Has Kuwait always been Cyberpunk?  

Obviously not. Kuwait in the 50s and 60s vibrated the same cheerful and positive attitude towards a bright and technicized future that we encounter in American Science Fiction literature of the 1930s-40s. Kuwait's philosophy was in keeping with that of magazines like Amazing Stories or Astounding Science Fiction , which developed under the influence of positively minded Russian and Italian Futurism. It is not exaggerated to say that Kuwait was the world's last utopia. Like today in Dubai and Qatar , advertisements (with red and orange as dominant colors) invited tourists to indulge in a perfect blend of futurist technology and exoticism. Futurist houses - today to be admired as ruins in Salmiya - indicated an uncompromising concept of modernity and progress naturally mixed with traditional elements. Fascinated journalists from Life and National Geographic presented life in Kuwait as liberal , modern , and healthy. Urbanism was humane and modernity was at its best. Thus spoke the Emir of Kuwait in 1952: "I want to make of Kuwait a country that blooms like a rose." 

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In 1960, Kuwait even exercised a pivotal

global logistic function , similar to that of today’s Dubai and Qatar. Kuwait Air connected London and Tokyo via Kuwait (see KT July 14, 1962) , which was a welcome improvement of international air traffic. Kuwait was also the pioneer in the Arab literary renaissance, its press being one of the freest on the planet. The Kuwaiti liberal Al-Arabi Magazine became the most popular magazine in the Arab world. 

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(Let's also mention that an optimistic spirit

blew into the country from another direction. In the early 1960s, Russia attempted to grab Kuwait from Britain to spread communism. Russia-backed Pan-Arabists planned to march in from Iraq; all organized by KGB operatives in Beirut.) [6]

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Today the optimistic spirit of this Futurism

(minus the press freedom) can be found in Dubai while in Kuwait Futurism disappeared behind the black clouds of burning oilwells. For Kuwait , the Iraqi invasion has had about the same effect that the Hiroshima bomb had on the development of Japanese Science Fiction literature. Technological optimism became impossible. Today Kuwait lacks investments because Kuwaiti businessmen prefer to invest abroad. Kuwaitis do not believe in the future of their own country.

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Partly , the capital flight is due to Kuwait's

pre-modern heritage: nomads don't believe in nations and borders and quickly move to another place. Bedouins are always on the move. The refusal to invest in Kuwait contrasts , again , with Dubai , which , though being relatively hastily built on a shaky economic ground and without much oil , attracts plenty of local and foreign (even Kuwaiti) investments.

The contrast between Kuwait and the much

newer Dubai could not be bigger. It is related to the cyberpunk problem described above. Sometimes , Dubai aspires to look cyberpunk. For example , it has created a "graffiti mall" , which looks like ... a mall. So far, real Gulf cyberpunk can be found only in Kuwait. Dubai also has a "heritage wave" on its program , attempting to retrieve tradition and humaneness that might have gone lost in its sleek techno-universe. Dubai aspires to have what Kuwait used to have in the 1960s at least on paper: the right mixture of past , present , and future.