Cyberpunk Now

In his recent on-line writing, Charles Stross hit the nail on the head about the cyberpunk lifestyle in his auobiography (Charles Stross: The Early Years).

“The cyberpunk lifestyle reads a whole lot better in fiction than as a lifestyle manifesto. Take it from someone who’s lived through it.”

“Picture this: you’re a former drug dealer who has turned to hacking for a living. You’re crashing in an apartment a bit older than Texas, surrounded by about seventeen computers, sleeping on a futon with a girlfriend with metre-long purple dreadlocks, and planning your defection from one net-based futuristic corporation to another over Korean take-away food. It sounds like something out of an early story by William Gibson, but the reality is a whole lot less glamorous. I’ve been there; I speak from experience. Cyberpunk is very nineteen-nineties: as a lifestyle statement it leaves something to be desired. Given that the late seventies and early eighties are the height of fashion right now, I reckon we’re about fifteen years away from the inevitable revival — I’ll be there, doddering around on a Zimmer frame and waving my fist at those young punks who’ve never used a command line interface.”

All the heroes of cyberpunk really epitomize the romanticization of a lifestyle that can easily become rather unpleasant. Whether it’s being a bike messenger, an anime otaku (or any kind of otaku, really), a punk rock musician, or simply homeless, it’s really not that great. Living in a squat with a dozen other people is all well and good until someone steals your stuff or the police show up and forcefully evict everyone.