Cyberpunk is a genre of science fiction that focuses on computers or information technology, usually coupled with some degree of breakdown in social order. The plot of cyberpunk writing often centers on a conflict among hackers, artificial intelligences, and mega corporations, tending to be set within a near-future dystopian Earth, rather than the "outer space" locales prevalent at the time of cyberpunk's inception. Much of the genre's "atmosphere" echoes film noir, and written works in the genre often use techniques from detective fiction. While this gritty, hard-hitting style was hailed as revolutionary during cyberpunk's early days, later observers concluded that in terms of literature, most cyberpunk narrative techniques were less innovative than those of the New Wave, twenty years earlier. Primary exponents of the cyberpunk field include William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, John Shirley and Rudy Rucker. The term became widespread in the 1980s and remains current today.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1777: San José de Guadalupe, the first town in the Spanish colony of California, was founded. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jose%2C_California)

1854: The Eureka Flag was flown for the first time during the Eureka Stockade rebellion in Australia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_Flag)

1890: The Diet of Japan, modelled after the German Reichstag, first met, when the Meiji Constitution went into effect in Japan. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diet_of_Japan)

1944: Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas at the Johns Hopkins Hospital performed the first Blalock-Taussig shunt operation to treat blue baby syndrome. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Blalock)

1947: The United Nations General Assembly voted to approve the Partition Plan for Palestine, a plan to resolve the Arab-Jewish conflict in the British Mandate of Palestine. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_UN_Partition_Plan)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -- C.S. Lewis (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/C.S._Lewis)