Comment by wrp
Cyberpunk got the future exactly wrong. In the 1980s, being into computer technology meant being into hardware. You could scrounge it and tinker with it, and had to be clever and highly motivated to do that. Cyberpunk took the computer geek themes of cleverness, effort, and hardware and added heavy antiestablishmentism.
I've been in education all through the rise of digital culture and am now dealing with the first ChatGPT generation. What I see is the inverse of cyberpunk culture. Computers are ubiquitous and dead simple to use. Kids spend their time doomscrolling and let ChatGPT do their thinking for them.
On the other hand, I could see this causing a resurgence of exactly that same aesthetic. Software will be eaten by LLMs and computers will remain ubiquitous, but hardware for now remains where it was. Specialized, niche, and able to be combined into something cool only by someone knowledgeable.
Having to solder or breadboard something together is approximately the same experience it was in the 80s. And the sorts of results you can expect are similarly rare and exotic. An at home automated solution for soldering is not coming any time soon.