04/29/2026
Everyday the world slips a little further into cyberpunk. I grew up on bladerunner, the matrix, dark city, william gibson novels, asimov, and philip k dick- all dreaming, and often warning- about a world where technology blanketed humanity in a technosurrealist overwhelm, where the lines between biology and technology were blurred to the point where those realms were simply extensions of each other. As is so often the case, truth is stranger than fiction. New York is always a harbinger of whats to come, and the brilliant, beating, warping heart of this city, at least visually- is rooted on forty second street. LED billboards span into the skies, flashing advertisements for AI agents, “don’t hire humans!” they insist, in near-convincing luminosity. Streamed songs from hundreds of speakers and phones flow into audible eddies and swirl around the steady hum of neons and the low buzz of electric taxis, technicolor lights from ebikes and ni****ne vaporizers and broadway signs contribute to this visual miasma, dense enough to dizzy you, a galaxy of stars somehow fallen, lost and trapped in these canyons of glass and steel.
And yet, amid these scenes torn from the pages of science fiction, humanity persists- the laughter of friends stumbling through the streets, the sizzle of kebabs and the crackle of roasting nuts, musicians and dancers and vendors selling their various crafts. Inside the theaters, there is shakespeare and music and the warmth of crowds, a couple kisses on the corner then hands their phone to me to take their picture. It’s our first time here, they tell me, smiles as wide as an avenue. You can decry all these changes, our ever increasing distance from the forests and lakes and the way things ought to be, or you can love this part too, the naturally unnatural bubbling evolution of the dark forest we are building around us.
