Search for Power…

In Cyberpunk another main point in most novels is the gaining of power, Wintermute in Gibson's Neuromancer is the perfect example. Most scientific projects are obviously based on the attempt to gain power. And I believe these attempts are basically a hidden desire to achieve divinity. The unlimited power of knowledge is not to be underestimated, this ambition is ironically very close to capitalism (which is, in last instance the basic reason why a society as those depicted in Cyberpunk novels would end up existing). To exploit nature's resources for commercial profit and political control is a very old technique. An obvious example of this is the importance of Megacorporations, see here

http://www.hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk/MultimediaStudentProjects/00-01/0003637k/project/html/concorp.htm

to understand this better, as the perfect example of the search for power to dominate the rest of beings that are at our same level, to reduce the number of their rivals and to eliminate them if possible, though applied to the cinema world, this article is an interesting way to understand this. But the evolution of man also brings an evolution of his Machiavellian techniques of reaching his objectives, and now it's not nature that is being destroyed and used for personal purposes, but man itself, the weakest are being used to increase the power of the powerful. One might say… "Well, this is already very old isn't it?". But we must not forget that in the past what was used was the weakest's labour, nor their identity or their true self… And evolution has brought (at least into the world of Cyberpunk novels) worse ways of dominating a being.