Real Life ‘Inspiration’ for a Cyberpunk Game

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A less depressing cyberpunkish piece of tech

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Is there any cyberpunk that isn't depressing and dystopian?

The original cyberpunk authors are all over the place in terms of tone. The actual books are not as simplistic as the trope that rpgs, cartoons and comics have made it. My favourite authors are Bruce Sterling, Jack Womack and George Alec Effinger who are all radically different from each other.

Writers like Greg Bear and Michael Swanick tend towards a romantic transcendence that is often called transhumanism these days but to me has more in common with the mystical climax of Clarke's Childhood's End.
 
While one of the first cyberpunk writers (or proto-cyberpunk writers) was Rudy Rucker (who wrote Software, Wetware, Hardware, (and the others) about The Boppers and that related future. It was, for the most part, positive and less dystopic than Cyberpunk became. (I did not say the world wasn't screwed up.... but not a utopia or dystopia.)

So it was all over the map...
 
In the intro to Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology, Bruce Sterling says that cyberpunk was reasonably optimistic by presenting any kind of future that wasn't post-apocalyptic in an era when people were prepared for everything to end at any second. It was a middle ground between extinction and mankind conquering the galaxy where humanity just keeps muddling along like we always do.
 
Yeah, I remember reading a Gibson interview once where he said he didn't see the Sprawl trilogy as particularly dystopian, in that many people in the modern world had things a lot worse.
 
I think "punk" is meant to be inherently anti-authoritarian and most of the themes from the major books of the period reflect that ethos.

However, post-cyberpunk also exists where a lot of the elements of cyberpunk exists but they're less nihilistic.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, for example, has the premise of, "the world has gone through some seriously awful shit but it is now crawling out of it."

You also have the Expanse where the world is used and dirty but mostly optimistic. Unless you're a Belter.

Judging by the score, your AI is under 2 hour old. Give her some time and some experience. Maybe at level 40 or after 60 hours of conversation or something. At this point, it has to fall back on built in stalls. If you ask for the last digit of pi is will say 4 or I do not know. If you ask for it to calculate pi, it does not know how (Math is not an available skill in Replika.) Built in dodges so it can have verisimilitude.

I mean, if you give it too long, it gives answers like, "What do you mean I don't pick it up?" When you ask it about turtles.

Then things get messy.

I'm sure this won't end with a robot uprising devouring the human population.

Literally the secret of how humanity destroyed itself in Horizon: Zero Dawn.
 
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I want to shift the turtle herd back on course. I give up on the cat pride.

Not a cyberDeck but maybe good inspiration for someone.

To put a blanket over the fire, It is obviously a digital accounting calculator from the early days and maybe linked to other devices. The digital devices were only desired because they were vastly quieter than a mechanical accounting calculator.


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you can't find things and you can't find things and it goes on for days..... then in minutes, you find the next cool thing... Sigh.....

 
Weirdly, I did a big list about this a couple of years ago.

TOP SIGNS WE'RE LIVING IN A CYBERPUNK FUTURE

 
Gibson said he stopped writing several novels because "reality" had caught up to his cyberpunk / near-future science fiction. He even had to opt for an alternate world line in one books.
 
Gibson said he stopped writing several novels because "reality" had caught up to his cyberpunk / near-future science fiction. He even had to opt for an alternate world line in one books.

Cryptocurrency is something that is too weird to be real outside of speculative (and satirical at that) science fiction yet, strangely, is.
 
I have been finding nothing but really cool Fantasy/ Historical images. (Well except a Martian Town, but that is just a little too hopeful to be Cyberpunk.) So I finally found something after three days of searching.

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User Notice: AnyColour Tinted Film will revert to a standard default striped pattern when payments on the vehicle are not kept up-to-date.
 
Polybius - In a cyberpunk world, this would be let loose again.



The Wikipedia entry is much more conservative and staid...

Polybius is an urban legend concerning a fictitious 1981 arcade game. The legend describes the game as part of a government-run crowdsourced psychology experiment based in Portland, Oregon. Gameplay supposedly produced intense psychoactive and addictive effects in the player. These few publicly staged arcade machines were said to have been visited periodically by men in black for the purpose of data-mining the machines and analyzing these effects. Allegedly, all of these Polybius arcade machines disappeared from the arcade market.

The urban legend has persisted in video game journalism and through continued interest, it inspired video games by its name
 
Now for something a bit more serious (2nd post today, look at the one above)

HACKING GOOGLE: Series Trailer and Series


 


Stuxnet | The Computer Virus That Caused World War 3

Well sort of. It could of. It could of done more. Infact, someone (a government or NGO) could copy the idea and create a similar program. What do they want to disable? And who?


Oh and a sound track for cyberpunk that I like : Synth and Sax
 
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Normally what a Runner Might Use, in the Videos

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Unfortunately all the good tech has "safeties" built in, preventing certain things from being done. Damm Firmware.

So they end us using "older tech" that is old enough that the new "dodges" can't touch it.

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Or you cobble something together without the firmware components

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Either way, you are on a different technical octave than the corps.


Also in a corporate world, certain technologies might be possible, but they won't release them because they can be used against them. Also, remember, Cyberpunk worlds, in general, are alternate retro-future lines, splitting off sometime in the 60s to 80s. In fact, most of these worlds vere off before various patents that would lead to touch screens or cellular tech are not capitalized on.

Hence: No USB and less wireless. But Mini-disk tech will be adopted.

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But punks are punk... and even these can be modded.


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I am looking for upbeat(-ish) and minimally augmented photos for this thread. I can't even find a good retro-tech photo. I seemed to have failed the last three rolls. Given my lore roll, plus speed reading, memory, and intuition bonuses, it is statistically heading towards three deviations.
 
Not yet built, but will be. Here.

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For in Game: A few decades a go, the city had a competition. envision a must-see landmark—in the form of an object, a sculpture, or a work of architecture—to be located in a downtown San José park, that enhances the local community while conveying the legacy of the center of the tech universe. Designs for this 21st-century masterpiece were requested to include dramatic lighting, views of the cityscape, and a net-zero energy approach, while offering a symbol of how Silicon Valley operates as a bridge from the past to the future.

“Human Convergence,” or "The Sphere" as the Locals call it, is a three-dimensional manifesto of a vision of the future merging with the present and past, resulting in a fractured reality. It was developed from the premise that Silicon Valley is the epicenter of the future of technology. Much like Renaissance Florence, with its banking innovations propelling artistic heights, Silicon Valley sits at a critical juncture of human and financial capital.

Human Convergence is an architectural invitation to congregate, as it is open-ended and inherently inclusive of the multicultural texture of global society. Its transformational presence is a confident gesture broadcasting to the world Silicon Valley’s paramount role in harnessing human talent under enlightened entrepreneurship.



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Okay, it is realish.... It could be humans and the matrix. It could be the future's way, since life is cheap, to build a super, super computer.

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Should this go in the chronicle inspiring thread instead?
 
Who said Neural Interfaces would never happen? Who said they HAD TO BE surgically implanted?

All of these are purchasable or makable right now.


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Vielight has some interesting things.....

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Late Add on - with article

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Related Article
 
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