On Punk in Cybeprpunk
Have you noticed that whenever Cyberpunk genre is discussed today, various literary types either pretend or assume that it's all about "dark" future where multinational corporations control the world? They conveniently forget that the main archetype of that genre was a hacker - someone who is highly skilled in the use of technology and intent on using said technology for their own benefit. It is a fiercely individualistic and somewhat anti-social archetype. Hence the "punk" part after the word "cyber". You see, the genre was born during the emergence of global communication networks and personal computers. Those technologies were essential to its formation and the values they effectively encouraged at the time were also celebrated in the science fiction books and stories of that period. Thus, cyberpunk celebrated heightened individuality, personal empowerment, weird subcultures and the general idea of counter-culture. Hackers in cyberpunk novels could be temporarily hired by corporations, but they did not belong to corporations. The etymology of the word "cyber" is quite interesting in this context. "Cyber" means "helmsman" in Greek. Norbert Wiener use the word to coin a name for the new science of cybernetics, which was about controlling (steering) complex systems with nonlinear behavior and feedback loops. The word was then used to talk about cybernetic organisms or cyborgs. Finally, William Gibson coined the term cyberspace. Thinking about all that, the name of genre clearly suggest that it's the "punks" who do the actual "steering" in the end. Why is this so commonly forgotten, misunderstood and misrepresented today? Because a lot of people doing the analysis are collectivists to their bone.As a related side note, it is very interesting to dig out and watch some of the older documentaries about the genre shot in the late 80s or early 90s. Compare and contrast to how the same books and the same real-life counter-culture are represented today.