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Do you mean cypherpunk? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunk
They probably meant cyberpunk, since they mentioned the combination of techology and social impact. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk
Thematically there is very little different between cyberpunk and steampunk.
The biggest contributing factor to the decline of the cyberpunk aesthetic in the 80's-90's was how quickly it became realism. If you read a William Gibson novel now, it would be like reading William Faulkner in the 1800's.
(I know Faulkner didn't publish in the 1800's. don't go there, this is my reply and that means I decide how time works here.)
The implications of the use of the advanced tools we build on the individual, and the species as a whole, is rarely considered with the gravity it deserves, at least by the vast majority of end users, I believe, in large part, because capitalism is predatory, and subsequently the tools it uses to accomplish it's end must be uniformly masked, behind a layer of safe aesthetics. A revival of the cyberpunk aesthetic in general, which paints technology as dangerous, empowering, and hints that the deeper into the technical details you get, the more empowered you become, would be a welcome return to realism from the magazine glossy, UI/UX of modern services. I mean seriously, this "Mumblecore" jargon and friendly faces on services which, let's be frank here, are simply the injections of profit and information siphoning mechanisms (the successful ones anyway) into monetary transactions for goods and services, and exchanges of information, between people, which already existed, in exchange for a razor-thin layer of convenience, and a gross distortion to their psychological faculties for perceiving value, to the end of contributing to the centralization of money, thus access to resources, and data, thus the ability to derive information, into the hands of a few, and creating (I'm trying my best to tone down the hyperbole here) impermeable veil of branding, that obfuscates as completely as possible, what anything actually is, or does.
(Don't go there. It's my reply, that means I can nest as many clauses in a statement as I want.)
If your blog even piques someone's curiosity, or contributes peripherally to a compulsion to dig deeper into how the layers of complex systems underlying the mechanisms we use to interact with the world now work, it was worth every minute you spent on it up to that point. Seriously, do it.
Speaking from personal experience, if you had shown me an ad for a "coding bootcamp" when I was 10, I would have chosen.. literally anything else to get into. Fortunately, I got my hands on a copies "Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller", and "Shadowrun" instead. The sentiment of that art, the feeling of those ideas, with regards to technology, has kept my interest alive through day after day of questioning whether or not this specific impending bout of 'meeting business requirements' in which I am about to engage means I am a terrible person.
Just do it dude. You know you want to.
However, you are describing two very different things. With a blog, one simply begins to write blog posts. There is no other approach to take, as you must before anything else establish your credibility as a writer within a domain of knowledge.
A news site is a far different proposal. Before you put a lot of effort into it, you need to figure out what might be crassly termed a 'business model', which in more general terms is simply, "here is my vision: what work is required to make it a reality; how will that work be done; who will do that work; why will they chose to do that work; how do I expect to benefit from this; do I still like what I am envisioning."
I think there's still lots to be dissatisfied with in the current landscape of content providers and aggregators.
For instance, a lot of nominal 'content providers' bulk up their content flow with hasty recapitulations of content elsewhere; that this activity avails them at all is, I believe, in particular, indicative of an unfilled niche in content aggregation. One frequently sees, out in the boonies of the not-directly-for-profit internet, knowledgable and useful summaries and introductions of content hosted elsewhere. Fleshed out more thoroughly with a contextualization of what something means, how and why it matters, and what it should lead the reader to anticipate, such material could facilitate reader access to expert opinion and information that would otherwise be beyond them.
As another example, editorial oversight, in particular, is in a state of near-crisis, everywhere. This is crucial, as it is the lynchpin of journalism. A different model of quality assurance would be transformative.
TBH most of the content on theintercept feels pretty cyberpunk to me though...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They probably meant cyberpunk, since they mentioned the combination of techology and social impact. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is an aesthetic, Cypherpunk is sociopolitical. Thematically there is very little different between cyberpunk and steampunk.
I think that of course most people here would be generally interested in reading such content, and if you can make a compelling case that there is a niche or intersection of interests that isn't well represented at a level of depth/complexity, then you have an interesting proposal. However, you are describing two very different things. With a blog, one simply begins to write blog posts. There is no other approach to…
Everything I have read and heard about successful blogs is that people write regularly for a year or two or more and eventually people care enough to pay attention. There are probably several reasons: 1. Writing and publishing everyday or so over a sustained period of time improves a person's skill at writing in general and writing for an audience in particular. 2. One of the ways popular blogs capture first time rea…
You're not wrong that this is short-term easier to establish an audience, but your long-term goal is to get to a point where a hypothetical reader of your blog will say "Well, yeah, you could find that topic anywhere, but personally I'm more interested in $NAME's opinion on the topic".
The best way to establish that is put out really good content until you've built up enough blogger 'cred' that you can tell me about other parts of you and I'll just wanna know.
That's Wired magazine.