This is a far more modern take on Cyberpunk created mostly through cyberpunk gaming, and doesn't have much to do with the origins of the genre. While it is ok for genres to evolve, maybe lets not evolve them to these kinda gross places.
An exploration of foundational cyberpunk literature and film and the idea of technology as a 'destructive' force.
The Sprawl Trillogy: Explicitly pro-transhumanism, though it notes society isn't currently set up to support it. The Sprawl does note some people are self destructive through technology, but it is far more anti-society than anti-technology, and has an overt theme of 'technology might replace our shitty society with something good.' Molly Millions, the most cyberized character in the series, is damaged but not because of her cybernetics and is mostly a wreck of a person because of a lack of healthy human connection, and at no point is it implied that her cybernetics make her a worse person. Gibson himself has also outright stated he hates this view on cyberpunk and calls it 'Aethestetic Cyberpunk' that overfocuses on the technology rather than the society. So we can take that off the list of cyberpunk stories that portray technology as destructive. It repeatedly depicts the internet almost as a 'spirit realm of humanity' trading on ideas of the Noosphere, and literally ends with characters talking about how change is never easy but can lead to good things as long as you accept it, and that the status quo of humanity and society is untenable.
I disagree. Technology is more than just cybernetics.
Case's devolution into the matrix is the personification of "losing oneself to technology". Case eventually spends so much time in the matrix he loses himself to it completely becoming "post human".
Molly (and other characters like the vat-grown ninja in the finale) are far colder and have less human reactions than a normal person would. They act in ways that are inherently less emotional and more mechanistic. They are cogs in the machine, a machine they have no control over.
Other short stories by Gibson firmly put the less augmented, more fallible humans in the role as the main protagonists with assorted cast of more technologically enhanced, less human characters as the opposition.
They are stronger, they are faster, they are richer, but they are less human and so they lose to the protagonist who is less strong, less fast and poorer precisely BECAUSE the protagonist is more human.
Bladerunner/Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep: A super political story that uses robots to explore the elite and privilege's relationship with labor, by having the police have a large part of their efforts focus on tracking down illegal imigrants robots who look and act and feel identically to humans but who lack the right to be on earth because 'they aren't human' but who society tries to convince that they are because its convenient, and who can only be outed by subtle culturally contextual questions and intense observation. VERY OVERTLY is about how the idea that 'pure humanity' is a bullshit concept and that the robots are just as much people as humans are. Probably one of the more explicit examples of 'You don't get to think your better than someone else just because all your parts are wet' of cyberpunk because that is ALL the plot really is about.
Agreed.
However late stage capitalism is the villain in this novel, not technology so much.
Humans have not so much sold themselves at the altar of technology as been totally dominated by the capitalistic forces that control society.
Whereas in Gibson's Sprawl trilogy there is hope for mankind to fight back against their capitalist and technological overlords ("punk" if you will) that is not possible in Bladerunner. All you can do is hide for as long as you can from those in power.
Ghost in the Shell: Literally its biggest theme is that policing other people's bodies is bullshit. Its the most recurring motif, and it uses very human and emotive cyborgs who pose no threat to society to show how hysterical and conservative society can be. Multiple plots are about how repressive it is to police what people do with their bodies both in the original series and in SAC, and it uses the fact that total body replacement exists to explore how even in a world where people could visually change entirely who they are at will, people are still going to be judgemental assholes who pressure and harass and oppress other people. There is an entire fictional species of pure AI who are portrayed as good, helpful, and innocent of many of humanity's problems who primarily exist to have philosophical discussions about what it means to be a person and aid humans using the gifts of their existence. Almost all of the problems of the setting are caused by the extreme inequality of society making terrorists out of people desperate to survive, monsters out of people trying to maintain the status quo, or are a product of fundamentalist thinking about the body.
I think you're completely skipping over the face that the Ghost in the shell is a technological construct open to tampering. Tampering with the very "soul" of the individual Ghost. Once you tamper with the ghost's code then is it the same Ghost as before or something different? How can any Ghost be sure of their own motivations when they could just be the output from some code inserted by a malicious actor? The only real person in Ghost in the Shell is a real person, the Ghosts are constantly wondering what part of their code is "them" and what is "inserted". Technology is literally causing this schism that did not exist before. Technology is at once liberating (you get to live beyond your body) and threatening (who knows whats "you" and what's been implanted by the corp that made you).
The Matrix: An exploration of trans identity and how humanity has an innate evilness about it due to its willingness to judge the other, and uses the metaphor of an alternative life in machines as a form of liberation from the crass physical matter you were forced to inhabit against your will. The lead character is deadnamed repeatedly by the main villain, and a side villain exists who wishes to repress the new knowledge they have about themselves and their physical existence compared to their mental self image. Literally includes a scene in its transmedia of a robot being torn apart by a violent bigoted mob in a manner to deliberately evoke the murder of trans people down to her artificial hair and clothing being violently ripped from her body as she screams "I'm Real!" while crying (Obvious trigger warning for what is essentially an anti-trans lynching and images of genocide, but watch that scene here and tell me that this is about how bad technology is). The machines in this setting, lacking human's ability to hold a grudge and hate to the point their entire history is trying to show how much they love and care about humanity even as they are attacked violently repeatedly, and after they contain humanity they devote themselves to philosophical and spiritual thinking without bias, and are able to instantly forgive the humans once humans develop to the point they can accept they must co-exist with these 'unnaturals.' This only was able to come about because these unnatural people accepted that biochauvanist reactionaries could not be reasoned with and forcefully ended their violence with violence, which was framed as justified and moral and the only realistic path to any lasting peace.
meh, ok, that's not what I got from the Matrix.
At it's surface it's the embodiment of technology running rampant, creating a literal fake environment (social media anyone?) that becomes more real than the real world.
So real that some people prefer it to the real world even after they know it's an illusion (steak, mmm).
It's the literal ascendency of technology over everything else, community, society, economy, reality, love, hate. It's all meaningless now, playing second fiddle to technology that has overtaken everything and reduced everyone to bit players in an mmo.
Robocop: A bit more anti-cyborg, sure, because the directors assume if Robocop didn't see his own face in the mirror he would have a psychotic break. Still, the director overtly states a theme of the story is that no matter how much you take away from a person they are still a person in that same interview: Despite being memory wiped and being mostly replaced, Murph was still Murph and still had his soul. It was, thematically, way more about corporations than technology: Almost everything bad in robocop's world was the result of shitty policy decisions, and it was a plot point that the technology they wanted to use to 'replace humans' was not in fact capable of doing that.
Robocop has literally lost almost everything, and yet he remains good.
Why?
Because of that small nub of humanity left in him.
He can't relate to people anymore, has a hard time acting normally around people and is always nearly killing people.
The only thing differentiating him from ED-209 is that small nub of humanity left in him.
If that doesn't highlight for you that humanity is important and replacing it all with technology (ed-209) is the bad path then i dont know what would tbh.
Akira: Not really about cybernetics, but still interesting becaus an overt theme was the corrupt xenophobic government and religious zealouts overtly 'othering' anything 'undesirable' or 'impure' was an important plot element. It overtly explores the loss of humanity and while Tetsuo has a cybernetic arm, he doesn't become a big blob monster because of it, he becomes a big blob monster due to the alienation he faces from being different, from the power thrust upon him, and how society treats him. The people doing science do screw some stuff up, but mostly under pressure from the millitary, and the main villainous force is spiritual fundementalism, not science. Also, the Manga more overtly comments on how people's hatered and biases are irrational and they will view mechanistic scientific things like psychic powers as miracles when it is convinient, deluding themselves and ascribing artificial importance to things when life gets stressful.
Akira is not a cyberpunk movie, it's just set in a dystopian world.
The are not themes of technology as a governing or determining force anywhere in the graphic novels or movie.
So no, Akira is not a Cyberpunk movie as much as a movie set in a cyberpunk like dystopia.
A recurring, core motif of cyberpunk ISN'T that technology is unnatural. It is that technology is a (potentially) liberating force, but society is inherently corrupting and damaging.
This is where we disagree.
All books I would classify as cyberpunk combine the concepts of late stage capitalism, dystopia and technology running rampant to the detriment of society and humanity.
Again, the idea that 'cybernetics eat your soul' is so notable as to being exclusive to cyberpunk TABLETOP that it shows up on the TVtropes page, in literary anaylsises of cyberpunk, and is explicitly noted by Gibson as being 'shitty aethestetic cyberpunk.' It is the exact opposite message Cyberpunk media tends to have.
I disagree, see my example above. Gibson has it throughout his books whether he knows it/ agrees with it or not.
Fantasy races having built in differences is a thing unique to SR, and while it really isn't good even in a pure fantasy setting (Again, people were noting Tolkien's works were kinda sorta really racist in the freaking 60's before the freaking Civil Rights act was signed, and D&D has overtly admitted it was never a good idea), it is especially not good when the metatypes are coded for real world races (You know, the orks orks with their grilled tusks and orksploitated musical genres being coopted by humans and elves and their yertzed out cars with the spinny rims who can't get good education, are attacked by men with pointy white hoods and robes and who are routinely harassed by the police) it is... borderline unconscionable. Like... sorry... no Adlzing, we should never go back to lowering mental maxes on what are, when we say the quiet part out loud, stand ins for black people, lets not. Lets hardcore not.
I disagree on all those points.
First there are other games before and since shadowrun that set different attributes for differing races.
So let's put that one down first.
Secondly, I am happy to play out racism in RPGs, it doesn't bother me. It's a reflection of the fucked shit that happens IRL and cyberpunk needs that fucked shit to properly convey a dystopia. I'm big enough to understand that it's a game and that my orc whose being racially judged is happening in a game and not in real life. I totes understand if you can't deal with it and that should be part of your first session zero at any table. But it's a bit cray-cray to declare it verbotten because it's not nice / good/ wholesome. We're dealing with a setting that's inherently not nice/ good / wholesome.
As for conflict: Body policing and mechanical racism don't drive conflict at all. The setting ALREADY assumes that Orks and Trolls are mentally equal and saying otherwise is racism, it is just that the MECHANICS don't back it up. It actually makes the conflict STRONGER to note that Humanis propiganda about 'dumb violent orks' is incorrect, rather than letting, as one friend put it, 'Humanis write the metatype section in chargen.'
Sure they do. You just don't like that conflict. That's ok. I'm not bothered by it because it's not real. IRL it pisses me off mightily but this is a game I play to dive into the deep end of dystopian horror, not to just run around as me in an orc mask.
Conflict in Cyberpunk doesn't come from the technology, it comes from society's injustice intersecting with the 'neutral' power of technology. I highly doubt anyone has ever written a plot in SR about how evil and spiritually polluted that person who gave themselves a cyberarm and cosmetic modifications was, but people DO write about how vile corpoations like Renraku are who exploit and enslave technological entities and push body and racial purity ideas are.
And there you totally skip the true horror of technology.
Fakebook.
That's the horror of our time and likely P2.0 is the true horror of the 6th world.
Technology you stick in your body is just an extension of that.
When technology restructures society to it's own benefit, like a bloated lampry eel feeding on our body politic, it sure as fuck becomes something to fear.
As we replace more and more of ourselves with non-human and anti-human parts we lose ourselves.
Even if that replacement is only mental frameworks for friendships, i.e. Fakebook.
A good plot about bigotry should, inherently, acknowledge biggotry is illogical and not really based in reality, rather than try to justify its origins by making the bigotry true.
And there you lose the entire plot.
You can be less intelligent and less physically fit and still be just as valuable a person as that PHD marathon runner.
You're familial relationships and the way you carry yourself in the world, how you treat people is what should determine your worth.
Not the size of your IQ.
So therefore when you think less intelligent people are inherently less worthy you are committing the worst act of bigotry possible.
Ergo, just because shadowrun has enshrined racial attribute differences in the mechanics does not mean that it is itself bigoted.
For that to be true it would have to also enshrine that less intelligent people are inherently evil/ bad/ scum.
and it pointedly does the EXACT opposite.
Trolls and orcs are people too and even if they are bigger and less intelligent the still have their own inherent value that some humanist scum cannot attack.
They have their own value that their school grades don't and cannot reflect.
TL:DR cyberpunk worlds are dystopian because of the triumph of $$ and technology over humans/ism. The former are valued more than the latter. No one cares you're a nice person who takes care of their family, the only thing that matters is your bank balance and how cutting edge you are.