The Cyberpunk Manifesto

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Cyberpunk Manifesto
by Gareth Branwyn
Gareth Branwyn posted the following description of the CYBERPUNK WORLDVIEW to general approval at a mondo2000 conference on the WELL:


The future has imploded onto the present. There was no nuclear Armageddon. There's too much Real Estate to lose. The new battlefield is people's minds.
The megacorps ARE the new governments.
The U.S. is a big bully with lackluster economic power.
The world is splintering into a trillion subcultures and designer cults with their own languages, codes, and lifestyles.
Computer-generated info-domains are the next frontiers.
There IS better living through chemistry.
Small groups or individual "console cowboys" can wield tremendous power over governments, corporations, etc.
The coalescence of a computer "culture" is expressed in self-aware computer music, art, virtual communities, and a hacker/street tech subculture. The computer nerd image is passe, and people are not ashamed anymore about the role the computer has in this subculture. The computer is a cool tool, a friend, important human augmentation.
We're becoming CYBORGS. Our tech is getting smaller, closer to us, and it will soon merge with us.
Information wants to be free.
Access to computers and anything which may teach you something about how the world works should be unlimited and total.
Always yield to the hands-on imperative.
Mistrust Authority.
Promote Decentraliztion.
Do It Yourself.
Fight the Power.
Feed the noise back into the system.
Surf the Edges.

[from mondo2000's USERS' GUIDE TO THE NEW EDGE; page 65-66; 1992]

Basically what is being described is just another counter-culture. IE, the participants are weery of modern society so they deside to shun it. Modern Culture won't collapse like what's described. It will morph and change and years down the road won't resemble its current self.

The problem with counterculture is that it's not really counter-anything. It's merely culture's rejects banding together and doing exactly what culture does, shun nonconformist. The truth is that if one truly is a nonconformist to all society, then they ain't bound by sociological rules. This person is commonly called a sociopath.

As for the splintering thing. Yes and no. In a decentralized society, an oddball would stick out even more then they do now, unless of course said oddball was with fellow oddballs in the oddball sect of society. Seeing as society is decentralized though, finding the other oddballs is going to be no easy task. Once you do find them though, life should be grand.

Honestly the whole cyperpunk idea seems like someone watched the movie "Hackers" one to many times.