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About MeCyberpunk 2020
Category: Whimsy Tags: Cyberpunk Decade-----
My new year’s resolution is to blog more. This is not likely to last long, based on previous experience. However…
I’ve started doing the housekeeping stuff expected of a new year – swapping over the keyboards from the two computers for example, and tidying up files – in my own little 5S. This is a holdover from when I used to work in a factory, the 5S being a management fad from Japan and standing for… well I forget. Sort, Store, Sustain, that kind of thing. Or as I used to think of it, Shovel Shit Sideways. Just a normal first day of a new year.
However this isn’t a normal new year1. Just look at that date! We’re now into the Cyberpunk 2020 decade, a roleplaying game I used to play from the 90s.
I once wrote in my diary that it felt like we’d just entered the future… when it turned into 1990. That’s an effect of reading Science Fiction from the 50s, 60s and 70s. 1990 was far enough away to be exotic and wonderful.
Over the last few years on Twitter I’ve noted anything and everything from the real world which feels… kinda Cyberpunk. As if we’re living in the dystopia we only used to play games about. New Year celebrations by drone swarm. My watch reminding me that I haven’t done enough exercise. Much of the planet literally on fire, including parts of the Arctic. A company wanting to use low orbit as an advertising space. A billionaire building an actual Mars rocket. And computing so ubiquitous and cheap that £35 buys more computing power in a credit card sized form factor than all the computers combined which I bought in the 90s.
Just to round off the feeling of living in a novel, Betelgeuse is widely expected to go supernova and alien megastructures around Tabby’s Star have only been ruled out last year.
All this without mentioning smartphones and social media. Because after all, the best science fiction is not really about the science but how it changes society.
From the vantage point of 1990, the future seems to have crept up on us.
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Hogmanay as we say here. ↩
Categories
Writing
Alan Grant • 16 Psyche • Proof Mode • I Am Freelance • The Circle is Complete! • Bit Patterns Redux • An Intrepid Update • Hammond’s Law • Edinburgh Book Festival • NaNoWriMo Crash and Burn • What is Science Fiction Anymore? • Blogging from Anywhere • NaNoWriMo has Stopped! • NaNoWriMo has Started! • NaNoWriMo • Why I Shouldn’t Skip PE •Moviemaking
Intrepid: Echoes • Intrepid Release Day • Where there’s a Sea… • The Stone unturned: Friday’s Shoot • The Stone Unturned • Come for the Cave, Stay for the Dead Whale • Where There’s a Sea • Lorraine Kelley Visits • And so it Begins •Intrepid
Bit Patterns Redux • Epistemology pt 3: How I founded a Star Trek Club • Intrepid Release Day • An Intrepid Update • Silicon Heaven • I’m Not in SciFi Now!!! • Where There’s a Sea • I’m Making a Movie! • I’m on Telly! • Holiday Coming Up •Whimsy
Windy OpSec • Wildly Improbable • Cyberpunk 2020 • User Interface • Lemmings Plushies • I Have a Bacon Number of 4! • Carl Sagan Sings! • So What Happens if I Say Yes? • Enchanted Picture • Twitter • Bob Exists • Currying Favour… • Convenience Reduction Measures • Buses • Music and Lyrics • Proof of Concept • Basic Assumption •Miscellaneous
A Long Overdue Update • Update from the Maemo • Overpackaged • Adventurous Scots • Light Aircraft Crash • A Wikipedia Upgrade • Too Tasty for Geeks • Microsoft Surface • Spooks Series 7: Episode 2 • The Satellite Dish • Cardiff • Deliveries • No More Intrepid Blog • Erk •Science Fiction
Alison Rowat and the Licensed Imagination • Bit Patterns Redux • An Intrepid Update • Hammond’s Law • Banks’ Law • Intrepid: Sisters • Arthur C Clarke • What is Science Fiction Anymore? •DMA Design
Public Appearances • Babbling On • Play Expo Blackpool • Grand Theft Auto Begins • Where Does the Time Go? • On No! • A Short Video History of DMA Design • • Newly Appeared Lemmings Graffiti • First Shots from GTA Drama • An Interview and a Repost • Lemmings Plushies • Bill Paxton Talks GTA Game Changer • Tweet from Brian Baglow (@flackboy) • Check This Disk! • The GTA Making-of Drama • Lemmings Merchandise is Go! • DMA Lives! • Project MyWorld • A Lemmings Conversion in 36 Hours • BBC Radio Scotland • You're definitely over the hill when... • Grand Theft Auto (via Gameswipe) • The Circle is Complete! • Epistemology pt 2: The Story of Hired Guns • Epistemology Pt.1: How I Co-Founded DMA Design • Lemmings II • DMA Design Office Tour • Kid Kirby • GTA Remembered •UFOs
Public Appearances • Rational Explanation Unlocked! • Seeing Shapes in the Cloud • The Scottish UFO Casebook • Naming those Pesky Flying UFO Objects • 
Post Tags
GTA
Bill Paxton Talks GTA Game Changer
Tweet from Brian Baglow (@flackboy)
You're definitely over the hill when...
Lemmings
Lemmings: Can You Dig It? Guardian Review
Lemmings: Can You Dig It? Released
A Short Video History of DMA Design
Newly Appeared Lemmings Graffiti
Hired Guns
A Short Video History of DMA Design
A Lemmings Conversion in 36 Hours