There are a lot fewer neon-drenched skyscrapers and risqué robots than we were promised, but a quarter of the way through the 21st century, we are indeed essentially living inside a cyberpunk dystopia. The evidence is all around us: corporate feudalism driven by monolithic tech companies with larger cashflows than many sovereign nations. Cutting-edge warfare is being waged with drones and lasers, while the generative computer programs being marketed as “artificial intelligence” warp our ability to discern reality. Electronic tchotchkes are ubiquitous but many people have little or no access to nutritious food or health care as our environment is run through a meat grinder and set on fire. This is the “high tech, low life” universe that Philip K. Dick and William Gibson warned us about, only not as glossy. As folks on Reddit like to put it, this is a “boring dystopia.”
The global spike in authoritarianism couldn’t possibly be as efficient, or as widespread, if not for the metastasizing mass surveillance tech apparatus following our every movement, every trip to the bathroom or grocery store, every visit to a website or a TikTok video. It seems that every detail of our face and the fine details of our irises is scanned and profiled and vacuumed up into the All-Seeing Eye of Providence stamped on every dollar bill. But whose providence are we talking here? Even the paranoid, conspiratorial mentality of “Neuromancer” feels justified in light of a global child sex trafficking ring operated by the world’s least savory financiers, spooks and politicians.
