>>96208648
>what separates X from Y
Wibbly wobbly cybermagic.
It's on a per-game basis, per-setting basis. Interpretations differ.
>What about engrams on the net?
Engrams on the net are no longer humans, they are constructs. 77 is great in showing how Alt has changed into something distinctly inhuman. The difference between an engram in a robot and an engram on the web is that the engram in a robot can interact with meatspace. AIs prove reliably, in the Cyberpunk world, that they have agendas beyond human interests, that if they were capable of enacting in meatspace would be dangerous to bystanders. AIs are dangerous because they don't value human life, and will use human life to accomplish their own non-human goals. If cyberpsychosis is "chromed nutter" then they are all suffering from cyberpsychosis; general reminder that these engrams were someone’s children, they were parents, school teachers, accountants; now they are a cloud of data that's squatting in your toaster and sending you invasive messages in your fillings. They probably have a right to exist, and deserve respect for being an alien intelligent life-form, but they are also the end-result of a technological development that outpaced the good judgement of where to apply it. They have lost everything that makes you 'you'.
>Woah that's pretty cool and- Wait a minute in 2020 they're just normal dudes who live in wild west towns and jerk off all day except it looks like Tron. What the fuck? You're a fraud!
Uh, jerking off in a wild west town as a Tron-dude is, uh, a spiritual malady on the human experience. I guess. Wibbly-wobbly cyber magic, interpretations may differ. In all seriousness you just have to decide what flavour of Cyberpunk you're having today. In 77 it looks pretty eldritch, in 20 it looks like Tron half the time and Terminator the other half, in Red it's Terminator except all the net-ghosts respect pronouns.
