[jaws]

There are many on this forum who envision the future as a post-apocalyptic Mad Max style world. This scenario however assumes a cataclysmic, instantaneous destruction of human capital. A decline scenario where civilization gets worse year-after-year leads to the conclusion that the future will be more cyberpunk influenced. Let's look at some of the basic ideas of cyberpunk and how they tie in to resource depletion.

- Total government collapse.
Once peak oil gets into full swing, governments will attempt to roll back the clock with immense deficit spending and hyperinflationary monetary policy. Since the trend will be irreversible, the governments will bankrupt themselves and become irrelevant as their money becomes worthless and their bureaucracies inneffective. Private banks will take up the role of issuing money once more. Public assets like roads and cities will be privatized. Police and courts will be hired away by those private entities who have the hard cash to pay them. Those companies will likely be international energy consortiums investing in alternative sources of energy using money earned from oil reserves.

- Intense and sometimes violent competition between multiterritorial corporations.
The anarchy and chaos that follows the collapse of governments will lead the way to violent competition between surviving powerful institutions. Assassinations and mercenary campaigns over land and natural resources will be commonplace. Veterans of the war in the Middle East will find employment doing 'security' work for these corporations. Central Africa will be depopulated by corporate-paid gangs to make way for biofuel farming.

- Life and economy shifting to 'cyberspace' and information trading.
The electrical grid will collapse early under the burden of supplying electricity for plug-in cars. The grid will be decentralized and merged with the internet. Energy and information will flow through the same cables. With the realspace world becoming increasingly violent and harsh, life will shift into cyberspace. Goods that were once manufactured in East Asia and shipped all over the world will now be transferred as blueprints in cyberspace and assembled locally with local resources to save on transportation costs. The physical economy will become highly local and served by locally-owned business plugged into franchised corporate networks selling them intellectual capital. Cyberspace will fill the void that the elimination of physical mobility left behind.

This 'system of the world' I believe will be the low-point of civilization until energy scarcity hits the bottom and a new golden age begins.

[Sys1]

I think the world will soon look like North Corea.

[KevO]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sys1', 'I') think the world will soon look like North Corea.

[The_Toecutter]

The corporate police state is essentially the government system of the cyberpunk world. Sad thing is, we're 3/4 there already. Look at our current world and the one you describe.

Intense deficet spending? Got it today.

Hyperinflation? Many countries, albeit not first world, are already experiencing that.

Government's bankrupting themselves? The U.S. has already done that, but hasn't had to pay the piper just yet. If there is a severe economic collapse of one of our lenders, the U.S. is fucked. They won't be able to pay that money back when it's demanded.

Private banks issuing money? That's the case here in the U.S. already and has been for decades. Federal Reserve?

Public assets are already rapidly being privatized. Kaliforniastan run by Ahhhnoollld already has multiple privatized highways, and we have Herr Bushkin privatizing our public lands like crazy so the oil, timber, and coal industries can have at it without even compensating the public for the land and the pollution these industries will generate. Even public assets like social security face privatization, albeit the government under Reagan heavily misallocated that money to bail out the Savings and Loans industry and to fund more corporate welfare schemes. Entire towns have even been sold on EBay.

International energy consortums? Got that too. Opec is one of them.

Violent 'competition' between multinationals has been going on for a long time. But usually the infighting isn't between multinationals, it's with small businesses and the multinationals seeking to drive them out. This competition between multinationals hardly exists. Assassinations and mercenary campaigns over land and resources? In the 1980s, Shell Oil wanted the land of some Nigerian villages so bad they sent in armeed mercenaries to kill the villagers. Today in the Congo, we have companies sparking civil war to keep the miners from unionizing, all because Congo is the world's largest source of Tantalum. We have entire wars being fought on behalf of corporations such as Halliburton, Betchel, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing, Iraq being the major one.

The economy is already shifting to 'cyberspace' as we speak. So much so that the Vice President last year recommended taxing sales and purchases on Ebay, for instance.

On a side note, replacing half of our cars with electric vehicles wouldn't demand enough of the grid to collapse it. At least not as our grid stands today. In the future that could be a very different story.


Look around you. The cyberpunk world is pretty much here and has been in creation since the 70s. Appears John Brunner was quite a prophet with his work Sheep Look Up, which wasn't necessarily cyberpunk itself but of which many do consider it cyberpunk's bible, along with Neuromancer by William Gibson. Sheep Look Up entailed a society in which people ate poisoned food, couldn't walk outside much due to poisoned air, were manipulated by the media, even had a religious right crazy for a President who engaged in illegal wars so a few industries could profit. The populace kept consuming ever growing amounts of petroleum in the luxury jeeps and full-blown ecocide was in progress.

My favorite cyberpunk novel would have to be Snow Crash by Niel Stephenson. It depicted the world you had outlined, for the most part. Hyperinflation, government collapse and takeover by the corporations, economy shifted to cyberspace, all those characteristics. Hiro Protagonist, the main character, even had highly valued property in cyberspace, to compensate for the crappy storage facility he lived in. He also drove an electric car for the first two chapters as a pizza delivery man for the mob.


Personally, I think the cyberpunk world and the Mad Max world could meld together into a very dangerous future. Those seeking security would flock to the megacorps controlled cities, and those seeking freedom would flock to the countryside, perhaps to work with armed militias in exchange for protection from nomadic gangs. Might even spark a civil war between the country and the city, as outlined in Good News by Edward Abbey.

[tmazanec1]

I expect a cyberpunk near future. I still hope for a nano-golden age afterwards, something like Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age.