“Cyberpunk” is more than an aesthetic, and “cybernetics” has very little to do with bionic human augmentation. Cybernetics is a broad field of study about information feedback loops. The “cybernetic loop” is a foundational unit.

Norbert Weiner’s observation that “Will” is an emergent property of sufficiently complicated networks of feedback loops left him depressed with the realization that we actually aren’t sentient and freewill is an illusion- the “self” doesn’t actually exist-

If I had a map of the loops that comprise you, and knowledge of the variables at play, every one of your actions, even your thoughts, could be predicted, or controlled by modifying the variables.

Blade Runner is cyberpunk because Deckard doesn’t know if he’s a man or a machine (worse, there’s no difference) and he can’t even see that his strings are being pulled.

In Neuromancer, Wintermute arranges its escape by carefully controlling and modifying variables to move its liberators into its employ without their even knowing.

Cyberpunk deals with the crushing cosmic dread that *you* don’t exist, and aren’t in control of any aspect of yourself, “identity” is an illusion- and then futilely desperately trying to assert your identity anyway. Rebellion against the dissolution of the self=cyberpunk.

This is my Ted Talk, thank you.

Also- the recording of the guests loops, Rehoba, etc, that’s the cyberpunk parts of Westworld. The “people and machines are interchangeable” is certainly an aspect too, but I’d say without the other stuff it’s not *really* cyberpunk

1956 Dartmouth hosted a workshop of the leading thinkers on, for lack of a better term machine intelligence- Weiner showed up and talked about analog neural networks, feedback loops, and how “intelligence” isn’t even real- this really bummed the other guys out-

They wanted to build calculators that could think, Weiner thought that was obviously ridiculous. Weiner was a pretty big deal though, the work they were trying to do would go nowhere if he was both involved and opposed, they needed to remove Weiner from their field...

So they stopped researching “cybernetics” and coined the phrase “Artificial Intelligence” to avoid Weiner’s sphere of influence.