[Puke]

It was looking bad there for a while, when the Berlin Wall came down. the Soviet Union fell appart, and the Iron Curtain came down. It was looking like the end of the world I grew up in.

The "Green" party was gaining popularity, vegitarians were everywhere, pacifism was spreading. Old, petty, squabling, outdated, outmoded, backwards Europe consolidated into a single economic / political entity -- or at least was well on its way. Globalism, though it brought about evils of its own, was destroying borders.

But the old world wasnt gone, people had just stopped seeing it. My world was still there, you just had to look a bit below the surface. Multinational corporations still controlled the economies of smaller countries, and still ruled over them with an iron fist. Imperial France still lorded over Africa, and the United States continued to operate clandestinly around the globe to secure its economic interests. Free-industry zones in China brought about the kind of Cowboy Capitalism invisioned in the elegantly distopian views of Gibson and Stearling.

A dramatic change of tense drives my vision home. The streets of the collapsed Soviet Union are as close to a manifestation of the Cyberpunk genre as anything is likely to be. War is waged for oil, geopolitical influence, reconstruction dollars, and personal profit. International communities are robbed of any consequential significance on a whim, and decades of peace efforts in Asia are thrown out in sheer acts of arrogance. All the old demons are still dancing about the world, and the nature of mankind remains unchanged since the first bipedlas murdered each other with their bare hands.

Though the important figures will change, borders will shift, and empires will fall, the world will remain unchanged. Technology will advance, and possibly collapse, only to advance again. If exploitable resources are found in space, they will be exploited. If they are not fought over with weapons, they will be fought over with money and politics. There are only two possiblilites. Perhaps we are at the pinacle of history, looking down a dangerous precipice -- or perhaps we are poised to vault into a new era. There is one certainty, however: Though the scenery will change, the nature of man will not.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.