This seems a fun time to talk about one of my favorite literary subjects - the origins of cyberpunk, how its visual aesthetic began in Fascist and Soviet art, and its core allegory of power out of human control. To start with, I want to show you some architecture.
This seems a fun time to talk about one of my favorite literary subjects - the origins of cyberpunk, how its visual aesthetic began in Fascist and Soviet art, and its core allegory of power out of human control. To start with, I want to show you some architecture.
This seems a fun time to talk about one of my favorite literary subjects - the origins of cyberpunk, how its visual aesthetic began in Fascist and Soviet art, and its core allegory of power out of human control. To start with, I want to show you some architecture.
This seems a fun time to talk about one of my favorite literary subjects - the origins of cyberpunk, how its visual aesthetic began in Fascist and Soviet art, and its core allegory of power out of human control. To start with, I want to show you some architecture.
This seems a fun time to talk about one of my favorite literary subjects - the origins of cyberpunk, how its visual aesthetic began in Fascist and Soviet art, and its core allegory of power out of human control. To start with, I want to show you some architecture.
This is an architectural sketch by Antonio Sant'Elia, a prominent figure in the Futurist art movement; a Soviet example of the Constructivist movement that evolved from it; the interior of the Reich Chancellery; and the Tyrell corporation from Blade Runner.
This is an architectural sketch by Antonio Sant'Elia, a prominent figure in the Futurist art movement; a Soviet example of the Constructivist movement that evolved from it; the interior of the Reich Chancellery; and the Tyrell corporation from Blade Runner.
This is an architectural sketch by Antonio Sant'Elia, a prominent figure in the Futurist art movement; a Soviet example of the Constructivist movement that evolved from it; the interior of the Reich Chancellery; and the Tyrell corporation from Blade Runner.
This is an architectural sketch by Antonio Sant'Elia, a prominent figure in the Futurist art movement; a Soviet example of the Constructivist movement that evolved from it; the interior of the Reich Chancellery; and the Tyrell corporation from Blade Runner.
This is an architectural sketch by Antonio Sant'Elia, a prominent figure in the Futurist art movement; a Soviet example of the Constructivist movement that evolved from it; the interior of the Reich Chancellery; and the Tyrell corporation from Blade Runner.
All these buildings have something in common: they're totally out of human scale; imposing, massive, meant to show that the organization which built it is bigger than any person. This is Hitler's personal office, and in it even he is literally dwarfed by the power of the State.
Futurist and Constructivist architecture share an angular, industrial look. They look mechanical, show off angles and curves and cantilevers not possible before high tensile steel, and are aggressively different from anything traditional. They're supposed to look like tomorrow.
Futurist and Constructivist architecture share an angular, industrial look. They look mechanical, show off angles and curves and cantilevers not possible before high tensile steel, and are aggressively different from anything traditional. They're supposed to look like tomorrow.
Futurist and Constructivist architecture share an angular, industrial look. They look mechanical, show off angles and curves and cantilevers not possible before high tensile steel, and are aggressively different from anything traditional. They're supposed to look like tomorrow.
Futurist and Constructivist architecture share an angular, industrial look. They look mechanical, show off angles and curves and cantilevers not possible before high tensile steel, and are aggressively different from anything traditional. They're supposed to look like tomorrow.
The Futurists began around 1909 in Italy, and they were the original tech fetishists. They wanted to sweep away old and traditional art, and replace it with celebrating the new and modern - airplanes, cars, factories, youth, violence, and speed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism 
The Futurists began around 1909 in Italy, and they were the original tech fetishists. They wanted to sweep away old and traditional art, and replace it with celebrating the new and modern - airplanes, cars, factories, youth, violence, and speed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism 
The Futurists began around 1909 in Italy, and they were the original tech fetishists. They wanted to sweep away old and traditional art, and replace it with celebrating the new and modern - airplanes, cars, factories, youth, violence, and speed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism 
The Futurists began around 1909 in Italy, and they were the original tech fetishists. They wanted to sweep away old and traditional art, and replace it with celebrating the new and modern - airplanes, cars, factories, youth, violence, and speed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism 
Futurist music involved the creation of intonarumori, large boxes of machinery simulating various motors and grinds and industrial noises, to be mixed onto an orchestra. Noise music 60 years before Throbbing Gristle. http://digicult.it/digimag/issue-065/the-scoppiatore-the-intonarumori-by-luigi-russolo/
Futurist music involved the creation of intonarumori, large boxes of machinery simulating various motors and grinds and industrial noises, to be mixed onto an orchestra. Noise music 60 years before Throbbing Gristle. http://digicult.it/digimag/issue-065/the-scoppiatore-the-intonarumori-by-luigi-russolo/
Futurist music involved the creation of intonarumori, large boxes of machinery simulating various motors and grinds and industrial noises, to be mixed onto an orchestra. Noise music 60 years before Throbbing Gristle. http://digicult.it/digimag/issue-065/the-scoppiatore-the-intonarumori-by-luigi-russolo/
Tangentially, Luigi Russolo's manifesto for Futurist music was "The Art of Noises." The name later got picked up by an 80s synthpop band that used the same idea of constructing music out of sampled audio.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Noises
The Italian Futurists were also raving nationalists. Consequently many of them volunteered for and got themselves killed in WW1. The rest would be founding members of the postwar Fascist party. Below, an excerpt from The Futurist Manifesto.
https://www.italianfuturism.org/manifestos/foundingmanifesto/
Nationalist buildings are always meant to convey awe of power; the Futurists added awe of industry. Antonio Marinetti tried to get his BFF Benito Mussolini to make Futurism the official art of fascism, but most Fascist buildings instead strove for continuity with history.
Nationalist buildings are always meant to convey awe of power; the Futurists added awe of industry. Antonio Marinetti tried to get his BFF Benito Mussolini to make Futurism the official art of fascism, but most Fascist buildings instead strove for continuity with history.
Nationalist buildings are always meant to convey awe of power; the Futurists added awe of industry. Antonio Marinetti tried to get his BFF Benito Mussolini to make Futurism the official art of fascism, but most Fascist buildings instead strove for continuity with history.
Futurism also got picked up in Russia by artists like Natalia Goncharova and Kazimir Malevich. After the Bolshevik Revolution, it got taken over by the Constructivist movement, also about sweeping away the old and traditional and replacing it with the new and technocratic.
Futurism also got picked up in Russia by artists like Natalia Goncharova and Kazimir Malevich. After the Bolshevik Revolution, it got taken over by the Constructivist movement, also about sweeping away the old and traditional and replacing it with the new and technocratic.
Futurism also got picked up in Russia by artists like Natalia Goncharova and Kazimir Malevich. After the Bolshevik Revolution, it got taken over by the Constructivist movement, also about sweeping away the old and traditional and replacing it with the new and technocratic.
Futurism also got picked up in Russia by artists like Natalia Goncharova and Kazimir Malevich. After the Bolshevik Revolution, it got taken over by the Constructivist movement, also about sweeping away the old and traditional and replacing it with the new and technocratic.
As with the postwar Futurists, Constructivism exalted national power through technological power. Unlike fascism, power in (pre-Stalin) communism was ostensibly not an person, but a party; a faceless emergent property of an entire political process, not individual dictators.
Of course, there always *was* a person in power, but state architecture was literally the facade obscuring that. Constructivists were popular in USSR architecture and publication until they fell out of favor with Stalin in the early 1930s. But the look kept that association.
Of course, there always *was* a person in power, but state architecture was literally the facade obscuring that. Constructivists were popular in USSR architecture and publication until they fell out of favor with Stalin in the early 1930s. But the look kept that association.
Of course, there always *was* a person in power, but state architecture was literally the facade obscuring that. Constructivists were popular in USSR architecture and publication until they fell out of favor with Stalin in the early 1930s. But the look kept that association.
Of course, there always *was* a person in power, but state architecture was literally the facade obscuring that. Constructivists were popular in USSR architecture and publication until they fell out of favor with Stalin in the early 1930s. But the look kept that association.
Of course, there always *was* a person in power, but state architecture was literally the facade obscuring that. Constructivists were popular in USSR architecture and publication until they fell out of favor with Stalin in the early 1930s. But the look kept that association.
"Cybernetics" is an ancient Greek word meaning "steering" or "governance." We associate it with computers and prosthetics now, but cybernetics is really the theory of feedback-controlled or self-regulating systems. Norbert Wiener coined it in 1948. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics:_Or_Control_and_Communication_in_the_Animal_and_the_Machine
Early uses of "cybernetics" usually referred to control of social and economic systems - what Wiener called "The Human Use of Human Beings." Computer science tied in as a way to continually assimilate information into automatic decisionmaking - the algorithmic feedback loop.
Cybernetics entered Soviet thinking via people like Victor Glushkov, who proposed computer networks as a way of managing centrally planned economies. Gather information about every person's economic activity, decide what they ought to do and buy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics_in_the_Soviet_Union
Glushkov's research got kiboshed by Party officials concerned that an all-seeing economy-controlling computer would usurp too much of their power, but the idea survived in other countries like Chile and its amazing Project Cybersyn economy control center.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn
So as we get into the 70s, "cybernetic" is associated with nascent computer networks collecting big data for faceless organizations (or maybe automation) directing society. Whatever individuals are involved are just parts of The System.
On the other side of the Berlin Wall, there weren't authorities in control of entire economies, and political process was *all about* individuals and human faces. But a lot of economic power was consolidating in another kind of faceless organization: corporations.
70s corporations were where the big computers were: banks, factories, logistics firms, accountancies, marketing firms, all handling billions of numbers each day. They had a global network while the Internet was still just some scientists' hobby project.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Worldwide_Interbank_Financial_Telecommunication
The 60s and 70s were also an intense period of horizontal and vertical integration. Petrochemical companies bought every step in their supply chains from oil field to gas pump. Conglomerates bound together companies in entirely unrelated industries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conglomerate_(company)#The_conglomerate_fad_of_the_1960s
In Japan, "Keiretsu" tied together entire economic sectors in complex arrangements where everyone owns a little bit of everyone else but no one is clearly in control. One keiretsu might touch every product you use in a day. The English word for this arrangement is "syndicate."
In Japan, "Keiretsu" tied together entire economic sectors in complex arrangements where everyone owns a little bit of everyone else but no one is clearly in control. One keiretsu might touch every product you use in a day. The English word for this arrangement is "syndicate."
In Japan, "Keiretsu" tied together entire economic sectors in complex arrangements where everyone owns a little bit of everyone else but no one is clearly in control. One keiretsu might touch every product you use in a day. The English word for this arrangement is "syndicate."
So that's "cyber-". But tech available to corporations is available to individuals too. The networks that telcos built democratized communication and let in phone phreakers and hackers. The street finds its own uses for things, and enter the "-punk" side of cyberpunk.
So here we are in the late 70s, early 80s. Once again modernism is back in fashion, everyone trying to look like they've gotten to the future already. But now the writers and artists know we've been here before, and our relationship with power is different.
So here we are in the late 70s, early 80s. Once again modernism is back in fashion, everyone trying to look like they've gotten to the future already. But now the writers and artists know we've been here before, and our relationship with power is different.
So here we are in the late 70s, early 80s. Once again modernism is back in fashion, everyone trying to look like they've gotten to the future already. But now the writers and artists know we've been here before, and our relationship with power is different.
Say you're an art director in 1982, looking for an aesthetic that depicts economic power accumulated outside of democratic institutions, within faceless organizations that control us by controlling technology. So you turn to the Futurists and Constructivists, of course.
Say you're an art director in 1982, looking for an aesthetic that depicts economic power accumulated outside of democratic institutions, within faceless organizations that control us by controlling technology. So you turn to the Futurists and Constructivists, of course.
Say you're an art director in 1982, looking for an aesthetic that depicts economic power accumulated outside of democratic institutions, within faceless organizations that control us by controlling technology. So you turn to the Futurists and Constructivists, of course.
Say you're an art director in 1982, looking for an aesthetic that depicts economic power accumulated outside of democratic institutions, within faceless organizations that control us by controlling technology. So you turn to the Futurists and Constructivists, of course.
Oh, you want to show the part of society living outside authority's control? Why, that would be independent business, the street traders. Look to a market enclave pinched off from a centrally planned nation, send your concept artist to Hong Kong, and add some literal punks.
Oh, you want to show the part of society living outside authority's control? Why, that would be independent business, the street traders. Look to a market enclave pinched off from a centrally planned nation, send your concept artist to Hong Kong, and add some literal punks.
Oh, you want to show the part of society living outside authority's control? Why, that would be independent business, the street traders. Look to a market enclave pinched off from a centrally planned nation, send your concept artist to Hong Kong, and add some literal punks.
Oh, you want to show the part of society living outside authority's control? Why, that would be independent business, the street traders. Look to a market enclave pinched off from a centrally planned nation, send your concept artist to Hong Kong, and add some literal punks.
Oh, you want to show the part of society living outside authority's control? Why, that would be independent business, the street traders. Look to a market enclave pinched off from a centrally planned nation, send your concept artist to Hong Kong, and add some literal punks.
Here's Omni Consumer Products, the owns-everything corporation from Robocop. Also, here's Dallas City Hall, built 1978, symbol of government power. And the Futurist, Antonio Sant'Elia, again.
Here's Omni Consumer Products, the owns-everything corporation from Robocop. Also, here's Dallas City Hall, built 1978, symbol of government power. And the Futurist, Antonio Sant'Elia, again.
Here's Omni Consumer Products, the owns-everything corporation from Robocop. Also, here's Dallas City Hall, built 1978, symbol of government power. And the Futurist, Antonio Sant'Elia, again.
Here's Omni Consumer Products, the owns-everything corporation from Robocop. Also, here's Dallas City Hall, built 1978, symbol of government power. And the Futurist, Antonio Sant'Elia, again.
Zhora's chase scene in Blade Runner. "The Principle of Glittering" by Russian Futurist Kazimir Malevich. "Dynamism Of A Soccer Player" by Italian Futurist Umberto Boccioni.
Zhora's chase scene in Blade Runner. "The Principle of Glittering" by Russian Futurist Kazimir Malevich. "Dynamism Of A Soccer Player" by Italian Futurist Umberto Boccioni.
Zhora's chase scene in Blade Runner. "The Principle of Glittering" by Russian Futurist Kazimir Malevich. "Dynamism Of A Soccer Player" by Italian Futurist Umberto Boccioni.
Zhora's chase scene in Blade Runner. "The Principle of Glittering" by Russian Futurist Kazimir Malevich. "Dynamism Of A Soccer Player" by Italian Futurist Umberto Boccioni.
"Cybernetic" as in "cyborg" as in biomechanical body enhancements is sort of a coincidence from when the term also covered biological feedback systems, like muscles. But if you want to depict a fetish for technology, well, inserting tech into bodies is the most literal way.
Finally, let's talk about AI in cyberpunk. Here's the thing with public mega-corporations: there isn't really *a person* controlling them, they don't have human motivations. With their stock openly traded, conglomerates are owned by everyone and no one.
The corporation as entity has a mechanical motivation: it's trying to optimize its stock price, which is an emergent property of what everyone else thinks about it. It doesn't have feelings. It's a machine chasing a number. The people running it are cogs in an apparatus.
So, if you want to personify an entity that's bigger than any individual, arises emergently from big data and mechanical incentives, makes its own decisions, and may or may not *be* a person... how about an artificial intelligence? Especially if the AI *is* a corporation?
So, if you want to personify an entity that's bigger than any individual, arises emergently from big data and mechanical incentives, makes its own decisions, and may or may not *be* a person... how about an artificial intelligence? Especially if the AI *is* a corporation?
So, if you want to personify an entity that's bigger than any individual, arises emergently from big data and mechanical incentives, makes its own decisions, and may or may not *be* a person... how about an artificial intelligence? Especially if the AI *is* a corporation?
So, if you want to personify an entity that's bigger than any individual, arises emergently from big data and mechanical incentives, makes its own decisions, and may or may not *be* a person... how about an artificial intelligence? Especially if the AI *is* a corporation?
What was metaphor in 80s cyberpunk has now become literal: we really are giving over a lot of control of our society to machines and algorithms that we don't understand. They optimize some number somehow and decisions pop out that affect us all, but they aren't *thinking*.
Anyway, to sum up:
- Cyberpunk is about centralization of economic power in inscrutable entities, and the fringes of society that live outside that power.
- The visual aesthetic subverts fascist and communist art representing centralized power. ...
(Summing up, 2/2):
- Cyberpunk's body mod thing is a literal way of depicting techno-fetishism as both fun and dangerous.
- Cyberpunk AIs are metaphors for organizations that contain humans but produce inhuman results.
- Quit trusting algorithms to run our society.
End of thread.
Oh, and if after that, you'd like to enjoy another sort of allegory for Soviet authoritarianism, Animal Farm has just been adapted into an adventure game: https://twitter.com/AnimalFarmGame/status/1337035825255772160?s=20
You can follow @despair.
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