Categories: Articles

History Predicted It… We're All Cyberpunks Now

How much of you is technology… how much of you is human?

No idea how this came across my radar, but – like you – I often find myself (late at night) deep down in the YouTube rabbit hole. There you are watching something that somebody sent you for work, and the next thing you know, it’s three in the morning and you’re watching things like this. Cyberpunk was originally coined in 1983. It was a term for individuals who were using technology to build their own world… on their own rules. Much of the output was seen as illegal and – if you were paying attention to Apple‘s recent announcements – you could easily see just how accurate this underground, indie and self-governed group of individuals were when thinking about our future and how much technology would be a part of us.

If you want to take a few steps back to see how far we have come…

This is a five-part, one hour documentary that looked to uncover the cyberpunk movement. What it is… what they were doing… why they were doing it… and what they hoped to get out of it. What seemed like a group of wild marauders, now feels more like a group of architects, designers and artists who were fighting to build our present state. Strangely enough, what they’re speaking about in this documentary doesn’t seem so far fetched in today’s context (you could even argue that’s a mild version of where we are at). In fact, we have moved things along at a much quicker clip than these cyberpunks could have ever imagined. What they were attempting to do has now – to certain degree – become a part of how we function as a society. When people scoff at robotics, artificial intelligence and the power of data, they may want to spend an hour watching this documentary, and thinking about how it wasn’t all that long ago when everything that we’re doing today seemed so strange, foreign and unlikely to happen.

Here it is: a documentary on Cyberpunk (and a lesson that everyone interested in business, marketing and innovation must watch)…

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.