History happened differently. In 1827, Babbage successfully created the Difference Engine, and the world was greeted with it's first mechanical computational machine. A revolution swept the planet. Mass data storage and processing was used by all major nations and corporations by the 1860's. In the 1890's and 1900's Edison and Tesla's genius was funnelled into digitising these previously clockwork contraptions.
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| Edison with an early electric computer |
Technology advanced at a rapid pace. Wireless communication allowed for the web of information to spread across the globe by 1920.
By the 1980's, the world had changed drastically. Powerful mega-corporations battled for control, wars shook the world, and society struggled to adapt to such advances as cybernetics and rudimentary artificial intelligence.
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| Corporate espionage in the 1980's |
Snap forward to 2012. The mega-corporations, while still vastly powerful, are being undermined by a number of communities using open-source technologies to provide for themselves and those that around them them.
Cybernetics have made the transition into everyday life - replacing a limb or upgrading a pair of eyes have become reasonably common procedures. Most people posses instantaneous access to the web of information that surrounds them. This mesh of high-bandwidth data enables seamless communication, and interaction with augmented and virtual realities.
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| An employee of the Seed corporation adjusts to her new cybernetic arm. |
Cities have evolved into vast, labyrinthine super-structures encasing the lives of billions of individuals. Some cities, such as Masdar or Pylon 1, where built from the ground up. These cities have been designed to efficiently and effectively house their massive populations.
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| Pylon 1: An incomplete space elevator being constructed by the Central African Alliance |
Unfortunately, the vast majority of mass-scale architecture was built haphazardly. These urbanised sprawls have spread along many of the world's coastlines, and house most of the planet's population.
Governments in these areas largely exist to facilitate and regulate interactions between the corporate entities that control much of humanity's resources. The teeming masses, forever content with the newest media and gadgets, live out their lives under the constant twilight glow of shopfronts and streetlights.
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| An arial view of a sprawling modern city, it's skyline dominated by corporate arcologies. |
The mega-cities are difficult to police, and many of the lower areas have degraded into impoverished slums. Here, the unfortunate and the opportunistic rub shoulders with counter cultures, degenerates, and criminals.
Life in the caverns is fast, cheap and brutal. The manufacture of drugs, weapons and black-shop cybernetics is big business.
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| A bar nestled deep within the cavernous spaces beneath the East Australian Sprawl. |
Into this world enters YOU. Not the you that you know, but you as you are in the Cyberpunk world of The 2012 Overture. Whether you're a cybernetic artiste, a bounty-hunter, a bio-hacker, a weapons engineer, a rogue programmer or a corporate agent is up to you. Your goals, fears and passions, however, are your own.
Welcome to The 2012 Overture. Try to survive.
