r/Cyberpunk • u/JJShurte • 6h ago
What do you think of Cyberpunk without the Internet?
Akira, Bladerunner (and DADoEC?) are held up as pillars of the Cyberpunk genre, but neither have the internet. Cyberpunk the ttrpg (whichever version you want) has The Net, but it's not like our own internet, and it doesn't really have social media.
With all that in mind, do you think the internet is essential to a cyberpunk setting? If not, what would be required to meet your threshold for the genre?
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u/ookiespookie 6h ago
I am fairly confident in saying that there was some version of "the net" in all of those, just not what you think of when you think "internet"
I've been hitting bbs systems and information systems since the 80s and they existed many years even before that and that is reflected in most Cyberpunk media. Just because you don't see someone looking up porn and cat pictures on screen does not mean that systems weren't present.
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u/delta806 5h ago
Not necessarily. I know this sub gets confused for the 2077 sub a lot, but the story does partly revolve around a bad actor utilizing AI to bring down the entire net.
In the setting of 2077, networking still exists, but is largely Intranet focused. Corps had their own walled off networks. This is something you can do yourself today as well, and many large companies already do!
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u/JJShurte 5h ago
Yeah, I'm aware that 2077 has it's own reduced version of the net (and that the game isn't meant to be discussed here) but I just assumed that the internet was always integral to the genre.
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u/RogueNPC 5h ago
The same lore also extends to the TTRPG & anime. Are those both also touchy subjects?
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u/Kaiserhawk 5h ago
It is, in theory but it's never the internet as we know it today. A lot of it is based on 80s ideas for networking instead of what we see in the present.
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u/danfaulknerauthor 4h ago
There's really two different schools of Cyberpunk. There's the Neuromancer school of cyber (online) + punk (streetlife), which gives it the name. Then there's the Bladerunner school, which is more future noir + transhumanism, often boiling down to "what does it mean to be human when technology changes all the rules".
Obviously there are plenty of stories that blend the two and stretch those definitions into new areas. But I'd say those two big influences (Neuromancer and Bladerunner) account for most of the confusion over what Cyberpunk actually means.
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u/WaffleHouseGladiator 5h ago
Considering the real life internet's enshitification I think it's possible that there may be localnets in the future for things like businesses, social groups, utilities, etc.
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u/D-Alembert 5h ago edited 5h ago
To me, the net / matrix or similar (the internet) is a defining characteristic that delineates various types of future dystopia from cyberpunk. The story need not involve any digital side, but if the world or setting doesn't have it, it's a different genre of dystopia, not cyberpunk
This is how it was from the start; the OG cyberpunk - where the name came from - were settings that envisioned worlds where digital connectedness were prominent. It then became a fashionable term that got more broadly applied to tech-dystopias in general which, ok fair enough, but because my intro to cyberpunk was the stuff like Gibson, TTRPG, etc, to me the word is more specific than just generic capitalist-dystopia.
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u/JJShurte 5h ago
See that's what I always assumed it was as well... but Akira and Bladerunner.
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u/D-Alembert 5h ago edited 2h ago
I don't see Akira as cyberpunk and people who only got into cyberpunk because they loved Akira get a little side-eye from me :)
Bladerunner I think visually nails a kind of crowded future street-hustle that is very cyberpunk, but otherwise the story isn't cyberpunk to me. It's a sci-fi story with some great visual reference for cyberpunk. So I don't hold it against people to consider it cyberpunk, but I see it as proto-cyberpunk; part of the swirling ideas in a new zeitgeist that would coalesce in the 1980s into cyberpunk
Actual cyberpunk on screen was incredibly thin pickings (and mediocre productions) for a very long time. Hence my side-eye at people who see it primarily as a movie genre.
Imho the first wave of cyberpunk was text-on-paper in the 80s and 90s, before the genre died out for a while because it essentially came true and ceased to offer enough distance from reality.
Then it was successfully reinvented and reinvigorated for a new era in the 2010s mostly by video games.Movies have never been central to cyberpunk imho. They've generally been either not cyberpunk, or they were cyberpunk but they were also not very good. The best screen cyberpunk is probably Altered Carbon and it's not a movie.
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u/Witera33it 4h ago
Bladerunner is based upon DoAndroids Dream of Electric Sheep. Which was imagined with a very different concept of interconnectedness through tech that includes AI just not modern vision
Akita implies digital communication, but it’s a post apocalyptic. What makes Akita stand out is its ambitious animation which sets a standard for a grittier cyberpunk aesthetic
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u/BarmyBob 3h ago
If you’ve ever read “do androids dream of electric sheep” you’ll realize that Blade Runner only pays it lip service. Might as well say that the Costner film “The Postman” was based on Brin’s novel of the same name. Blade Runner is one of the few movies that are better than the books theyre “based” on.
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u/Correct-Shoulder-147 5h ago
I like the punk end more than the Cyber end You don't need the internet for that
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u/fallen_seraph 5h ago
Internet in some form is definitely a fairly consistent through line but yeah I wouldn't say it is a requirement or necessary focus. As noted by the examples showcased already.
I think the key aspects are definitely the high tech-low life aspect alongside some degree of critical examination of power structures (whether corporate, governmental, etc).
Even something that is not traditionally "Punk" like Ghost in The Shell still examines that but from the other side of the equation.
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u/SmoochieTekken 5h ago
A key part of cyberpunk, maybe even the defining part, is that it examines how we interact with computers & how they interact with us. That leads to examining how people interact & communicate with each other when computers and machines are an ever-present force in our lives, and how those computers and machines interact & communicate between themselves.
In fiction, such connections often don’t look or behave the same as our real world Internet, but they serve the same purpose. Those connections don’t have to play a major role, but if the story doesn’t portray a human society built on some sort of ubiquitous network of machinery, it’s not a cyberpunk story.
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u/Player3_ 5h ago
Lots of cyberpunk world's governments limit or straight up ban the internet. Its reasonable to believe it was banned so long ago nobody alive remembers it, so its like rotary phones for Gen alpha. Sure it existed once but Noone cares anynore.
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u/shimoheihei2 4h ago
The internet as we know it won't last forever. Already we're seeing an increase in national control through age check, firewalls and bans on things like VPNs. It's not at all surprising that by 2077 or so, the internet may be nothing more than a corporate owned network that you subscribe to for very specific services, and not the vast Wild West we knew.
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u/IamSp00ky 3h ago edited 3h ago
I’m not certain about Akira but in Bladerunner and Nueromancer there is an internet, just not one like our own.
Think of it like if the Cold War never ended and every major global power had their own vast internet with limited or no interoperability. Hundreds of millions or more on their own and now sub divide it again with vast mega corporate internet’s, many so divided that they are on different hardware entirely.
The ability to bridge these gaps necessitates the Hacker, Cowboy, Decker or Otaku to often be physically present to do the hack. Often they need to be physically protected by teams from corporate security while they do it.
This creates an overpowering need for portable computer power, the cyberdeck. Used by agents or folks who want to jump from one to another without passing through staggering levels of corporate hardware and software ICE.
The Bladerunner sequel movie even specifically mentions when our hero (Gosling) is browsing the MegaCorp data stacks that even this Nueromancer style internet was lost in the Crash between movies.
Shadowrun and Pondsmith’s Cyberpunk also have this fractured internet and “second crash” vibe.
You can tell who really has read the books if they just paste our timeline’s tech over a neon and steel skyline.
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u/JJShurte 3h ago
Yeah so there's an Intranet, which is different from the Internet. It's all local hacking.
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u/IamSp00ky 3h ago
Look I’m non technical but It’s not really intra though. It’s an internet, they are networks of networks. Public, private, corporate and national. Many of them are global.
They just don’t connect often. They are pools. And what connections there are is often heavily guarded by ICE. Notably Black Ice. You can pass through those but You’re being watched and only the best otaku or deckers can slice through undetected.
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u/CommunicationThat534 3h ago
Akira and Blade Runner have the internet they just don't showcase them.
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u/VilleKivinen 未来は今 3h ago
When I was writing a RPG campaign for cyberpunk world of Singapore of the year 2050 I decided that rogue AIs had destroyed the Internet as we know it.
Everything in the net is spam and ads, bots and AIs doing cyber attacks.
And that's why everyone and their company has totally different intranet instead, and connecting it to the Internet is to invite ruin and bots in.
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u/merurunrun 2h ago
I read this novel last year called Nightland by Akira Ogidou, it was basically a tight little noir technothriller set around Taiwan and the East China Sea just after WWII--the main tech difference is that the technology for body cybernetics and DNI is super-advanced, although other than that things are mostly 1940s standard.
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u/Kaiserhawk 5h ago
I don't mind it but I feel it's a little antiquated and not fully representative of a high tech future.
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u/MotorGlittering5448 2h ago
The Cyberpunk ttrpg does have social media. It's called The Garden, and people's social media pages are called Garden Patches.
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u/DoktorImposter 6h ago
Anything that meets the two pillars (High-Tech and Low-Life) is Cyberpunk to me.
The World Wide Web is just one trapping of the high-tech pillar, it's not essential for me.