Cyberworld Revised

[Flaco76]

So Cyberworld was one of my favorite cyberpunk settings since it actually provided name brands/life in the One and Twenty. Written in 1993 about the world in 2043 it has some glaring problems.

1. The US has been under an corporatist Provisional Government (ProGov) since 2021 and suspended elections since then. Senators are elected by states and there is a class system based on race/wealth. Mexico and Cuba have been added to the US and the US is fighting a guerrilla war in Cuba and Bolivia. A secret police force (NERCC) helps enforce the law.

2. Canada broke up by 2010 into a Columbia-Alberta alliance, the Central Provinces and a Atlantic Community led by Quebec.

3. Argentina and Chile merged into a business friendly state called Chiletina.

4. Brazil receives money from the world to keep the Amazon nice. Everyone pays or faces a total economic embargo.

5. Europe is united and peaceful

6. The Commonwealth of Independent States signed a series of economic agreements with Japan with Japanese corporations gaining access to Russian raw materials and markets. Now six of the ten biggest corporations are Russo-Japanese and they have a space station.

7. China has sealed itself from the world after a devastating disease and civil war.

8. All of Central Asia is under the Central Asian Federation which like the old USSR sponsors lots of terrorists.

9. Israel defeated a combined Arab invasion in 2021 and occupied Jordan, Lebanon, Syria the western half of Iraq and threatened everyone (Saudi Arabia, Iran) else with nukes if they joined in.

10. South Africa fell apart in civil war in 2004 causing a worldwide economic collapse called the Grand Slam. Some countries in Africa have merged despite economic collapse, environmental damage and a devastating plague. Why we don't know.

11. Australia has been depopulated by a unknown disease and no cure has been found.

REVISED

So obviously things have changed between 1993 and 2017 and like several Cyberpunk/near future settings it has become dated. So here are my ideas. Some are a collection of my ideas and a mash of Cyberworld, Cosmic Era https://strolen.com/viewing/The_Cosmic_Era, Transhuman Space and other ideas

1. World temperatures have risen 10 degrees and sea level by 12 feet. World population in 2043 Cyberworld is 6.4 billion. So by 2067 population may have gone up.

2. The US has changed due to disease, technological and social shifts and environmental damage. We still have elections but the major factions are the Technocrats/Corporates and Deep State National Security apparatus (we want to keep the lights on, people fed and housed and make money) and the People's Power (Environmentalists, Bio-punks, Anarchists, Cyberdemocrats) who want local autonomy. Cities in the center of the country have been more important since New Orleans and the East Coast have to deal with rising seas.

3. With the rise of 3-D printing, automating and limited AI/nanotech the manufacturing industry has reduced the number of people employed. Many people are employed in the service/knowledge industry now. Many countries have created a Universal Basic Income instead of Unemployment benefits.

4. Mexico did not do well in the transition but has recovered somewhat thanks to Renewable Energy/Biotech/Entertainment industries. Canada gained new farmland and shipping channel with the Climate Shift and so is united and wealthy.

5. Cuba followed Mexico's example but with a more extensive social welfare state.

6. South America used its raw material and biological wealth to gain a modest increase of wealth. Many new drugs and biotech designs now come from Brazil and Argentina.

7. East Africa is united and western Africa has a common market. Nigeria took the loss of oil revenue hard. Environmental damage and ethnic/religious conflict affect most of Central Africa.

8. Europe has reformed under a more Federal Europe to present a united front against Russia. Still spends a lot of time fighting themselves. Britain is out of the European system and trading with North America more.

9. Russia is authoritarian but not the levels of Putin era. They have the same problems as the US but more concerned about China and Central Asia. Russia used its knowledge of space travel and research to help mankind go back into space.

10. Central Asia is united under a form of Islamic Democracy. They have received investment from India and China and use them both to keep independent. Still don't trust the Russians.

11. Japan, Russian, Korea, Philippines, southeast Asia and Australia form a Pacific Rim Coalition against Chinese military and economic bullying. Like Europe they spend a lot of time arguing with each other. Malaysia and Indonesia are sites of major spaceports.

12. China is democratic (somewhat). Parties can compete as long as they don't violate Social Harmony. Heavy monitoring of public spaces and the Internet by State Security. China presents a strong face to the world and is aggressive in space development.

13. India remains chaotic mix of religions, ethnicities, languages and economics. Glittering modern cities next to vast slums. Leaders in AI, information technologies, entertainment and bio-tech (lots of test subjects). Border clashes with China and influence games in Nepal, Southeast Asia and Central Asia.

14. Iran is the top power in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia crashed and burned when the oil revenues started to fail. Iraq, Syria, Lebanon are a patchwork between Israeli, Turkish, Russian and Iranian supported states. Israel adopted a two state solution reluctantly due to demographics.

15. US, Russia, China, India have bases on the Moon and stations in orbit. Fusion is growing in use along with alternative energies. US/India/Brazil have cooperated on a Mars mission which landed in 2050 and Russia/Japan/Indonesia landed in 2052. Corporate mining vessels and stations are in the Asteroid Belt. Near space littered with stations both private and national. No O'Neill large stations yet.

16. In many developing countries the corporations have security forces and major influence. While the developed world would not permit this openly the developing world has little choice.

[Daigoro]

Apart from #2 and #10 in the top list, which are now in our past, I'm not sure why any of the others appear dated to you.

#1, if anything, appears more likely than before, and #6, with recent meetings between Putin and Abe, could actually happen.

#7 and #11, relying on unknown epidemics, are just as likely or unlikely to happen as they were in 1993.

[cybermancer2k1]

I'd very much like to see a 4th Edition Cyberworld, but I know that's just pipe-dreaming.

[patchwork]

Not sure what you're aiming for or what you'd like the community to provide; can you clarify what you'd like to see?

I use Cyberworld as satire, which is all I've ever been able to take it as. It isn't even governed by Rule of Cool, but by "whatever would make a small town conservative American soil his pants". Scared of the big bad evil Russkies so hard it's warped the entire culture for a couple of generations? Scared of those fiendish Japs and their too-clever technology and hard work taking good Murican jobs? Here, have a Russian-Japanese Alliance for maximum boogeyman factor! Have no idea what to make of China because nobody in the USA, especially in 1993 knows a bloody thing about China? Bamboo Curtain, all isolated and mysterious and stuff so you can pretend they don't exist! Australia always makes a convenient victim because Muricans think of them as Muricans who happen to have gotten lost (which also means their continued existence as an independent nation can't advance the Murican narrative). Creepy police powers and all these Mexicans within the USA. Make President Hammond gay and the horror would be complete. It's an attempt at a terrible dystopia that turns out just plain ridiculous.

[TGLS]

My thoughts: Cyberworld is not meant to be a realistic world; many features exist to guide adventuring possibilities rather than realism. It also has some zeitgeist. But there is also attempts to justify decisions too.

Originally Posted by Flaco76

1. The US has been under an corporatist Provisional Government (ProGov) since 2021 and suspended elections since then. Senators are elected by states and there is a class system based on race/wealth. Mexico and Cuba have been added to the US and the US is fighting a guerrilla war in Cuba and Bolivia. A secret police force (NERCC) helps enforce the law.

Let's be fair here; this America has had been beaten bloody. And it didn't change overnight either. Oh, and elections are still running too, but they're basically fixed though. The military conflicts serve dual purposes: they feed money to the Military-Industrial Complex and they distract from problems at home.
Let's also look at the flip-side; conspiracies used to be very popular. Even if you don't think they are true, they still make a good plot device. Everything from Burris being killed in Cincinnati through Hammond becoming President feels like a worst-case scenario version of JFK assassination.
One more thing; ProGov is meant to be a strawman. The leadership serves only themselves. Not even statists can approve of the government given the corruption. When you include the fact that gamers got arrested in the wake of the assassination, you might as well put up a sign that reads "These guys are our villains!"

Originally Posted by Flaco76

2. Canada broke up by 2010 into a Columbia-Alberta alliance, the Central Provinces and a Atlantic Community led by Quebec.

Take a look at this map. This was the federal election result for Canada in 1993. Notice, outside of Quebecois expansion into the Atlantic and the North, this apes how Canada divided in Cyberworld. Given a heavy enough shock, the country could collapse, especially with that political situation. Given how poor Atlantic Canada was, it is plausible they joined Quebec because remaining in the UP was geographically untenable.

Originally Posted by Flaco76

3. Argentina and Chile merged into a business friendly state called Chiletina.

Chiletina is said to be essentially the result of one man's vision, a little implausible on its own, but given all the bad stuff that happens at the same time, it's forgivable. It is a straightforward example of the "Superstates are super-awesome" current that flows through the book [See also UCAS, Europe, CIS, to a lesser extent Russo-Japan, and emerging United India]. It does have a few purposes: provide a rising nation for players to defend, a place to run away to, and an alternative backdrop that isn't all good or bad.

Originally Posted by Flaco76

4. Brazil receives money from the world to keep the Amazon nice. Everyone pays or faces a total economic embargo.

Three reasons: one, it let's the question of global warming be dropped, two, it follows the precedent of the Montreal Protocol [Pay less developed nations from doing things that are destructive to everyone], and three, it let's players take missions where they can defend the rainforest.

Originally Posted by Flaco76

5. Europe is united and peaceful

Well, first things first: United Europe isn't like our European Union; it solved its internal problems and centralized, instead of expanding eastward. Also, a nationalist faction headed by Germany and Italy [again] are opposed by moderates [Iberia, Scandanavia, England]. On one hand it is peaceful and united, but it isn't a circle of politicians dancing around and singing "Kumbaya". The reasons behind it: NATO needs to go in Cyberworld; without getting rid of NATO, the US keeps its bases around the world and becomes more dangerous. If NATO is gone, then somebody needs to prevent Western Europe from being Finlandized by Russia. The answer? United Europe. Also, it let's players play in a pre-ProGov America without having to move the date back and fight Nazis!

Originally Posted by Flaco76

6. The Commonwealth of Independent States signed a series of economic agreements with Japan with Japanese corporations gaining access to Russian raw materials and markets. Now six of the ten biggest corporations are Russo-Japanese and they have a space station.

Something tells me having Russia and Japan take over the world was a goal of Cyberworld. It's part of the character of the setting, all the way down to the slang. The Russians winning by losing and natural enemies allying for mutual profit, and it highlights the topsy-turvyness of cyberworld.

Originally Posted by Flaco76

7. China has sealed itself from the world after a devastating disease and civil war.

The problem of Russia and Japan becoming a world power is highlighted by China; primarily because it is Russia and Japan, just slightly behind. If China is in the world market, then they'll accomplish what Japan and Russia will, before them because they don't need to sign a treaty. Which is why they get beaten around by civil war, and embargoed out of the market because of Australia.

Originally Posted by Flaco76

8. All of Central Asia is under the Central Asian Federation which like the old USSR sponsors lots of terrorists.

Central Asia exists as the more rogue villain of Cyberworld, because ProGov can't nuke the Moscow and get away with it [And a tiny dirt poor country could never pull off a major terrorist attack]. Use them for the plots of action movies involving contrived world domination schemes.

Originally Posted by Flaco76

9. Israel defeated a combined Arab invasion in 2021 and occupied Jordan, Lebanon, Syria the western half of Iraq and threatened everyone (Saudi Arabia, Iran) else with nukes if they joined in.

The Arab war is probably an exaggeration of the then ongoing South Lebanon Conflict, where following the First Lebanon War, Israel ended up holding part of Lebanon. Given Israeli military history tends to involve the country going to war with a Pan-Arab coalition and generally winning, and that this conflict involved an incredibly disorganized Arab side, it seems reasonable that they managed to defeat their enemies. Threatening the other powers of the Middle East is a little over the top, but the occupation seems strangely inevitable and ahead of its time [Leave, and the group who attacked will reform. Stay, and embolden the group who attacked.]

Originally Posted by Flaco76

10. South Africa fell apart in civil war in 2004 causing a worldwide economic collapse called the Grand Slam. Some countries in Africa have merged despite economic collapse, environmental damage and a devastating plague. Why we don't know.

I agree, the map of Africa and all the data in the tables do more harm than good. If it was left very vague [no map, a few generic entries aside from important ones], it might may have done better. All the merged countries confuse issues. My best guess is that brazen wars of aggression flared and this is what the new order looks like.

Originally Posted by Flaco76

11. Australia has been depopulated by a unknown disease and no cure has been found.

I believe this is intended for three reasons: one, to prevent this setting from being too much like Autoduel because Australia's isolation could make it a great power, two, to leave it an open question for GMs to insert something interesting into [The whole unknown disease thing is left very ambiguous], and three, because you can't do Mad Max without wrecking Australia first.

[Tinman]

I'm a big fan of the Cyberworld setting & would love to see an update. I was also a huge fan of the Cthulu-punk world because it was set in the Cyberworld setting.

[Dr. Beckenstein]

And I also like Cyberworld, but always thought it's version of Australia was really really lazy. :-)

[Prince Charon]

I think if I were going to revise Cyberworld, it would be in parallel with a revision of Transhuman Space, fitting them into the same timeline.

[trooper6]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

I think if I were going to revise Cyberworld, it would be in parallel with a revision of Transhuman Space, fitting them into the same timeline.

I wouldn't do that personally because I see cyberpunk and transhumanism and being about fundamentally different anxieties and very different time periods.

I see cyberpunk and fundamentally about the anxieties of late 1970s and the 1980s...bleeding into the early 1990s. It doesn't make sense to update it to make it today...because it isn't about today at all. It is about 1984. It is one of the reasons why transhuman stories overtook cyberpunk stories...because it isn't the 1980s anymore.

A person can still play cyberpunk, of course. Nostalgia always sells. But I think it is best to think of cyberworld as an alternate universe that diverges from our own in 1993 and leave it at that.

[hal]

If I were to work with updating any kind of "cybernetics based" game world where technology advances quickly, and society struggles to stay sane throughout it all, I'd start with the following basic background:

1) automation of any kind, whether by means of simple kiosk like interfaces, or actual machines or vehicles - results in the dangerous weakening of the economic forces that used to exist prior. In my campaign worlds, industries that remove a human from the equation via automation of any kind, are taxed for the support required to pay welfare benefits for the unemployed. This mind set was adopted in the European Union first, and subsequently adopted by other first world nations struggling to pay the costs of social programs and/or safety net programs.

2) the law almost always lags behind technology. As a consequence, things will get NASTY for a while until someone tries to fix the issue. For example, there is supposedly a new process involving the use of living skin cells for in-vitro fertilization techniques being developed. (In theory that is, like anything else, one has to wait for the future to see if it works!). Imagine a rock star being sued for paternity payments on a child that was brought into existence via IVF using living skin. What will the courts say the first few times it happens, and what changes to the laws will there be after wards?

3) In the past, the rich used their wealth to get poorer people to do as they desired. In a world with automation, robotic factories etc - might not the rich be more inclined to finding ways to depopulate the region rather than finding ways to enrich the lives of the poor? Plagues that induce sterility or kill outright, could be let loose in a biopunk sort of fashion. With automation and robotics - there will no longer be a need for the poor's service.

4) Social/political divides: We're living in a time period in which politics has caused some major polarization. Institutional trust has eroded severely to the extent that some societies may be on the edge of rebellion. How long would society last if they lost trust in the police force, or the newspapers telling the truth instead of engaging in yellow journalism, or the vote being rigged, etc? Might not social unrest include an increase in lawlessness?

5) that which can't go on, won't. As social programs make it easier to remain unemployed, social programs and safety net programs will become increasingly more costly. Taxes continuing to rise may have a double effect of causing the population to self-select for lower replacement rates (ie, the heavier the tax burden, the less children are produced by the taxed). This in turn, gives rise to a cycle where the taxes never drop, but the population paying the tax dwindles. Somewhere along the way, there will be a point of no return where either the taxation has to be relaxed, or the people revolt against the taxation being ruinous.

6) Environmental factors: Some might say that pollution is our worst problem. Energy pollution in the form of excess heat (why do you think birds sit on telephone wires in the winter - transmission of electricity across lines results in waste heat). Urban areas with excessive energy use might also have "islands" effects where the areas have high heat, but other areas lack it.

7) Weather: Some are saying that we're heading for a new mini-ice age due to the lack of sun spots (as in ZERO sun spots recently), and others are claiming Global warming. Some point out the fossil records of petrified wood indicating that the American South West proves periodic warming and cooling periods, while others say "It is out of control, the world is doomed!". Then there are those astrophysicists who point out that our sun is currently 20% brighter (and consequently warmer) than when it first came into being. The progression of the sun's lifespan will ultimately make the Earth uninhabitable due to excessive heat production from the sun. The fact that our Sun is a variable star seems to be lost on some. But either way you slice it or dice it, climatic change has the potential to seriously impact on food production, raise the ocean levels (or in a Mini-Ice Age scenario, lock up more water in ice)

Then we have the "never forgets" syndrome of modern society today. Storage of video or file medium has grown progressively cheaper. As a consequence, things you say today, may come back to haunt your buttocks some 20 years later as if you had just said them then and there. This is going to have some major effects on people as they self-censor their words, and attempt to run silent as to their real thoughts in an effort to avoid persecution later on. Let's face it. When children were taught about their founding fathers in the United States back in the 1960's - they were taught that the founding fathers attempted to create a document (the declaration of independence as well as the United States Constitution) that was politically viable. The pros of what were accomplished were given a higher level of attention than were the issues that were divisive. People forget that the historical people of the past were no different than the people of today in the sense that they were a product of their times, trying to do the best they could with what they had. The lesser populated colonies feared the tyranny of the higher population colonies - and enacted the Electoral college to avoid the issue that was perceived. Slavery, some hated it even then, and some wanted to abolish it on the premise that all were created equal - yet some, having paid money for their slaves, were determined not to have their investments STOLEN from them. It was NOT a perfect time, and political compromises were as unsastisfactory then, as they are today. Today's children seem to learn nothing more than "They were slave owners" and are shown only the dirt, or the imperfections.

In any event, society evolves with the times, certain cultural bedrock principles determine how people will react to what is right and what is wrong. Legal codes evolve on the basis of precedent - how judges adjudicated cases in the past and try to retain a level of consistency. For me, the Cyberpunk "updates" simply need to examine the general basis for any story telling:

What are the conflicts?

Man versus Man
Man versus self
Man versus Nature
and so on and so forth

I never really liked TRANSHUMAN SPACE, and I never really liked over the top CP2020 all TOO much either. A much more muted version of CP2020 is my comfort zone.

So, what would YOUR updated Cyberpunk or Cyberworld look like? :)