previously, today the key ‘global resource’ is information itself rather than
oil, farm goods or other resources usually associated with capitalist market
systems. Information today represents power and determines the
population’s actions; consequently dominion over the world of bits is
translated into control in the world of flesh. Blade Runner is perhaps the film
that in the clearest way shows the dramatic view of a postmodern society
(Lyon, 1994: 1-6). Blade Runner takes place in Los Angeles, a modern and
multicultural city nowadays, but which in 2019 presents an aspect of absolute
urban decadence. The sunny California that we know has obviously suffered a
nuclear or chemical disaster. The city becomes an impersonal place without
distinctive characteristics, where different styles and cultures are mixed up
under the neon lights of commercial advertisements. It is in this context that
the modern industrial organization shows new principles that are not based in
capital or work as the main resource of power. Instead, they have been
substituted for information, knowledge and communication. Therefore, we
cannot see any political or social influence in the execution of power.
Economy manipulates society and both are directly dependent on the
technological and information industry. Blade Runner portrays a consumerist
society in which everything is a show and the most important thing is
appearance. Blade Runner depicts a situation in which all boundaries have
imploded within cultures, biology, technology and between reality and
unreality. Consequently, this is a world in which simulations have displaced
reality (Kellner, 1995: 305).
At the point of confluence of reality and (un)reality, of machine and
human, we find Cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is defined as a postmodernist
tendency and ‘the cultural expression of late capitalism’ (Jameson, 1996: 9).
It is a vision of the future under the prism of a pessimistic imposition of
technology and its consequences: its impact on the conduct of the people and
the living space which turns from an empirical reality to a virtual one, the
Cyberspace, the ‘no-space’ (Jameson, 1991: 38 and 321). Cyberpunk should
be understood as a kind of socio-economic theory that embraces technology
and offers up an alternative to the bright, utopian dream of modernity: a
dystopian future. Cyberpunk is reflected in the increasing number of dark
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