How Cyberpunk Predicted the Future of Work
While you were finding your next gig with Fiverr, Freelancer, or TaskRabbit, you secretly morphed into a cybernetically-augmented mercenary from the future.
It would have been easier to realize this transformation if we lived in a land of shimmering polymer and steel, with nanomachines built into our DNA and fusion cells powering our smartphones. Make no mistake though, we already live “twenty minutes into the future,” at least in terms of work.
If you were expecting neural implants to control drones, that is still years away (or it could happen tomorrow). In the meantime, how we go about work has changed in ways that emulate certain tropes from the cyberpunk genre, as depicted in this summer’s Deus Ex: Mankind Divided video game, and genre classics such as Blade Runner, Neuromancer, Shadowrun, Snow Crash and Max Headroom.
Cyberpunk typically showcases a push for freedom
Amid the trappings of advanced technology, most cyberpunk worlds feature some sort of oppressive control or an implacable authority that runs the show. Somewhere in the shadows, the protagonist operates outside of that control, making moves and decisions that break with established protocols. It is not hard to see how elements from this genre can be found in the here and now.
Megacorporations hold court over their domains — defined more by big data, sentiment analysis, and intent than geography and demographics — jockeying for greater market presence and affinity with customers across multiple continents.
Artificial intelligence offers up options and ideas to enhance decision making and strategy.
Collaboration platforms let teams review, edit, and exchange information, and then extract the most meaningful data and details.
Freelancers and contract professionals dart from gig to gig, moving fast and bringing their specialized expertise to custom projects.
Putting in a cyberpunk perspective, street samurai, deckers, and data couriers are all just freelancers taking advantage of the flexibility and mutability offered by the gig, on-demand, and sharing economies.
Sure, they have diamond-edged katanas and AI-assisted guns that can track a target by their sweat, but look beyond the dark, mirrored sunglasses of the cyberpunk scene and you will find a world where traditions are being rethought, including on the job front.
Cyberpunk is about breaking old norms and rewriting “the system.”
More and more people are forging careers around their ability to be mobile rather than sticking with one employer. Adam Jensen, in the Deus Ex series, was a security chief for a company and then lent his unique expertise and abilities to a task force, essentially going to work where he is needed.
William Gibson’s Johnny Mnemonic depicts a freelance courier who has digital information dumped into his brain, without actually knowing what the data contains, and then transports it to wherever the client instructs. And Hiro Protagonist in Snow Crash delivers pizza, a legacy business in the on-demand world, when he is not hacking the virtual reality of the online Metaverse.
Speculative fiction often heralds new ideas, and not all change is upfront and obvious. As we chase unicorns across the digital dreamland of augmented and virtual reality, the way we work is transforming on many levels.
Professional services giant PwC produced a report in 2014, “The Future of Work — A Journey to 2022,” approaching the topic from three different angles.
In the report, the segment identified as the Blue World anticipates corporations will grow so large they can wield more power than some governments. Such influential entities can also touch every aspect of life, PwC said in its report.
That concept is a hallmark of cyberpunk (and likely also worries various conspiracy theorists). Blade Runner’s Tyrell Corporation effectively drafted the local police to “handle” and dispose of the company’s problematic, rebellious Replicants. The U.S. government in Snow Crash has given up pieces of land and power to private groups who rule as sovereigns of their own territories.
In Shadowrun, the fictional Renraku Arcology was a daunting, mountainous structure that effectively was a megacorp’s private city within Seattle where some 100,000 employees and their families lived. That goes way beyond living in a mining town and shopping at the company store. The arcology, powered by its own fusion reactor, exemplified the might of a corporate body that housed, entertained, fed, clothed, and held great sway over its privatized populous.
That level of control over an enclosed environment, in a nefarious way, leads to the next concept PwC spoke of in its report.
The Green World, Pw said, is the notion that companies may reach a point where sustainability matters more than profits. There are companies today that pursue sustainability in their operations, striving to reduce their carbon footprint, occupy ecofriendly spaces, and generate at least some of their own power off the grid.
Creating new forms of energy, including fuel sources that can be replenished, is a goal for many alternative power companies. However making this work at scale, on a massive level, is not easy. Cyberpunk tends to give this a dark, cautionary twist by introducing new forms of energy that frequently give megacorps more and more autonomy. Unfortunately, the presence of such power does not always translate into widespread access to energy. In fact, energy availability may be limited and rationed according to bureaucratic whims, particularly in the cyberpunk genre. More sources of power may exist, but rarely is this totally divorced from profit margins.
Even with massive enterprises and conglomerates wielding more influence and control, their size continues to be a contributor to lethargy to evolve and adopt new ideas and strategies. This is an opening that smaller companies, startups, and freelancers can take advantage of.
PwC also described in its report an Orange World where innovation is driven by smaller organizations and talent is drawn from lots of different places. Further, individuals take charge overseeing their careers, hiring out their skills and sweat equity rather than sticking to a strict corporate life and doctrine.
That is a primer for life in the freelance/contract worker sphere. It also speaks to small businesses, boutique firms, and startups that can tackle specialized tasks for many different clients. Instead of following a singular routine, dictated by one boss, their calendars are populated by a menagerie of tasks from different outlets.
So is the future of work a mercenary life? Speaking from personal experience, yeah, it kind of is. You succeed by showcasing what you are capable of, then hire yourself out to the best offers you can find for your skills — much like characters seen in cyberpunk tales, just without the bionics and neural links.
And that is not a bad thing.
