@Audiobellum said:
That's true and I think it would be cool if more cyberpunk art and entertainment addressed this in a serious way. Most cyberpunk stories are good at addressing how future technology could change the face of class politics but, I haven't seen any good example of cyberpunk stories tackling the issue of race and gender while also staying true to the cyberpunk formula.
I do think this is important as well. I assume you're referring to Mike Pondsmith. I think he is an amazing creator, but maybe he didn't want to make the whole thing about how he was black. Though, sadly, a lot of popular science-fiction, in general, has been from white male creators, and you can see how this biases their viewpoint.
Like I saw the film Advantageous, which was sort of like Children of Men, but told from the perspective of a mother. And it makes sense, because the writer and director was an Asian woman. So the range of ideas can be limited by your cultural perspective, and only seeing visions of white men is super limited. Or take, The Matrix, which was created by two trans women, while they were in the closet. And I think this was a big part of what the film was about. So I can understand why.
Or take Neill Blomkamp, for example. He is white, but from South Africa. So his movie District 9 did deal with ideas of racism and apartheid, but from a white male perspective. I think he did a great job, and it was an amazing movie, but the perspective is limited as I mentioned before.
But I think waiting to solve our human problems won't work, and, in fact, may be unsolvable. We still have wars today, slavery, oppression, even after everything that has happened. So people won't learn. But I think with the developments of AI and human-level androids, maybe things will change. Like today I am a man. My race is complicated. I am mixed, but my DNA is all over the place. Mostly European and a big part African. But what if I could wake up tomorrow and have a white woman's body, that was in her 20's? And then the next day, I could be an older black man. Or be some androgynous hybrid that doesn't exist in nature. Both sex organs, pink skin, elf ears, whatever you want. I think then the idea of race, and gender, and even just what it means to be a physical body would be changed completely.
