The futuristic world of cyberpunk is no longer fiction. Brain-computer interfaces from Neuralink, AI-powered smart glasses, and advanced prosthetics are making its imagined technology a reality.
However, pioneers from that era see a different outcome. "The future turned out to be much less cinematic," said Ken Goffman, known as R.U. Sirius, co-founder of Mondo 2000. "What it really is, is very boring and banal."
Goffman recalls early optimism that personal computers would shift power away from governments and corporations. "Instead, many of the companies building those technologies became some of the world's most powerful institutions."
Media scholar Shira Chess argues cyberpunk's core prediction was never about chrome limbs. "The thing that nobody wanted to fully deal with was the moment that corporations took over digital spaces fully," she told Decrypt. "We were done-we were cooked."
Chess sees the same pattern with artificial intelligence. Rather than fearing sentient machines, she is concerned about how society frames the debate. "The more we behave like there is a demon in the box with AI, the harder it's going to be to convince future generations that there is not."
A new resistance is emerging. Chess points to the cyberdeck movement-custom computers built from recycled parts-as an attempt to reclaim personal technology. She also notes growing opposition to centralized AI from groups like Stop the AI Race and the rise of open-source AI agents.
"The core tension with cyberpunk is that it needs a thing to resist against," Chess said. "For all of those anti‑hero vigilantes, there needed to be something to resist, and it needed to be that sort of corporate baseline."
Forty years after William Gibson's Neuromancer, cyberpunk's most accurate prediction was not the tech, but the struggle over who controls it.