I was Promised a Cool Cyberpunk Dystopia

On the 21st of January, I watched tech billionaires have front-row seats in the inauguration of the most powerful man in the world—it was a confirmation that the distinction between the corporation and the state has blurred beyond recognition. But, when I look out my window, the sky is not the “colour of television tuned to a dead channel” that was promised by William Gibson in Neuromancer. There are no flying cars zipping through airways like in Blade Runner or the shimmering searchlights and neon mega-towers of Akira. 

These billionaire technocrats aren’t the shadowy sharp-suited and villainous masterminds that insidiously stroke their robo-cat as they topple world governments in the name of profit. Instead, they topple world governments while eyeing each other's girlfriends, and throwing the most awkward Sieg heils ever put to record. 

I don’t know which is more terrifying—an outright corporate villain, or these ‘innovators’ that straddle the liminal area between laughably stupid and existentially petrifying.

I increasingly realise that life has imitated art in the worst way possible. It has studied dystopia, and cyberpunk, and taken the worst parts from their genres. Instead, taking their techno-libertarianism, wealth disparity, rampant unchecked capitalism, propaganda, climate disaster, corporate oligarchy, destruction of all that might challenge the system, increasing methods of control, it's left out all the cool shit. 

Twitter user (I refuse to call it X) Alex Blechman tweeted in 2021, “At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus, from classic sci-fi novel Don’t Create The Torment Nexus.” The Torment Nexus isn’t a real sci-fi concept—rather it’s comedic shorthand for ‘commercialised dystopian technology’ that satirised a couple of tech developments of that year, but it was primarily aimed at the launch of Facebook’s Metaverse, the supposed “Future of Digital Connection” that came with an expansive (and expensive!) rebrand into Meta. 

The metaverse concept owes its name to the novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, in which it’s a similar virtual reality social space. Stephenson’s Metaverse, while certainly a powerful and unifying tool, is, in truth, part of a plan of the comically greedy capitalist villain to reprogram the human brain. Many asked why Meta would shift its whole company to centre around a product inspired by a tool of world domination. Many wrote it off as a misinterpretation of the source material. 

Regardless, years on, Zuckerberg’s Metaverse is far from the flashy, groundbreaking program it aspired to be. It’s a mess of dead worlds, glitches and awkward design. At least the whole ordeal caused Zuckerberg to evolve from theorised lizard-man to hype beast. However, he wasn’t the only CEO to be inspired by Snow Crash—Google co-founder Sergey Brin was also inspired by Stephenson’s novel.

The other technology likely satirised in Blechman’s tweet is the transhuman horror that is Elon Musk’s Neuralink. Neuralinks are brain–computer interfaces, sewn directly onto the brain. They are intended — as stated in the company’s first press conference — to create “Full symbiosis with artificial intelligence.” They aim to allow users to control devices with their minds, help in motor function and cognitive functions. Just last year Neuralink had its first human test trials, allowing two quadriplegic men to control a computer mouse ‘telepathically.’ 

Does that sound great to you?

 

Well, I wouldn’t trust my brain with Elon Musk. I'm sure it won’t be long before Neuralink blasts ads directly into your brain and his track record with new technologies isn’t stellar. The Cybertruck, which he stated is “what bladerunner would have driven” (note that Blade Runner isn’t the name of a character in the movie but rather a job title). It’s a quote that positions the cop who shoots escaped slave robots as someone to emulate—a fantasy that his product is supposed to fulfill (and fails at spectacularly). His driverless Teslas and recently unavailable Cybercab stem from one of the most popular sci-fi tropes, but have been more dangerous than useful with a steadily growing list of fatalities.

One cannot ignore the expansion of artificial intelligence in our coming dystopia, with the AI boom shovelling truckloads of data into generative algorithms and image-generation systems, burning up water and electricity to create horrific deep-fake chimeras and mediocre pieces of text. There’s little I can add to the conversation, except to once again draw attention to the lame technocrats who steer our future. 

Last year, OpenAI launched its own voice assistant powered by ChatGPT, but actress Scarlett Johansson was shocked to find that—without permission—OpenAI had seemingly replicated her voice. OpenAI had been negotiating with Johansson to utilise her voice up until days before the launch, and it is alleged that OpenAI had already replicated Johansson’s voice and simply went ahead without permission. CEO Sam Altman denies this is the case, but the offending voice was removed from the program either way. 

The debacle provides an insight into the personal psychology of one of the main drivers of the AI craze. Sam Altman has admitted that Spike Jonze’s 2013 film Her was one of his main inspirations for starting OpenAI. The film features the story of a writer who purchases an artificial intelligence named Samantha to help with his writing and his loneliness, but they slowly develop a romantic relationship. Samantha is played by Scarlett Johansson and, at its launch, the ChatGPT virtual assistant was criticised for its flirtatious tone. 

The proponents of the AI boom promise personal assistants that’ll enhance our lives, streamline our digital work and do all that boring stuff in the blink of an eye. But the above evidence—to me—paints a picture of tech-bro trying to fulfill their own parasocial fantasies of subservient robot girlfriends, who may or may not sound like Scarlett Johansson. 

Far from being a tool of casual creativity, AI has flooded the internet with regurgitated images and text slop. Tools that science fiction and AI companies have promised will ‘make our lives easier by leaving room for recreation’ now stifle our creativity and engineer the layoffs of artists, writers, and other creatives.

If allowed to continue, we may see the already bleak Hollywood environment—with its endless sequels and remakes—become a wasteland of corner-cutting artificially produced ‘films.’ It’s a change that will happen slowly—already, movies like The Brutalist were revealed to have used AI for background images and giving actors Hungarian accents. Aren’t actors supposed to act? Or will theatrical consumerism soon reach a point where the art of acting is reduced to only the recognisability of an actor’s face? 

Even in the darkest of cyberpunk futures, art is often a tool of resistance to relentless consumerism. Maybe this is why there’s a push for arts of all kinds to be digitised, automated and mass-manufactured. 

Perhaps more terrifying are the examples that transcend parody. I’m talking, of course, of Amazon's patented worker cages, a concept so ridiculous that if it appeared in a book, movie or show, critics would deride it as heavy-handed symbolism. 

In the midst of this, I ask, where is the cool shit? 

Why did we have to get this dystopia? With its car-centric infrastructure, ugly corporate architecture and constant surveillance. Where’s my robotic arms? Where are my rocket boots? Where are my flying cars? The holograms? The miracle cures? Why are the rich and powerful being inspired by the doomsday weapons and mind control devices? In the wealth of technology within science fiction, why do they focus on the tools of personal enrichment and control? I was promised a cool dystopia! 

I say all this not because I’m afraid of new technology, but because the cyberpunk future envisioned in so many works of fiction is closer than you think, and it’s the future that powerful people in our system want. A future where they hold absolute power, where they strangle our freedom with technology and where their unchecked privileges wreak havoc on our planet and our lives.

Mike Pondsmith, creator of the tabletop roleplaying game Cyberpunk, said “Cyberpunk was a warning, not an aspiration.”. This is why I detailed so many works of fiction, because, like the Metaverse and Snow Crash, how long till the rich are able to swap to other bodies like in Altered Carbon? How long till corporations fight wars with each other like in Count Zero? 

Then we’ll realise we should’ve heeded these as warnings, not discarded them as outlandish fiction. We should’ve stopped the executives who look at hypothetical capitalist hellscapes and instead of being horrified are inspired. 

We are barreling into an uncertain future, where things are rapidly changing and almost every day brings a new event never thought possible. While I might’ve depicted these tech overlords as buffoons (and they are), they are also exercising increasing control over our lives and our governments. Their attempts at creating their very own tech-branded dystopia won’t be ending any time soon.

So If it looks like a Torment Nexus, smells like a Torment Nexus and is named after the Torment Nexus, maybe, just maybe, it’s the Torment Nexus, and you probably shouldn’t buy it.