Cyberpunk was intended as a dystopian warning about untrammeled corporate greed that begins messing around with the very definition of humanity, reducing body and soul to extensions of technocapital in pursuit of profit.
Which is actually kind of what happened. It's just that instead of cyberoptic implants, neural jacks, boosted reflexes, and chrome arms that can punch through concrete, we got social media colonizing our attention loci with slot machine engineering, the reduction of human relations to algorithmic discourse, and ubiquitous surveillance turning every square centimeter into owned space.
But if you go back to the original literature, the Gibson and Sterling novels that kicked it all off, this devitalized void is there in the background, as the default state in which most of the population live. The protagonists enjoy picaresque adventures in the neon-lit shadows, but these are mostly criminals and corporate mercenaries, the only classes who still enjoy some modicum of freedom in the tightly controlled cybernetic society. Most of the population are normies.
There's a Bruce Sterling novel, Islands in the Net, that makes this dichotomy between the relative freedom of the criminal underworld and the cloying conformity of the corporate network explicit. The story concerns the closing down of the last few islands of cultural autonomy, at the hands of a junior executive belonging to a global corporate monoculture that resembles the absolute worst of Effective Altruism and striver credentialism. Her explicit goal - or rather the goal of the egregore which she serves as an implement of - is to draw the world into a safe, sterile, rational, controlled social order, all for humanitarian reasons of course. They are fighting poverty, lawlessness, superstition, racism, and disease! And absolutely no one will be allowed to escape their ministrations. All of this should sound very familiar...
But at the same time, for all the aimless ennui of this time, that criminal underworld still exists. Corporate mercenaries are a thing. There is a thriving subculture of computer hackers. People are beginning to experiment with biohacking in various ways. These are all edge cases of course, most people don't live this way or even really know it goes on, they are very much plugged into the matrix as it were, but then such characters were outliers in cyberpunk, too.
Millennial moidslop where men act foolish and mock themselves because this is 'manly' or whatever—manliness as permitted by feminism, where men are permitted to be performative stupid and brutish but never to embody competence or grace or anything that justifies male power.
Right now China and India are plotting to send millions of their citizens to this country on temporary visas so they can gain citizenship and have these new citizens vote in their interests and run for office to advocate for their interests. They will be voting by the millions from Mumbai and Beijing. They will be used as a chain migration vector to bring in dozens of family members who will bring in dozens more. It will be a hostile takeover of this country.
Any Republican administration that doesn't immediately recognize this threat and ban all visas from these countries is not fit to rule this country.
NUCLEAR POWER.
IT DOESN'T CARE IF THE SUN'S SHINING OR THE WIND'S BLOWING.
IT DOESN'T NEED BATTERIES FULL OF COBALT OR LITHIUM DUG UP BY CONGOLESE CHILD SLAVES IN CHINESE-OWNED MINES.
AND IT HAS LOWER LIFETIME GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS THAN SOLAR, AND ABOUT THE SAME AS WIND.
IT'S NOT EVIL DEVIL MAGIC. IT'S METAL THAT GETS HOT AND BOILS WATER TO MAKE STEAM THAT TURNS TURBINES.
THERE'S NO SMOKE. THE SHIT THAT COMES OUT OF THE COOLING TOWER IS JUST STEAM.
NUCLEAR PRODUCES AT LEAST A HUNDRED TIMES LESS RADIOACTIVE POLLUTION THAN COAL WHICH CONTAINS TRACE RADIOACTIVE ELEMENTS WHICH GO INTO THE AIR WHEN BURNED.
NUCLEAR POWER DOESN'T HAVE THIS PROBLEM BECAUSE ALL NUCLEAR WASTE IS CONTAINED, AND NO NUCLEAR WASTE CASKET HAS EVER LEAKED IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN NUCLEAR POWER.
NUCLEAR POWER IS SAFE.
IT'S EFFECTIVE.
IT DOES LESS DAMAGE TO THE ENVIRONMENT THAN COAL, OR EVEN WIND AND SOLAR WHICH REQUIRE A FUCK TON OF LAND AND TOXIC METALS FOR WHICH WE HAVE NO PLAN TO DEAL WITH.
NUCLEAR POWER IS THE CLOSEST THING TO A PERFECT ENERGY SOURCE THE HUMAN SPECIES HAS EVER DISCOVERED.
WE'VE HAD THE TECHNOLOGY SINCE THE 1950S. IF WE EMBRACED IT FROM THE START, WE WOULDN'T HAVE CLIMATE CHANGE TODAY. WE COULD HAVE HAD ALL OF THE AIR CONDITIONING WE EVER WANTED, ALONG WITH EVERY OTHER MODERN CONVENIENCE WE'RE CONSTANTLY SHAMED FOR TODAY.
BUT WE SAID NO.
WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE DOING AS A SPECIES?
ARE WE FUCKING RETARDED?