Citation :

Pooja Dahiya, Sneha Sharma, Omdev Dahiya, "Reconstructing Identity and Control: Technological Domination and Social Fragmentation in Cyberpunk Worlds," International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 38-58, 2026. Crossref, https://doi.org/10.14445/23942703/IJHSS-V13I3P105

Abstract

This study critically analyzes the complex relationship between technological development and human identity, freedom, and socio-political systems, using cyberpunk literature as a lens to examine a range of realms. The examination of evidence related to technological developments, such as cyber prosthetics and AI in governance, demonstrates how technologies simultaneously provide freedom from physical and cognitive limitations while also perpetuating identity fragmentation, reducing agency, and promoting social stratification. This exploration highlights how technologies disproportionately benefit dominant classes and reinforce inequality. Ethical questions raised in relation to the corporate/government surveillance of behavior, the commodification of personal data, and the diminishing of privacy and free speech depict potential futures that embody both dystopian experience and ideological threats to democracy, wherein technology perpetuates oppression. There is a discussion about the cognitive effects of virtual realities on subjectivity, and the resulting considerations of identity, addiction, and social isolation. We conclude that through critique of corporate, exploitative treatment of technologies and manipulation of socio-political existence and relations, cyberpunk literature serves as an important cautionary reflection of unbridled technology development and the consequences to human freedom and justice.

Keywords

Artificial Intelligence, AI Governance, Cyberpunk, Human Identity, Socio-Politics, Tech Advancement, Virtual Reality.

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