I know this isn’t your typical cyberpunk artwork, but I personally think it depicts a failed attempt to achieve divinity via cybernetics. And since so many cyberpunk works ask the question “can an android have a soul?”, I consider this artwork to be cyberpunk. Do you disagree?
Larger version here.
“What have I done, what have I become? Transformed my flesh into silicon All the feeling’s gone, where did I go wrong? Nothing’s the same, not even the pain” - Informatik, Silicon
I had this poster on my wall in my dorm in the early 2000s. I think I still have it rolled up in a cardboard tube somewhere. I had a bunch of his stuff as posters.
In my understanding cyberpunk broadly discusses what “advanced” technology does to our humanity. What makes us human and how do you preserve it. How far should you go with technolgy without destroying what makes us special. What is the essence of a human, what should we keep, what shouldn’t we keep.
You could just optimize any “inefficiencies” out of a human and what is left would be pretty pointless in my opinion. Our limitations make life worth living, to some degree at least. Scarcity and uniqueness makes things special, without it everything would quickly loose meaning.
As an illustration for what I mean, think of a Minecraft world. It’s so big that you could never see it all, but everything is the same, so seeing it all would be pointless anyway. If you implemented.
The same applies to people. If you could literally just build your perfect spouse, friends at change or replace them on a whim, they wouldn’t be special anymore.
It’s the same with death, the fact that your time is limited, makes it special. Though I would extend lifespans by maybe a factor 10 or so lol.
Image if you already knew everything, like these AI language models but on steroids. You wouldn’t need to be curious. You would never need to learn anything. You would always know what the out outcome of every situation is. Then what’s the point of doing anything really? If you’ve already solved literally every problem.
Sure pure hedonism is fun for a while, but then you might as well be a brain in a jar constantly being pumped full of heroin. No one can tell me that that’s the preferable outcome.
I think the future will have massive artificial limits on life and technology, just to keep things interesting and life worth living as a human.
So I think it fits. Went a bit off track there lol.
Some people will insist on a very narrow definition, but I think that’s silly.
Wow this had been my wallpaper on all my machines between 2002 and 2006-7 era. Never knew who actually drew it but for me, it was so expressive and futuristic. Many thanks to Luis Royo for making my desktop look super cool!
