When it comes to corporations in the real world, a lot of them feel like they are getting close to the level that the scary corporations in cyberpunk stories are. The main theme in cyberpunk, is that there is commodification of everything, and companies are willing to sell anything to make profit. In both cyberpunk worlds and in the real life world, there is advertisement everywhere, and tracking of what people do in order to sell to certain people. For example, in Neuromancer, there is a group called Tessier-Ashpool, who deal with pretty much everything. They are a group that control a lot of the wealth in technology, and deal with cloning an AI, which are things that many people sought for in this cyberpunk world. But what is very interesting about their greed, is that it is not to challenge the systems that they are in, only to keep it going forever. They just sit in their wealth and clone themselves so that they can keep it forever, which helps them but deteriorates everything else around them.
In the real world, there are not exactly any companies that are at that point yet, but I feel like it is not too crazy to think it could end up that way. When it comes to the tech powerhouses like Google, Apple, and Meta, it seems that they are so focused on creating huge technological things that will make them a lot of money that they seem to lose sight of what the point of technology is. Apple refusing to evolve with other companies, making it so that their devices need to be upgraded in order to stay relevant, reminds me a lot of how greedy some companies are in cyberpunk stories. These companies want to alienate their own audience and market, so that they buy nothing else but their products.
I think that cyberpunk is not too wild for coming up with these greedy companies. It is very realistic to me to see certain corporations get so greedy that they end up owning everything and advertising themselves on everything that they can. It is an exaggeration of course, but as the years keep going they get closer and closer to reality.
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