Cyberpunk - 4 Era's of History

The Silver Era (before 1980)

Key events: Words like computer, robot, cyborg, and punk are created; Computers like The Difference Engine and ENIAC are built, while Pascal, Boole, Babbage, & Turing make contributions; Isaac Asimov creates the Three Laws of Robotics; Alexander Graham Bell invents the Telephone; AT&T rises to become a monopoly; Late 60s counterculture; 70s Punk; Kraftwerk forms and changes music.

The Industrial Age in the states showed us that we could more than just weald tools and weapons. We could do more than build homes and walls. Plant food and care for cattle. We could do more than adapt to our environment – we could change it. Many who focus on the cyberpunk history forget the intregal part of this industrial era where cogs and gears worked together to do more than man could do alone. Also, the invention of plastic was a key part of the creation of smaller, more precise and cheaper machines. Metals and energy was refined over the years to finally end in the form of a computer. As computers grew the ability to network grew as well. From the days of needing someone to connect your call we move to the day where AT&T monopolize the communication industry. Business saw the power and value of computers but no one could have guess how they would invade almost every aspect of our personal lives. Many works alluded to extreme possilbities of this like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, A Clockwork Orange, Fahrenheit 451, THX-1138, The Shockwave Rider, and Metropolis. Although these are considered “classics of the silver age of Cyberpunk” they only portray extreme cases of what could happen if we allow technology to go too far.

The Golden Era (1980-1993)

Key events: Bruce Bethke creates the word “Cyberpunk”; Neuromancer is published, and a movement is born; IBM PC storms home market; Blade Runner in theaters; Hajime Sorayama gives us sexy robots, gynoids, and cyborgirls; Laser Tag; The Golden age of video games; AT&T broken up; AT&T crashes due to programming error; Misguided Secret Service launches “Operation:Sundevil”; The World Wide Web goes online for the public.

Bruce Bethke was the first to reference Cyberpunk in a short story in 1980 (http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/cpunk.htm). He had no idea national media would pick it up and use it for all sorts of references about Science Fiction. Most media sources used it often to reference author’s like William Gibson, Michael Swanwick, Jack Dann, Gardner Dozois, and Avram Davidson. Then came IBM, 1981 and the Personal Computer.

It seems like forces are aligned in 81. Along with the PC Kraftwerk releases the album “Computer World” in Germany, William Gibson’s short stories “The Gernsback Continuum” and “Johnny Mnemonic” are published and more important Gibson pens his book which will later become the foundation of Cyberpunk – “Neuromancer” – which was original titled “Jacked In.”

Next, computers move into our entertainment ideas with Pong, Atari 2600 and Commodore 64. Games take us places we only read about or imagined when we were children. And they continued to grow and capture our attention.

The Mainstream Era (1993-1999)

Key events: Billy Idol’s Cyberpunk CD; Time Magazine’s 2/8/93 cover article “Cyberpunk!”; Johnny Mnemonic, Lawnmower Man, Hackers, et al in theaters; Microsoft Windows becomes dominant OS; Web population explodes due to AOL.

Cyberpunk received a real nationwide boost from Time Magazine in February 1993 (http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,1101930208,00.html). Before that Cyberpunk wasn’t a buzz word with anyone – but now it was published to the masses. Soon after Hollywood produced five cyberpunk movies. Also “The Cyberpunk Handbook” was published to enlighten those who wanted to know more about the movement (Wired’s review from 1995 when it was published http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.12/streetcred.html?pg=3).

Some view the end of the Mainstream era as a time when the movement died. The fact is Science fiction as a whole was less popular. The days when hundreds of thousands read monthly magazines of short stories that open our eyes to future possibilities had been dwindling for some time. But this brief dark period of Cyberpunk would move back into the mainstream shortly.

The Millennium Era (1999-Present)

Key events: The Matrix explodes in theaters; George Bush Jr. steals White House, and America is screwed; 9/11/2001 triggers Big Brother knee-jerk “Patriot Act”; AT&T slowly reassembles itself; AT&T plans for a “Tiered Internet” triggers Net Neutrality debate; NSA & AT&T are found in bed together; DRM is invented… and hacked; Web 2.0 becomes a buzzword; Google flexes its tentacles; Spam, spiders, botnets, and other threats to the net grow in power; Robots, nanotechnology, and cybernetic implants are closer than ever to reality.

The Matrix revealed a future where computers rule our minds. The ultimate interface of man and machine. Our dependence on information from computers and the panic of the Y2K bug revealed a real intertwining of life and digital realities. Computers are a real part of our lives.

Cyberpunk moves from short stories and novels into corporations, hackers, medical and industrial technology and even how we receive our news on the internet from Blogs, RSS feeds and e-mail. The government is using technology to monitor our world “for our protection” as well hiding behind the Patriot Act. The FBI and NSA spying programs have never been more real. Microsoft, AT&T, Apple, Google are examples of corporations moving into the technological future. Some call it world domination or wanting control of the internet – I call it the current time and what we view as digital power now will look like a Model-T to today’s super charged computer controlled hybrid cars.

The reality of Cyberpunk is that it will eventually fade into reality. The movement – so called – will become the norm. The exciting thing about it is trying to find out what's happening next and being apart of the change from “Science Fiction” to “Science.”