• 9point6@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    are you telling me that cyberpunk pop culture might have been warning me of an impending dystopia?!

    😳🫨😵

    • alcoholicorn
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      7 months ago

      TBF, for the last 30 years even Cyberpunk authors completely missed the point that capitalism will subvert these amazing technologies to make everything worse if we don’t do something. Neal Stephenson is a crypto shill.

      • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
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        7 months ago

        Manna got rampant capitalism + AI pretty close, and has predicted McDonalds payment kiosks, Amazon worker abuse, and probably some of the tech layoffs too.

        • ℛ𝒶𝓋ℯ𝓃@pawb.social
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          7 months ago

          Wow… I’ve worked in the fast food industry for 2 years, and that really hits close to home. With the kitchen display systems and headsets, with modern technology it would be easy to implement that… very easy. We’d still need one manager on the line for de-escalating angry customers but that would end up essentially the same as the book synopsis described. And the subsequent dystopia… I could literally see this occurring tomorrow. Kinda scary.

      • BigFatNips@sh.itjust.works
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        7 months ago

        Damn, that surprises and saddens me. I’ve only ever read one of his books, Diamond Age/A young lady’s illustrated primer, but I thoroughly enjoyed it and also thought there were some great critiques of the upper class

  • bleistift2@feddit.de
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    7 months ago

    Could someone enlighten me what Deus Ex is about without spoiling more than two hours of gameplay?

    • alcoholicorn
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      7 months ago

      You’re a new type of cyborg cop, that works for a new anti-terrorism unit to hunt down terrorists, formed after they bombed the twin towers. A global pandemic keeps the streets eerily quiet.

      The game came out in 2000 btw.

    • bloodfart
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      7 months ago

      You’re a cyborg agent for a new branch of the federal government formed in response to a terrorist attack on us soil tasked with performing extrajudicial acts in order to keep access to the treatment for a pandemic under government control.

      In the opening cutscene the governments response to the pandemic is revealed to be “let it rip” for profit.

      It’s a phenomenal game and very fun.

    • Pharmacokinetics@lemmy.worldOP
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      7 months ago

      Basically: Anti-Terrorist agent gets instructed not to talk to terrorist, talks to terrorist and becomes a terrorist.

  • phoneymouse@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Someone on here posted the dialogue from a conversation with an NSF “terrorist” from the game and I initially thought it was a pretty reasonable assessment of modern society and its problems. It was only when I read the comments that someone pointed out that the post was quoted verbatim from the game. Need to see if I can find that post…

    • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
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      7 months ago

      Corporations are so big, you don’t even know who you’re working for. That’s terror. Terror built into the system.

      There’s so much more, but I remember that one

      • phoneymouse@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Here is another:

        Human beings may not be perfect, but a computer program with language synthesis is hardly the answer to the world’s problems.

        -JC Denton

  • LittleBorat2
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    7 months ago

    It’s just human nature to see something coming for 40+ years and then be surprised by it.