Week 8 of New Com Tech (Lecture/Tut Spark)

During this week's lecture, we learnt about cyberpunk and how it has relations to society. Cyberpunk was created around 1983 through the Sprawl trilogy by Bruce Bethke. In the book, it had features of advanced science, such as information technology and cybernetics, which also included a breakdown in the social order. Cyberpunk started off as a novel genre but it has slowly pushed its way into society through films, television shows, manga and anime, games, music and literature. Features in cyberpunk usually include things like a electronic based society, futuristic gadgets and gizmos, is set in the near-future etc.

A film that can be related back to the cyberpunk genre is "Blade Runner." The movie is set in 2019 in a oppression future which is being manufactured by beings called 'replicants.' They are slaves used on space colonies and are legal prey on Earth to various bounty hunters who kill them. The overall tone of the film set a trend for many other cyberpunk movies such as "The Matrix," which uses a wide variety of cyberpunk elements. But these two films are only two of the many cyberpunk based films created so far today.

Cyberpunk has become a part of today's society through entertainment and is beginning to become a social impact. =)