The sci fi dystopian film, Blade Runner (1982), starring Harrison ford, was an early vision of the cyberpunk fiction. The word "cyberpunk" was coined by writer Bruce Bethke, who in 1980 wrote a story with that title, combining "cybernetics," computer culture and "punk," the nihilistic punk music of the 1970s and '80s. Dr Malone argues that the world view of the technocratic elites, embodied in those of the World Economic Forum, have the main elements of cyberpunk, with the use of AI to produce rigid social control in “smart cities,” as in Blade Runner, but where life for most people is no more than slum-dwelling, with the Metaverse giving some exit from the real world via virtual reality. As the real world is so miserable, there needs to be AI solutions, especially to loneliness and relationships, which too, are replaced by on-line virtual reality experiences.
As Dr Malone argues, this must all be resisted and defeated, since it means the end of the human essence, reducing human beings to empty shells of what they should be. And resistance involves staking out wholesome alternatives to what the technocratic elites are proposing, in parallel societies, where relationship live, and family values prevail, over the values of cyber-alienation.