WEEK ELEVEN: Cyber/Steampunk

This week I read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. The story follows Hiro Protagonist, a wild-card, genius of a main character, who gets caught up in a mob related drug concoction that's sweeping the "nation." He and his group of misfits work together to get the world back on its feet after Snow Crash has taken over the minds of many. Taking place in a dystopian America, Stephenson puts us deep into the world of what it means to be cyberpunk. The story itself is great fun to read. Stephenson's irreverence makes him an excellent storyteller for the genre. He writes with intense rebellion towards conventional literary subjects and gives us something fascinating to read.

Cyberpunk as a genre is a kind of dated futurism that envisions human life intermingling with robots and the genetically modified. We are presented with blends of human potential with genetic mutations, creating both higher beings and dangerous counterparts. Thematically, the genre feels grungy. This is not the clean future of The Jetson's, rather, the seedy underbelly of a world gone awry from the misuse of technology and the possibility that our own creations may overtake us. The line between human and tech becomes so thin and blurred that there can almost be no distinction of the two's differences.

More and more in today's world we can see technology's impact. Automation is what's next, cyberpunk is an intriguing warning. I connect this week to a video that I saw a while ago, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU , "Humans Need Not Apply." The video analyzes how our world is already in the process of ridding humans of having purpose in society as we know it to be today. There are still people that are skeptical, claiming that there can't possibly be a way a robot could do their job, but those people are in denial. Already we see the ways in which tech is dominating the cultural infrastructure of our lives, and that trend is only going to grow exponentially with each year. So, what's next?

Cyberpunk presents us with a look at what could become of us, despite how fantastical and far-away the concepts may seem. With the fears that ensue, so do the possibilities. There will be infinitely new ways that our world will open new doors for us to travel through. Control of our offspring, beings that do the things we don't want to do, and time. Time for us that we've never had before.