"Cyberpunk escaped from being a literary
genre into cultural reality.
People started calling themselves cyberpunks, or the media started
calling people cyberpunks. The first people to identify themselves
as cyberpunks were adolescent computer hackers who related to
the street-hardened characters and the worlds created in the books
of William Gibson, Bruce
Sterling, John Shirley, and
others. Cyberpunk hit the front page of the New York Times when
some young computer kids were arrested for cracking a government
computer file. The Times called kids "cyberpunks". Finally, cyberpunk
has come to be seen as a generic name for a much larger trend
more or less describing anyone who relates to the cyberpunk vision.
This, in turn, has created a purist reaction among the hard-core
cyberpunks, who feel they got there first."
-- R.U.Sirius, Mondo 2000: A Users Guide to the New Edge
The word 'cyberpunk'
was originally a marketing term applied to Science Fiction writings
of William Gibson and Douglas Rushkoff, but was soon taken up
by many Internet users as a description of a lifestyle, culture
or community to which they imagine they belong. So cyberpunk became
the way of thinking and attitude for many people in the Net and
in so called Real Life.
This is due to the fact that they correctly noticed the seeds
of the fictional world of cyberpunk in Western society today.
Our world is evolving into a typical 'cyberpunk-world': the rising
amount of technology in our everyday lives - we thrive and survive
on technology, the developement of the cities into huge 'sprawls',
drugs and crime. All these aspects of our culture fit nicely into
the world of cyberpunk - the future now.
So, the world from the works of Gibson and "Blade
Runner" is becoming a stark reality.
Some groups associate themselves with cyberpunk literature/scifi
and call themselves cyberpunks, or, are associated with cyberpunk
and called cyberpunks. The main classifications of cyberpunks
are hackers, crackers, phreaks, cypherpunks, netrunners, otakus,
ravers, transhumans, and extropians.
These papers recount the evolution and history of cyberpunk
as a cultural theme. They place the cyberpunk culture in an historical
context.
Cyberculture, Technoculture, Future Culture... Cyberpunk Digital
Culture Links.
Discussion about cyberpunk style issues. Cyberpunk attitude,
fashion, language, music, drugs, love, religion, etc.
Future we will get when cyberpunk world becomes more and more
reality.
Cyberpunk is nothing without the technology.
Communities, web-sites and e-zines by cyberpunk people.
