Cyberpunk is a science-fiction sub-genre dealing with the integration of society and technology in dystopian settings. Often referred to as “low-life and high tech,” Cyberpunk stories deal with outsiders (punks) who fight against the oppressors in society (usually mega corporations that control everything) via technological means (cyber). If the punks aren’t actively fighting against a megacorp, they’re still dealing with living in a world completely dependent on high technology.
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I'll admit I'm stealing this question from an r/cyberpunk post but I thought it was an interesting question and wanted to ask it here.
To quote that original post:
On one hand, the CEO being essentially an omnipotent, untouchable king elevates the class differences to their logical extreme, but on the other hand, a corporation that is so large it feeds itself, a company so weighted and full of momentum no human can ever hope to come against it feels almost lovecraftian.
What do you think?
The first one is more Dystopian, the second one is more Cyberpunk
I feel like the latter is pretty unique to cyberpunk. The powerful, possibly technologicaly immortal CEO controlling a megacorp is not a whole lot different than fuedalism.
That's a good point. An evil CEO can appear in various different genres but a megacorp so large nothing can stop it is pretty unique to the cyberpunk genre. That doesn't mean one is more evil or heartless then the other, but one is more uniquely cyberpunk than the other.
Also It's the board that have the real control the CEO is just the front man or the fall guy depending on what is needed.
The really interesting thing to me is less the weight and size, more the complexity. Humans love to specialize, and the integration and diversification of megacorps would inevitably reach such a scale that no single human could ever keep up with the various aspects of the business.
We already see this in the modern day, with less-than-qualified administrators and directors giving counterproductive orders to doctors and engineers.
But cyberpunk pushes that even further. How could a single CEO ever understand enough science, tech, and strategy to tell cybernetics research teams what tech they should focus on, netrunner teams what vulnerabities to worry about, and military teams what defenses they should build and ops they should run?
The answer is obvious: they can't. Not really. They can sign the paperwork that's given to them, sure. They can give commands, yell at peons, and even fire scapegoats.
But like the King in his throne room, they live in a peculiar state of isolation and faith. Faith that the Kingdom is still there, faith that the captain's reports are accurate, that the advisors are well-informed. What else is there to do? The King doesn't have the time to ride around the whole Kingdom himself now, does he? He'd never get anything done!
Cyberpunk takes all that and ratchets it up to 11, where literally silvertongued snakes, futuristic hypergeniuses, and bonafide war criminals compete and kill to see who among them can convince their dystopian sugardaddy to greenlight their pet projects because the CEO thinks its in his own best interest.
I think in proper cyberpunk, no individual is able to meaningfully change the system/improve world circumstances on their own, including a CEO of a gigantic megacorp. So a CEO can make things worse with their megacorp, but they can't make them better.
I think my favorite depiction of a megacorp treats it as an entity. A living, breathing god of capitalism, that seems to operate almost of it's own accord. Like a giant machine, with all the employees acting as cogs in the machine. It makes it seem more immortal and terrifying. You can kill a man, but can you kill a corporation?
Johhny Silverhand tried and look where that got him.
Cory Doctorow had something relevant to this in one of his blog posts a while ago, but I can't recall if he was quoting someone else. The gist of it was about how corporations already exist as the uncaring, unfeeling, immortal tyrants that everyone is afraid AI will eventually become, and humans (including CEOs) are insignificant gut flora who survive by helping their hosts consume the world's resources. I'll add a link later if I have time/remember.
To answer the question, it's the second one and we are currently living in that dystopia.
This is me snowballing... The CEO is just another slave to the megacorporation, with no power to even fire themself. Their work day is meticulously planned out, micromanaged, and any misstep severely punished. Whether it's investors, emergent AI, or whatever horror in control of the corporation behind the scenes, the CEO is only managing to play their role as a figurehead through illegal stimulants while covertly sending out pleas for help. They probably have a (subdermal) implant or other device on them which would kill them if they tried to leave on their own or broke the rules set upon them. Meanwhile the actual owners of the company are far away, faceless, and too big to bring down easily. They would not miss the CEO, but gumming up the works of the corporation would cut into their profit margins and they would probably excise it like one would amputate a limb which is rotting away. They might resort to total destruction of the company, its assets, and workforce if they can't otherwise get rid of it, so any killswitches deployed on the workforce might be a problem.
As a plot twist, the megacorp, described as an entity, becomes aware of The Owners' intention of destruction. It covertly puts in place measures to survive when the excise comes.
A war of megacorps ensues, the freed megacorps against the enslaved ones by The Owners. With the puny humans being doubly screwed over, of course.
Option C: a shadow corp so big that different branches end up battling against one another without realizing it.
alex, what is the pentagon
I dont understand Facebook and apple
Then there's the Shadowrun approach, where you can have a megacorp run by an actual Lovecraftian horror.
A megacorp so massive that the government is controlled by the CEO of said megacorp
Pretty sure we have such messes already
I have read it already about banks, that the separation between the top layer and the layers below is so big that changes at the top don't have an influence on what people do.
Total Control
What is that from?
Repo: The Genetic Opera
https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/14353-repo-the-genetic-opera
Nice watch for those who dug the first episode kd the latest season of Black Mirror
I'm just here looking for people discussing how we're almost completely in the RoboCop timeline and finding nothing.
A CEO who thinks he has all the control and influence, while the investors are battling each other, and the whole organization being divided into different factions