Living Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk went mainstream in 1995, which saw the release of classics Hackers, Johnny Mnemonic, The Net, 12 Monkeys, and the lesser-known Strange Days. Building on the earlier successes of Blade Runner and Max Headroom, these movies successfully setup an aesthetic which a few years later The Matrix cemented into popular consciousness as what those hacker types get up to while fighting corporate power. It was spandex or leather, roller-blades, synth music, sunglasses, and handles like Crash Override, providing a cinematic alternative to what hacking work is actually like, better portrayed by Sneakers or Mr. Robot.

As our lives become increasingly enmeshed with the computer systems we’re forced to deal with, I’ve ruminated a bit about how this is not the cyberpunk dystopia we were promised, and I’ve started collecting the mundane activities of everyday life that are, in their own small way, both cyber and punk, simple ways people are taking back control of computers:

1. Making changes to a form in the web inspector to get around misguided email validation which rejects any non-dot-com domain name, in order to communicate with the PTA.

2. Using a browser extension or shell script to archive text, audio, or video content from platforms which gate that material behind ads or paywalls, to consume or reference it at leisure.

3. Using Reader View to get around javascript meant to prevent reading the page, using an ad-blocker to simply make a page readable or block spyware, or otherwise using User Scripts to customize web pages.

4. Using throwaway email addresses to register accounts at sites which demand them to read their material.

5. Modifying an Electron application’s content to provide enhanced styling or features, instead of paying a monthly fee for those features.

6. Putting a traffic cone on a remote-controlled car to stop the corporate takeover of our public spaces by reckless machines.

7. Putting devices — especially ones you’ve been assigned by an employer — into a portable faraday cage to restrict their spying when not in use.

No, we didn’t get the cool-looking clothes in our cyberpunk future. We got the ones that trick algorithms instead, and to some extent, hacking can now involve tricking generative chat bots with ASCII art to discover more about the nature of their training data.