Again, I consider the debate pointless, but if steampunk (or anything) is in no sense cyberpunk it's no more appropriate in a cyberpunk thread than Dumas. I’m not interested in declaring one or the other better and think it contradictory to try; I’ve provided ample evidence of connections via postmodern noir, the ubiquity of advancing technology and examination of the latter fostering the former. Unlike cyberpunks tech spin on noir, I'm aware of nothing novel or unique that distinguishes steampunk from cyberpunk; it simply restricts cyberpunk to the Victorian Age, sometimes absurdly. Thus I don’t think it LESS restrictive; Bronze Age cyberpunk is viable, as I’ve noted, but an otherwise "steampunk" story instantly becomes "dieselpunk" if set between World Wars. I don’t see nor have you demonstrated “evolution”, just cyberpunk themes with Dickensian lace and language. For that reason though, it was never my intent to attack steampunk as a whole, both because I don't wish to and because I think it would be cutting off my nose to spite my face. To clarify my subject line, after two AIs subsumed the matrix by their merger at the end of Neuromancer, Count Zero ultimately reveals that an outside stimulus caused the new entity to fracture into sub-entities that neither that refused to even acknowledge their parent, let alone the links between them. Here's hoping this contrived conflict is resolved as neatly in the end as that one was.

If your point is "neither has substance, nor should, and the trend of your youth is square, daddy-o while the trend of mine is the bees knees" there's nothing to discuss, because the topics ARE nothing (at the risk of summoning Dan, I don’t think non-being representative or capable of much evolution). That’s akin to the school of thought that says speculative fiction can never be more than entertainment, though obviously I'm more interested here in what else cyberpunk offers rather than what its various derivatives offer. However, I think you do cyberpunk AND steampunk a disservice by treating both as mere aesthetics; unlike cyberpunk, the conscious and deliberate affectation you laud is LITERALLY “the definition of trying too hard”. Looking cool remains a poor basis for claiming anything superior overall to another; the best works don’t consciously try and those that do are invariably the worst, because they must substitute form for substance.