Christian As. Kirtchev, Dec. ’98
The future. It is not what you think it is, if you expect the white easy days and the blue friendly sky. The future will not know the meaning of the words “peace” and “quiet”. It will not be the bright, lovely everyday life.
The future is dark and gray; the snowflakes of the dead air-transmission, singing in white noise. Steel, concrete and glass, suffused in neon and halogen. Chrome with slight spots of rust. The dirty rain, flowing down the streets in streams joining in silver puddles. The future smells like hot dust, smells like machinery and electronics. The ugly concrete buildings raised in the gray sky, the clouds reflecting in the blue plexiglass. The neon blinking on the walls at the thinny streets, alluring to mysterious locations with unclear purpose. The holograms on the big streets, overloading the brain with gigabytes of information in images and sounds... The people- less humans and more surgery and implants. Less real and more fake, unreal beautiful, smart, fast...
The world’s global information closed to a space without boundaries and limits. Milliards of zeroes and ones, pulsing for one mili-second of time, in the veins of fibro-optic, crossing all over the planet . A global network of data circulation from point to point trough independent channels. A space called “cyberspace”. One new world, in which people will live and work at the same time trough time differences and geographic boundaries, on one place, in one time. A new dimension, depending on information data, huge amount of information data...
The mans consciousness will not know the world as it is now. Psychovegetative distortions; Halucionations, impossible to be distinguish from reality; Artificial merging with real. Our brain will not be able to know which is real and which is not. Mass hallucination, intruding the brain; Computer generated worlds and events will blend with physical world. At one time, you could have the knowledge of randomly chosen area, collected by all the scientists and philosophers in human history and at another, to forget it all... biochips.
Advance in the medicine, put in all areas of life. Surgery that will be able to fully reconstruct any chosen part of the body, by just reprogramming the DNA code. Bio-electronic enhancements, allowing increasing the human capabilities in many times. strength; speed; sight; hearing; linguistics. In the psychology, new drugs will be born. Drugs capable of stimulating the human mind, with VR, above the known limits, unlocking huge amounts of brain capacity. Drugs for pleasure, way better than the meaning put in words like ecstasy, trance, nirvana... Tonus stimulants, so strong that any of today’s military sections will trade its government, just to own them.
The politics will not be on government basis. There will be no search for better system of ruling. Communism, Democracy, Imperialism, Anarchy or whatever type of government- they all will be forgoten... The corporations will be the new authority. The political borders will fall and new ones will raise- those, restricting the power of each corporation.
The social picture? The small will become smaller, the big- bigger. Two levels: hyper poor and hyper rich. Two communities without any points of merging. Two indipently developing communities. Two different social worlds.
This is the future.
Predicted by several in their literary expressions. A vision, supported by many others. A possibility of the world’s progress, closing to reality by following the logic, born in the minds of people, calling them self- cyberpunks. One variant of the future. A variant pulling ahead to its realization.