We are living in a pre-cyberpunk world, actively paving the groundwork for corporate-government fusion. Worse, we’re doing it while thinking we’re resisting it.
William Gibson didn’t predict the future, he described the present with better lighting. The megacorporations aren’t coming; they’re already here, and we invited them in through the front door while demanding they bring regulation with them.
There was a time when resistance meant building alternatives. When people got fed up with profit-driven corporations, they learned to code and built their own solutions. People created their own networks, tools, and systems. Linux stands as a monument to that effort; a rejection of corporate control through decentralization and independence.
This philosophy has become a niche view. Now, resistance is synonymous with “there ought to be a law.”
Take the Stop Killing Games (SKG) initiative. Game companies are shutting down games remotely, preventing people from accessing products they purchased. “You will own nothing and be happy,” as the World Economic Forum’s 2030 prediction suggested. The old-school response would be building preservation tools as a community, creating decentralized networks, developing open alternatives, and supporting indie developers. Instead, supporters focus on getting the government to mandate corporate end-of-life solutions, like children running to their mother after falling on the playground.
This pattern repeats everywhere. Don’t like how social media moderates speech? Regulate them. Concerned about tech company monopolies? File antitrust suits. Worried about data privacy? Demand more compliance requirements.
Every single one of these “solutions” makes the problem worse. Large corporations can afford compliance teams. They can navigate complex regulatory frameworks. They can lobby for favorable interpretations. Small businesses and potential competitors cannot. They must then turn to these large companies for infrastructure and expertise, creating even less competition and fewer choices for consumers.
My theory is that we have systematically reduced the general population’s ability to think independently and build alternatives. There’s no evil conspiracy, just a general lack of awareness resulting in one of the most disturbing changes of the 21st century.
We are actively consuming what can only be called “brainrot.” We’re using technologies that diminish our cognitive abilities while becoming overconfident in our tech skills. People mistake being users for being creators, consumers for producers.
The irony is that we’re actively selecting companies that encourage this dependency. When AI companies see that we respond better to sycophants and negatively to criticism, what do you think they optimize for? Do you think SKG proponents will stop buying games from the very megacorps they’re trying to regulate?
Megacorporations only have power because people gave them money for their products. The government must serve both corporate and public interests. Nobody will take care of you except yourself. You cannot say “I’ll leave the technical details to government and corporations” like SKG did and walk away. If you don’t have the knowledge to participate, you’re no longer at the table, you’re on the menu.
Complex regulations get passed that ostensibly protect consumers from big corporations. Small businesses can’t afford compliance, so they either fail or get absorbed by larger entities that can handle the regulatory burden. The remaining large corporations then influence how these regulations are interpreted and enforced because they’ve grown even larger in capital, technical expertise, and manpower.
The result is a system where every attempt at resistance actually strengthens the thing being resisted. It’s regulatory capture disguised as consumer protection. It’s corporate-government fusion marketed as progressive activism.
This is the Zaibatsu model from Neuromancer, not through dramatic corporate takeovers, but through the slow erosion of the capacity for independent action. Every time we choose regulatory solutions over building alternatives, we’re voting for a world where only institutions with massive resources can operate effectively.
The truly insidious part is that this masquerades as enlightened resistance. People feel good about “fighting the system” while actually strengthening it. They’re participating in sophisticated campaigns that channel their legitimate frustrations into outcomes that serve corporate interests.
Gibson’s “consensual hallucination” was cyberspace, a shared digital reality that everyone agreed to believe in. Today’s consensual hallucination is subtler: the belief that regulatory capture is actually resistance. We’ve collectively agreed to hallucinate that asking power to regulate itself constitutes meaningful opposition. Like AI hallucinations, it sounds convincing, follows logical patterns, but bears little relationship to reality.
We’re building a world where government and corporations are indistinguishable because we’ve created conditions where they have to be. When every solution requires institutional backing, when every form of resistance goes through regulatory channels, when every alternative gets crushed by compliance costs, you end up with corporate-government fusion by design.
We’re not stumbling into a cyberpunk future. We’re building it deliberately, one well-intentioned regulation at a time. The people building it think they’re the resistance.
In Gibson’s vision, the hackers were outlaws operating in the shadows of corporate power. In our reality, we’ve convinced the would-be hackers to become compliance officers instead.
At this point, it’s more than just acquiring technical knowledge, it’s about self-cultivation and mental discipline to avoid falling into mob think. Control your emotions so you can accept criticism. Question whether your resistance is actually resistance or just another form of participation in the system you claim to oppose.
The real hack isn’t regulatory, it’s cognitive. It’s refusing to accept the premise that only institutions can solve institutional problems. It’s remembering that the most powerful act of resistance is building something better, not begging power to regulate itself.
The future is still being written in code. The question is: will you be writing it, or will you be asking someone else to write it for you?
July 3, 2025 10:13 PM