The technological dreams of science fiction have sated our futurist appetites by filling our imaginations with possible futures free of suffering, illness, war, and climate change. Through literature, film, television, and video games, the techno-future has always seemed a distant utopia. A dream of scientists, philosophers, and sci-fi addicts. But as we enter the third decade of the twenty-first century, this future seems more concrete than ever. With the billionaire space race making the dreams of yesteryear reality, and Bezos reportedly having invested in eternal life research, the foundations of the soon-to-be automated-future are being laid before our eyes. 

Whilst the space race is undoubtedly the pet project of a small set of tycoons with huge business interests, they have framed their cyberpunk crusade as a mission to help humanity through enhanced technological progress and the conquest of other worlds. This has seen the entrepreneurs venture into the transhumanist realm, fetishizing technological acceleration as a vehicle for human emancipation. Transhumanism is a philosophical movement which believes that humanity has not reached its full potential and that this can only be achieved through science and technology ultimately fusing with the human body. Many transhumanists romanticise this synergy to the extent that they want to accelerate the process so that humans can reap the supposed benefits quicker: overcoming aging, cognitive shortcomings, involuntary suffering, or our confinement to planet Earth.

The techno-future is one of excitement and opportunity, but its current trajectory and technological determinist outlook appears more like the cyberpunk worlds of Altered Carbon and Elyisum; worlds of deep inequality, with technological progress dominated by the few large corporations, and earthly ruin for the rest. 

The Billionaire Space Race

The year 2021 has seen the billionaire space race reach new heights as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos compete for space domination. SpaceX and Blue Orbit are their respective outfits, each pioneering commercial space travel in the early twenty-first century, and they have both claimed that their space adventures are not solely for monetary gain, suggesting that SpaceX and Blue Orbit will help humanity as the pressures of climate change and finite resources increase. Quoting one of the first prominent Russian rocket engineers, Musk told South by Southwest in 2018, “Earth is the cradle of humanity, but you cannot stay in the cradle forever.”

To help humanity these billionaire space cowboys have discussed colonising Mars and even building a floating satellite colony in space, something the cyberpunk film Elyisum could only dream of. Bezos criticises Musk’s Mars colonisation plans, suggesting that anyone who wants to conquer Mars should try living on the summit of Everest -  a “garden paradise” by comparison. One thing they do agree on is the need to take humanity off planet Earth, with Bezos foreseeing trillions of people living on his proposed satellite colonies.

Elsewhere, Bezos has reportedly begun a search for the elixir of life through investments made in the start-up Altos Labs. Founded by the Israeli-Russian venture capitalist Yuri Milner and the American scientist Richard Klausner. Altos Labs research how cells age, with the intention of reversing the process. They are offering scientists $1 million annual salaries to work on the project. Formed in the US in 2021, the company now has many international labs, including in Cambridge. Whilst mysterious and reluctant to give much away, the move to Cambridge makes sense because Cambridge University is the home of the world leading Medical Research Council Cambridge Stem Cell Institute and the region is a biotech hub. According to the website Pharmaceutical Technology, Altos Labs hopes to delay death by rejuvenating the human body on a cellular level. By reverting adult cells into stem cells, they can then be turned into any type of cell.Bezos is not alone, however. Elon Musk’s company Neuralink has also ventured into the transhumanist realm, attempting to create implantable brain machine interfaces—what Musk described as “a Fitbit in your skull”. If achieved, this brain machine interface could allow for a therapeutic and curative hacking of the brain, which Musk claims could “cure blindness, paralysis, deafness, and mental illness”. Based in California, Neuralink has been described as neuroscience theatre with developments unlikely to materialise any time soon. But as advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) quickens, the rate of change also increases, such that Musk’s plans may be closer than we think. 

Transhumanism did not begin, however, with Musk and Bezos. A prominent transhumanist theorist is Nick Bostrom, a professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford and author of the 2003 Transhumanist FAQ, arguing that technological advancements and bio-enhancements can make humans more productive, with illness and old age not impacting our economic contributions to society. Viewing these bio-enhancements as a vehicle to enslaving humanity to eternal labour is hardly a dream to be fetishized. Transhumanists want to overcome what they see as biologically natural defects because they view life in terms of its productive value. Humans become cogs in the money-making capitalist machine whilst the wealthy can play at joyous eternal life. It is therefore difficult to not see the recent adventures by SpaceX and Blue Orbit as anything other than benefiting Musk and Bezos’s respective business interests, under the guise of liberating humanity. 

The notion of liberation carries strong religious undertones, as if Bezos or Musk were messianic figures. This should not come as a surprise for Transhumanism claims to champion rationality and science whilst rejecting ‘faith, worship, and the supernatural’. This rejection of religion and adoration of science further takes on a form of ‘fanatical atheism’, with transhumanists using the notion of salvation as a framing process for their own soteriological desires. And yet, it is not the Kingdom of Heaven and its promise of universal salvation which transhumanists desire: it is a hyper individualised and techno-feudal vision of “start-up deification”. 

This is reflected in the cyberpunk series Altered Carbon, where the rich can afford the highest degree of immortality, are deified by those less well off, and live in the clouds looking down on those below them (figuratively and literally). This is dystopian, but it is not hard to imagine such a Godlike reverence of the most advanced transhumans, especially when these figures are already celebrated in public for their so-called entrepreneurship. This is especially problematic when society is full of vast inequalities which would only be exacerbated if the top 1% were to literally become gods. 

A technological utopia?

To hope that technological development will save humanity through our relocation to space or through bio-enhancements is an example of technological determinism. Technological determinism is the idea that technology drives the development of society and shapes its structures and culture. The billionaire space race is technologically deterministic because it assumes that, given a new opportunity on Mars or on a satellite colony, humanity could live peacefully without the threat of war or climate breakdown. This is ultimately naïve. The same can be said for Neuralink or Altos Labs: altering human genetics will not lead to an inherent increase in human satisfaction, especially if bio-enhancements are used in the pursuit of eternal capitalism. Transhumanists like Musk and Bezos wish to extend life, but not the conditions through which life is rendered worth living.

We only need to look at the coronavirus pandemic, and the technological and scientific breakthroughs that rapidly birthed the coronavirus vaccine, to see a critique of such technological determinism. Whilst the vaccine is an amazing development which can hopefully end the coronavirus pandemic, the rollout of the vaccines has not been equal worldwide. Indeed, many have labelled the ongoing situation an example of “vaccine apartheid” within which the richer nations of the so-called West have hoarded the vaccines for themselves, whilst many in the so-called Global South have been denied even a first shot. 

As a metaphor this is best viewed through the film Elysium where the richest in society live aboard a large luxurious satellite (which mirrors Bezos’s own project), where there are no wars and no illness, whilst Earth has been ravaged by climate breakdown and has been left to rot with an ever-expanding population who are regularly denied medical treatment. The film itself is a vehicle for social commentary on contemporary issues such as class, immigration, and transhumanism, but it truly comes to life in the wake of the vaccine apartheid, demonstrating that technological development or, latter on, the conquest of space, will not necessarily benefit all of humanity. Without proper societal and juridical intervention, present social inequalities will be merely transplanted into space, and onto the future space conquest. If we consider the systemic racism that plagues our planet, it will not be cured by jollying off to Mars; if humans can build apartheid walls on Earth, they can do it in space, but it would be called progress. 

Anyone familiar with the dystopian cyberpunk genre will recognise that the present developments in technology present beginnings of a cyberpunk future; no longer a sci-fi dream, but the likely foundations of our future world(s). If Musk and Bezos can use science fiction as a guide for their plans, we must heed the warnings embedded within the cyberpunk dystopias.

Cyberpunk is dead and we killed it

Cyberpunk is a sub-genre of dystopian science fiction that came about in the nineteen-seventies and -eighties that features advanced technological and scientific developments, such as AI, juxtaposed with a revolution in the social order, normally through the taking of power by large corporations, as can be seen in Blade Runner. 

Framed by Bruce Sterling as “the combination of lowlife and high tech”, Cyberpunk acted as a way of creating art out of the intersection between the human and the machine. This entailed a combination of cybernetics and punk, the “juxtaposition of control and chaos” which were held in tension to produce alluring effects which play on our wildest imaginations of the possibilities afforded to society by the ongoing technological revolution. 

As we have entered the twenty-first century, technological development has accelerated at such a rate that the dreams of yesteryear have become firm realities

At the same time, the genre of cyberpunk has experienced a resurgence, with the film Elyisum, the video game Cyberpunk 2077, the tv series Altered Carbon, and many others. Musk’s company Tesla even unveiled the Cybertruck, whose launch featured Grimes as the Cybergirl presenter in an outfit snatched right out of Bladerunner 2049. 

Grimes’s Cybergirl opening speech was eerily dystopian, with lines that could have been written for the Matrix:

“The skies are polluted; the world is addicted to oil. But we are here to offer a solution. The Cybertruck: the number one form of transport for a Cybergirl. The greatest evolution in vehicular fashion and function. I now present to you, my creator…”

Whilst the cyberpunk motifs are alluring marketing campaigns for Musk, and offer gripping viewing for Netflix and Hollywood, cyberpunk is truly dead - and we killed it. Just as punk died a bitter death at the hands of capitalist consumerism, so too has cyberpunk seen its thought-provoking motifs and iconic visuals fall prey to the reproducible capitalist machine.

As a genre, cyberpunk foretold the dangers of unfettered technological development and warned against a technologically determinist fetishization of a near-magically liberated humanity. Its dystopian punk undertones tried to make people aware of the power of global conglomerates, especially their dominance in the technological spheres. This was demonstrated especially in Cambridge Analytica’s use of Big Data to interfere in British and American elections.

As cyberpunk evolved into the 2010s and 2020s, it has regurgitated the same themes of neon corporate dystopias, but has also been co-opted by the very large corporations against which the genre warned; becoming a mimic of itself. As Ryan Zickgraff puts it: what was once a vital genre of anti-capitalist fiction has now been reduced to a cool retro aesthetic for capitalist marketing. 

But this is to be expected. As Fisher explains, anti-capitalism as a literary and cultural motif is found most evidently in the heart of capitalism itself. Fisher discusses what Robert Pfaller calls “interpassivity”, whereby the film, tv show, book, or even new Tesla vehicle, “performs anticapitalism for us, allowing us to continue to consume with impunity”. 

Returning to Grimes’s opening remarks, those who purchase the Tesla Cybertruck can participate in the solution against climate breakdown and excessive capitalist growth by joining the supposedly green capitalist revolution. 

“Western consumerism, far from being intrinsically implicated in systemic global inequalities, could itself solve them. All we have to do is buy the right products”. 

In the same vein, despite the rockets polluting the earth and space tourism potentially accelerating the planet’s ruination, by investing in SpaceX or Blue Orbit, or purchasing a ticket on a charted space flight, we feel as though we are contributing to the solution of Earth’s destruction through a fully performative rebellion against human constraints. 

Cyberpunk as a reality—large corporations dominating technological development and influencing political power—is very much alive; as a dystopian cultural genre through which anti-capitalist themes could be explored, it is rotten carcass, a symbol of Earth’s inevitable destruction should Musk and Bezos’s technological jaunts continue on unfettered.

A more progressive techno-future?

The allure of technological acceleration is overwhelming, and the opportunity to travel through space and implement bio-enhancements is naturally attractive. We must not, however, launch ourselves into the void without proper regulation and scrutiny of technological developments. 

Whilst I am sure Musk and Bezos are sincere in their claims that SpaceX and Blue Orbit will help humanity overcome the ruination of the earth, one cannot help but wonder why these technologies are not turned inward to prevent climate breakdown and to restore prosperity to the planet that birthed us. Indeed, by pushing the boundaries of space exploration we could inadvertently be further destroying the planet.

As Arendt remarks in her work The Human Condition, “the Earth is the quintessence of the human condition” and nature “for all we know, may be unique in providing human beings with a habitat in which they can move and breathe without effort and without artifice”.

We cannot give up on planet Earth; we cannot hope that technology will save us from our own self-destruction; we cannot jet off to a satellite in the sky, to run away from our problems when the Earth provides the perfect habitat for human beings. Least of all because it will only be the 1% who are fortunate enough to be saved.

However, we can implement proper regulation to ensure these technologies are used to properly help and improve society; we can relish in the ever-increasing technological developments without their fetishization; and we can hope for a fairer world where technology is shared equally, and vaccine/technological apartheid is a thing of the past.

We have truly entered the technological future of cyberpunk and are witnessing the laying of the foundations for the transhumanist future. As a rebellious genre, cyberpunk is dead, but its original essence can and must be rearticulated if we are to ensure that those foundations reflect the future we want to see. 

By Owen Dawes