The title for this essay comes from an inspiration the documentary “Punk’s Not Dead” by Susanne Dynner gave me. It proves that punks are indeed “not dead” and are demonstrated with various music genres in American culture. So if critics  declare Cyberpunk for dead, they will be surprised that there are many forces who try to prove them wrong. Creative Cyberpunk writers are out there, many surely still undiscovered, contemplating about mankind’s future relationship with science, technology, computers, robots and the lot. I will describe with the help of the following short advertisement about “Cybermobbing” or “Cyberbullying” that not only writers make precautions or warnings for the future.

“Werbung gegen Cybermobbing“

This advertisement produced by order of the European Union the  shows how a victim becomes insulted and bullied by hostile class mates in the cyberspace of the Internet. The degree of harm might be kept within a limit in this example. The threshold to “Cyberterrorism” is stunningly low, when people consider doing worse than bullying and aim to damage others on a much severer level. The extent of harm caused would be the only difference. It shows that even the government by taking measures to inform society, is aware of  the threat ruthless skilled computer users could do to political, social and economic entities. If punks roam the street and are up to no good people can call the police and get help in most situations. But cyberpunks don’t have to worry about “Internet” police trying to catch them. If skilled enough they could cause “cyber-mayhem” being invisible and leaving no trace.

In my opinion many crucial themes in Cyberpunk deal with mankind crossing borders in science and technology and not knowing the negative outcome it could have. Nearly every Cyberpunk story deals with the aftermath of terrible mistakes done by people who hold power, scientists ignoring ethnic condemnable questions or using advanced technology for a “bad” cause. It makes the issues Cyberpunk is about relevant to us, because as users  we can always make wrong decisions regarding the application of technology. Cyberpunk which does not always try to entertain can be seen as comments about the progress of science and technology when misused. As science fiction fans we could imagine serious Cyberpunk novelists as “Vulcans” trying to display and educate inexperienced humans about what might happen if you make the wrong decision at the wrong time.

This week’s course asks whether or not cyberpunk has outgrown itself, and surpassed the realities imagined by some of the founders of the genre. Is it still relevant in the tech-saturated world in which we live? Have the warnings that were sounded by Gibson, Stephenson and Sterling become a reality? Is the technological reality in cyberpunk even that important, given how concerned the films and novels are with questions of truth, memory and reality? Much of the work read and discussed asks the question: What does it mean to be Human? Does this mean cyberpunk has a continued relevance as a genre?

With these questions, your reading and the discussions we have had over the past 3 weeks as a guide,  write a short (+/-2 page, complete with links and references) paper on how you see cyberpunk’s relevance as a genre, the debate on whether or not cyberpunk can be said to be ‘dead” and the epistemological issues it raises.   There are a great deal of resources online on this topic, so feel free to use any of them, as long as you refer back.

If you could upload your piece as a blog post by the end of the day on Monday 6th of October. That gives everyone the whole of Tuesday 7th to read, and then we can have our discussion on Wednesday 8th. Please tag your work as Week 4, Is Punk Dead and any other tags you think are appropriate.

Additional Resources:
These are just a starting point, but you may find them useful.
Cyberpunk RIP – an article by Paul Saffo in WIRED mag circa the early 1990s.
The Four Eras of Cyberpunk – article by Mr Roboto which defines the current era as “post-Matrix”

Pic by Enric Martinex on Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0