40 years to Cyberpunk?

[Jürgen Hubert]

Here are some other suggestions:

- There is no serious health care reform, and health care costs continue to rise. And there's also some new diseases around the block which are very expensive to treat. Thus, there is a much larger division between those who can afford health care and those who don't than even today - especially if emergency room treatment is no longer automatic because it proved to be "too expensive".

- Rising automation causes widespread unemployment for people without a good college degree. Most grocery stores and other normal shops have a single employee at best - everything in them is stacked and monitored by robots. The same goes for manufacturing, security systems, and so forth. Even the military shrinks down as an increasing amount of is activities - both active combat, surveillance, and support - is left to automated systems.

Thus, the vast majority of Americans are unemployed and bored out of their minds - a situation similar to many of the Arab oil states (with robots taking the role of cheap expatriate labor from South-East Asia).

[ed_209a]

What do you all think about corporate extraterritoriality? This is a concept Shadowrun uses where some corporate facilities are granted what amounts to sovereign nation status, like an embassy.

This would again be part of the nibbling away of the Govt's power, because in these several blocks, the Govt doesn't have to provide emergency services, utilities (or collect taxes...)

So you might eventually develop a maze of corporate micronations, with the actual Government not really caring what they to to each other short of overt hostile action (but covert is a different matter)

[David Johnston2]

The nations may be weak but to formally recognise a corporation's property as extraterritorial they'd have to be getting something out of the deal. Corporate autonomy is more likely to be de facto than de jure.

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

The main meme of the cyberpunk genre is an advanced civilization returning to the historical status quo - concentration of wealth, power, and the mechanisms for generating same in the hands of a small segment of the population with the bulk of the populace reduced to impotence. This is seen as desirable by some segments of the population (namely the ones with wealth and power).

Another secondary meme is the empowerment of the individual - the lowly street-person who finds new sources of wealth and power previously unknown. Thus he not only manages to survive, but thrives despite (or even because of) his conventional powerlessness.

So the first question is, "Who has the Power?"
Second question, "How did they get it?"
And third question, "What is the new Power?"

[Orienda]

Even better than both parties going of the deep end, have both parties fragment into a couple dozen small parties with no appeal outside their base. Government becomes completely innefectual, only hardcore fanatics vote, and politicians become even more obsessed with the politics rather than the effects, and money can all but buy votes, letting corporations basically dictate policy (and that policy is about the only thing that gets done). Maybe even have a consortium of mega-corps run their own candidates that control the government.

Disasters are good. If you want the Shadowrunner dynamic, definitely make the non-citizen underclass, with not only illegal immigrants having no rights (and no records) but perhaps also refugees from regions devestated by disasters, where records were almost all destroyed (Another Katrina, Nuclear Terrorist Attack, Cyberwarfare with another country etc.)

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Rather than continuing with the old "corporate vs. government" conflict, it would seem appropriately cyberpunkish to have both replaced by something else. Various organizations in the fiction of Bruce Sterling and Walter Jon Williams, freed of earthly constraints, build communities which act kinda like corporations and kinda like states, but it'd be difficult to call them either. They're mostly based in space and use cutting-edge technologies which it would be dangerous or expensive to develop in a biosphere; indeed, many such societies may blow themselves up, but they can do so safely if they're on the Moon, and if one in a thousand strikes it rich, they strike it very, very rich. The off-world communities become immensely powerful but, given the circumstances of their origins (it takes a very committed group to take the kinds of risks their founders took, and such commitment could easily be linked to very strong feelings about something other than a mere scientific enterprise), may follow some very peculiar ideologies. Frex, they may experiment with network-driven mass-mind techniques, radical genetic engineering easily altering things which were previously hard to modify (intelligence, age, sex, life cycle, etc.), or use new technological and psychological techniques to explore unusual states of mind. In addition to being rich and powerful, they're increasingly hard to recognize as human.

In any case, Earth is rendered increasingly irrelevant. Europe, the US, and China become the equivalent of Third World nations, increasingly dependent on aid and advice from the dynamic new societies of orbit and beyond. Overpopulation, climate change, squabbling over the scraps tossed down from orbit, and existential angst make Earth a relatively drab, dangerous place to be. Some look to ascend to join the off-planet revolution, but don't know if they'll be able to fit in. Others look for ways to make life more meaningful on a planet whose time appears to have passed. Transhuman Space might be a good starting point, but more depressing.

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

TBC has an interesting idea. One variant that's popular out where I live ... "Big Government" vs "Self-Sufficiency".

Have a government that's more and more willing to claim authority and put the screws on, combined with an increasing tendency to seek "local" solutions. Carried far enough, you have major urban areas with military curfews and ten identity checks just to walk down the street, contrasted with rural areas where all the houses have their own power plants and renegade computer servers.

Food supply to the major cities requires involved negotiations and armed caravans, the "official" computer networks are ruthlessly patrolled to keep the small-town independent systems from hooking up (and they fail constantly), and travel between cities (when allowed) can be either by government-controlled planes and trains or by dangerous "Mad-Max" road trips. Military expeditions to "pacify lawless elements" are common but useless.

Smuggling between urban and rural communities is rife. Urban areas want food and "natural-grown" drugs, rural areas want computer and medical technology. The government doesn't like it and tries to shut it down, with predictable results.

Just a notion.

[GoodGame]

I'd go with Autoduel's timeline and shift it to are present, but keep our digital dependence and old infrastructure, with no serious wars. Fuel and energy costs stress the government to a hollow shell, but society still depends heavily on the digital, and some scientific progress is still made. In the power vacuum and magic of the digital, cyberpunk arises.

[Victor Maxus]

How about a quick one here. The plan for government bailout fails, weakens nations economy even more. In desperation, government gives up old policy of not allowing trusts, and the old monopolies return, giving incredible power to a few corporations compared to a now weakened government.

This could be a general back drop to a potential cyberpunk crisis situation.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

Rather than continuing with the old "corporate vs. government" conflict, it would seem appropriately cyberpunkish to have both replaced by something else. Various organizations in the fiction of Bruce Sterling and Walter Jon Williams, freed of earthly constraints, build communities which act kinda like corporations and kinda like states, but it'd be difficult to call them either.

Requires five or six centuries.