In the 80s there was also a "new" Sience Fiction Wave about Cyberspace.
The most important authors were William Gibson with his "Newromancer"-Trilogy
and Bruce Sterling as the main-philosophe-thinker of that themes (he had also
written great novels like "Schismatrix").
The base-scenario is always the same: the world of the near future is sick and ill,
there are superrich people - all others are poor. No middleclass at all all over the world.
The ONE WORLD ruled of international big concerns, they have the money and do what
they want.
Even in the late 80s there was a movie calls "Freejack", the theme: if dead comes nearer,
and you have the money, you can save your personality/brain to a harddisk called "switchboard",
than you buy a new body (of any poor man you like, most founded in history back, because the
people of today in this movie all were crapp, biological determ and so on) and so you can in fact
live forever, you move with your brain/feels/char/personality from body to body...
So i think, the 2 wishes to "play god and create life" and "Living forever" you can merge into
with computer and digital technology - i think an important motive why digital life became so
much attractive.
Just a thought, perhaps it will help you...