Cyberpunk saw surveillance capitalism coming

Cyberpunk did not predict flying cars. It predicted the business model: corporations using networks, surveillance, and quantification to turn human life into profit long before smartphones made it normal.^[1][2]

Classic cyberpunk’s omnipresent cameras and screens look a lot like today’s ad tech stack: data brokers, shadow profiles, and behavioral data sold across hundreds of sources into one dossier.^[6][8][9]

The genre also nailed reputation as a machine. Today that shows up as consumer scores, algorithmic risk scoring, and black-box decisions for loans, housing, jobs, and even prison time.^[8][9][14]

Cyberpunk’s old megacorp is still here, but it wears a cleaner suit. Big platform firms now operate as data infrastructures, shape dependencies, and push governance through markets, lobbying, and technical standards.^[14][15][16]

And the state never vanished; it partnered up. Senate testimony on data brokers describes an unregulated industry feeding everything from credit and insurance to employment and housing, while lawmakers asked how to restore control.^[9][8]