CY8ERPUNKS

Prior art · FILM

Film & TV

Era 0 · 1948–1974

Ground

cybernetics meets the counterculture

  1. 1965

    Godard, Alphaville

    Technocracy, machine intelligence controlling language, noir-dystopia with almost no special effects.

  2. c. 1967

    The Prisoner

    (McGoohan). Surveillance, identity, "I am not a number." A core visual/political ancestor, exact run dates (1967–68).

  3. 1968

    2001: A Space Odyssey

    HAL 9000: the first great AI character, and a cautionary one.

  4. 1970

    Colossus: The Forbin Project

    The AI that seizes control for its own good. Underrated; essential for the "who governs the machine" thread.

  5. 1971

    THX 1138

    (Lucas). Control-society aesthetics.

Era 1 · 1975–1982

Proto-cyberpunk

the term exists before the label

  1. 1981

    MTV launches

    (Aug 1, 1981). Music video as a visual grammar for the decade; the movement's aesthetic spreads through it.

  2. 1982

    Blade Runner

    (June 1982). — and the one most responsible for the retro re-hash problem. Note that its actual concerns (replicant personhood, memory, what counts as a person) are AI concerns, not chrome concerns.

  3. 1982

    Tron

    (July 1982). First mass visual of "inside the computer."

Era 2 · 1983–1986

The term & the wave

  1. 1983

    Videodrome

    (Cronenberg, 1983) — media, flesh, control. Also ** (1983) — hacking enters the mainstream imagination.

  2. 1984

    The Terminator

    ** (both 1984). Repo Man is the punk-cyberpunk LA register and is closer to the actual ethos than most.

  3. 1985

    Max Headroom

    Character debuts (1985; TV series 1987).

  4. 1985

    Brazil

    (Gilliam, 1985). Bureaucratic dystopia; ducts.

Era 3 · 1987–1991

Cyberculture & cryptography

  1. 1987

    RoboCop

    (1987); ** series.

  2. 1988

    Akira

    (Otomo film, 1988). Japan's contribution to the visual canon and the source of much that is now cliché.

  3. 1988

    They Live

    (Carpenter, 1988). Conspiracy, subliminal control, and the best fistfight in cinema.

Era 4 · 1992–1996

Cypherpunks, Wired, the Declaration

  1. 1995

    Ghost in the Shell

    (Mamoru Oshii). The AI/mind/ network question in its best visual form. Then ** (1995) — the pure-pop version.

Era 5 · 1997–2004

Network culture & the critique

  1. 1999

    The Matrix

    (March 1999) and ** (Cronenberg, 1999). The Matrix is the peak of the aesthetic and the beginning of its decay into a set of visual quotes.