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Cyberpunk is essentially distopian. And this is why it's gotten so hard to write cyberpunk.

Actually it makes other sci-fi easier, since it's starting to look like the only unrealistic part of StarTrek is the tall ceilings.

Excuse me while I rant.

It sounds like the talk that was going on just before 1914. Everything was going to be solved. Everything was going to be okay. Then it wasn't. Is he wrong in his statistics? No, definitely not. But despite our abundance, things that make people happy and feel secure are more and more elusive. It's not that happiness and security aren't available, it's that people don't know where to find it because they're always being told to overextend themselves financially. That people are told to put themselves first instead of helping others. I'm not saying people don't help each other. It's that their mindset is more and more selfish. I've seen this hurting children, the teachers at my kids school can't motivate the students because the children have no interest in learning. They have a hard time just getting them to pick up a pencil. My son's 4th grade class had kids come into it with a kindergarden reading level, on average the class coming in was at a 2nd grade reading level. And it's not just my son's class it's the whole school. The teachers are pulling their hair out trying desperately to get these students to learn.

Why is this happening? Because the children's parents pamper their kids. There is no negative side to the child's willful disobedience. The teachers try every carrot they can imagine. They give candy they give praise they do special honors. It isn't working. The children become more decadent and dumber. Really, my son with learning disabilities looks like a genius in his class. My daughter had the same 4th grade teacher 2 years ago and the difference in classes is appalling.

So that's just one thing. That's just kids. It's not the full story but it's an example of how you can have abundance and still have a dystopia. 9% or and probably more don't have jobs, more don't have decent jobs. Why? It's not like there's a lack of work to be done. There are roads that need to be fixed. There are buildings and houses that need repair but there are still people that don't have employment. People that are employed are always worried that they'll lose their jobs.

Then there's bigger issues. Fisheries at the brink of collapse. Soil at the brink of collapse. Water issues that may or may not be solved. Sure you could build tons of cheap solar panels but what impact will that have down the line from manufacturing impacts? Really all these problems can be solved, but will they? And if they are, will it be in a way that allows people to feel happy and secure?

Dystopia is still pretty easy, even in abundance. I'd say we're already there.

I think we're getting closer to Aldus Huxley's version of horrific Utopia.

For those outside the US, you can get the video straight from source: http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_diamandi ... uture.html

Finally got to watch the video . . . funny I'm on the same continent and can't access
it through the first link

Interesting, and he's got some good points. Tech is moving forward faster and faster.
Information is become more and more easily accessed . . . but so is miss-information.

Abundance is great if everyone has an equal opportunity to access it. However I find
he's missed a few important points . . . technology is driven by the market and profit.
If people wont pay for it, they wont make it; and the other is the new voices that have never
been heard. If you don't want to listen . . . and let's be honest a lot of people wont listen;
then those voices might as well not exist.

Let's not forget one other item. Greed. There is a large segment of the younger population
that have this notion of "I'm owed". A good job, wealth, and what have you, and they expect
to be given what they desire.

I could rant on, but I think I wandered off topic.
Good video, gives hope for the future . . . the "email will scammers" must be chomping at the bit
for that 3 billion new users

The difficulty with foretelling is that at best it's an anecdotal predictive art where the predictors are the product of their society. That's not a very good base for any prediction. Neither Emmett, Peter, Gordon or Sheikh are impartial predictors. An impartial predictor would need the impossible: absolute observability of history and curret state.

As an over-educated Southern-Englishman (the product of my society), my bias is more positive than most. I distrust the media because they report breaking bad news but not the retraction that follows. Nor do they report how humanity changes given knowledge of a bad situation. The statistics they quote tend to support the news story to make it easier for the viewer but the truth is often much more complicated and riddled with uncertainty.

An added problem is that you cannot inflate personal experience to represent global problems. This is why I cringe at the BBC dumbing down news to a more personal level. A news story about climate change will be presented as a farmer losing crops due to flooding. Not only disingenuous but the worst case of correlation being confused with causation.

Using personal experience is understandable but when the notion is abstract, small scale experience is inappropriate. You have to remain at the macro, abstract scale and deal with issues that way. If you don't then your local, personal problems cloud and direct the argument.

Global happiness and security is impossible to measure but as a notion, I have no doubt that it will improve globally. Happiness and security is the biproduct of education, both of which are on the increase. As infant mortality improves, families will become smaller (that's counter intuitive but the statistics hold out) and living in fear that your children will die is a massive contributer to unhappiness and insecurity.

I feel that the world has fewer problems than ever before. It doesn't appear that way but only because we're communicating more than ever before. Communication is what brought us out of the dark ages.

Is there such a thing as "over educated"?

Yes.

Actually my point was that dystopian cyberpunk is still pretty easy to imagine. In the 80's the big fear was the rise of megacorporations. They've already risen but they handled things better than the worst case scenario that was envisioned. Basically dystopian cyberpunk is all about taking problems and asking "what if they weren't handled well."

Cyberpunk is hard to write because it's about how edgy and badass computer programmers are.