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Quoted A love letter to cassette futurism by Mike Piggott (Twisted Wonderland)
[C]assette futurism is a retro-futuristic aesthetic from around 1970-1985, and is a subgenre of sci-fi that essentially envisions a future through utilitarian, analogue technology. Think tech that was available in that time period: bulky computers, cassette tapes, CRT monitors, physical buttons, VHS/Beta systems, floppy disks, reel-to-reel tapes, Polaroids, dot matrix printers, microcomputers, and so on.

I recently read Mike Piggott’s blog post A love letter to cassette futurism (HT Dragonfly BSD Digest). I did not recall having seen the term before, but Mr. Piggott’s definition of it being “a retr-fusion aesthetic from around 1970-1985 … that essentially envisions a future through utilitarian, analogue technology” was about what I expected from the headline. As I started reading, I thought to myself that this sounded tangentially similar to cyberpunk (granting cyberpunk is not among my favorite aesthetics). Mr. Piggott addressed my thought in the next paragraph:

Which may put you in mind of cyberpunk as a subgenre, and there’s definite overlap, in a sense.

Mike Piggott

From Mr. Piggott’s description of cassette futurism and my understanding of cyberpunk, I can see the distinction (I will go with cassette futurism as the better of the two).