1993.....
....and we all thought 'Virtual Reality' would take over the world. Of course, the era of Holograms and Virtual Reality sex never arrived, as its 2005 today. Gotta go, somone is text messaging me a new Mp3 on my Celly
share1993 (gaining mass-appeal by 1995) was THE year, for the technophile / singularity / transhumanist / hacker / cyberpunk crowd.
Communism was on its way out as "The Fear", and the intelligencia were making chin-stroking posteuring about the end of history and the future of humanity's worldview. (Mondo 2000 / Wired, Fukuyama's "Last Man" vs. Babylon 5, Aeon Flux by Peter Chung, Third Culture / EDGE, Wim Wender's 'Until the End of the World'...)
Computer-augmented reality ("cyberspace") seemed to fill that vacuum (one path to overcome social nihilism), but got hyped too much too fast and the bubble burst before it could realize its full potential, much like French and German New Wave in the early 80s.
Now that the coddled mainstream has passed over the potential of massively distributed communications and computer-aided design in all spheres of human creativity, that potential sits largely idle -- waiting for consumer demand.
James Cameron and George Lucas are talking about the future of entertainment being 3D Digital Cinema, when asked about whether these new 3D digital movies could be released on video Cameron said the technology was already therere to release movies in 3D for home use, all they needed was more films to be made in this way to make it financially viable he speculated that in 10 years most people would be watching films in 3D in their homes, I remember thinking of Wild Palms at the time, it's not exactly the same technology but it's a very similar idea, after all if IF we get used to 3 Dimensional entertainment wet total immersion would be the next step right.
Of course neither Lucas nor Cameron are Senator material.
i have to agree with crapmailforme because cyberpunk gained popularity during times of fear and collapse of a system(i.e. Communism) Cyberpunk was popular during the 80's because of the rise of Asian influence in the world market and Japan was making great progress in technology. A great example of this was found in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. My guess was that there was a general fear of the rise of Asia during the 80's but when we started adapting to their technology it lose it's fear appeal and nobody cared as much.
Now, I think that cyberpunk and dystopia is on the rise again due to what's been happening to the world since 9/11. Let's call this the new fear. The Children of Men is a good film that deals with the fear that we will one day be the cause of our own demise which is appropriate because of the threat of nuclear war.