As the title states, can it? Ive been trying to live in a sci-fi, somewhat cyberpunk way for a bit now, and thats led to me owning physical music again, mainly cassette tapes. However, they are analog, not digital. The best tape players are older, well maintained ones. Id argue analog tech can still be cyberpunk because the physical ownership and ability/drive to indefinitely fix things is very anti-corporate, you're actively choosing to buck the trend of algorithm and planned obsolescence. That, and sometimes the aesthetic is just THERE, like with this demo version of Towers by Towers. What do yall think?
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Retro tech is absolutely cyberpunk. It’s not often cited as a cyberpunk setting, but the Alien franchise takes place in the same setting as Blade Runner, and it’s retrofuturism can be seen as “vintage is more reliable than bleeding edge”/”corp too cheap to ever upgrade the ship” type of thing.
Cool but then you are locked on old music because new releases are not in that format anymore. You could always copy from CD to cassette but that would be a lot of work. Maybe old music is your favourite and that’s ok. I for example am a huge Jerry Lee Lewis fan so…
I think so. If 2077 was supposed to be ultrafuturistic, then why not get rid of all the wires and just make it all wireless? Magnetic tapes don’t look out-of-place retro to me, They fit right in with all the arcade games everywhere.
of course!
mich of todays tech still has boatloads of analog tech inside.
Cassettes used to hold computer programs, so they’re not exclusively analog tech.
They can definitely be cyberpunk, but of the more retro ’80s variety.
Looks Frutiger Aero to me
that would be Cassetepunk which is an offshoot of cyberpunk, so yes?
Analog is cyberpunk because it cannot be hacked. Doesn’t give off a signal when it’s played, it’s an air gapped piece of information.
As cyberpunk is an old genre about “new” technology (1980’s writing about 2020’s), it pops up a lot. Fun fact: most digital records are still recorded on magnetic tape, its very cost effective storage for records we don’t need immediate access to.
Cyberpunk settings are very often retrofuturistic. Many of the foundational works of the genre were written almost half a century ago now, and their visions of a cyberpunk future were informed by the technology they had back then.
Personally, I’d go with flash drives or SD cards for practicality, but aesthetic-wise, cassette tapes and similar retro tech can definitely be cyberpunk.
Analogue can so much more then just aging tape decks. Like a record you can inpart a analogue imprint into almost anything. Maybe one day they will learn to arrange molecules of a gold bracelet in a way that it stores information.
The thing is many devices are a hybrid of digital and analog we only make the distinction because engineers need to understand when and where to use either because digital took a big leap over analog when modern computers took over.
What’s really interesting is you can follow digital vs analog back to ancient times.
as long as it has information inside (which it does) it can be considered cyber.
I think it could be considered cyberpunk in some way. Funny thing is you could write programs to be usable on cassette tapes too, but that hasn’t been a main practice for a long time (from what I could remember with the ZX Spectrum).
Towers is fucking sick, nice to see outside of the vapor community.
Join the cassette futurism subreddit
Analog media 100% jives with cyberpunk. The genre itself is largely a product of the 1980s where analog media was still king. CDs would have certainly been around for a few years but those were still cutting edge at the time. There were even various computers and game consoles from the early 80s that pulled data from cassette tapes.
I think the important thing on an aesthetic level is that the analog media in question has some relation to computers or personal electronics. This would include things like punch cards used in computers from the lat 60s/early 70s, but wouldn’t include things like wax cylinders from the early 20th century.
With that said, it’s not a hard and fast rule. I’m sure someone could make a convincing argument on how wax cylinders actually are cyberpunk as fuck. And if you’re writing cyberpunk fiction, using antiquated storage as an inspiration point for the kind of technology that exists in that world is 100% valid.
Last thing I’ll ad is that this doesn’t just apply to storage. Broadcast technology can also be cyberpunk. Pirate Radio stations are an easy example, and in a world where everything is connected to the internet, something like an old CRT display could be preferable in some cases. The genre is highly aesthetics driven so there are a lot of ways you can spin analog tech to be cyberpunk.
Absolutely. I think of the cassettes they had in the film Strange Days, for example.
r/cassettefuturism
Absolutely counts, it’s part of low-tech, and has some really beneficial display aspects – data stored on tapes can never be hacked.
iirc Neuromancer had tapes as a part of the setting still, and that’s a fundamental cyberpunk work. If its good enough for gibson, I think it counts as part of cyberpunk. Definitely part of the retro-future aspect of cyberpunk. Also look into tapedeck-futurism
I would say yes. At one point computers ran on that stuff
Actually cassettes were often used as data storage in early computing so it could 100% count!
Actually I think the retro tech in some way is more cyberpunk than modern tech, which is moving more to solar punk.
Having stuff off the net is better security.
Not only can the corpos not suddenly stop your favourite tunes, but it’s also a way to stay low profile during your various extra-legal activities.
Can’t trace a signal that doesn’t exist.
You know, at least that cassette is not spying on you and trying to manipulate you to sell you stuff. What’s more cyberpunk than going analog for your own safety?
Look up Cassette Futurism.
I believe blade runner and blade runner 2049 both have elements of cassette/analog/retro punk
I am not sure on the details but lore wise there was a big crash at some time and only those kind of technologies survived or something along those lines
Repurposing tech, even old tech, to make something new and unintended by the tech’s creators, is absolutely cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is a kid in an alley finding an old paint can and using it to drum.
No. Period.
I’ve always seen cyberpunk “design” as a fusion of retro and new-tech.
Like running a supercomputer on a crt screen.
Has anyone mentioned why the MYST falling guy is featured on there yet? Anyone know? I’m very curious.
and so I close, realizing that perhaps, the ending has not yet been written.
Yes, there’s a lot of situations in cyberpunk where people go more analog due to some problems from the digital infrastructure. Like in the case of that bladerunner sequel
/r/cassettefuturism
I feel like it’s more the cassette futurism variety of cyberpunk, the color scheme fits though
“My first impulse, when presented with any spanking-new piece of computer hardware, is to imagine how it will look in 10 years’ time, gathering dust under a card table in a thrift shop.”
—
# [William Gibson](https://www.quotenik.com/author/williamgibson/)
Absolutely. Blade runner has cyberpunk phone booths for one, and Johnny Pneumonic has some of the most retro cyberspace ideas I’ve ever seen