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Comment by Overtonwindow | Hacker News Reader

What about this qualifies as cyberpunk?

I find the irony here quite amusing: While we usually marvel at the cyberpunk dystopia laid out on paper/screen in front of our eyes, the characters in the story typically never stop to question any of it. They take the world they live in completely for granted, making it clear to us, the reader/viewer, that they don't know any different, adding to the extend of the dystopia on display.

And here we are discussing a toilet that probably films you piss, analyzes the data and uses it as input for a video game, all using a built-in computer and display mounted on top. A touch screen no less, because the team involved in developing this, despite probably countless meetings, never even gave a second though towards hygiene, I guess.

A marvel of technology that I could imagine the likes of Neal Stephenson describing in loving detail over at least two pages, describing how the data is hauled off to some remote machine in a data center, collecting statistics of no use to anyone, from hundreds of such installations, all secured only by a couple default passwords.

And our reaction to this is: So? What off it?

That was not their reaction. They just wanted to know how it qualifies as “cyber punk”.

FWIW - I thought st_goliath went to great lengths to point out how it's "cyber punk".

Agreed, I was merely pointing out what their initial comment was saying.

The cyberurinals coupled with the bleak sculpture garden[0] outside Eddie's truly do make for a great Stephenson aside, come to life. It's only missing Gibson's combat hovercraft tanks parked by the statues, instead of Ford Raptors.

0: https://www.google.com/maps/@34.9079089,-116.844012,3a,75y,9...

> I find the irony here quite amusing

No, you are confusing cyber*punk* with boring dystopia.

A large chunk of cyberpunk is "the ramifications of new technologies mashing together in unplanned ways when humans get involved."

Toilets exist, touchscreens exist, cameras exist, and motion tracking exists, but nobody who developed those techs expected this application.

And here I was thinking I was a bearded mid 30's software developer in europe.. :/

They should remove the word "punk". There's no punk here. It's just a cyber bathroom. They could get someone to egg the joint, and then they would have a cyber bathroom punk, but still not cyberpunk.

If for Christmas they get a handsome Santa to hum a Wild Cherry cover while egging the place it would be a chunky hunky cyber bathroom punky funky.

“Neonliberal”

It’s “cyberpunk” in that it would fit in a world of cyberpunk fiction.

Maybe some punk can hack them as a practical joke.

The blue light flickers to green, showing I've eaten below my regulation level of fat and sugar. Thank fuck for that, I can't take another visit from the Doctors. The last examination hurt so much I couldn't sleep.

I hear the dusty modem connect to the Authority's servers, where it sends my data and calculates the price of my piss. It seems it's a good one today - it's given me enough credits to buy a shot of orange juice. Must be Chloe's cooking.

The goons take the guy in the cubicle next to me. Too much nicotine.

Seems I pissed slower than usual today as I'm seeing the prostate transplant advert. I remind myself to drink more water.

Now it's cyberpunk...

Personally I'm not a fan of this term "Neonliberal" because neon lighting doesn't really have anything to do with cyberpunk. The neon lighting aesthetic is a retro 80s thing, only indirectly related to the cyberpunk genre by way of dated cyberpunk media from the 80s. Cyberpunk media made today shouldn't feature neon lighting, it should have LED lighting. Focus on neon is missing the point of cyberpunk, it reduces cyberpunk to little more than a retro aesthetic.

What about Blade Runner, Neuromancer and Cyberpunk 2077?

> What about Blade Runner, Neuromancer

Neon aesthetics were appropriate in these because of technological context in which these were created. Neon signage was not yet an anachronism in the 80s. I don't blame sci-fi writers of the past for failing to predict future technology, but at the same time I find it hard to take deliberately anachronistic sci-fi seriously.

It's analogous to the difference between genuine Victorian science fiction (e.g. Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, etc) and modern steampunk media set in the Victorian era. Modern steampunk emulates the style and feel of Victorian science fiction, but I think that makes it a different genre. Victorian science fiction wasn't written to be anachronistic but steampunk is, so they're different genres.

> Cyberpunk 2077

I haven't played it so I can't really judge it, but I can say that what little I've seen hasn't gotten me excited.

The way Cyberpunk 2077 adapted Cyberpunk 2020 made me realize that we've moved the near future 50 years farther off, but we're still stuck in the same futurism fantasy of the 70s/80s.

...

I guess I knew that already, but this made me realize it in a new way :)

Cyberpunk Edgerunners is quality media and I’m not usually into anime.

We're currently between coherent future aesthetics in our society. The "Apple store minimalism" trend is in decline, and there isn't really a good candidate to take its place. Ironically, this leads to people going retro for their futurism. Personally, I'm holding out for a Art Deco revival, but the 80's neon definitely has its charms.

While the objects on their own aren't exactly "cyberpunk," they are very much a digital-dystopia kind of thing. A seemingly innocuous use of tech that could very easily be used to shatter the privacy of any individuals that come into proximity of it.

I hadn't even thought about the privacy implications. My first thought was "All I want to do is empty my bladder and the people hogging the urinals are moving slow because they're playing games."

They may be using IR or ultrasonic sensors to detect the urine streams, but I wouldn't be surprised to find full-on cameras in there.

"Let’s pray they’re not connected to Wi-Fi." After getting out of the bathroom, Bob noticed he was being served a noticeable amount of ads for male enhancement.

Cyberpunk stories often illustrate technology and capitalism taken to absurd extremes.

A good example of this is the coin-operated door handle from Ubik.

[1] https://infovore.org/archives/2015/02/17/joe-chips-problem-w...

Aside from a layer of grime, what's missing from the standard cyber punk formula?

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