman. If you want some philosophical underpinning for much of this theory and thought, Ernst Bloch's "The Principle of Hope" is your best bet and an underappreciated classic. Love you all, xoxoxox

[@TheJudgeandtheJury]

Keep up the great work.

[@LossomoFilms]

This was the best video so far I think

[@thetigerking2613]

Could one argue that Cyberpunk has been transformed into the Dystopian fiction popular around 2014?

[@strad404]

2014??

[@strad404]

The Liberal Capitalist 😂

[@Dorian_sapiens]

I think I see the continuity you're cuing into with that comparison. On the other hand, cyberpunk also drew on earlier dystopian literature, so I think those seeds were present from the beginning.

[@Realkeepa-et9vo]

@Whizper2me Isn't the most influencial dystopian work, 1984 by Orwell, from 1948, long before the rise of Cyberpunk?

[@MM-hc1cq]

@@Realkeepa-et9vo 1984 was a totalitarian fascist dystopian vision. Cyberpunk is a corporate late-capitalist dystopian vision. The themes and aesthetics of each are completely distinct.

[@SoundYantra]

Shame you forgot Deus Ex: Mankind Divided as example of modern cyberpunk with meaningful message

[@LexYeen]

Meaningful, yes. Shackled by the constraints of the capitalist system it was written and implemented under? Also yes.

[@OmnisDementia]

Also, some chapters of Black Mirror. Not all, but some.

[@decepticonne]

@@OmnisDementia San Junipero is a bit stale but a great bit of utopian cyberpunk. beyond that I don't see much cyberpunk in the series as a whole.

[@TheAndradeCS]

What about the first game, Human Revolution? That one was great as well, perhaps even greater. However, there's the issue that it might go against human adaptation, due to the whole Chip thing in the end, so it's still very anti-corpotation, but also anti-body modification too.

[@WELSHGAMER99]

@@TheAndradeCS The original Deus Ex was chalked full of Anti Capitalist messages.

[@subroy7123]

You are quickly becoming my favorite YT channel. Haraway is probably the most interesting intervention in ontology of consciousness in recent times. Keep doing what you're doing.

[@yasserdefranca2935]

This is now one of my favorite KZbin videos.