>>7280979It started as a thing because very often asian cultures rapidly adopt emerging technology. There have been a great many instances of a new type of product coming out and dying within a week, never being seen outside of China or Japan except ten years later as a niche collectors' item. Because Gibson and his ilk often traveled between major cities, which often have a chinatown area that brings in a great deal of consumer products from the east, this became something interwoven in the general aesthetics. Add to that the fact that for whatever reason asian countries and communities tend to go for a lot of neon and chrome and also tend to manage somehow to be both absolutely filthy and impoverished while also having a huge technology black market and soaring corporate districts, and it just fits. Add to that the simple fact that a lot of tech junkies and computer nerds tend to enjoy japanese culture and chinese kung fu flicks as well as getting cheap electronics from chinatown and in the modern day the internet, and it becomes even more fitting. As China, Japan, Thailand, etc tend to continue rapidly adopting and discarding new(and often cheap) technology before the west does, the aesthetic remains.
