Content Domains
Content Domains
Our framework for understanding the cyberpunk present • 8 domains • 98 total articles
These content domains represent our comprehensive framework for analyzing and understanding the cyberpunk transformation of society. Each domain focuses on a critical area where technology, power, and human experience intersect in ways that define our present reality.
Corporate Power
Corporate Power
The concentration and exercise of business influence over markets, governments, and society represents one of the most defining characteristics of our cyberpunk present. Mega-corporations wield power that rivals and often exceeds that of nation-states, controlling critical infrastructure, manipulating markets, and capturing regulatory frameworks. This pillar tracks the rise of corporate feudalism, platform monopolies, and the new digital oligarchy that shapes economic and political reality through technological dominance and geopolitical maneuvering.
Capital Markets
Capital Markets
The flow, concentration, and control of financial resources reveals the economic machinery powering our cyberpunk transformation. Digital platforms have created new forms of value extraction, turning human attention, data, and social relationships into tradeable commodities. Meanwhile, traditional labor relationships dissolve into gig work and algorithmic management, creating a precarious workforce dependent on platform owners. This pillar examines how capital moves through our increasingly digital economy and who controls the flows of wealth.
Digital Rights
Digital Rights
The battleground for control over personal data, privacy, and digital autonomy represents the front line of the cyberpunk struggle. Surveillance capitalism has transformed human experience into raw material for behavioral prediction and manipulation, while individuals lose control over their digital identities and private information. This pillar covers the systematic erosion of privacy, the rise of comprehensive monitoring systems, and the few remaining spaces for digital resistance and autonomy.
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Institutional Power
Institutional Power
Government institutions and regulatory frameworks struggle to maintain relevance and control in a world dominated by technological systems they barely understand. Traditional democratic processes clash with algorithmic governance, while corporate influence over policy-making reaches unprecedented levels. This pillar examines how power operates through official channels, the capture of regulatory systems by the industries they oversee, and the emergence of new forms of technological authoritarianism disguised as efficiency and innovation.
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Cultural Dynamics
Cultural Dynamics
Technology reshapes human relationships, social structures, and cultural norms in ways that often serve corporate interests rather than human flourishing. Digital platforms mediate increasingly large portions of social interaction, while algorithmic systems shape what information people see and how they understand reality. This pillar tracks the transformation of culture itself into a battleground for attention, influence, and social control, examining both resistance movements and the systematic engineering of human behavior for profit.
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Technology Systems
Technology Systems
The digital infrastructure that underlies modern civilization reveals itself to be far more fragile and centralized than most people realize. Critical systems depend on a small number of companies and physical infrastructure points, creating systemic vulnerabilities that can cascade across society. This pillar examines current technology deployments, their dependencies and failure modes, and the growing power of the few entities that control essential digital infrastructure.
Emerging Tech
Emerging Tech
Cutting-edge technologies promise to reshape human civilization while often serving to concentrate power in the hands of those who control their development. From artificial biology to space infrastructure, these emerging systems will determine whether future technological development serves human flourishing or further entrenches existing power structures. This pillar tracks breakthrough technologies, their development trajectories, and their potential impact on society and individual autonomy.
Planetary Health
Planetary Health
The environmental impact of technological civilization reveals the unsustainable nature of current digital systems and the false promises of technological solutions to ecological problems. While technology companies promote narratives of efficiency and sustainability, the material reality involves massive resource extraction, energy consumption, and electronic waste. This pillar examines both the environmental costs of our digital transformation and the limited potential for technology to address ecological challenges without fundamental economic changes.