> IMO cyberpunk was maybe just too early. I think brain implants, gene editing, AI and other technologies are going to happen
I had a discussion with someone - "if the 21th century is the century of biotech" (the cliché in the Silicon Valley since the late 90s) is true, why are we seeing little progress? My reply was: perhaps biotech history will be similar to electronics history, and it's just too early for now. Spark-gap transmitters were put into service in the 1900 and started the electronic age. In the 1910-1920, vacuum tubes were invented (the entire radio industry started before we even had an RF amplifier). In the 1940s, the first generation of electronic computers came into existence. Transistors were invented in the 1950s and practical ones didn't exist until the 1960s. VLSI started in the early 70s, and it's only in the 1980 that the microcomputer revolution was finally here.
Although Moore's Law arguably is much older than VLSI, but it still took 40 years before the new science of electronics invented the computers, and another 40 years before VLSI's exponential growth. Thus, I wonder, is the Human Genome Project the spark-gap transmitters of our era? Then CRISPR-Cas9 is the vacuum tube? And today we see a Hacker News headline "AlphaFold: a solution to a 50-year-old grand challenge in biology" [0], a breakthrough of protein folding using deep learning. Well, we are probably reaching the biotech equivalent of electromechanical computers right now. This "electronics-biotech" analogy seems right, if it's the case, brain-computer interface will be invented in the 2070s, like 1970s VLSI.
On the other hand, classic cyberpunk is always about the near-future. Its plots were usually based on a quick interpolation of the extreme growth of computing power we were seeing in the 80s, combined with the caricature of post-capitalism, it is only from this assumption that leads to radical social changes. If the story took place in the 22th century instead of 40 years later, it would be very "uncyberpunk". Cyberpunk's predictions has failed to materialize from this perspective. But it may still have a chance - if the singularitarianism are correct, the singularity will be there by 2050...
Personally, when I think of biotech, I think of gene editing, growing organs in a vat, etc. I would tend to put brain-computer interfaces in a different category.
That being said, I think that biotech is not progressing much because there's a lot of regulations slowing down research, and nobody has really demonstrated a "killer app" yet. I think what could happen, is that we will eventually be able to use gene therapy to really effectively kill cancers, and then funding is just going to pour into the field at 50 times the current rate.
There's a lot of other cool things we could do with gene editing, like fixing incurable depression, life extension, fixing genetic diseases, curing irritable bowel syndrome and dangerous allergies, but there's currently not enough funding, and there's not enough excitement, people are too worried about "ethical" implications.
I think it might be similar with brain-computer interfaces. Someone needs to spend a lot of money to get the first version working. It's possible that Elon Musk will win that race with Neuralink. If we can have a brain implant that allows a paraplegic person to move a robot arm, send texts and make themselves dinner... 10 years later you will have disabled people walking with exoskeletons and hackers hooking themselves up to computers. It could all happen within our lifetime. We just need someone to make that first killer demo, then funding pours in, 100 startups pop up overnight, and innovation really takes off.
I think the idea that regulation is slowing down research is a bit too simplistic to the point of being misleading. It's important to consider how regulation comes about, how that process shapes the regulation, how research gets funded, and so on.
Our modern economic landscape of conglomeration over competition is important. It came about in part because of regulation, but repealing regulation would not undo it and return us to a Renaissance of competitive independent businesses. This strained, rigid, highly interconnected economy has made it so that only the big institutions can afford to take substantial risks, and already being the giant wealth funnels that they are, there's little incentive to take those risks.
The greater the share of the economy made up by giant interconnected businesses with an aligned profit motive, the less risk taking, disruption, and innovation there will be. You shouldn't need to be Elon to be entrepreneurial at the cutting edge, but you do, because you can't compete with Elon. You shouldn't need to have Amazon's resources, but you do. Looser regulations are moot.
I had a discussion with someone - "if the 21th century is the century of biotech" (the cliché in the Silicon Valley since the late 90s) is true, why are we seeing little progress? My reply was: perhaps biotech history will be similar to electronics history, and it's just too early for now. Spark-gap transmitters were put into service in the 1900 and started the electronic age. In the 1910-1920, vacuum tubes were invented (the entire radio industry started before we even had an RF amplifier). In the 1940s, the first generation of electronic computers came into existence. Transistors were invented in the 1950s and practical ones didn't exist until the 1960s. VLSI started in the early 70s, and it's only in the 1980 that the microcomputer revolution was finally here.
Although Moore's Law arguably is much older than VLSI, but it still took 40 years before the new science of electronics invented the computers, and another 40 years before VLSI's exponential growth. Thus, I wonder, is the Human Genome Project the spark-gap transmitters of our era? Then CRISPR-Cas9 is the vacuum tube? And today we see a Hacker News headline "AlphaFold: a solution to a 50-year-old grand challenge in biology" [0], a breakthrough of protein folding using deep learning. Well, we are probably reaching the biotech equivalent of electromechanical computers right now. This "electronics-biotech" analogy seems right, if it's the case, brain-computer interface will be invented in the 2070s, like 1970s VLSI.
On the other hand, classic cyberpunk is always about the near-future. Its plots were usually based on a quick interpolation of the extreme growth of computing power we were seeing in the 80s, combined with the caricature of post-capitalism, it is only from this assumption that leads to radical social changes. If the story took place in the 22th century instead of 40 years later, it would be very "uncyberpunk". Cyberpunk's predictions has failed to materialize from this perspective. But it may still have a chance - if the singularitarianism are correct, the singularity will be there by 2050...
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25253488