In the moral universe of cyberpunk, we *already* know ThingsWe Were Not Meant To Know. Our *grandparents* knew these things;Robert Oppenheimer at Los Alamos became the Destroyer of Worldslong before we arrived on the scene. In cyberpunk, the idea that thereare sacred limits to human action is simply a delusion. There are nosacred boundaries to protect us from ourselves.
Our place in the universe is basically accidental. We are weakand mortal, but it's not the holy will of the gods; it's just the waythings happen to be at the moment. And this is radicallyunsatisfactory; not because we direly miss the shelter of the Deity, butbecause, looked at objectively, the vale of human suffering is basicallya dump. The human condition can be changed, and it will be changed,and is changing; the only real questions are how, and to what end.
This "anti-humanist" conviction in cyberpunk is not simplysome literary stunt to outrage the bourgeoisie; this is an objective factabout culture in the late twentieth century. Cyberpunk didn't inventthis situation; it just reflects it.
Today it is quite common to see tenured scientists espousinghorrifically radical ideas: nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, cryonicsuspension of the dead, downloading the contents of the brain...Hubristic mania is loose in the halls of academe, where everybody andhis sister seems to have a plan to set the cosmos on its ear. Sternmoral indignation at the prospect is the weakest of reeds; if there werea devilish drug around that could extend our sacred God-givenlifespans by a hundred years, the Pope would be the first in line.
We already live, every day, through the means of outrageousactions with unforeseeable consequences to the whole world. The