The 80’s were a pretty wild time, and despite the rainbows and day-glow the decade had a bit of a dystopian undercurrent that showed up in the pop culture of the time… The cartoons we watched, comics we read, and lots of movies of the time were typically based on a failed future premise – and many of the table top RPGs we played often had a decidedly dystopian flair as well.
Probably had something to do with the whole Cold War thing and the ever-present threat of getting nuked…
Anyway, I like to think living through the 80’s prepared me for the modern day – because the modern day more resembles Cyberpunk than Star Trek.
On the way into work this morning I got another heavy Cyberpunk vibe from it all… See, Denver – being a suburb of L.A. at this point – has a bit of a homeless problem… And one of my various routes to the office goes past a couple of camps that move around as the politicians take notice and evict them to some other space.
So, like a page from a Cyberpunk story, I leave my burbclave and drive my high-powered high-tech executive sedan past the favelas to get to my corpo tech job on the top floor of some glass and steel high-rise. Once I arrive, cutting edge biometrics let me into the building so that I can spend the day working on the company’s Gibson that I built over the last two decades…
It makes for interesting stories, but I’m not sure I’m happy living it…
Listening to "Kids" by The Midnight