It's many things at once. For some people, it's just an aesthetic. It's the whole "hacker, rebel, techy, lone-wolf" aesthetic.
It's also a genre of science fiction. It basically combines futuristic tech with dystopian/utopian elements, and grimy, old-world stuff. For example, a cyberpunk setting may have godlike AI, but everyone lives in the ghetto. Usually there are rogue actors that try to disrupt or exploit the technology system in place-- the "hackers". These actors are all about reclaiming old tech, building gadgets, and often cyborg-like body mods.
Cyberpunk is a sort of philosophy as well, along the same lines. This is where the subculture aspect comes in. Ever heard of steampunk? Steampunk in a fictional setting is where all technology is mostly mechanical, usually drawing on Victorian elements as well, and sometimes magic or supernatural stuff is included. Steampunk can be boiled down to an initiative to create stable, reliable, mechanically sound systems, usually put to interesting/novel use.
Cyberpunk as a subculture is similar. It's all about making tech work for you, pushing it to its limits, experimenting and exploiting within the given system. It's a rebellious attitude and a response to corporate and government tech control. It incorporates a fashion element like all good subcultures, likes to resurrect old tech (like nixie tubes), and often incorporates body modification (like NFC chips under the skin). People like to repair their own technology, modify their own technology, and collect obscure technologies. Many are also hackers, or want to be.
> It basically combines futuristic tech with dystopian/utopian elements, and grimy, old-world stuff.
In other words, “The future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed” — William Gibson.
And it will probably always be that way, not just in terms of global inequality, but even in a single person’s life: you might be among the billion or two people living as humans have lived for thousands of years, on subsistence agriculture and herding with no running water, but you also have a smartphone and can video-chat with your cousins across the world. That aspect of cyberpunk storytelling is just taking this fact of existence and amplifying it to draw attention to it.
It's also a genre of science fiction. It basically combines futuristic tech with dystopian/utopian elements, and grimy, old-world stuff. For example, a cyberpunk setting may have godlike AI, but everyone lives in the ghetto. Usually there are rogue actors that try to disrupt or exploit the technology system in place-- the "hackers". These actors are all about reclaiming old tech, building gadgets, and often cyborg-like body mods.
Cyberpunk is a sort of philosophy as well, along the same lines. This is where the subculture aspect comes in. Ever heard of steampunk? Steampunk in a fictional setting is where all technology is mostly mechanical, usually drawing on Victorian elements as well, and sometimes magic or supernatural stuff is included. Steampunk can be boiled down to an initiative to create stable, reliable, mechanically sound systems, usually put to interesting/novel use.
Cyberpunk as a subculture is similar. It's all about making tech work for you, pushing it to its limits, experimenting and exploiting within the given system. It's a rebellious attitude and a response to corporate and government tech control. It incorporates a fashion element like all good subcultures, likes to resurrect old tech (like nixie tubes), and often incorporates body modification (like NFC chips under the skin). People like to repair their own technology, modify their own technology, and collect obscure technologies. Many are also hackers, or want to be.