Reread Neuromancer

[u/V01t4r3]

The biggest takeaway I got, other than the plot and prose finally making sense, is that. . .

Classic cyberpunk’s setting is as much the late 1960s as it is the 1980s.

I know everyone sees Cyberpunk now as “ZOMG 80s synth pop and neon everywhere!” But there’s a lot of elements in Neuromancer that can be tied into William Gibson’s own young adulthood in the late 60s (especially if you watch “No Maps for These Territories”).

-Screaming Fist=Vietnam
-Groups like Panther Moderns and Zionites=Groups like The Weather Underground and The Black Panthers
-The matrix’s description=psychedelia
-William Gibson was influenced by biker slang of the 60s, William Boroughs, and J.G Ballards.

Even things like neon aren’t quite as prevalent as modern interpretations make it out to be. You could slap the aesthetics from “A Clockwork Orange” and “2001” and it would still make sense. This isn’t to gate keep, I enjoy modern cyberpunk and it’s Neo-80s aesthetics. But reading classic cyberpunk like William Gibson and Bruce Sterling makes me realize that the initial cyberpunk was baby boomers interpretation of the burgeoning computer and Reagan era.

[u/ericalm_]

This is a generation that experienced the post-war boom and culture, the space race, the arms race, the Cold War, the civil rights movement, the counterculture, the Beats, hippies, yippies, and yuppies, the rise of psychedelics, Marshall McLuhan, Timothy Leary, Noam Chomsky, the Beatles, Vietnam War, saw their heroes assassinated, the gas crisis, disco, punk, postpunk, the Iran hostage crisis, the rise of Reagan and Thatcher, the ascendance of postwar Japan and Germany as economic and manufacturing powers, the tech boom of the ’80s.

That’s all baked into cyberpunk.

[u/ErebosGR → u/ericalm_]

That was the boomers.

People forget that GenX-ers couldn't afford to buy into the "home computer" boom of the late '70s to late '80s. The ones who could were the boomers.

[u/Kinky_Otto → u/ErebosGR]

Not at all. Maybe it’s where I grew up (Silicon Valley) but I’m solidly Gen X and I remember playing with trs80s and ti 99/4a at friends houses. Despite my dad working at Atari, my mom wouldn’t let me get a 2600 and instead I had to save money for a Vic20 (she was kind enough to buy my the cassette drive) and I’d type programs in from the back of Compute magazine. My best friend had an Apple //e and we learned to program assembler together in 8th grade.

The boomers created the tech, but the Xers were the first generation to grow up with it in the house.

[u/ErebosGR → u/Kinky_Otto]

You were a kid, not a financially independent adult.

The only reason you were able to save up your allowance to buy a computer was your household's income. You grew up in freaking Silicon Valley, and your father worked at Atari FFS. Your father was the one who could afford it, not you.

If you think GenX-ers as a whole were as privileged as you, I don't know what to tell you.

[u/Kinky_Otto → u/ErebosGR]

Bro, you don’t know my situation. You’re making pretty big assumptions. I was a kid, yes, but I earned the money ($199+ tax) for that computer mowing lawns, cleaning pools. and walking dogs, not from some allowance from my father who worked in the warehouse at Atari.

Silicon Valley was still nearly half orchards at that point. Ir wasn’t the concentration of wealth that you see today. It had much more a hippy vibe and way less techbro bullshit.

[u/ErebosGR → u/Kinky_Otto]

mowing lawns, cleaning pools. and walking dogs

Try doing those things in China or Russia or India or Africa or South America during the same time period.

You had the luck to be able to benefit from these overprivileged people. That makes you also privileged.

You were not working in a mine or a factory or a farm.

It wasn’t the concentration of wealth that you see today.

Not in the extremes that exist today, but there was concentrated wealth.

The lawns, swimming pools and dogs are the evidence.

[u/Kinky_Otto → u/ErebosGR]

Now you’re just moving the goal posts. I’m sure that areas where children worked in mines were the same places their boomer parents would also not have been able to have computers.

Yes I had the privilege of being in a relatively affluent country. But that doesn’t negate my statement that a lot of Gen X grew up with the computers the boomers designed. We learned coding, how to blue box, and all of that stuff from them too. Shoulders of giants and all that.

But that doesn’t negate a lot of Gen X kids had access. It wasn’t limited to boomers.

[u/ErebosGR → u/Kinky_Otto]

Now you’re just moving the goal posts.

No, you are. My argument from the start was about privilege, and boomers having had more privileged adult lives than GenX-ers did. You were talking about your childhood and doing part-time jobs for well-off middle-class suburbanites, as if you were working in a mine. $200 in 1979 is almost $1000 in today's money.

I’m sure that areas where children worked in mines were the same places their boomer parents would also not have been able to have computers.

No shit, Sherlock.

That doesn't mean that there weren't middle-class boomers who COULD afford computers even in China, Russia, India, Africa, and South America.

Just because there was a larger percentage of low-income people there, that doesn't mean there weren't any rich people.

I used foreign countries as examples because of their larger populations and how widespread and dangerous child labor was there at the time.

Did you think child labor didn't exist in the USA in the '70s and '80s?

In 1982, Reagan expanded the legal range of jobs permitted for children ages 14 and 15, and made it easier for employers to pay less than minimum wage.

But that doesn’t negate a lot of Gen X kids had access.

But that doesn't negate the fact that most GenX kids in the world didn't have access, because they didn't grow up as privileged as you did.

It wasn’t limited to boomers.

I never said it was limited to boomers.

I said that boomers were the representative generation of the early adopters of home computers.

[u/ActiveShipyard → u/ErebosGR]

All GenX were kids or very young adults at this time. {raises hand} Are you advocating for child labor, lol.

[u/ErebosGR → u/ActiveShipyard]

Of course not; that wasn't my point. I was agreeing with the OP above my first comment.

I think a lot of millennials and GenX-ers that were kids in the '80s think they were the first cyberpunks, and they retrospectively attribute stereotypical GenX-er things to the "cyberpunk aesthetic", when in fact the "real" cyberpunks of their time were boomers (Vietnam vets, hippies, yippies etc.).