[evincarofautumn]

> It basically combines futuristic tech with dystopian/utopian elements, and grimy, old-world stuff.

In other words, “The future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed” — William Gibson.

And it will probably always be that way, not just in terms of global inequality, but even in a single person’s life: you might be among the billion or two people living as humans have lived for thousands of years, on subsistence agriculture and herding with no running water, but you also have a smartphone and can video-chat with your cousins across the world. That aspect of cyberpunk storytelling is just taking this fact of existence and amplifying it to draw attention to it.