"Cyber" pertains to information systems, like those in a computer.

"Punk" refers to fractious youth.

Together the two elements suggest an artificial human with torn clothes and spiky hair (e.g., Daryl Hannah's character Pris in Blade Runner).

Cyberpunk is fiction dominated by the feeling that man is dwarfed by machine in a technological world.

Its works portray a society alienated from nature and organized along corporate rather than tribal, familial, or national lines.