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NARRATIVES OF

TECHNOLOGY
J.M. van der Laan
Narratives of Technology
J.M. van der Laan

Narratives of
Technology
J.M. van der Laan
Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois, USA

ISBN 978-1-137-44030-3 ISBN 978-1-137-43706-8 (eBook)


DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43706-8

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In Gratitude
PREFACE

Technology is a part of everything we do today, more than at any other


time in human history. In one century alone, we embraced Frederick
Taylor’s notion of “scientific management,” fell in love with the automo-
bile, radio, television, and microwave, became devoted to techniques for
teaching, marketing, and self-help, and were captivated by personal com-
puting devices and the Internet. Even the humanities, once the bastion of
traditional learning and scholarship, are now excited about the integration
of new technologies and mining digitized texts for data. We have long
been fascinated and delighted by, but also conflicted and worried about
technology.
This study documents and analyzes the competing, still evolving nar-
ratives about technology and its place in our lives. Even though we are
surrounded by and immersed in it, technology tends to escape our notice
and so remains poorly understood. Because technology is such an impor-
tant feature of our existence, we need to examine it, our conceptions of
it, and our relation to it with greater discernment. Although the contents
of the narratives seem self-evident, they are not. They require clarification
and interpretation. This book illumines the hopes and fears we express in
our narratives about technology, the various meanings we ascribe to it, and
the new forms of a mythology or demythology those narratives represent.
Let me briefly explain the organization of this book. The first chapter
contextualizes and defines technology; the second does the same for narra-
tive and myth. The following two chapters (Chaps. 3 and 4) delineate and
survey the two key narratives for technology in non-fiction: one popular
and optimistic, the other unpopular and critical. The focus shifts in the next

vii
viii PREFACE

chapters (Chaps. 5, 6, and 7) to a review of the narratives in fiction and


then to an analysis of two iconic and pivotal texts which stand out among
literary treatments of technology. The volume continues (in Chaps. 8
and 9) with an examination of the stories expressed in what are now the
chief vehicles of narrative for our culture—movies on the one hand and
advertising on the other.1 The last chapter (Chap. 10) returns to the
subject of narrative and considers its properties and transformation in
technological culture. The conclusion also considers whether technology,
or a popular, widely accepted narrative of technological idealism, can pro-
vide a valid and viable master narrative, or unifying myth, for us to find
existential orientation and meaning.
This volume is neither a polemic for nor a diatribe against technology,
but it does call for distinctions between facts and fantasies. Most people are
uncritically pro-technology, a few take a critical view, but no one (not even
the much-maligned Luddites) can really be absolutely anti-technology.
As Neil Postman wrote,

that would be something like being anti-food. We need technology to live,


as we need food to live. But, of course, if we eat too much food, or eat
food that has no nutritional value, or eat food that is infected with disease,
we turn a means of survival into its opposite. The same may be said of
our technology. . . . technology may be life-enhancing or life-diminishing.
Which is it?2

In other words, does it enhance or diminish our humanity? That ques-


tion informs this entire project.

IL, USA J.M. van der Laan

NOTES
1. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 are altered and expanded versions of essays I published
previously in the Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society. They are listed
in the Bibliography at the end of this book.
2. Neil Postman, Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century: How the Past
Can Improve Our Future, New York: Vintage Books, 2000, p. 44. All sub-
sequent references to secondary literature will appear parenthetically in the
body of the text with the author’s name and/or abbreviated title and page
number. The same is true for online references. They are all keyed to the
Bibliography.
CONTENTS

1 The Reality of Technology 1

2 Narrative and Myth 21

3 The Dominant Narrative 41

4 A Counter-Narrative 75

5 Literary Narratives 111

6 Faust and Technological Fulfillment 151

7 Frankenstein and Technological Failure 169

8 Movies, Machines, and Human Beings 187

9 Advertising Technology 203

10 The Transformation of Narrative 221

ix
x CONTENTS

Bibliography 237

Index 257
CHAPTER 1

The Reality of Technology

“They think it also necessary


that he should understand all the mechanical arts.”
(Tommaso Campanella, The City of the Sun, 1602)

A VERY BRIEF HISTORY


Technology has been with us since time immemorial, since the first human
beings began to use sticks, stones, and fire, or began to make primitive
tools, clothing, and structures for shelter. Indeed, “technology is as old
as man himself” (Forbes 11). From the beginning, we have invented and
employed it as a means to an end, to extend our abilities, our reach, and
our power over the natural world, even over other human beings. Indeed,
the pioneer of technological historiography Conrad Matschoss noted
in his history of the steam engine (1901) that the goal of technology is
dominion (or power) over the earth (cf. 15). The story about the Greek
mathematician, engineer, and inventor Archimedes (of the third century
BC) illustrates how technology has always been about increasing our
physical capabilities as well as how magnificent we think our technological
inventions are. Archimedes supposedly made the extravagant claim that if
he had the place to position himself, he would be able to move the whole
earth with a lever. Lewis Mumford, a prominent twentieth-century analyst
of technology, considered him “the prince of technicians” (Pentagon 243).

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 1


J.M. van der Laan, Narratives of Technology,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43706-8_1
2 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

With the lever and hammer, we increased our strength, with the wheel
and sail our mobility and range of travel, with irrigation and fertilization our
harvests—to name only a few ways technology has assisted and benefited
us. In addition to the physical or material advantages such technologies
provided, others such as the alphabet and writing—not to mention the
number system—enabled us to extend our mental or intellectual abilities
as well. In one of their essays in the voluminous Technology in Western
Culture, Melvin Kranzberg and Carroll Pursell point out that Homo sapi-
ens, or Man the Thinker, is also and “cannot be distinguished from Homo
faber, Man the Maker” (“Importance of Technology” 8).
From simple beginnings—basic tools of wood and stone for hunting,
fire for warmth and cooking, plant materials and animal skins for clothing,
simple structures built for shelter, and pottery for transportation and stor-
age of goods—we progressed over time to more complex tools, clothing,
structures, and so on. This trajectory has often been written shorthand
with the common labels of historical epochs. As Kranzberg and Purcell
observe, “the very terms by which we measure the progress of civiliza-
tion—Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, and even Atomic Age—refer
to a developing technological mastery by means of his environment”
(“Importance of Technology” 8). We call our own time the Information
Age, Digital Age, or Age of Technology per se. Implicit in this categori-
zation and taxonomy is the notion of progress and advance of some sort
from stone to copper, bronze, iron, plastic, and silicon. Typically, we have
identified technology with tools and the kinds of tools we use.
Some of the great milestones or turning points in our technological
advance are as fundamental as agriculture, the number system, the alphabet,
and the wheel. The rise of the city could be mentioned here as well. Other
seminal events include the yoke, the stirrup, the mechanical clock, double-
entry bookkeeping, gunpowder, optics for telescopes and microscopes, the
printing press, the steam engine, the railroad, electricity, the telegraph, the
automobile and airplane, radio and television, plastics, antibiotics, the solid-
state transistor, the silicon computer chip, the personal computer, and the
Internet. There are, of course, many more examples I could cite here.
The path leading to our present technological existence is a long one.
The scientific revolution of the European Renaissance launched by the likes
of Copernicus (1473–1553), Galileo (1564–1642), Kepler (1571–1630),
and Vesalius (1514–1564) helped bring the technological world into being
(Winner, Autonomous Technology 5). With the Industrial Revolution of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, humanity took an enormous step
closer to a life characterized, if not determined, by technology. Arnold
THE REALITY OF TECHNOLOGY 3

Gehlen maintains that there have really only been two watersheds in the
history of technology. That is, there were essentially only two transforma-
tions of technology and our relation to it that fundamentally altered the
individual, society, and culture. The first was the transition from nomadic
hunting and gathering to the settled existence of agriculture and domes-
ticated animals; and the second from that form of life to the introduction
and establishment of industrialism or mechanized industry (Gehlen 94).
Wolfgang Schivelbusch considers the Industrial Revolution to be an epoch
already “permeated and even overwhelmed by technology” (170). By the
end of the nineteenth century, we were well underway to the new world
of technology we would come to inhabit in our own time. Today, tech-
nology is extensive, ubiquitous, and pervasive. As Ray Kurzweil observes,
“computers are diagnosing electrocardiograms and medical images, flying
and landing airplanes, controlling the tactical decisions of automated weap-
ons, making credit and financial decisions, and being given responsibility
for many other tasks that used to require human intelligence” (8). We now
use and rely on technology in every sphere of life: from agriculture, energy,
medicine, telecommunications, and transportation to business, education,
finance, politics, and psychology.
Although we rarely, if ever, think about it, we live in a world saturated by
technology. The actual reach and extent of technology is truly remarkable.
David Nye illumines our situation and deserves to be quoted here at length.
“In everyday life,” he writes,

technologies mediate almost all experience from the moment one awakens
until going to sleep at night. Much of what one sees is subtly shaped by the
spectra of light thrown by different types of bulbs and fluorescent tubes.
The air itself is heated, cooled, or dehumidified according to the needs of the
location and the season. What one hears is muffled, amplified, or otherwise
mediated by man-made materials, and a good deal of this sound is transmit-
ted by radio, stereo, television, computer, or telephone. The shape, texture,
and taste of the orange juice, eggs, coffee, and English muffin one eats for
breakfast have been modified by a myriad practices, including the breeding
and feeding of animals, the use of food additives and preservatives, and the
transformation of raw foodstuffs into products at processing plants. When
leaving in the morning, few people directly experience much of the weather;
they see it through the windows of cars, buses, and trains on the way to
school or work, where “reality” is increasingly defined by telephones and
computer screens. (Technology Matters 194)

Technology is, so to speak, the environment in which we now live.


4 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

A PROVISIONAL DEFINITION
So what exactly is technology? How do we at least begin to define it in order
to know what we are dealing with and talking about? When we speak of tech-
nology today, cell and smart phones, computers and the Internet come to
mind immediately, especially because information technology is at the heart
of technology today, but technology includes tools and machines in general
as well as organizational methods and bureaucratic procedures which estab-
lish regularity or order and maximize efficiency. With this chapter, I do not
offer some new theory or philosophy of technology. Other books perform
that service and, to be honest, a truly new theory or philosophy has not been
published in recent decades. The contours of the discussion have remained
essentially the same over the course of the last half century or so. In con-
sequence, I furnish an epitome of what has been written by some leading
minds about technology and its defining features.
Most people today would use technology itself and turn first to the
Internet, Google, and Wikipedia for a definition of the word. So let us do
the same. Wikipedia reports that

Technology is the making, modification, usage, and knowledge of tools,


machines, techniques, crafts, systems, methods of organization, in order to
solve a problem, improve a preexisting solution to a problem, achieve a goal,
handle an applied input/output relation or perform a specific function. It can
also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, modifications, arrange-
ments and procedures. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology)

The Wikipedia entry continues, but the opening sentences give a sense of
the wide range of meanings technology can have.
The word “technology” acquired its more or less modern meaning
only a few centuries ago. In London in 1704, John Harris published
his Lexicon Technicum: Or, An Universal English Dictionary of Arts and
Sciences in two volumes. This work must be considered the first techni-
cal dictionary. In “The Preface” to the first edition, he relates some of
the areas he covers: besides methods of calculation and measurement, he
documents “the Laws of Motion,” “the Doctrine of Mechanicks, Nature,
and Properties of Staticks,” “the way of Calculation of Automata, or Clock
and Watch-work” (n.p.). He also describes various tools or “Mathematical
and Philosophical Instruments such as “Telescopes, Microscopes, Baroscopes,
Hygroscopes, and the Pneumatick-Engines, or Air-Pumps” (n.p.). Harris
THE REALITY OF TECHNOLOGY 5

defined “Technical” as “sometimes the same with Artificial, and expresses


whatever relates to the Arts and Sciences, as the Terms, Rules, &c. So that
the Terms of Art are commonly called Technical Words” (n.p.). While this
definition anticipates, it does not yet comprehend what we have come to
mean by technology.
Although the Oxford English Dictionary records use of the word “tech-
nology” as early as 1612, it cites the sixth edition of Edward Phillips’ The
New World of Words or Universal English Dictionary of 1706 as one of
the earliest sources for a definition of the word in a sense we recognize.
His brief definition of Technology as “a Description of Arts, especially the
Mechanical” indicates something of the meaning it would later come to
have. Similarly, the term Technologie appears in the great German encyclo-
pedia of the eighteenth century which Johann Heinrich Zedler compiled,
his Grosses vollständiges Universal Lexikon aller Wissenschaften und Künste
(Great Universal Lexicon of all Sciences and Arts, 1732  ff.), a resource
comparable to the famous French Encyclopedie of Diderot and D’Alembert
(1751 ff.). Zedler explains the term primarily in terms of discourse and
as “theory of artificial words” (“Kunst-Wörter-Lehre”), but he obliquely
connects it as well to handicrafts (pp. 508–509). (The French Encyclopédie
does not contain entries for technique or technologie.) Although it already
belonged to the English and German lexicon, it was not until Johann
Beckmann published his Anleitung zur Technologie (Introduction to
Technology) in 1777 for a German readership that “technology” came
to be established as a term, a concept, even a field of study. Beckmann
expanded and elaborated on the word and the idea: “Technology is the
science which teaches the processing of natural materials, or the knowl-
edge of the handicrafts” (3rd ed., p. 17; my translation). He equates tech-
nology with knowledge and juxtaposes it with the things of nature. It does
not yet have the full meaning it has today, but his book deals with various
handicrafts and describes assorted processes of manufacture, so that the
concept already has something of the sense it would later acquire. The
first monograph in English about technology is Jacob Bigelow’s Elements
of Technology published in Boston in 1829. The subtitle explains both the
origination of the publication and its intended use: “taken chiefly from
a course of lectures delivered at Cambridge, on the application of the
sciences to the useful arts: now published for the use of seminaries and
students.” This book, like Beckmann’s, suggests the sense of technology
as applied science in handicrafts.
6 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

In “The Importance of Technology,” Kranzberg and Pursell provide a


working definition for technology as we understand it today: “In its sim-
plest terms, technology is man’s efforts to cope with his physical environ-
ment … and his attempts to subdue or control that environment by means
of his imagination and ingenuity in the use of available resources” (4–5).
Technology, they explain, “is much more than tools and artifacts, machines
and processes. It deals with human work, with man’s attempts to satisfy his
wants by human actions on physical objects” (6). They, moreover, empha-
size the important point that technology “involves the organization as well
as the purpose of labor” (6). Briefly stated, technology comprises tools,
artifacts, and mechanisms as well as procedures, techniques, and methods
that allow human beings to enhance and extend their physical and mental
abilities so as to possess power over and to control nature, even each other.
I should add that technology now plays an enormous role in human leisure
activity as well as work.
In spite of so many previous attempts to define it, we continue to feel a
need to explain and elaborate what the concept technology means. For exam-
ple, Stephan J. Kline attempted to answer the question “What is Technology?”
with a brief summation in the Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society
(1985). In contemporary English usage, he observed, the word was “being
used to represent things, actions, processes, methods and systems” (215).
According to him, technology now has essentially four meanings: (1) manu-
factured articles, (2) the process and system of manufacturing those articles,
(3) techniques or methods, and (4) sociotechnical systems of use (215–216).
The emphasis he places on system is especially important (more about which
below). Along with others who have done so, he identifies the extension of
human capacities as a key feature of technology (217).
As the presence of technology in our lives continues to increase, we real-
ize more and more that we need to come to terms with it. In The Nature
of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves (2009), for example, W. Brian
Arthur once again addresses the issue. For him, it is “the methods, practices,
and devices a culture uses to make things function” (27). More specifically, he
identifies three main features. According to him, technology is (1) “a means
to fulfill a human purpose”; (2) an “assemblage of practices and components”;
and (3) “the entire collection of devices and engineering practices available to a
culture” (28). The word “means” denotes for him also “a device, or method,
or practice” (29). Defined as “a means to a purpose,” technology then
encompasses “business organizations, legal systems, monetary systems, and
contracts” (51), since they are all means to purposes. Here, he is describing
THE REALITY OF TECHNOLOGY 7

what we can call non-material technologies. The emphasis he places on means


and purposes, or what we generally refer to as means and ends, is a key issue
in any consideration of technology. Further, the relation of means to ends is a
fundamental concern taken up in later chapters of this book.
One of the most important writers on technology was the French theo-
rist and critic, Jacques Ellul. He preferred to use the word, technique, but
its meaning has been subsumed in English usage today into the generic
term, technology. In The Technological Society (first published in 1954 as La
Technique ou l’enjeu du siecle), he distinguishes among several subdivisions
for modern technology: (1) mechanical, (2) economic, (3) organizational,
and (4) human (22). According to him, its defining feature is efficiency or
“the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency
(for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity” (xxv).
So understood, technology is the realm where tools, machines, and tech-
niques all combine. In his second book on the subject, The Technological
System (1977), Ellul summarized and epitomized his point: “Wherever
there is research and application of new means as a criterion of efficiency,
one can say that there is a technology” (26). Efficiency means improved
performance, functioning, or operation—whether of a mechanical object
or of a social organization such as a school, a government, or a business—
which means doing or producing more quicker, easier, as well as cheaper
and which simply equates with doing more better. To achieve efficiency,
technology necessitates precision, quantification, standardization, reliability,
and objectivity.
While there are many other authors I could call on here for definitions
and clarifications, these suffice for a foundational and general understanding
of what technology is. In sum, technology allows us to change conditions
in nature, but also “to bring about change in the economy, in society, in
education, warfare, and so on” (Drucker 19). That is, we seek to control
our various environments with technology. In a word, it affords us power.
Indeed, technology enables and enhances the exercise of human power by
design (see Hans Jonas 81).

MATERIAL AND NON-MATERIAL TECHNOLOGY


Today (and at least for the time being), we identify and consider every-
thing pertaining to our digital devices and systems as technology, but it
is no longer so easy for us to recognize a simple cup or hat or scissors as
such. It is even more difficult to perceive and understand that there are
8 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

non-material technologies such as planning and organization. Friedrich


Jünger helps to understand this aspect of technology. “By definition,”
he writes, “technology is really nothing but a rationalization of the
work process” (12). Rationalization here essentially means organization
to increase efficiency. Ellul used the term “human techniques” (Society,
85  ff.) for this dimension of technology and calls planning “the techni-
cal method” (Society 184). Neil Postman called such methods “invisible”
technologies (Technopoly 123), as we are typically not aware of them as
such. However we care to label them, they must be recognized as forms
of technology. In this category belong advertising, economic planning,
education, law, political organization, and psychological therapy. Michel
Foucault’s ideas about techniques of discipline and mechanisms of power
speak to features of non-material technology as well (cf. Discipline and
Punish, 1977; Power/Knowledge, 1980).
According to Ellul, technology “transforms everything it touches into a
machine” (Society 4). He means that it “mechanizes” everything it encoun-
ters (12). Wherever technology extends its reach, the machine model
establishes itself. Everything, everyone, and every situation becomes some-
thing to be engineered, standardized, regularized—made to operate like
a machine. Non-material technology mechanizes activities or behaviors.
It is a mechanization of life through rationalization, organization, measure-
ment, assessment, standardization, and statistical analysis. Organization
as management or bureaucracy is simply a mechanization of human rela-
tions and activity. Indeed, management is really only a term of techno-
logical culture. Management and the systematic processes of bureaucracy
are tools used to achieve a desired effect, or as Arthur writes, they are
“means to a purpose,” and they work like a mechanism with the interlink-
ing and replaceable parts of an office or business. Andrew Feenberg sees
“centralized, hierarchical social structures” as a basic feature of technology
(Transforming Technology 24).
The economy is a good example of non-material technology, since our
economy (or economics) is essentially a technology or combination of tech-
nologies. We need only think of the Federal Reserve System in the USA
and its role in the direction of the economy, the supervision of currency
and monetary policy, the regulation of banking and interest rates, and the
general oversight of the entire financial system. If we similarly consider the
basic accounting practices so fundamental to business and economics, we
find basic arithmetic and mathematics—addition, subtraction, multiplica-
tion, and division—simple, but ground-breaking technologies at the core.
Lewis Mumford discerned “the mathematical aspect of mechanization”
THE REALITY OF TECHNOLOGY 9

already in the late medieval counting houses and in the rise of capitalism
with its bookkeeping, record-keeping, timing, weighing, and measuring
(Pentagon 278). Likewise, double-entry bookkeeping and the invention of
the first modern stock exchange (probably the Dutch East India Company
in 1602) are, in essence, technologies as are the more recent development
of what are called financial instruments (i.e., tools) and the introduction of
algorithms and robo-trading. According to a recent report in the July 2013
“Index” of Harper’s Magazine, 50 % of all “U.S. stock-market activity is
made up of computer-assisted ‘micro-trades’” (13).
The economy, Arthur observes, arises from its technologies, “from the
productive methods and legal and organizational arrangements that we
use to satisfy our needs” (3). If, and according to Max Weber, capitalism
is the voluntary supply and planned division of labor, the rationalization
of production, and the maximization of efficiency and production, then it
is undeniably technological. Today, capitalism rests upon calculations, sta-
tistics, equations, and numbers which produce returns, gains, or losses for
investors. Planning on a grand scale is necessary for the global economy
with production and markets separated by thousands of miles and depen-
dent upon complex systems of transportation and delivery (whether of
material objects or immaterial information). Profit maximization is noth-
ing other than optimal efficiency—the basic feature of any technology.
Besides, the economy, education, law, or politics are all about strat-
egizing, or calculating, for outcomes. Consider, for instance, the No
Child Left Behind and Race to the Top programs in the USA. In the case
of Race to the Top, the creation of standards and standardized testing
plays a key role; teaching and learning are assessed and measured; fund-
ing is determined on the basis of scores related to effectiveness. Thanks
to LEXIS (or LexisNexis), F.  Allan Hanson writes, “lawyers are begin-
ning to think of the law as a collection of facts and principles that can be
assembled, disassembled, and reassembled in a variety of ways for differ-
ent purposes” (131). Seen in terms of such components, the law has as it
were been mechanized. Politics has been similarly technologized. It has
become a matter of constant polling, of measuring public opinion, and
of calculating the effects of positions and platforms on voters. One can
argue that educators and politicians alike are technicians, as are attor-
neys and judges, business men and women, economists, farmers, psy-
chologists, pastors, and physicians. As technicians, they seek to engineer
education, the student, the government, the citizen, the legal system,
commerce, the consumer, the economy, agriculture, the mind (psyche),
the congregation (the spirit), and the body.
10 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

A VAST, UNPRECEDENTED SYSTEM


Above all, it is important to understand that modern technology, essentially
beginning with the Industrial Revolution, but fully realized today, is
different from any other time in human history. Kranzberg and Pursell
point out three key differences between technology today and that of any
previous era. “What distinguishes our age from the past is,” they explain,

first, our belated recognition of the significance of technology in human


affairs; second, the accelerated pace of technological development that
makes it part-and-parcel of our daily living in ever-increasing measures; and,
third, the realization that technology is not simply a limited or local fac-
tor but encompasses all men everywhere and is interrelated with nearly all
human endeavor. (“Importance of Technology” 4)

In their estimation, the twentieth century “witnessed technological


growth of such magnitude that it can be said to have equated or surpassed,
both quantitatively and qualitatively, all previous technological develop-
ments throughout history” (“Promise of Technology” 4). As the technol-
ogy guru Kevin Kelly describes it, “all graphs of technological progress
start low, with small change several hundred years ago, then beginning to
bend upward in the last hundred, and then bolt upright to the sky in the
last fifty” (88). Gordon E. Moore’s famous and oft-cited “Moore’s Law”
similarly underscores the exponential growth of technology, at least digital
technology, in recent years. According to Moore, co-founder of Intel, the
number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles roughly every two
years (first published in a paper by Moore in 1965).
In the course of one century alone, essentially the twentieth, technol-
ogy developed as never before—moving society and culture to a place
they had never been before. Petroleum products, internal combustion
engines, automobiles and an integrated highway system, airplanes, radio,
television, cinema, and computers all entered our world. We moved from
the earliest sound recordings on wax cylinders to LPs, cassette tapes,
CDs, and MP3s. We saw the invention and implementation of electric
lights, power tools, household appliances like stoves, ovens, washers, dry-
ers, dishwashers, refrigerators, freezers, and microwave ovens, of central
heating and air-conditioning, of indoor plumbing, and of communica-
tion devices like the telephone, cell phone, smart phone, and personal
computer along with all its appendages like the Internet, Google, email,
Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Nook, Kindle, iPad, GPS, and more. It all
THE REALITY OF TECHNOLOGY 11

happened within the last one hundred years or so. The acceleration and
expansion of technological change and advance have no comparison with
those of any previous time. There has never before been so much, such
widespread, and such powerful technology so rapidly developed and dis-
seminated as there is now.
As already noted, we now rely on technology in all provinces of life:
agriculture (farm machinery, petrochemicals for fuel, herbicides, pesticides,
and fertilizers), business and finance (sales techniques, management, robo-
trading), economics (planning, organization, regulation), education (teach-
ing techniques, smart classrooms, distance learning, online instruction),
medicine (CT scans, MRIs, other assorted machines, pharmaceuticals,
computer-assisted diagnosis), personal relations (online social networks,
texting, Tweeting, Facebooking), politics (polling, public relations tech-
niques, support for technological research and development), and religion
(online worship, social media as new community, growth strategies and
techniques). We are now utterly dependent upon an immense, complex
technological system. Something as low-tech as electricity illustrates this
point. If the power goes out, everything comes to a halt: cooking, heating,
cooling, lighting, telecommunications. With computers down, all office
work stops. In a typical supermarket where the power has gone out, noth-
ing works: no lights, coolers, freezers, cash-registers, or doors. No buying
or selling can take place, since the machines which read the bar-codes,
register the prices, calculate the costs, process the purchase, and dispense
change and receipts do not function without electricity.
In particular, it is the “systemic” nature of modern technology that dis-
tinguishes it from that of the past. Unlike the technology of almost all of
human history, ours now stands out and apart as a vast system. Jünger was
one of the first to recognize its enormous extensions. In Die Perfektion
der Technik (translated as The Failure of Technology, 1946), he writes that
“There is no machine product which does not involve the entire techni-
cal organization, no beer bottle and no suit which do not presuppose it.
Consequently, there is no work process which can be treated as indepen-
dent and isolated from this organization” (8). Because technology deter-
mines the work process at all levels, it pervades and permeates everything:
the economic system, the political system, the educational system, and so
on. While there may seem to be many, separate, individual technologies
in our world today, they actually constitute a vast ensemble of innumer-
able, interconnected technologies that combine to form one great, unified
system. According to Thomas P. Hughes, large systems are “the essence of
12 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

modern technology” (American Genesis 185). Large systems “embody not


only technical components but mines, factories, and organizations such as
business corporations, banks, and brokerage houses” (Hughes 185).
This system is universal. It is everywhere and touches everyone and
everything, as Kevin Kelly’s more recent description (2010) of the elabo-
rate technological system in all its complexity reveals:

There is no communication between machines without extruded copper


nerves of electricity. There is no electricity without mining veins of coal
or uranium, or damming rivers, or even mining precious metals to make
solar panels. There is no metabolism of factories without the circulation of
vehicles. No hammers without saws to cut the handles; no handles with-
out hammers to pound the saw blades. This global-scale, circular, inter-
connected network of systems, subsystems, machines, pipes, roads, wires,
conveyor belts, automobiles, servers and routers, codes, calculators, sensors,
archives, activators, collective memory, and power generators—this whole
grand contraption of interrelated and interdependent pieces forms a single
system. (8–9)

One of the contemporary doyens of technology, Kelly invented a new


word to express and “encapsulate the grand totality of machines, methods,
and engineering processes” in and of this system—namely, the technium
(12).
Long before Kelly, Ellul pointed out that “the system itself is composed
of subsystems: rail, postal, telephone, and air systems, a production and
distribution system for electric power, industrial processes of automated
production, an urban system, a military defense system, etc.” (System 108).
The city which Kelly calls “the largest technology we make” (81) exempli-
fies the interdependent, overlapping subsystems of the larger whole. There
are grids, systems, and networks for electricity, water, and sewage; for trans-
portation; for telecommunications; for schools, municipal governments,
police, and fire departments; zoning regulations for residential and com-
mercial use; huge, complex buildings; pipes and wires running everywhere
above and below ground, and on and on. Like the city, the automobile
represents an extensive ensemble of numerous interrelated and interde-
pendent technologies from the mining, drilling, refining, smelting, and
transportation of raw materials to the production of steel, plastics, glass,
batteries, fabrics, and rubber used in the assembly of the vehicles on the
factory floor, to roads, highways, and bridges (which require petroleum
for asphalt or sand, gravel, and iron for concrete), to traffic signs, lights,
THE REALITY OF TECHNOLOGY 13

laws for ownership and operation, and, finally, to the gas stations and repair
shops which the automobile also necessitates. These technologies are all
interconnected and coordinated.
Today, information technology—and in particular the computer
with its various byproducts and extensions—stands at the core of this
vast technological system. As Kelly observes, “computers have already
absorbed calculators, spreadsheets, typewriters, film, telegrams, tele-
phones, walkie-talkies, compasses and sextants, television, radio, turn-
tables, draft tables, mixing boards, war games, music studios, type
foundries, flight simulators, and many other vocational instruments”
(295). Of course, they have also incorporated the encyclopedia, the
office memo, the weekly planner, the camera, the television, the cen-
tral governing systems of automobiles, home furnaces and appliances,
medical diagnosis (e.g., IBM’s cognitive system called Watson), and so
on. Today “all technology follows computer technology” (Kelly 159).
So, for example, faster computer chips lead to faster jet engines, higher
corn yields, and faster drug discovery (Kelly 159). The computer is used
for everything to assess and do everything. Technology is so different
today from in the past, and here I mean the time before the initial explo-
sion of mechanized industry, because all our “machines and methods”
exceed “human possibilities” (Ellul, Society 241). That is, they are utterly
beyond human scale and measure.

A TECHNOCENTRIC CULTURE
Technology must arguably be the dominant feature of our civilization
today. In Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life, Albert
Borgman presents technology as “the characteristic way in which we today
take up with the world” (35). That is, technology now mediates between
us and everything else, not to mention everyone else. Here, we need only
consider the centrality of the smart phone as we incessantly email, text,
and tweet one another, not to mention google the Internet for answers to
questions. It cannot be denied that we typically and habitually relate to one
another through technology. With Borgman, we might say that contempo-
rary technology even represents for us “an approach to reality” (13), since
we see the world now in terms of our technological devices and methods.
It has become “the decisive current in the stream of modern history” (35).
In Questioning Technology, Andrew Feenberg asserts that technology has
become the medium of daily life and is central to the structure of modern
14 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

society. It is now “the material framework of modernity” (19). Indeed,


technology plays a paramount role in nearly “every form of human activity”
today (Stivers, “Our Brave New World” 249). We must admit that we are
dependent on, fascinated by, and deeply attached to technology. We love it
and, typically, the more technology, the better.
We are now a technocentric society and culture, where nothing else
matters as much as technology. As the structure of our world and fab-
ric of our existence, it is now the most important feature and focus of
our lives. We accordingly expect great things from it. We turn to it for
answers to all our questions and solutions for all our problems, even those
which technology itself has created. The great Spanish philosopher José
Ortega y Gasset notes that technology has “attained today among the
integral components of human life a position which it has never held
before” (138). Primitive or prehistoric human beings were not aware of
their technology as such (142). Arnold Gehlen points out that before the
relatively recent emergence of a modern technology, “technique did not
come to occupy the very center of man’s vision of the world, and thus
also of his conception of himself,” but “this is what is happening today”
(11). Indeed, it has happened.
Never before has technology been so extensive, so central, so domi-
nant, and so important to us. It is the key feature of our daily lives. We
wake up and turn on our coffee makers, computers, televisions, radios;
check our phones for text and voicemail messages; get something to eat
and drink from the refrigerator; take a shower in nice warm water; and
then typically take the car to work. Planning and organization, calcula-
tion and measurement, define society whether in economics and educa-
tion, academic and work performance, or crop yields and physical health.
Technology is now deeply entrenched in the social, cultural paradigm.
According to Borgman, it “not only informs most human practices, but
it also patterns the organizations, institutions, the daily implements, the
structures of civilization, and even the ways in which nature and culture
are arranged and accessible” (Borgman 104). Technology is “the rule
today in constituting the inconspicuous pattern by which we normally
orient ourselves” (Borgman 105). Ellul believes that the “technical phe-
nomenon is the main preoccupation of our time” (Society 21).
We are fully oriented to and around technology. As our smart phones,
computers, and automobiles testify, technology is situated at the very center
of our lives. Technology is the New Criterion.
THE REALITY OF TECHNOLOGY 15

THE QUESTION OF AUTONOMY


As it advanced and expanded into a vast system, technology also came to
exceed our comprehension and oversight. That is, technology has reached
the stage where the human being is no longer in charge of it. Borgman
maintains that it has become something “beyond our care, maintenance,
and radical intervention” (113). Thinkers as different from one another as
Martin Heidegger, Jacques Ellul, Langdon Winner, and Kevin Kelly have
concluded that technology has become autonomous. In his Discourse on
Thinking, Heidegger observes that technological forces “have moved long
since beyond his [the human being’s] will and have outgrown his capacity
for decision” (51). Winner devoted his book The Autonomy of Technology to
this question. As he explains it, “a multiplicity of technologies, developed
and applied under a very narrow range of considerations, act and interact
in countless ways beyond the anticipations of any person or institution”
(89). There can be little disagreement that we typically understand next to
nothing about our specific technological devices, not to mention the vast,
unmeasurable system itself. Because we know so little about the technolog-
ical system sustaining us, “the possibility of directing technological systems
toward clearly perceived, consciously chosen, widely shared aims becomes
an increasingly dubious matter” (Winner 295–296). Even a champion of
technology like Kelly realized that “at some point in its evolution, our
system of tools and machines and ideas became so dense in feedback loops
and complex interactions that it spawned a bit of independence. It began to
exercise some autonomy” (Kelly 12), indeed, has a “noticeable measure of
autonomy” (Kelly 12–13). What he calls the technium “has grown its own
agenda, its own imperative, its own direction. It is no longer under the full
control and mastery of humanity” (Kelly 186).
Here, readers might well be thinking that technology is hardly autono-
mous and that she or he is certainly still in control of it in their lives. After
all, we can control how much we watch television or whether or not we
have a cell phone or use a computer. That is a fairly superficial and incon-
sequential kind of control, however, and even in these instances, we do
not very well regulate how or how much we employ those technologies.
There is a much broader and deeper type of control at issue here. Do we
truly have a choice about whether or not or how much to use technology?
Does anyone really have a choice today about using a cell phone? Or a
computer? Or, at least in the USA, an automobile in a largely urbanized,
16 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

suburbanized, and now ex-urbanized environment? And if someone lives


in any kind of urban environment, as most people now do, that person is
necessarily involved in all its technological complexity: in its energy grid
and waste disposal systems, in its planning and zoning, in its mass trans-
portation, in its system of traffic lights and street illumination. Similarly,
if someone works in education or business, one takes part in the non-
material technologies of organization, planning, standardization, manage-
ment, measurement, and assessment.
In a technocentric culture, it would actually be outlandish and absurd
to repudiate technology. Who does not use a cell phone, a computer, and
an automobile? I live in the USA and have a car, as does my wife. We used
to live around the corner from a supermarket. We could easily walk there
and sometimes did, but nine times out of ten, we took the car. Although
walking would have been better for us, for our vascular and respiratory
systems, for the muscles in our legs and arms, and for the environment, we
drove the car to the supermarket. It was simply quicker, easier, and more
convenient—in a word, more efficient. And efficiency is what technology
is all about. Ask any American parents today about staying in touch with
their children. If they want to communicate with them, they had better
have cell phones and better know or learn how to text. Similarly, at my
university, the students and I are obliged to use a specific technology.
We have no choice in the matter. The students have to have access to a
computer, because they have to enroll online for all courses. And I have
to have and use a computer, because I have to record and submit their
grades online. Humans are certainly involved in making some decisions
about technology, but that involvement and those decisions are informed
and corrupted by the larger technological circumstances of our existence.
To be sure, a few people do not use a car and walk, but most of us do.
Sure, some people do not have cell phones, but the vast majority does.
Sure, some people do not have a computer or Internet access, but they
are the odd ones out. They are the exceptions which prove the rule. While
cars which parallel park themselves may seem a trivial concern, software
programs for sorting through and deciding which job applicants to inter-
view or hire prove more disconcerting. Financial transactions conducted
by computer programs similarly give pause. Known as robo-trading, buy-
ing and selling is conducted by algorithms that automatically carry out
transactions faster than a human being can register or process the neces-
sary information. Such trading ultimately touches human lives and econo-
mies, but, in this case, no human beings make the decisions. Control and
autonomy now appear in a different light.
THE REALITY OF TECHNOLOGY 17

BOTH BOON AND BANE


Without doubt, technology has always offered humankind real benefits.
It typically results in real achievements. Thanks to technological advances
and innovations, people have abundant food, are warmed and cooled as
needed, travel faster and farther than ever, are cured of countless diseases,
and have an unfathomable amount of information available to them. Our
technology improves our poor eyesight, fixes our bad teeth, lifts us out of
depressions, and reduces high cholesterol. Technology increases produc-
tion and affords higher crop yields, permits faster trading of stocks and
bonds, and establishes a global economy, even society. If there is anywhere
a question or a problem, we expect technology to provide an answer or a
remedy, and if not right now, then soon. When someone wants to know
something in a conversation, someone with a smart phone will use Google
(and probably Wikipedia) to search for an answer. We may have pollution
and global climate change, but we expect and rely on technology to pro-
vide an alternate energy source for some kind of “green” or clean energy.
Automobiles may be dangerous, but technology makes cars safer for us.
Everything is better, thanks to technology. Or is it?
We need technology, cannot do without it, and are now deeply attracted
to and invested in it. We must also understand that as we use and adopt
it, it adapts us to itself. That is, we change according to and conform to
the technologies we have and continue to develop, acquire, and assimilate.
They cast us in their mold. They, thus, transform our habits and way of
life. Technology accordingly creates new values, attitudes, and modes of
existence. For instance—and for good or ill—the invention of the alphabet
affected the way we think; the mechanical clock utterly changed our sense
of time; the railroad altered our sense of space; the automobile transfig-
ured and restructured the physical and social landscape of the USA; the
cell phone and PC altered the way we communicate and relate to one
another; and soon cyber-organisms and robots will transform our concept
of what it means to be human.
While technology expands and enhances our abilities, it also reduces
them. There is no doubt that technology bestows many blessings, but
it is equally true that those technological blessings are characteristically
accompanied by curses. In other words, technology has always been a
mixed blessing: fire cooks food and heats the dwelling, but can also burn
the dwelling down to the ground; the arrow to kill wild game for food
can also be the weapon used against a fellow human being. Similarly,
the invention of writing resulted both in an increase and loss of mental
18 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

capacity. As Socrates laments in Plato’s “Phaedrus,” writing, so to speak,


impaired our ability to remember. Because we could write things down,
we no longer needed to remember them. It is not much different from
our use of Google today: we need not remember something we looked
up, as we can simply google it once more and recover it from the vast
resources of the Internet, should we ever need to recall and know it again.
Technology is, then, both boon and bane. Although fire gave us warmth,
it could also be devastatingly destructive. The automobile allows us to live
and go practically whenever and wherever we like, but it also isolates us
from one another; pollutes soil, air, and water; and causes multiple deaths
each year. The global economy and society we now benefit from, at the
same time, exploits one region for the advantage of another, interlinks
economies in a way that one can plunge the others into crisis, and spreads
disease and invasive species as never before. With all its benefits, technol-
ogy invariably and unavoidably creates new and unanticipated problems.
C.P. Snow once remarked that “Technology… is a queer thing. It brings
you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other”
(see Anthony Lewis, “Dear Scoop Jackson” 37). No rational person, Kelly
asserts, can ignore “the steady stream of ills bred by our inventions and
activities, including new problems generated by our well-intentioned
attempts to heal old problems” (73). The so-called dark side of technology
must always be taken into account along with its bright side. There is no
such thing as a neutral technology whose good or evil depends on how
it is used. As Marshall McLuhan observed, “our conventional response
to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb
stance of the technological idiot” (18). Technology succeeds and fails,
not because it is used correctly or incorrectly, but because its failures are
co-extant with its successes. The two cannot be separated from each other.

UNDERSTANDING TECHNOLOGY
Although it is all around us, technology is now so fully integrated into
our lives that we tend to overlook it. Kevin Kelly realizes that “despite
its power [or even presence in our culture], technology has been invis-
ible, hidden, and nameless” (6). Although—or more likely because—it is
all around us, we barely notice it and are not really aware of it anymore.
Often, when a new technology appears, it is regarded as something amaz-
ing, even miraculous. In the course of time, however, it is absorbed into
the everyday, and we no longer marvel. Technology is invisible, because
THE REALITY OF TECHNOLOGY 19

it is our new environment, our new nature: it is what we live in. For us, it
is like the water fish swim in; it is, so to speak, the “air” surrounding us,
which we breathe and on which our lives depend. We are enveloped by
our technology. As a result, it fades into the background. Although we talk
about it constantly, we take it for granted.
Until the transformation of technology into a vast, autonomous system,
we were generally able to understand how our technology worked, that
is, how it operated or functioned. Whereas before we had to and could
understand how a technology like the hammer and nail or pen, ink, and
paper worked in order to use it, we do not now have to understand how
something like the television or cell phone or personal computer works in
order to use it. Almost everyone has such devices, but who can actually
explain how they work, how the pictures come through the cables and
appear on the screens in color, or how human voices travel through the air
and then are heard in little hand-held objects, or how 0s and 1s produce
everything imaginable on our laptops and tablets? While we know all about
technology, we know next to nothing about it. By and large, we have no
understanding of how our technology works, but we use it anyway. Since
we do not really comprehend what our technology is, nor understand how
it works, we are ill-equipped to make any necessary judgments or decisions
about whether or not to develop, adopt, or use any of it.
In spite of all the increased attention we have given to it, we persistently
misunderstand what technology is, what our relationship to it is, what its
role is in our lives, and what it does or does not do for and to us. Precisely
those issues are what this book with its examination of our narratives about
technology seeks to address and illumine.

THE REALITY OF TECHNOLOGY


At this stage of human history, technology has been so institutionalized that
it now belongs to the social structure in the same way as politics, economics,
religion, education, or the family. Technology, as discrete devices, but also
as a system of systems, is now a “something” in our lives. It is something
we know is there. Not until very recently in human history has technology
become something we identify “as such.” It is something we recognize,
acknowledge, talk about, and refer to all the time, even if our understand-
ing of technology is, on the whole, fairly limited. As our environment and as
our innumerable ubiquitous devices, it is both something in the background
and something in the foreground of our lived experience.
20 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

As Ellul makes clear, technology now has a reality, “its own substance,
its own particular mode of being, and a life independent of our power of
decision” (Society 93). Technology (or to use his word “technique”) has
become “a reality in itself, self-sufficient, with its special laws and its own
determinations” (134). In The Real World of Technology, Ursula Franklin
points out that technology shapes and defines reality itself (29). As Allan
Hanson observes, we formerly perceived and understood the world in
human terms. Now, however, “it is presented to us in dimensions defined
by our instruments and the technologies they enable” (140). And, he con-
tinues, “not only the external world, but we ourselves become intelligible
in terms of those instruments and technologies” (140). Technology deter-
mines what is and is not real. When anything does not accord with the
technological order, it soon appears to be unreal; when anything cannot
demonstrate its efficiency, it is perceived to be utterly fantastic (Winner
217). Although he himself rejected the idea, Ortega y Gasset describes
technology as “the one positive thing, the only immutable reality in the
hands of man” (104). There is now no reality outside of technology.
CHAPTER 2

Narrative and Myth

“Clearly then, it is no part of the storyteller’s craft


to describe only what is good or beautiful.”
(Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji, eleventh century)

POINTS OF ENTRY
Some of our oldest stories, stories we refer to as myths, have dealt spe-
cifically with technology, most famously the myths of Prometheus, for
example, and of Daedalus and Icarus. First recorded in Hesiod’s Theogony
and then in his Works and Days (from the eighth century BC), the myth
of Prometheus recounts his audacious defiance of Zeus. Against Zeus’
prohibition, Prometheus stole fire, the ur-technology and possession of
the gods, to give to human beings. The myth of Prometheus is one of the
earliest stories we have about technology. From fire—or along with fire—
Prometheus gave human beings what the ancient Greek language termed
technê. According to Aeschylus, in his play Prometheus Bound (from the
fifth century BC), the fire stolen from Zeus was the “source of all arts” (line
7). The Greek word used here by Aeschylus is pantechnon (παντέχνου). In
Aeschylus’ play, Prometheus calls himself didaskalos technês (διδάσκαλος
τέχνης, line 110), “teacher of (or in) every art.” In a sense, he is the father
of all technologies. From Prometheus and his gift of fire, the first or primal
and most basic technology, derive all the other technologies: inventions
(mechanemat [μηχανήματ᾽], line 469), numbers (arithmon [ἀριθμόν], line

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 21


J.M. van der Laan, Narratives of Technology,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43706-8_2
22 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

459), letters (grammaton [γραμμάτων], line 460), all the arts and sciences,
medicine and metallurgy among them. As the protagonist himself asserts,
“every art possessed by man comes from Prometheus” (line 506). The
acquisition of the forbidden knowledge of fire allowed humans to know
what the gods alone knew and to become like them.
Because Prometheus transgressed Zeus’ command, he was punished by
the god, chained to a rock and made to suffer interminably, as an eagle
came every day to eat his liver, which grew back only to be devoured again
the next day. Prometheus was not the only one punished, however. As
Hesiod tells it, Zeus gave men “as the price for fire an evil thing in which
they may all be glad of heart while they embrace their own destruction”
(Works and Days 7). Indeed, Zeus “bade famous Hephaestus make haste
and mix earth with water … [to] fashion a sweet, lovely maiden-shape”
(7), namely, Pandora who came to possess a jar which contained and
would unleash so many plagues upon humankind. Zeus “made the beau-
tiful evil” contained and then released from her jar “to be the price for the
blessing” of fire—that is, technology (Theogony 123). The myths tell and
warn of granting to human beings the knowledge (abilities or technolo-
gies, in this case specifically, fire) which ought to belong to the gods alone.
It is the story of overreaching and of unintended consequences, as are the
myths of Daedalus and Icarus. Prometheus intended to help humanity,
to benefit humanity, and to improve human existence—precisely how we
look at technology today—but the blessing included a curse. There lies
the essence of the story. That human beings enjoyed technology while
embracing their own destruction remains portentous.
Not unlike the crafty Prometheus, Daedalus whose very name means
“clever worker” was a craftsman and inventor, a maker and technician
in other words, first mentioned by Homer in the Iliad (eighth century
BC). Daedalus was an innovator who gave humanity various technologies.
According to Pliny (in the first century AD), Daedalus invented carpentry,
the saw, ax, and other tools. The oldest myth about him tells of a laby-
rinth he built. It was so cunningly designed that he himself could barely
escape from it. This story warns essentially of the consequences or dan-
gers of one’s own inventions which have unintended consequences and
may do more harm than good—certainly still an issue for technological
innovation.
Most familiar perhaps is the story as told by Ovid in his Metamorphoses
(completed around AD 8) of the wings Daedalus constructed for himself
and his son Icarus. He built them from feathers and wax that gave them
NARRATIVE AND MYTH 23

the ability to fly. What happened to Icarus is well known. His father
warned him not to fly too high or too close to the sun, but he ignored the
admonition and did so anyway. The wax melted, and Icarus plunged to his
death in the sea. Why this happened has a simple explanation: Icarus and
Daedalus had entered the sky, the heavens, the realm of the gods. Icarus
had ascended to and transgressed the realm of the sun-god Apollo—a
realm forbidden to mortals—and was accordingly punished. The old saw
comes to mind that if man were meant to fly, the gods would have given
him wings. But the story also tells, as does that of Prometheus, of techno-
logical innovation as both boon and bane.
The Bible, too, tells in only the briefest terms of the beginnings of civi-
lization, of the domestication of animals, of music, and of technology. It
offers nothing more than a rough outline. In Genesis 4, the anonymous
narrator provides a primeval history of the descendants of Cain, the son of
the first humans Adam and Eve, who murdered his brother Abel. One of
those descendants, Lamech, lived several generations later. According to
the biblical account,

Lamech took to himself two wives: the name of the one was Adah, and the
name of the other, Zillah. Adah gave birth to Jabal; he was the father of
those who dwell in tents and have livestock. His brother’s name was Jubal;
he was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe. As for Zillah, she
also gave birth to Tubal-cain, the forger of all implements of bronze and
iron; and the sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah. (Genesis 4: 19–22, New
American Standard Version)

Nothing more is said of Tubal-cain or the introduction of technology.


Like the myths of Prometheus or Daedalus, this story reports the origin
of artifacts or tools.
Another ancient biblical story deals more profoundly with technology.
It is the story of Babel, the great city. In Genesis 11, we read of a momen-
tous plan devised by the inhabitants of the earth. According to the biblical
account, they said to themselves: “‘Come, let us make bricks and burn
them thoroughly.’ And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for
mortar. They said, ‘Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower
whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name’”
(verses 3–4). While this story famously tells of linguistic differentiation
and the spread of peoples across the earth, it also tells of something else,
of a great technological feat, the planning and construction of something
24 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

monumental—a city. The Lord, we read, in verse 5 “came down to see


the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. The Lord said,
‘Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And
this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do
will be impossible for them’” (NASV, verses 5–6). The Lord’s comments
speak to the promise of exceptional ability which technology bestows on
humanity. With technology—here in the form of planning, engineer-
ing, and fabrication—humanity will be able to do anything and every-
thing. The tower mentioned in this passage compares as well with our
own present-day skyscrapers—especially those which have been built to
be the biggest and tallest on earth, such as the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the
Shanghai Tower, or the Makkah Royal Clock Tower Hotel in Mecca—as
demonstrations of human ability, ingenuity, mastery, and magnificence.
In each case, it was a desire to build something sensational and to accomplish
what had not been done before.
As discussed in the previous chapter, the city must be acknowledged as
one of the greatest and most complex technological systems ever conceived
and built. Both the building of a city and the construction of the great and
grand tower constitute a magnificent feat of engineering—that is, of tech-
nology. The name Babel, moreover, means “the gate of God.” Such a gate
affords entry, access to, and, possibly, possession of a divine intelligence.
The name bears witness to mankind’s attempt to acquire the knowledge of
God and, with that knowledge, the power of God—the same kind of power
over everything possible which we have always sought to attain with the
help of our technology. As in the other ancient stories about technological
endeavors and achievements, there is a price to pay for technological audacity:
the great plan comes undone.
Millenia have passed since those stories were first told, and we have
continued to tell other and ever more tales of technology.

NARRATIVES BY THE NUMBERS
Although we have myths and narratives about technology from ancient
times, writing about it in its modern sense did not really begin until the
nineteenth century with the advent of large-scale mechanization. Over
the course of the twentieth century, technology came to receive more and
more attention until, at present, we talk and write about technology all
the time and more than ever before. Every week, if not every day, reports
about technological developments and improvements appear in newspapers
NARRATIVE AND MYTH 25

and magazines, on radio and television. So, too, books about technology
have multiplied in recent years.
TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) talks and conferences
occur and are broadcast on a regular basis. My own local NPR station
airs the TED Radio Hour every week. From 2000 to 2013, David Pogue
had a column on technology in The New York Times every Thursday. The
Huffington Post, an online “news aggregator,” similarly devotes a regular
section entitled HUFFPOST TECH to the subject. Both national maga-
zines Time and Newsweek have pages dedicated to technology on their
respective websites. In addition to Time and Newsweek, such magazines
as The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, or The Atlantic Monthly regularly
publish articles about technology. For example, “Thumbspeak: Is Texting
Here to Stay?” by Louis Menand appeared in The New  Yorker (October
20, 2008), while “The Robot Will See You Now” by Jonathan Cohn and
“Can Google Solve Death” by Harry McCracken and Lev Grossman were
the cover stories in 2013, respectively, for The Atlantic (March 2013) and
Time (September 30, 2013). Similarly, the November 28, 2014 New Yorker
appeared as The Tech Issue. Stories about technology continue to appear in
those publications. The press and other media in Europe mirror the same
attention to technology. Whether The London Times and The Guardian in
England, Le Monde and L’Express in France, or Der Spiegel and Die Zeit
in Germany, all devote specific columns or web pages to stories about
technology.
In order to discern when a particular interest in and awareness of the sub-
ject began and then increased, I attempted a simple search for books (and
only for books) with the word “technology” (or in the case of French and
German, technique or Technik and technologie or Technologie) in their titles.
I made inquiries at four great national libraries—the Library of Congress,
the British Library, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and the Deutsche
Nationalbibliothek. To search a range of years such as 1750–1800 or
1950–2000 proved impractical, if not impossible—either too unwieldy on
the one hand or too difficult on the other—so I had to narrow the search
parameters. The selection of years to survey—1750, 1800, 1850, 1900,
1950, and 2000—was an arbitrary choice, but it provides a rough measure
of the number of books in question. The survey offers at least a glimpse of
how much interest in technology has changed—decreased or increased—
over the last 250 years or so.
From what I could determine, there were no books in English before
1800 with the word technology in the title. According to Paul Terry,
26 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

my contact person at the British Library, the records show no books held
there with the word technology in the title for the sampled years 1750
or 1800. For the year 1850, there is one title: Technology, or, Library of
Art-Manufactures. Vegetable Kingdom. Series First. Alimentary Substances.
Sugar, The Art of Manufacturing and Refining Sugar, Including the
Manufacture and Revivification of Animal Charcoal, with an atlas, illus-
trative of the machinery and buildings, by J.A. Leon. There is, likewise,
one title for 1900: Chemical Technology or Chemistry in Its Applications
to Arts and Manufactures, an English translation of a book by Friedrich
Ludwig Knapp (in Richardson’s and Watts’ Chemical Technology, vol. 3).
For 1950, however, there were fifty books with technology in the title
and, for 2000, there were 1,974. These numbers reflect scant awareness of
technology as a distinct subject during the eighteenth and nineteenth cen-
turies, with a marked increase in attention over the course of the twentieth.
At the Library of Congress, Michelle Cadoree Bradley searched the
records for me and found no listings for 1750–1751 or for 1800–1801.
For 1850–1851, her search returned a total of seven titles, and for 1900–
1901, 128 books appear in the record. For 1950–1951, there were 694
books, and for the year 2000, more than 10,000. At that point, any mea-
surement or collection of data becomes too difficult, because so many
books appear with technology in the title. A search of the records at the
Bibliothèque nationale de France produced no titles with either technolo-
gie or technique for the years 1750 or 1800. The catalog shows one title
for 1800, three for 1850, seventy-five for 1900, 244 for 1950, and then
490 for 2000. Since the German national library was founded in 1912, I
asked Sybille Stahl to sample the years 1912, 1962, and 2012. The search
of the German catalog for the words Technik and Technologie in book
titles produced results similar to those for the French national library. For
Technik, there were forty-six in 1912, 314 in 1962, and 681 in 2012. For
Technologie, there were nine  in 1912, ninety-nine  in 1962, and 406  in
2012. Each search produced similar results with a similar progression: very
few books at first, a considerable increase in the years sampled for the nine-
teenth century, and, then, a substantial surge at the end of the twentieth
and beginning of the twenty-first centuries.
At my home institution, librarian Angela Bonnell helped me to con-
duct a search of the world’s largest bibliographic database WorldCat, a
global catalog of 72,000 library collections. In German, there were several
titles before 1800. These books began to appear in the last quarter of the
century and give evidence of the emergence of technology as a subject
NARRATIVE AND MYTH 27

of interest, study, and education. (I will discuss these works in the next
chapter.) For the time period from 1800 to 1850, Ms. Bonnell and I
found only three books in English with technology in their titles. One was
Jacob Bigelow’s Elements of Technology, published in Boston in 1829. The
second was Edward Hazen’s Popular Technology, published in New York
in 1846. And the third, by Knapp, was Chemical Technology; or, Chemistry,
Applied to the Arts and to Manufactures (edited and translated from the
German by Edmund Ronalds and Thomas Richardson), published in
London in 1848. Unfortunately and ironically, the search program—the
WorldCat technology, that is—was unable to produce any accurate and reli-
able results for the parameters of dates I set. When I searched for books
published from 1850 to 1900, for instance, or simply for 1900, the search
results included numerous books published long after that date, even as
late as 2003. Each time I repeated the search, the results were different as
well. There were so many false “hits” that the search was utterly unreli-
able. Even so, the investigation was not entirely in vain.
Finally, a search of millions of books in English, French, and German
from 1700 to 2008 containing the word technology/technologie/
Technologie via Google’s Ngram Viewer (cf. https://books.google.com/
ngrams) produced graphs with results I summarize here. From 1700 to
about 1900, the line of the graph for English remains constant and is
virtually flat at the lowest point possible. From about 1900 until 1950,
the line rises gradually but, between 1950 and 1980, spikes dramatically,
continuing in that trajectory through 2000, where it dips down slightly
(by 0.001368%). The results for French are similar although the line rises
slightly around 1830 and stays on a plateau until about 1945, but spikes
between 1952 and 1983, at which time it drops (by 0.001077%). German
shows a slight jump around 1794–1800, a slight rise again around 1872,
some minor ups and downs over the next 65  years, and another jump
from 1937 to 1943. The line on the chart spikes between 1950 and about
1987, then drops (by 0.000785%), but rises again between 1995 and
2008 (by 0.000344%). As with the English and the French graphs, the
line for German never returns to the base, but remains elevated.
The numbers from the national libraries, WorldCat, and Ngram Viewer
all indicate an initial lack of interest in or concern for technology which
next turns into a growing awareness of it and then transitions into an
outright preoccupation with it. There is no doubt that we have devoted
more attention to technology in the last one hundred years or so than at any
other time in human history and that a tally of books about technology
28 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

right now is next to impossible, because there are so many. At present,


technology occupies our activities and has captured our imagination as
never before. The term technology has, in fact, become a buzzword. And
the volume of articles, books, essays, novels, movies, television programs,
and advertisements about technology is growing by leaps and bounds.

A WORD ABOUT STORIES


Storytelling is a basic human activity. Since ancient times, we have needed,
told, and used stories in order to describe and explain the human being, the
human condition, and the universe we inhabit. Our myths (from the Greek
mythos or “story”) have long performed that function. Narrative (from the
Latin gnārus or “knowing”) has likewise served as a fundamental means to
know and understand ourselves and our world. In particular, we have
used our stories or myths, especially our master or grand narratives
(e.g., Graeco-Roman, Judeo-Christian, or Secular-Scientific), to produce,
find, and assign meaning for and to our experience of existence. The great
narratives, whether religious, political, economic, or scientific, have allowed
us to pose and answer questions about where we have come from, who we
are, and where we are going, in other words, about existential purpose.
We tell all manner of stories and find them all around us: in newspapers
and magazines, on the radio and television, in movies and videos, and on
the Internet. We hear or see stories about the political events of the day,
crimes and punishments, winning and losing, buying and selling, births
and deaths, and so on. We have written histories to tell the stories of cul-
tures and societies, nations and individuals, which schoolchildren study.
Political and economic ideologies reveal implicit stories as well. Consider
the legacies of Adam Smith or Karl Marx and the core narratives of capi-
talism or communism. What is more, our sciences produce stories about
the origin and end of the universe, the structure (particles and forces)
of natural phenomena, the evolution of species and ecosystems, the drift
of continents, and mental health and illness. Religions such as Judaism,
Christianity, or Islam embody narratives which tell us about how things
came to be, are, should be, or will be.
Each one of us, moreover, has his or her own individual story, begin-
ning with when and where we were born. Our personal stories include
other persons such as parents, grandparents, siblings, extended families,
and friends past and present. They include physical and social environments,
houses, schools, classmates, teachers, and employers. Our specific stories
NARRATIVE AND MYTH 29

consist as well of our work and play experiences, our successes and failures,
our beliefs and disbeliefs. Each of us constructs with our own particular
story an identity, a self. The eminent biologist Edmund O. Wilson calls
the self “the central dramatic character of the [brain’s] confabulated sce-
narios” (51). That story is who each of us is. Without it, we are unable to
know ourselves or tell others who we are. In the same way, the stories of
technology reveal its identity, character, and essence.
Various narratives tell about the past, present, and future of tech-
nology—and about its interconnections with humanity. The myths of
Prometheus, Icarus, and Babel mentioned earlier, the famous stories of
Faust and Frankenstein, the latest commercials about smart phones and
Google, and movies about androids and artificial intelligences, all tell
stories about technology. They reveal how we understand it, its place in
our lives, and ourselves as human beings in relation to it. Narratives can
take the form of fiction or non-fiction. They can approve or disapprove of
our technological achievements. For example, non-fictional accounts like
Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants, Brian Christian’s The Most Human
Human: What Talking to Computers Teaches Us About What it Means to
Be Alive, Mark Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age
Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes our Future, or Nicholas Carr’s
The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains tell stories about
technology as much as fictional narratives such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave
New World, Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano, Richard Powers’ Galatea 2.2,
or Don DeLillo’s Underworld do. While some narratives mythologize,
others demythologize. In very real ways, these stories about technology
compete for our confidence and allegiance. Whether subtly or overtly,
they teach and inculcate worldviews. Since we use narrative to know our
world and ourselves, an investigation into the stories we make and relate
about technology—which indisputably constitutes the world as we now
experience it—will help us to know better what this world is and what we
are or are becoming in it.
In Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century, Neil Postman claimed that

what is important about narratives is that human beings cannot live without
them. We are burdened with a kind of consciousness that insists on our hav-
ing a purpose. Purposefulness requires a moral context, and a moral context
is what I mean by a narrative. The construction of narratives is, therefore, a
major business of our species; certainly no group of humans has ever been
found that did not have a story that defined for them how they ought to
behave and why. (101)
30 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

NARRATIVE PER SE
The essential link between knowledge and narrative can be discovered in
the history of the word itself. Several scholars have traced the etymology
of the term. Hayden White, for example, has documented the deriva-
tion of the words narrative, narration, and narrate via the Latin gnārus
(“knowing,” “acquainted with,” or “expert”) and narrō (“relate,” “tell”)
from the Sanskrit root gnā or jnā (215, note 2; see also J. Hillis Miller,
Reading Narrative 47). Our word story similarly derives from the Greek
historia and its root eidenai (“to know”), which meant to learn by inquiry
or narrative. According to Wilson, “our minds consist of storytelling”
(51)—that is, “conscious mental life is built entirely from confabulation”
(51).
As Louis O. Mink explains, “even though narrative form may be, for most
people, associated with fairy tales, myths, and the entertainments of the novel,
it remains true that narrative is a primary cognitive instrument” (131). With
narrative, we search for and define who we are and what the nature of our
world is. Narrative, Mink continues, remains “a primary and irreducible form
of human comprehension” (132). James Phelan understands narrative in
similar terms. He describes it as “a distinctive and powerful mode for explain-
ing experience and organizing knowledge” (in Scholes, Phelan, Kellogg,
The Nature of Narrative 286). Hayden White extends the meaning by call-
ing narrative a “metacode, a human universal on the basis of which transcul-
tural messages about the nature of a shared reality can be transmitted” (1).
We tend to undervalue or even dismiss stories as something frivolous and at
best entertainment, especially in comparison to the acknowledged value and
importance of technology. Our narratives are anything but insignificant and
irrelevant, however, and those about technology reveal how we understand it
and ourselves as human beings living in its circumstances.
Throughout this book, I use narrative to mean story. After all, as
Robert  Scholes observes, “when we speak of narrative, we are usually
speaking of story” (“Language, Narrative, and Anti-Narrative” 210).
Some scholars insist on a distinction between the two terms. In my opin-
ion, the differentiation they desire is not particularly useful. Definitions of
story invariably employ the word narrative, those of narrative the word
story to describe the term in question. The definitions are, in a sense,
tautological. When Scholes defines story as situation–transformation–
situation, and Tzvetan Todorov narrative in essentially the same way as
succession–transformation (more on these characterizations below), clear
NARRATIVE AND MYTH 31

differentiation becomes moot. We cannot, moreover, distinguish between


the two by asserting that one, but not the other, refers to past events, since
both can and do. We cannot differentiate between the two by saying that
one is fictional, the other non-fictional, since both can be either one or the
other. Nor can we argue that stories are closed-ended, while narratives are
open-ended. These characterizations simply do not hold.
Scholars have also wished to classify story, on the one hand, as the
overarching or broad-level concept or category (Scholes 210) and nar-
rative, on the other, as the particular way in which the story is told.
Different narratives could then constitute different versions of the same
story. Such definition and differentiation offers little advantage here. In
my view, more confusion than clarity arises from such technical distinc-
tions. I might say that there are two major stories about technology and
that many narratives tell those two stories, but there is not much, if any-
thing, to be gained from using such labels. If narrative is to mean how a
story is told, then it does so only inasmuch as it refers to the basic, con-
stitutional elements of a story to which I now turn.
While scholars have approached and defined narrative in various ways and
argued about how to identify a narrative, my concern here is not so much
to debate what does or does not qualify as such. Since we generally do not
think of technology in terms of narratives, stories, or myths, however, it is
important to have at least a general idea of narrative as a background or
framework for the subsequent discussion of the various tales of technology.
Strictly speaking, narrative is simply an account or story, and story a narrative
or recital of an event or series of events. Paul Ricoeur once posed the very
question we are dealing with here: “What then is a story? And what does it
mean to follow a story?” (vol. 1, 150). His answer is straightforward and
provides a set of defining features for narrative. “A story,” he answers,

describes a sequence of actions and experiences done or undergone by a


certain number of people, whether real or imaginary. These people are pre-
sented either in situations that change or as reacting to such change. In turn,
these changes reveal hidden aspects of the situation and the people involved,
and engender a new predicament which calls for thought, action, or both.
This response to the new situation leads the story toward its conclusion.
(vol. 1, 150)

This notion of story he takes from W.B.  Gallie’s Philosophy and the
Historical Understanding (1968) and notes that it corresponds to his own
32 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

concept of “emplotment” (150). His definition correlates further with


that of other important theorists of narrative such as Louis Mink, Robert
Scholes, or Tzvetan Todorov.
According to Todorov, narrative is identified by two key principles:
succession (i.e., events happen in time) and transformation. He notes
that the description of a state of affairs is not enough to be classified as
narrative. Narrative, he stipulates, “requires the unfolding of an action,
change, difference” (28). Scholes defined story similarly as “a narrative
with a certain very specific syntactic shape (beginning-middle-end or
situation-transformation-situation)” (“Language, Narrative, and Anti-
narrative” 210). This description of narrative structure is simple, yet
fundamental and instructive. The cognitive function of narrative form,
Mink adds, “is not just to relate a succession of events, but to body forth
an ensemble of interrelationships of many different kinds as a single
whole” (144). As these scholars indicate, narrative connects otherwise
disconnected events, data, information, and perceptions in order to
create coherences.
In the opinion of Rick Altmann, narrative has traditionally been under-
stood in terms of plot or action. Like Ricoeur, Altmann points out that
no action occurs without people—that is, without a character: “the exis-
tence of narrative depends on the simultaneous and coordinated presence
of action and character. Narratives are not made of characters here and
actions there but of characters acting” (15). He goes on to posit “follow-
ing,” as Ricoeur did, as necessary for narrative as well. This “following”
corresponds also to Todorov’s notion of succession. “Not until the nar-
rator begins to follow a particular character will the text be recognizable
as narrative” (15–16), writes Altmann. It is essential to understand that
narrative—like language itself—depends on and creates order and coher-
ences. Its succession—its beginning, middle, and end—structure reality as
it were. Narratives give shape to our world and our lives.
That narrative creates coherence may well be most significant. It makes
connections among the random events and phenomena of our experience.
Even the lowly sentence creates coherence as it links words together in a
meaningful way. The linking of sentences into a paragraph, or paragraphs
into a larger framework, increases the coherence. So, too, a narrative brings
together in a meaningful way the experiences of our lives. That is what
the simple beginning, middle, and end structure of narrative accomplishes.
With narrative, we create order out of the disorder and even chaos of
human existence, so that it becomes comprehensible and significant to us.
NARRATIVE AND MYTH 33

We know who we are thanks to the story of our selves which we piece
together until it becomes a coherent whole.
All of these descriptions identify actions and events, characters in situations,
succession and transformation as definitive for narrative. To summarize,
narratives are stories in which a narrator relates the actions of a character or
characters which reflect change or transformation. In the narratives exam-
ined here, technology assumes the role of a character. It is itself an agent of
change. In fact, change or transformation typically and especially informs
the stories about technology. The plots are about progress and advance,
innovation and increase, modification and transformation. Depending
on the story, technology appears either as protagonist or antagonist, hero
or villain.
Hayden White asserts further that factual storytelling, which would
include historical accounts or non-fictional expository prose, contains
“the impulse to moralize reality” (14). That is, such storytelling narrates
a morality for a given society. If so, then the narratives about technology
may wonder about, support, or challenge the morality of the social system
technology has given rise to. Ricoeur acknowledges something similar to
White’s notion of moralizing when he writes that narratives require “a
specific understanding that takes the nature of a judgement” (vol. 1, 155).
Indeed, the narratives in question contain implicit judgments about tech-
nology. If finally, as White indicates, narrative has to do with authority
(13), then the narratives about technology are also about its sociocultural
authority.

MYTH, IN PARTICULAR
At this point, we need to return to Louis Mink’s remark that most people
associate narratives or stories “with fairy tales, myths, and the entertain-
ments of the novel.” That comment may be especially true today, when we
look to natural science and even more to technology for the answers and
solutions to all our questions, needs, and problems. In consequence and
as noted earlier, we tend to dismiss stories as unimportant, inconsequen-
tial, trifling, or irrelevant. As a primary cognitive instrument, however,
narratives are anything but trivial. They have as much to tell us as any
natural science or technological invention. Myth, for example, may not
tell a “true” story, but a mythical or fictional story contains “truths” about
being human, being with other humans, and being in the world. To know
whether Prometheus, Pandora, or Daedalus ever actually existed is not
34 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

necessary for us to draw meaning—and meaning still valid today—from


their stories.
Since the term myth (not to mention mythmaking) also figures in the
ensuing discussion about tales of technology, it is helpful to have a general
sense of its nature and use, especially since we may not readily recognize a
myth in our culture today. The etymology of myth, like that of narrative,
is interesting and informative. Mythos originally had various meanings,
among others: speech, narrative, and fiction (Oxford English Dictionary).
As Scholes, Phelan, and Kellogg note, the word mythos in ancient Greece
typically and simply referred to a traditional story (12). By the fourth cen-
tury BC, when Aristotle came to use the word, it meant plot and, for him,
plot meant “the mimēsis [the imitation or reproduction] of an action”
(Ricoeur, vol. 1, xi).
One of the most important people to write about myth was Mircea
Eliade. He identifies two senses or meanings of the word in his book Myth
and Reality. One meaning for myth is that of fable, invention, fiction, and
illusion. The other which prevailed in archaic societies is a “true story”
which is “sacred, exemplary, significant” (1). Eventually, already in the
ancient world, myth was demythologized and came to denote “what can-
not really exist” (3). In the context of this book, I use myth in both senses
of the word. On the one hand, we now understand myth, such as the myth
of Prometheus or of Icarus, as a fiction which, nonetheless, expresses a
truth or truths about humanity and its experiences. On the other hand,
we use the word myth to indicate a fiction, something contrary to fact,
make-believe, pure fantasy, preposterous, patently wrong or false. In some
cases, the two meanings overlap. When Lewis Mumford, for example, uses
the term in The Myth of the Machine, as his two-volume work is entitled,
he refers to a story which to some seems credible and enjoys consider-
able authority, but, at the same time and upon closer inspection, con-
tains misconceptions and fallacies. In Future Hype: The Myths of Technology
Change, Bob Seidensticker uses the word as well to debunk and negate
certain views or beliefs people now have about technology which he con-
siders wrong-headed. Whereas he is a technological enthusiast, however,
Mumford wrote in opposition to such technological optimism.
Myth and narrative are naturally closely related. Like any narrative,
myth has a beginning (an abstract statement of the initial situation), a
middle (the theme proper, that is, an abstract of the body of the rep-
resented event), and an end (an abstract of the outcome, the terminal
situation) (H.A.  Murray, “Possible Nature” 328–329). Likewise, myth
NARRATIVE AND MYTH 35

performs important functions similar to narrative. As the renowned


Claude Lévi-Strauss observes, some anthropologists “claim that human
societies … express, through their mythology, fundamental feelings com-
mon to the whole of mankind, such as love, hate, or revenge or that they
try to provide some kind of explanations for phenomena which they can-
not otherwise understand—astronomical, meteorological, and the like”
(207). We might now include technology as one of those phenomena we
cannot otherwise understand.
In his book on William Blake, Mark Schorer discusses the necessity of
myth and provides an especially useful characterization of myths. They are

the instruments by which we continually struggle to make our experience


intelligible to ourselves. A myth is a large, controlling image that gives phil-
osophical meaning to the facts of ordinary life; that is, which has organizing
value for experience. A mythology is a more or less articulated body of such
images, a pantheon. Without such images, experience is chaotic, fragmen-
tary and merely phenomenal … All convictions involve a mythology, either
in its usual, broad sense or in a private sense. (355)

In other words, myths help us to understand life, to give it meaning,


to find or form coherences. In them, we communicate our fundamental
attitudes and beliefs. Or as Bruce Lincoln puts it, myths express “ideology
in narrative form” (147). They naturalize and legitimate specific attitudes
and values and in doing so establish “the most important aspects of
culture” (72) as well as “how things are and must be” (149).
Like Lincoln, Roland Barthes has characterized myths “as the domi-
nant ideologies of our time embodying sets of specific beliefs and struc-
tures of ideas and viewpoints” (Burnett, Senker, and Walker, “Myths
of Information” 69). Technological myths “stand over and above us as
social ideologies, shaping our worldviews and governing the actions of
official institutions and powerful organizations” (Burnett, Senker, Walker,
“Introduction” 4). As a form of ideology, myths create a set of beliefs, a
coherent view or explanation of reality. While they provide explanations,
they are also normative, for they determine values, attitudes, and behav-
iors. A myth shows what is best for the individual and society, how the
individual and society should be. Myths provide justifications as well (4),
and those under discussion here justify technology. The technological
myth establishes and sustains the authority of technology in our culture
today. With our narratives and myths, we represent what is of greatest
36 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

concern and significance to us. They show us what we hold most dear, also
what we admire, revere, and fear.
With our myths, we have contemplated and described beginnings
(births of the universe and of human beings), ultimate destinations (endings,
deaths, heavens, hells, nirvanas, oblivions), and what lies in between
(the human condition and human relationships). There are numerous
myths, but there are as well certain archetypal patterns which occur again
and again. There are myths of creation and origins; myths of a fall from
grace or loss of innocence; myths of journeys of ascent; myths of tests or
challenges to overcome; myths of a new creation; myths of deliverance, of
salvation, of liberation from suffering, sickness, want, and poverty.
In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the famous mythologist Joseph
Campbell provides a sketch of the basic structure and content of all myths
or as he calls it the monomyth: “The hero ventures forth from the world
of common day into a realm of supernatural wonder; fabulous forces are
there encountered and a decisive victory is won; the hero comes back from
this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow
man” (28). According to Campbell, “the basic elements of the archetypal
pattern” for the story of the hero are: “a separation from the world, a
penetration to some source of power, and a life-enhancing return” (33).
In the opinion of Jacques Ellul, “all myths directly or indirectly go back to
the myth of Paradise” (Society 191). In paradise, we live in harmony with-
out want; there is no suffering and no evil there. Another word for such
a place is utopia. Ellul goes on to say that myths “perform the historical
function of religions—they unify experience in a way that is satisfactory to
the whole culture and to the whole personality” (355).
Throughout human history, sacred, exemplary, significant myths have
integrated and unified societies and cultures. They explain how things
happen(ed), why they happen(ed), where we have come from, who we
are, and what our purpose is. Eliade tells us that myth “supplies models for
human behavior and, by that very fact, gives meaning and value to life” (3).
Where myths are living, they “still establish and justify all human conduct
and activity” (5). If we extend the idea of myth to the stories we tell about
technology, we find that they, too, express and inform our beliefs, attitudes,
morals, and behavior.
In the analysis and interpretation of our narratives about technology,
we consequently encounter and discover expressions of our ideologies
and basic convictions, especially those which are, so to speak, “hidden” in
those stories. As Henry A. Murray understood,
NARRATIVE AND MYTH 37

myths are simple or compound narrative units, many of which, carried in


the mind, have had extraordinary permanence and potency, inasmuch as
generations of people have been disposed to live—feel, think, and act—to a
considerable extent in these terms, and hence that knowledge of the myths
of any given society should enable us … to explain many of the otherwise
unintelligible conceptions, emotional reactions, and modes of behavior of
its members. (“Possible Nature” 305–306)

Old and new myths circulate in our culture and are carried either con-
sciously or unconsciously in our minds. We live, feel, think, and act in
terms of these myths, again whether we know it or not.

TECHNOLOGY, NARRATIVE, AND MYTH


Campbell thought that myth ceased to play a role in modern society. In
his opinion, “the democratic ideal of the self-determining individual,
the invention of the power-driven machine, and the development of the
scientific method of research, have so transformed human life that the
long-inherited, timeless universe of symbols has collapsed” (Hero 338).
In contrast, Ellul writes that “the technical productivity man is witness-
ing seems to have spurred a proliferation of myths” (Society 191). While
many old and ancient myths may no longer have the force they once had,
new myths arise to take their places. “Even when, as in modern civiliza-
tion, myths multiply and separate and tend to become abstract so that the
images themselves recede and fade, even then they are still the essential
substructure of all human activity” (Schorer 356–357).
Such developments make the identification of myth today difficult, but
not impossible. It is, moreover, a mistake to say, as did Lévi-Strauss, that “a
myth always refers to events alleged to have taken place long ago” (209).
He meant established myths of specific cultures. In the concluding essay
of his book Mythologies, Barthes discussed “MYTH TODAY.” He asserted
there that “everything can be a myth provided it is conveyed by a discourse”
(109). Certainly, there is a discourse of or about technology. While we can
recognize the ancient stories about Prometheus, Icarus, and Babel as mythi-
cal, modern and more recent works of fiction and non-fiction do not neces-
sarily present themselves as sources of myth. Nevertheless, the contours of
a myth or set of related myths emerge from our various narratives about
technology.
On a visit to England in 1848, Ralph Waldo Emerson “clairvoyantly
noted in his journal that a modern mythology would have to be industrial,
38 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

mechanical, parliamentary, commercial, and socialistic” (Levin 108), in a


word, technological. Such a myth reflects the particular views or under-
standing of technology which underlie human attitudes and activity today.
It will express its importance and relevance for us. It will unite us around
itself. Such stories are powerful and influential. In reference to myth in
primitive culture, the great Polish anthropologist Bronislav Malinowski
notes that it “expresses, enhances, and codifies belief; it safeguards and
enforces morality; it vouches for the efficiency of ritual and contains prac-
tical rules for the guidance of man” (19). Even for Homer and Hesiod,
Bruce Lincoln observes, myth served as a “strategic—and ultimately
successful—attempt to redefine and revalorize the terms in question” (18).
In the same manner, the stories or myths about technology give voice to
and determine how we think and act.
In what way then has a myth arisen with, around, or for technology?
In The Real World of Technology, Ursula Franklin points out that “technol-
ogy, like democracy, includes ideas and practices; it includes myths and
various models of reality” (2). In fact, Ellul documents the formation and
emergence of “the technicians’ myth.” In brief, its message is: “We strive
for Man’s happiness; we seek to create a Man of excellence. We put the
forces of nature at his disposal in full confidence that he will overcome the
problems of the present” (Society 390). Ellul means Man as “Humanity,
the Species, the Proletariat, the Race, Man the creature, Man the eternal,
even You” (390). In this myth, man is deified, and “technique is subordi-
nate to the human being” (391). But I am getting ahead of myself here.
Even where technology is concerned, we are myth-makers. When we, for
example, write about technology with metaphors in order to familiarize
or humanize it, we contribute to its “mythification” (see Knoespel 120).
As technologies develop and as we deploy them, they generate “their
own mythic structures, borrowing much older ideas and bringing these
together with new ideas [and] have produced myths repackaged for our
time” (Burnett, Senker, Walker, “Introduction” 1–2). These mythic nar-
ratives convey messages which simultaneously “frame their reception” and
affect how we view our technologies (Burnett, Senker, Walker 4).
We must also recognize that particular technologies themselves “con-
vey messages that are more general and more fundamental than the
specific purposes to which they are put” (Hanson 139). That is, particular
technologies have specific meanings and can give rise to their own narra-
tives. As David Nye demonstrates, for instance, the ax in the settling of
the American frontier begets a narrative of independence, self-sufficiency,
NARRATIVE AND MYTH 39

potentiality, and ownership. The automobile begets a narrative of speed,


affluence, freedom, mobility, prestige, and power. It can be an object of
affection or irritation. The now ubiquitous computer gives rise to a nar-
rative of efficiency, productivity, immediacy, power, connectedness, prog-
ress, and knowledge.
With the ascendance of technology in our time, traditional myths and
sources of meaning have been displaced and largely replaced. Whether
technology is the principle or substance to unite or destroy society and
culture is one of the questions addressed in the narratives about it. Can a
myth of technology be the glue that holds society and culture together?
If so, what does it mean for a culture to be unified by technology?

VARIATIONS ON THE THEMES
While the details and contents vary, there are essentially two kinds of sto-
ries about technology. The privileged and predominant narrative is one of
affirmation and technological optimism or idealism. The authors of this
narrative category are the myth-makers or mythologizers of technology.
They are champions of technology and find models for human behavior,
meaning, and value in it. In a subordinate counter-narrative, dissent and
opposition come to expression. Often labeled technological pessimists,
these authors demythologize the prevailing and authoritative account of
technology. This alternative version disputes the story of technological
progress, success, and beneficence. These two narratives have also been
described in terms of social constructivism on the one hand and techno-
logical determinism on the other, where the former asserts that human
action shapes technology, whereas the latter argues that technology deter-
mines human action. Of course, both labels are reductionist, and both are,
to some extent, true.
A third current, a story of ambivalence, accompanies the other two.
In some cases, it involves apathy about the nature and effects of technol-
ogy on us and our lives. That is, some people think that technology may
now harm more than help us, but as it is impossible to change its course
or curb its power and reach, we might as well just accept it. Typically, the
ambivalent narrative admits to the problems caused by or even inherent in
technology, but calls for better technology which remedies or no longer
causes such problems. This understanding of technology usually masks
a desire to find a way to rescue technology from, and rid it of, its nega-
tive features so that we can enjoy its benefits. In spite of all its criticisms,
40 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

objections, and concerns, this narrative actually aligns with the dominant
story of technological idealism.
The popular narrative of technological affirmation and optimism enjoys
the greatest circulation, credibility, and acceptance. The narrative of dissent
and opposition is, in contrast, unpleasant, unwelcome, and unacceptable.
The ambivalent voices want to be fair, even-handed, and balanced, seeing
both good and ill in technology, but actually end up rationalizing or apolo-
gizing as it were for its flaws and failures. Which of these narratives will be
authoritative; which considered valid, legitimate, true, authentic, and accept-
able; and which invalid, illegitimate, untrue, inauthentic, and unacceptable?
Which of these stories can serve to help us best understand the new universe
of technology, define a social order within it, and determine how to live in
its circumstances? Among others, Alex Goody, Katherine Hayles, Thomas
Hughes, David Nye, Howard Segal, Herbert Sussman, and Wylie Sypher
have done much to trace the outlines and contents of the narratives about
technology. (Hayles traces the development of one particular technological
narrative, specifically how we human beings have come to understand and
accept ourselves first as cyber-organism and then as posthuman. Although
her work parallels mine in certain ways, it charts a different course and,
therefore, does not figure prominently in the following pages.) The present
study provides conceptual refinements and extensions both of their work
and that of others. This book offers a review and analysis of the details and
contents of the competing stories we have told about technology.
An investigation of our narratives about technology offers greater
insight into its role in our lives. David Nye remarks that the meaning of
a specific tool, and by extension technology, in general, is “inseparable
from the stories that surround it” (Technology Matters 3). In his opin-
ion, “tools have always embodied latent narratives” (5). Indeed, “a tool
always implies at least one small story” (5). Like Todorov, Nye identifies
sequence or succession of events and transformation as the key elements
of narrative: “There is a situation; something needs doing” (5). He relates
the basic narrative structure to technology: “to conceive of a tool is to
think in time and to imagine changes” (5). Thus, we find the meaning or
meanings of technology in the stories we have told about it. Kevin Kelly
urges us to listen “to technology’s story” (or stories), and by “divining its
tendencies and biases, and tracing its current direction” seek “to solve our
personal puzzles” (6). The next chapters explore the stories we tell about
technology. They reveal the meanings we ascribe to it, the hopes and fears
we have for it, and the new forms of myth technology has fostered.
CHAPTER 3

The Dominant Narrative

“What mankind can dream, technology can achieve.”1


(Slogan of Fujitsu Company)

POINTS OF DEPARTURE
While the typical reader can, with relatively little difficulty, recognize fiction as
narrative, she or he does not so readily identify non-fiction with stories and
probably even less so when the writing is about technology. Nevertheless,
non-fictional accounts tell stories about technology as much as fictional
narratives do. In the non-fictional discussions of technology, one narra-
tive celebrates and champions technology, another challenges and disputes
that narrative’s claims. These narratives reflect how we have thought and
still typically think about technology. While this chapter examines the nar-
rative of technological idealism, the next considers the narrative of dissent.
Both sample the most significant and representative writing for the two
different storylines. Here (and in the next two chapters), I let the authors
speak largely for themselves, since their own voices best illustrate the
character and content of the narratives in question.
As noted in the previous chapter, writing about technology in its
modern sense did not really begin until the nineteenth century and the
advent of large-scale mechanization and then became a preoccupation in

1
Used with the kind permission of Fujitsu.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 41


J.M. van der Laan, Narratives of Technology,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43706-8_3
42 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Relatively few early texts concern
themselves with technological promise. Over the course of time, a story
of affirmation developed and ultimately established itself as the dominant
narrative about technology, even as a master narrative or authoritative
myth which unites and provides meaning to society. As such, this narrative
sets the parameters for all discourse about technology.
Studies by Thomas Hughes, Howard Segal, and David Nye have
documented how technological enthusiasm became and still remains the
accepted narrative. Segal found that Americans, more than Europeans,
“have usually been enthusiastic about technology” (Future Imperfect 141),
but the emergence of technological culture and technological enthusi-
asm was not restricted to the USA. As Hughes observes, “Fordism” and
“Taylorism”—in other words, an emphasis on technological systems as
practiced in Henry Ford’s automobile factories and espoused by Frederick
Winslow Taylor in his Principles of Scientific Management (1911)— “spread
throughout Europe” as well (American Genesis 8). Hughes goes on to
note that modern technological culture was actually first defined in Europe
(9). Although he thought that the age of technological enthusiasm had
passed, it has instead persisted and has flourished, especially with the rise
of computers, the PC, Internet, and smart phone. The investments in
computers and communication technologies in US schools alone provide
ample evidence of continued technological enthusiasm.

EARLY IMPULSES
Around the year 1230, Johannes de Sacrobosco, a monk and scholar at
the University of Paris, wrote a treatise entitled De sphaere mundi. In this
work, he conceived of the universe and the earth as a great machine—the
machina mundi—and initiated a long tradition of understanding the world
and the human being in mechanistic terms. That way of thinking appealed
to many, not least of them Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) who in his
notebooks referred to the human body as “this machine of ours” (168).
Likewise, he repeatedly identified planet earth as a “terrestrial machine”
(320, 506). This view of the human being and the world would become
decisive in the centuries to come.
One of the very first books to be published about machines was Jacques
Besson’s Instrumentarum et Machinarum of 1569. This volume reflects
both the author’s and his patron’s—the French monarch Charles IX’s—
great interest in technological innovation. Other early works about machin-
THE DOMINANT NARRATIVE 43

ery that fall into the same category as Besson’s include Agostino Ramelli’s
Diverse et artificose machine of 1588, Vittorio Zonca’s Novo teatro di machine
et edificii of 1607, and Georg Andreas’ Theatrum machinarum novum of
1662 (cf. Knoespel 101). The very idea of the “Theatrum” brought special
attention to technology. The word meant a place for viewing something and
put technology itself, essentially for the first time in history, on display. With
such publications, a new understanding of and fascination with technology
manifested itself and set the course for future attitudes.
According to José Ortega y Gasset, “technology properly speaking,
technology in the fullness of its maturity, begins around 1600, when man
in the course of his theoretical thinking about the world comes to regard
it as a machine” (117). He connects the rise of modern technology to the
work of Galileo Galilei and Christiaan Huygens and credits them with the
establishment of “the mechanical interpretation of the universe” (117).
With them, Lewis Mumford includes Nicolaus Copernicus and Johannes
Kepler, since their revolution in astronomy reconceived the cosmos as “a
mechanical system capable of being fully understood by reference solely to
a mechanical model” (Pentagon 33).
René Descartes’ landmark Discourse on Method (1637) remains one of the
most influential books of the modern era. Although it is not a work about
technology per se, it contributed much to a technological orientation. In
this work, he reiterated the notion of the human body as “a machine,” but
one “which, having been made by the hands of God, is incomparably better
arranged, and possesses in itself movements which are much more admi-
rable, than any of those which can be invented by man” (34–35). Of even
more importance, however, is the “method” Descartes advances which fuses
“mathematical and mechanical modes of reasoning” (Mumford, Pentagon
77). This method is itself thoroughly technological in nature.
Of similar interest is Thomas Hobbes tremendously influential
Leviathan of 1651. While a treatise on government and statecraft, it also
contains famous and forceful statements about the human being and soci-
ety. Like Descartes, he conceives of the human being in mechanistic terms.
“For what is the beast but a spring,” Hobbes asks, “and the nerves but
so many strings, and the joints but so many wheels giving motion to the
whole body” (19). The image of the mechanical clock is clearly evident
here. Such a mechanistic, or technological, way of seeing things, including
the human being, was widely accepted. The renowned scientist Robert
Boyle described the human being in analogous terms. In 1663, he wrote:
“a humane Body it selfe seems to be an Engine, wherein almost, if not
44 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

more then almost, all the Actions common to Men, with other Animals,
are perform’d Mechanically” (27–28). The universe, the planet, and the
human being were all understood as entities governed by the principles of
mechanics. This new worldview soon came to be authoritative.

ENLIGHTENED VIEWS
The importance of the European Enlightenment for the formation of
our ideas about economics, politics, philosophy, and so much more can
hardly be overstated. Moreover, it informed how and what we think about
technology. The conception of the human being as mere machine found
expression again in Julien Offray de La Mettrie’s famous L’homme machine
of 1748. It builds on the view of Descartes and others that animals are
automata. It gives voice once more to the by then widespread clockwork
paradigm: “the human body is a watch,” the heart “the mainspring of the
machine” (141). In a mechanistic, clockwork universe, the human being
must necessarily also be understood as machine.
Only a few years after La Mettrie published that book, one of the most
significant and influential works of the century appeared. It was Denis
Diderot’s and Jean le Rond d’Alembert’s Encyclopedie ou dictionnaire
raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (1751–1777). Although the
famous French encyclopedia contains no entries for technique or technol-
ogie, it dealt “with the present-day systems of learning and technique,
explaining in each case general principles, likewise methods and routines”
(Cazamian 258). In fact, the Encyclopédie itself led to “the creation of the
‘Enseignement Technique,’” that is, technical education (Cazamian 258).
As d’Alembert indicates in the “Preliminary Discourse” (1750), he
and Diderot took inspiration from Bacon, Descartes, Galileo, Locke, and
Newton, from the authors of the mechanistic worldview (http://quod.
lib.umich.edu). The “mechanical arts,” the encyclopedists explain, would
constitute one of three main categories covered in their publication. The
Encyclopédie would accordingly concern itself especially with technological
knowledge. Their great work served not only as a sourcebook of informa-
tion about technology, but also as a mirror of how the Enlightenment
viewed and valued it.
Preoccupied with systematization, organization, and classification, the
eighteenth century was the age of encyclopedias and dictionaries. Zedler’s
Universal Lexikon (64 vols. 1732–1754), the Encyclopedia Britannica (3 vols.
1768), and the French Encyclopédie (17 and 11 vols. 1750–1772), not to
THE DOMINANT NARRATIVE 45

mention the dictionaries of Bayle, Voltaire, Johnson, and Adelung, were


the great projects and products of the time. In their desire to categorize,
measure, chart, and calculate everything, those authors and editors were
engaged in a truly technological undertaking. Although separated by cen-
turies, their work anticipates the Internet, Wikipedia, and Google, where
all the knowledge of the world is now supposed to be collected, found,
and accessed.
Toward the end of the eighteenth century, Nicolas de Condorcet wrote
his Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (writ-
ten in 1781, published in 1795). It is a landmark among narratives of
technology and charts the course for technological idealism. As presented
there, technology is a feature of rational scientific knowledge that will
prove a key agent in the improvement of the human being and all areas
of society. He recommends “the application of the calculus to the prob-
abilities of life and the investment of money” to prevent financial disasters
(181). For education, he suggests “the subtle choice of syllabus and of
methods,” so that “we can teach the citizen everything he needs to know”
(182). According to him,

new instruments, machines, and looms can add to man’s strength and can
improve at once the quality and the accuracy of his productions, and can
diminish the time and labour that has to be expended on them. The obsta-
cles still in the way of this progress will disappear, accidents will be foreseen
and prevented, the insanitary conditions that are due to the work itself or to
the climate will be eliminated. (187)

In this new world, thanks to technological innovations, “everyone will


have less work to do, will produce more, and satisfy his wants more
fully” (188). Such thinking characterizes the dominant narrative of tech-
nological enthusiasm, even 200  years later: technology always advances
and improves; it enhances human ability; saves or eliminates labor; solves
problems; and affords contentment.
Condorcet wants to apply the technological tools of measurement,
assessment, and efficiency to morals, society, and politics as well. “The
application of the calculus of combinations and probabilities to these
sciences promise even greater improvement, since it is the only way of
achieving results of an almost mathematical exactitude and of assessing
the degree of their probability and likelihood” (190). Indeed, he regards
“the more extensive and less imperfect [i.e., more efficient] use of what we
46 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

might call technical methods” as the means to perfect both education and
the sciences (197). Technological progress, he predicts, will mean “the
end of infections and hereditary diseases and illnesses” (199). With the
elimination of all diseases, Cordorcet believed, as technological optimists
still do, that “the average length of human life will for ever increase” (200)
and essentially make us immortal.
If we take only German publications at the end of the century as a
measure of engagement with technology, we discover a remarkable num-
ber of books written specifically about the subject. As noted in Chap. 1,
one of the first books about technology was Beckmann’s Introduction to
Technology (my translations here and following) in 1777. In the next quar-
ter century, a number of other volumes appeared in short order, indicat-
ing a specific orientation and trajectory. The list includes a technological
dictionary in 1781 by Johann Karl Gottfried Jacobson, an introduction to
the study of technology in the same year by Benedict Franz Johann von
Hermann, Technology, or the Mechanical Arts in 1782 by Johann Samuel
Halle, another Introduction to the Study of Technology in 1785 by Johann
Gottlieb Cunradi, a textbook about technology in 1787 by Georg Friedrich
von Lamprecht (which relates the term to handicrafts, factories, and manu-
facturing), another textbook in 1790 by Karl Gottlob Rössig, yet another
educational book called Humanity and God: Or Elementary Instruction
in Technology and the Science of Administration (Menschheit und Gott) in
1795, a volume on Technologie in 1796 by Friedrich Ludwig Walther, and a
book in 1800 by Carl Philipp Funke about natural history and technology
for teachers. At least three points become clear from this publication
history: (1) technology was plainly emerging as a new topic of special inter-
est; (2) it was understood both in terms of machines and management; and
(3) it had become a particular field and subject of study and instruction.
Indeed, technology itself had become something distinctly identifiable and
had assumed an important role in the culture of the time.

FULL STEAM AHEAD


During the nineteenth century, technological enthusiasm established itself
firmly as the dominant narrative. That century was preoccupied with the
steam engine, in particular, and what it called “the machine,” in general.
In 1808, The Times of London ran a brief announcement about railway
pioneer Richard Trevithick’s portable steam engine and the wager that it
could outrun any horse. In a telling comment, expressing both the odds
THE DOMINANT NARRATIVE 47

of the wager and public opinion concerning the technology, The Times
reported that “The engine is the favorite. The extraordinary effects of
mechanical power is already known to the world; but the novelty, singular-
ity and powerful application against time and speed has created admiration
in the minds of every scientific man” (quoted in Jennings 128). At the
very start of the century, technology enjoys the admiration of all who want
to be considered enlightened, forward-thinking, and scientific.
In 1829  in Boston, Massachusetts, the Harvard professor Jacob
Bigelow published his Elements of Technology and, with this work, set the
tone for technological optimism in the USA. His book considers the dif-
ferent kinds of technologies then extant: from writing and printing to
heating, ventilation, locomotion, machinery, metallurgy, and glass mak-
ing, to name only a few. He gives voice to the great pride we take in our
technology: “we accomplish what the ancients only dreamt of in their
fables; we ascend above the clouds, and penetrate into the abysses of the
ocean” (4). Like Condorcet, he speaks only of improvements, advantages,
rewards, and advancement (6). According to Mark Greenberg and Lance
Schachterle, Bigelow’s book initiated “the distinctive American faith in
technology as a source of progress” (“Introduction” 15).
A popular actress of her time, but also author, memoirist, and friend
of Henry James, Fanny Kemble wrote a remarkable letter to a friend in
1830 which recounts her experience with George Stephenson on a test
run of the Liverpool & Manchester railway, which he built. In it, she cel-
ebrates the new steam locomotive as well as the wagons, carriages, tunnels,
bridges, and other grand feats of engineering linked to the railroad. She
opens her remarks with an exaggerated show of emotion: “A common
sheet of paper is enough for love, but a foolscap extra can alone contain a
railroad and my ecstasies” (in her Records of a Girlhood, 1878, quoted in
Jennings 172). Her descriptions transform the machine whose wheels are
its feet, pistons its legs, and coal its oats into an animate being. It was for
her a “snorting little animal” which she “felt rather inclined to pat” (in
Jennings 173–174). She calls it a “magical machine,” and “no fairy tale
was ever half so wonderful” as what she saw that day (in Jennings 174).
Her letter reflects an infatuation with the whole technological system. And
she reveals, technological enthusiasm did not belong solely to men, but
to women also.
Besides Bigelow, an American mathematics-teacher-turned-lawyer
named Timothy Walker promoted the technological worldview. He felt
it necessary to mount a “Defence of Mechanical Philosophy” (1831) in
48 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

response to criticisms Thomas Carlyle had published a few years earlier


(in 1829; that text will be taken up in the next chapter). Mechanism,
Walker claims, has as yet not been “the occasion of any injury to man”
(123). Speaking for like-minded contemporaries, he declares: “we look
with unmixed delight at the triumphant march of Mechanism” (125). In
his opinion, “the mechanical enterprise, with which our age is so alive, far
from being unfavorable to our spiritual growth, is the one thing needful
to furnish the freedom and leisure necessary for intellectual exercises,—to
establish mankind in the otium cum dignitate” (126). This notion echoes
again and again over time in the dominant narrative. He also recommends
a technological “social lever” similar to a mechanical lever to lift weights
(128) so as to engineer society. Walker subscribes to “an unfaltering belief
in the permanent and continued improvement of the human race, and we
consider no small portion of it … as the result of mechanical invention”
(134). His essay epitomizes the triumphant narrative of technological
idealism.
At about the same time as Walker, the German-born American writer
and inventor John Adolphus Etzler published The Paradise Within the
Reach of All Men, Without Labor, By Powers of Nature and Machinery
(1833). It reiterates views expressed by Condorcet, Bigelow, and Walker.
In this paradise, “hardships and dangers” will cease to be, life will be “free
of labor,” of “toil and vexation,” “full of enjoyments and pleasures” (iii).
There, we will experience “the greatest human happiness imaginable” (iii).
It is a decidedly utopian premise. Technology promises to free us “from
almost all the evils that afflict mankind, except death, and even put death
far beyond the common period of human life,” to create “a new world
far superior to our present,” and to raise humanity “to a far higher scale
of beings” (2). It is all to be facilitated and brought about by a “system
of machineries and establishments” (61). This technological system will
manufacture and provide for every human need. The perfection he envi-
sions has remained a key theme in the dominant narrative—as subsequent
examples will show.
In 1852, the English barrister Michael Angelo Garvey wrote about the
two great revolutionary technologies of the age in The Silent Revolution,
or, The Future Effects of Steam and Electricity on the Condition of Mankind.
These two technologies, Garvey asserts, allow the human being to sub-
ject everything “to his dominion” (3). In the form of steam machines—
for ships, railroads, factories, and more—technology perfects the world.
“Unaffected by place, time or climate,” he declares, “incapable of fatigue,
THE DOMINANT NARRATIVE 49

untouched by passions or infirmities, there stands the universal servant


of man, ready to relieve him of all drudgery, and to supplement his lim-
ited ability in carrying out the intentions of his will” (4–5). In Garvey’s
view, technology is under human control, stronger and better than the
human being, and source of unlimited possibility. Writing about electric-
ity, Garvey expects it “to become the link of minds, the channel of intel-
ligence and thought between all habitable parts of the globe” (7). His
vision took in the telegraph, but already anticipates telephony, email, and
the Internet. In his view, the telegraph institutes “a responsive sympathy”
between two minds and “creates a communion of thought between cities
and kingdoms” (8). He has no doubt that these technologies will elevate
humanity (127). His book describes a future of social harmony made
possible by technology. As will become apparent by the end of this chap-
ter, the same expectations he had for technology in the mid-nineteenth
century still characterize technological optimism at the beginning of the
twenty-first.
Although space does not allow me to quote explicitly from their work,
three French thinkers deserve brief mention here. Howard Segal points
out that the ideas of Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825), Charles Fourier
(1772–1837), and Auguste Comte (1798–1857) contributed much to
the dominant narrative of technological enthusiasm. The political and
economic theorist Saint-Simon, for example, essentially wanted society to
be guided by science and technology. His desire for hierarchical structures
and emphasis on organization and management reflects the technological
mindset. The philosopher and socialist utopian Fourier, in turn, proposed
model communities whose citizens would live in phalansteries—buildings
which were both technological structures and “social machines” (Segal,
Technological Utopianism 69). In those communities, human inclination
and activity would be managed and directed in order to achieve specific
ends and reach desired goals. Similarly, Comte, a founder of sociology
as a discipline and an early philosopher of science, asserted “the need for
science and technology to solve major social as well as technological prob-
lems … [and] for technological experts to solve both those problems and,
in time, to run society” (Segal, Technological Utopianism 61). Comte’s
book A General View of Positivism (1848) focused on the organization of
human life. In other words, it proposed a method to engineer not only
the manifold spheres of existence, but also the human being. In Wylie
Sypher’s estimation, Comte’s positivism was “the most ambitious system
of technology the nineteenth century produced” (227).
50 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY IN SIGHT


Between 1883 and 1933, several works appeared in the USA which,
according to Segal, “espoused a position that a growing number, even
a majority of Americans … were coming to take for granted: the belief
in the inevitability of progress and in progress precisely as technological
progress” (Technological Utopianism 1). This utopian literature presented
technology “as the panacea for virtually all of mankind’s problems” (8).
Since most of the authors Segal deals with are essentially unknown today,
I will not dwell on their work and only refer to them in passing. Several
of their titles provide a clear indication of their agenda as can be seen
in Charles Willard Caryl’s New Era: the Plans for the New Era Union to
Help Develop and Utilize the Best Resources of this Country (1897), Charles
William Wooldridge’s Perfecting the Earth: A Piece of Possible History
(1902), and Harold Albert Loeb’s Life in a Technocracy: What it Might
be Like (1933). As another indication of how highly Americans regarded
technology, Thomas Hughes reports that, from 1904 to 1924, they chose
Thomas A. Edison as “America’s ‘greatest’ or ‘most useful’ citizen in pop-
ular newspaper or magazine polls” (“Introduction” 13). Technological
idealism had firmly established itself.
From about 1909 to the First World War, the futurist movement in Italy
fanatically embraced the machine as vehicle of cultural invigoration, but it
did so “in a violently antihumanist fashion, helping pave the way for fas-
cism” (Ferkiss 224, note 4). With The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism
(1909), Filippo Tommaso Marinetti essentially instituted the movement.
The Manifesto ends in an outburst of technological intoxication:

We will sing of the vibrant nightly fervor of arsenals and shipyards blazing
with violent electric moons; greedy railway stations that devour smoke-
plumed serpents; factories hung on clouds by the crooked lines of their
smoke; bridges that stride the rivers like giant gymnasts, flashing in the sun
with a glitter of knives; adventurous steamers that sniff the horizon; deep-
chested locomotives whose wheels paw the tracks like the hooves of enor-
mous steel horses bridled by tubing; and the sleek flight of planes whose
propellers chatter in the wind like banners and seem to cheer like an enthu-
siastic crowd. (http://www.italianfuturism.org)

Marinetti exalts technology as some kind of magnificent, heroic beast. As


Lee Bailey observes, Marinetti “praised technology as the boundless wave
of the future: not only would it sweep aside old traditions and explode in
THE DOMINANT NARRATIVE 51

violent powers, but technology, he rightly saw, would saturate minds with
a dazzling enchantment” (85).
Futurismo contained a certain longing for destruction which would
liberate humanity from the past, purify society, and then usher in a new,
better existence. In another manifesto concerning the Ethiopian colonial
war of 1935–1936, Marinetti declared war beautiful, “because it initiates
the dreamt-of metallization of the human body” (as quoted by Benjamin
in his Kunstwerk (1936); also in Modernism: An Anthology 576). With
its fascist tendencies and passion for war, Futurismo eventually lost cred-
ibility, but its desire for a cyber-organism or transhuman has continued to
appeal and find acceptance. However horrible the two world wars proved
to be, they did not dim any hopes for blessings to come from technologi-
cal advance.
So many others have discussed Frederick Taylor and his Principles of
Scientific Management (1911) that I will not devote much space to it here.
Suffice it to say that his book and principles had enormous effect and
have shaped thought up to the present. As James Worthy noted in Big
Business and Free Men, Taylor defined employees as mere “component
parts of a mechanism” (65). Taylorism, as his theory and methods came
to be known, minimized “the characteristics of workers that most sig-
nificantly differentiate them from machines” (Worthy 67). Taylor’s “one
best method” (Principles 25) exemplifies non-material or human technol-
ogy, and it gives voice to the fundamental principle of efficiency. His own
words reveal the order of values which his principles entail: “In the past
the man has been first; in the future the system must be first” (Principles
7). His notion that every aspect of work should and could be measured
for maximum productivity penetrated every sphere of life—not only busi-
ness and industry, but also education and life in the home. Still in debt
to Taylor, companies today keep track of employees by means of digital
monitoring.
Although now all but forgotten, three works from around 1930 dem-
onstrate the pervasive thinking of the time. Men and Machines (1929)
by Stuart Chase, Romance of the Machine (1930) by Michael Pupin, and
Successful Living in this Machine Age (1931) by Edward Filene. Their works
celebrate technology and its potential benefits. “With his machines,” Chase
writes, the human being “sees and hears and lifts and runs as no living
organism has ever dreamed of doing. He stands enormous, fantastic and
alone; outside the laws of living organisms, a control switch in his hand.
Power unlimited; sensitiveness unbounded” (9). It is the technological
52 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

promise: extraordinary power and a life without limits. For these authors,
technology could fulfill and realize whatever human beings could imagine.
According to Thomas Hughes, the narrative of technological affirma-
tion started to wane by and during the 1960s and 1970s. He perceived an
increase in criticism of technology and thought that the era of technologi-
cal enthusiasm “was passing into history” (American Genesis 1). He was
incorrect in that view, however, as publications since that time bear witness.
Writing in the 1960s, exceedingly popular authors like Arthur C. Clarke,
Teilhard de Chardin, Marshall McLuhan, and Buckminster Fuller did
much to legitimate and reinforce technological idealism. They preached a
technological gospel, informing audiences of the bright future technology
was to usher in.
Well known for his science fiction work, Arthur C. Clarke published an
influential book of non-fiction in 1962, Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry
into the Limits of the Possible. The subtitle already alerts readers to a key
theme in the dominant narrative—limits and limitlessness. He expresses
the commonly held view that “at the present rate of progress, it is almost
impossible to imagine any technical feat that cannot be achieved” (11).
What he specifically envisions for the future is not so important as his
attitude toward technology in general. Like previous and subsequent tech-
nological optimists, Clarke sees a future of unlimited abundance, thanks to
technology. “The time may come,” he observes, “when the twin problems
of production and distribution are solved so completely that every man
can, almost literally, possess anything he pleases” (171). As readers will
realize, Clarke’s theses are not new. He envisions improvements and solu-
tions in economies, education, legal proceedings, politics, and the pro-
duction of all manner of goods with the result that all of humanity will be
better off.
In Clarke’s opinion, technology will continue to alter human beings
and bring about an evolution into other forms of existence. “The machine
is going to take over” (229), he writes, and welcomes that eventuality. He
accepts and embraces the changes technology will necessarily bring, even
“The Obsolescence of Man” as the title of one chapter reads. Because
he considers humans to be “living machines” (236)—like so many of his
predecessors—Clarke has no objection to uniting the organism with the
mechanism. For him, the human organism is in fact a poor specimen,
made of “poor materials” and, therefore, “handicapped” (236) by its
“limitations” and “defects” (237), which can however be corrected, over-
come, and eliminated by technology.
THE DOMINANT NARRATIVE 53

Thanks also to his popularity, the French Jesuit priest and philosopher
Teilhard de Chardin has had considerable influence as well. His techno-
logical enthusiasm comes to expression especially in The Future of Man
(1964). For him, “all the machines on earth, taken together, tend to form
a single, vast, organized mechanism” (160). He identifies that vast mecha-
nism with “the thinking center of the Noosphere” (160)—a concept he
coined and describes as “a stupendous thinking machine” (168). This
Noosphere is “outside and above the biosphere, … an added planetary layer,
an envelope of thinking substance” (151). He insists that we must see “the
machine as playing a constructive part in the creation of a truly collective
consciousness” (161). Like Clarke, he posits a merger of the organic and
mechanical. He envisions a “grandiose machine-in-motion” (177), involv-
ing all of humanity and the universe itself in which freedom of choice and
action will only be “everywhere heightened” (177). Emphases may shift
in the course of time, but the claims for technology and the envisioned
outcomes remain the same.
For these idealists, technology becomes destiny. De Chardin considers
“the growth of generalized technology and mechanization” (226) an inevi-
table and salutary development for humanity. He conceives of a huge unified,
technological system which fulfills all hopes and bestows limitless blessings.

What has really let loose the Machine in the world, and for good, is that it
both facilitates and indefinitely multiplies our activities. Not only does it
relieve us mechanically of a crushing weight of physical and mental labor;
but by the miraculous enhancement of our senses, through its powers of
enlargement, penetration and exact measurement, it constantly increases the
scope and clarity of our perceptions. It fulfills the dream of all living crea-
tures by satisfying our instinctive craving for the maximum of consciousness
with a minimum of effort. (227)

Technology provides what humanity needs. It enables an evolutionary


process toward transcendence and the emergence of what De Chardin
calls the “Ultra-Human” (276). The Ultra-Human is the completed, per-
fected human being, a consummation which is “ultra-technified, ultra-
socialized, ultra-cerebralized” (279). Robust and resilient, the dream of
technological fulfillment endures.
In 1964, Marshall McLuhan published one of the most popular and
influential books of the twentieth century, Understanding Media: The
Extensions of Man. With his maxim that “the medium is the message” (7),
he shaped subsequent discussions of mass media and of technology for
54 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

decades to come. McLuhan dealt with the new and emergent technologies
of that time, in particular with what he called the electric and electromag-
netic, which have since developed into electronic and digital technology.
As he defines them, “all technologies are extensions of our physical and
nervous systems to increase power and speed” (90). While he sees tech-
nology as physical and mental enhancement, he also recognizes the confu-
sion and disruption for the individual, society, and culture caused by new
technology. In spite of what, at first glance, looks like objections raised
against technology or like warnings about the threats it poses to humanity,
McLuhan’s book supports and promotes technological idealism.
Like Clarke before and others to follow, McLuhan envisions and
accepts a union of the human organism with the technological mechanism.
“Having extended or translated our central nervous system into the elec-
tromagnetic technology,” he writes, “it is but a further stage to transfer
our consciousness to the computer world as well. Then, at least, we shall
be able to program consciousness in such wise that it cannot be numbed
nor distracted by the Narcissus illusions of the entertainment world that
beset mankind” (60–61). McLuhan considers the programming of our
consciousness a means to escape the ills of our mass media. His hopes for
the computer are likewise exceptional: it promises “a Pentecostal condition
of universal understanding and unity” (80). In other words, the computer
brings revelation and renewal for all.
The next wave of technology—electric technology, and computers in
particular—will put aside mechanical modes of work, freeing humanity
from the fragmentation and subservience they caused. Thanks to “electricity
and automation,” McLuhan announced,

men are suddenly nomadic gatherers of knowledge, nomadic as never


before, informed as never before, free from fragmentary specialism as never
before—but also involved in the total social process as never before; since
with electricity we extend our central nervous system globally, instantly
interrelating every human experience. (358)

What McLuhan envisioned has been realized to large extent in the per-
sonal computer, Internet, smart phone, and new social media.
The subject of much publicity and known best for his geodesic dome,
“Bucky” Fuller became immensely popular and influential largely because
of his innovative designs, but also for his worldview. In Synergetics:
Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975), Fuller elaborates his theories.
THE DOMINANT NARRATIVE 55

He again takes up the old, long-standing notions that “Universe is tech-


nology—the most comprehensively complex technology. Human organ-
isms are Universe’s most complex local technologies” (section 311.02). In
highly idiosyncratic language, often containing words of his own inven-
tion, he elaborates a grand, almost mystical vision:

With popular conception of synergetics being the omniconceptual coordi-


nate system of nature will come popular comprehension of total cosmic
technology, and therefore popular comprehension that a competent design
revolution—structurally and mechanically—employing the generalized
principles governing cosmic technology can indeed, render all human-
ity comprehensively—i.e., physically and metaphysically—successful, i.e.,
becoming like “‘hydrogen’” or “‘leverage’”—regular member functions of
an omnisuccessful Universe. (section 986.776)

Implicit in his remarks are notions of improvement, perfection, and


fulfillment.
There is hardly a better title to illustrate the dominant narrative than
Samuel C. Florman’s 1975 essay “In Praise of Technology” in Harper’s
Magazine. Like Timothy Walker in 1829, he felt a pressing need to mount
a defense of technology, this time in response to the criticisms expressed
by Jacques Ellul, Lewis Mumford, and others (some of whom will be dis-
cussed in the next chapter). Responding to a growing concern about the
place and role of technology in contemporary society, Florman laments a
perceived loss of the public belief “in the beneficial effects of technological
progress” (53). He battles what he calls a “hostility to technology” that
“has become such a familiar staple of our reading fare” (53). He devotes
most of the piece to a refutation of criticism, an “antitechnological myth”
(58) in his opinion, which portrays technology as “a demon, a force, a
thing-in-itself” (58). He defends technology instead as an agent of lib-
eration and empowerment. For him, technology is something sublime, a
form of self-expression and self-fulfillment.
A civil engineer, general contractor, and contributing editor to Harper’s,
Florman takes up his defense again in Blaming Technology (1981), which,
of course, he does not. He readily admits that with technology come
undesired harmful consequences. “The more I researched the history of
American know-how,” he writes, “the more I perceived that practically
every technological advance had unexpected and unwanted side effects.
Along with each triumph of mechanical genius came an inevitable portion
56 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

of death and destruction” (184). As a result, he suggests a path between


technological optimism and pessimism. His answer is to adopt a “tragic
view of life” (188). With this worldview, the “questing technologist”
becomes a “godlike man passionately desiring a state of affairs more per-
fect than any that now exists” (190). It is a decidedly idealistic concept
of technology. The human being in quest of technological advance and
improvement seeks perfection, and his or her research and development—
which will necessarily go awry—nevertheless emerges as a hero which
excuses any excesses or failures or collateral damage. Most telling is an
assertion on the last page: “We simply cannot stop while there are masses
to feed and diseases to conquer, seas to explore and heavens to survey”
(193). In other words, we cannot stop technological advance, for it alone
supplies the solutions to our gravest problems and quenches our thirst for
knowledge.

HIGH-TECH IS HERE
By the 1980s and thereafter, the criticism of technology continued and
even increased, but the champions of technological idealism held their
ground and even prospered. In spite of Florman’s apprehension and
concern, technological enthusiasm never diminished and actually gained
momentum and potency, thanks especially to the computer and digital
revolution. At the same time, writing about technology increased as well.
Alvin Toffler and John Naisbitt are two professional forecasters whose
books “predict” the future and promote technology. Although their best-
selling books sometimes warn about the apparent dangers of technology,
they actually celebrate the benefits of technological progress. Beginning
in 1970, Toffler’s trilogy of books about the future began to appear. He
published Future Shock in 1970, The Third Wave in 1980, and Powershift
in 1990. Future Shock is ostensibly about being prepared for the changes
and innovations of the future. Though technology may growl, he reas-
sures readers, it is not to be feared. Indeed, “important new machines …
suggest novel solutions to social, philosophical, even personal problems”
(29). Although he talks about taming technology or recommends “the
conscious regulation of technological advance” (428), he nevertheless
advocates the need for “not less but more technology” (429). Like
Florman, Toffler acknowledges the side effects and potential hazards
technology brings with itself (429), but, all the same, calls for increased
reliance on technology.
THE DOMINANT NARRATIVE 57

The Third Wave is also about changes to come. Toffler sets hope
for humanity in a third technological revolution which will evolve into
a “dramatically new techno-sphere” (164). The technologies of the
“Third Wave” are, to large extent, electronic or digital, that is, essen-
tially computer-related. In this new existence, everything improves: work,
education, family life, politics, the economy, and the self. “As we grow
more familiar with the intelligent environment,” he writes, “and learn to
converse with it from the time we leave the cradle, we will begin to use
computers with a grace and naturalness that is hard for us to imagine
today. And they will help all of us … to think more deeply about our-
selves and the world” (189). With Powershift, Toffler concludes his tril-
ogy by describing the transfer and transformation of economic, political,
and social power. As a priority for the new redistribution and diffusion of
power, he lists “the speedy universalization of access to computers, infor-
mation technology, and the advanced media” (369). All three books posit
the need to develop and employ technology more than anything else for
our benefit in the years to come.
What is noteworthy about these books and others like them is that they
have sold very well and speak to a huge audience. (Naisbitt boasts on the
dust jacket of his 1999 volume that his books have sold over fourteen
million copies.) Like Toffler, Naisbitt published a series of interconnected
books which focused on the future and on technology: Megatrends: Ten
New Directions Transforming Our Lives (1982); Megatrends 2000: Ten
New Directions for the 1990s (1990, written with Patricia Aburdene); and
High Tech/High Touch: Technology and Our Search for Meaning (1999,
written with Nana Naisbitt and Douglas Philipps). In Megatrends, Nasibitt
envisions the age of bio-technology and the triumph of the individual over
the collective through high-tech computers, cell phones, and fax machines.
There, he introduced the idea of “high tech/high touch” which is his for-
mulation for not necessarily balancing, but accepting and adopting new
technologies. “High touch” humanizes technology, making it acceptable
to us. According to him, “high touch” is the needed “human response” to
technology (39). He believes that the more technology we have acquired,
the more human has been our response. Replete with too many platitudes
and commonplaces, this book belongs to the “self-help or personal growth
movement,” as he himself indicates (40). In spite of any warnings about
technology he may offer, Naisbitt presents it as the means to grow and
fulfill our potential, to become more sensitive and more human. In the
second book, Megatrends 2000, as in the first, he presents the next round
58 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

of changes to come as opportunities for everyone. This sequel belongs to


the self-help or power-of-positive-thinking category also.
In the first two books, Naisbitt emphasizes the beneficial role of
information- and bio-technologies. In contrast, High Tech/High Touch
presents itself as a cautionary tale, opining the saturation of our culture by
technology. Naisbitt et al. deals there with a number of the problems high
tech has occasioned. The authors consider the USA a “Technologically
Intoxicated Zone” (10) and realize that technology has become “the cur-
rency of our lives” (31). In this book, Naisbitt seems to see technology in a
new and critical way. He and his co-authors attempt a moderate, balanced
assessment, “understanding that technology zealots are as shortsighted as
technology bashers” (26). In point of fact, their book exhibits a funda-
mental ambivalence toward technology which I discuss at greater length
in Chap. 4. While they condemn our technological intoxication, they at
the same time encourage us to “love technology” (12). Technology hardly
appears so threatening, when they say “high tech consumer goods are only
new toys to be explored” (27). In the “Epilogue,” after all the problems
the authors address and all the recommendations they make to become
sober in our relationship with technology, Naisbitt reports that he decided
to give up his old computer and is getting “a new iMac and wants to take
lessons to use all the features and be more efficient in Word” (229). In the
end, he remains as enthralled by and delighted with high tech as ever, in
quest of greater efficiency—the touchstone of technology.
In the last decades of the twentieth century, many writers were espe-
cially engaged in promoting technology. Prominent among them are
Nicholas Negroponte, George Gilder, Marvin Minsky, and Howard
Rheingold. Negroponte co-founded MIT’s Media lab, which explored
the human–computer interface, and was the first investor in Wired maga-
zine. He published a bestseller, Being Digital, in 1995. In his opinion,
“digital technology can be a natural force drawing people into greater
world harmony” (230), but most of all it is “empowering” (231). The
idea that digital technology can offer humanity “new hope and dignity”
(231) establishes it as a source of meaning. Like Negroponte, Gilder
enthusiastically campaigns for technology and the Internet with his news-
letter, the Gilder Technology Report. His various books—Microcosm: The
Quantum Revolution in Economics and Technology (1989), Telecosm: The
World After Bandwidth Abundance (2000), and The Silicon Eye: Microchip
Swashbucklers and the Future of High-Tech Innovation (2006) deal with
and promote specific technologies such as the microchip revolution, fiber
THE DOMINANT NARRATIVE 59

optics, and the Foveon sensor. Like Toffler and Naisbitt, Gilder has an eye
to the future and a believer’s faith in a technological providence.
Marvin Minsky co-founded MIT’s artificial intelligence (AI) labora-
tory in 1959. In The Society of Mind (1985), he restates the mechanis-
tic view of the universe and everything in it, this time emphasizing the
mechanistic character of the human brain. For Minsky, the human brain
is “a vast, unknown mechanism” and human beings themselves “won-
derful machines” (30). His 2006 book, The Emotion Machine, conveys
the same idea in its title. That book looks forward to the day when we
will be able to build machines with an AI which achieves a consciousness
akin to that of human beings. While Minsky advocates for AI, Howard
Rheingold has been a particular proponent of cyberculture. He has long
been interested in expanding and enhancing human abilities and intelli-
gence through technology and, in 1991, published Virtual Reality—one
of the first books on the subject. He, too, eagerly looks forward to the
application of coming technologies. His 2012 book Net Smart: How to
Thrive Online deals with ways that digital media empower human beings
and also offer opportunities to make them more mindful or thoughtful.
Together with Gilder and Toffler, Esther Dyson and George Keyworth
published a piece in 1994 praising and encouraging the benefits of digital
technology. They called their manifesto “Cyberspace and the American
Dream: A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age.” According to them,
“cyberspace is the land of knowledge, and the exploration of that land can
be Civilization’s truest, highest calling. The opportunity is now before
us to empower every person to pursue that calling in his or her own
way” (http://www.pff.org). They are evangelists for the postindustrial
“Third Wave” of technological development. As they see it, the benefits
are patent and real: “putting advanced computing power in the hands of
entire populations will alleviate pressure on highways, reduce air pollu-
tion, allow people to live further away from crowded or dangerous urban
areas, and expand family time.” They assure us that this technological
development democratizes, equalizes, liberates, connects, and unifies the
citizens of the nation.
That technology will improve everyone’s life is, moreover, a view
held and expressed by “most elected pubic officials,” writes David Nye
(Technology Matters 96). Whereas Ronald Reagan invoked “the David
of the microchip” to topple “the Goliath of totalitarian control” in a
speech at the Guildhall in London in 1989 (in “Reagan Urges ‘Risk’”),
Bill Clinton called for “modern computers in every classroom” at the San
60 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

Francisco Exploratorium in 1995 (see Clinton “Remarks”). On the one


hand, the computer and Internet are supposed to spread democracy.
On the other, they promise to create social equality. As the politicians
assure their constituents, technology offers and provides more equality,
more justice, and more freedom.
American politicians of all stripes remain devoted to technological
advance. For example, among important issues for the Republican Policy
Committee in 2014 were: the creation of “optimal conditions for tech
sector growth”; the elimination or reduction of “regulations that impede
technological advancements”; and support for “the free flow of digital
trade” (“Republican Solutions” http://www.rpc.senate.gov). The 2015
Democratic White House home pages emphasize technology in similar
terms: it is “an essential ingredient of economic growth and job cre-
ation”; “digital infrastructure … is critical to our long-term prosperity
and competitiveness”; and “the Internet and information technology can
be applied to make government more effective, transparent and accessible
to all Americans” (“Technology” https://www.whitehouse.gov). In sum-
mary, technology insures commercial, democratic, environmental, health,
educational, and social benefits. Politicians all agree that technology will
make citizens more productive and more secure, the nation stronger and
more powerful.
Like Rheingold, Janet Murray takes particular interest in the virtual
realities made possible by digital technology. She considers the computer
“the most capacious medium ever invented, promising infinite resources”
(3) and “a thrilling extension of human powers” (6). Her book Hamlet on
the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (1997) extols the vir-
tues of the new technologies which allow a virtual existence in the digital
realm. In her opinion, digital virtual worlds can bring “the benefit of self-
knowledge” and send us “back to the real world all the stronger” (25–26).
She celebrates the contingency, illusion, and simulation of virtual worlds
as definitely preferable to ordinary physical reality. At the same time, she
recognizes the enormous power virtual reality exercises over its users. She
uncritically describes how a video game transformed her, an otherwise
“fervently pacifistic mother,” into a gun-slinging killer (54). Computer
video games, she realizes, program the player, so that the player has to do
what the game wants (77). Although the computer “can distract us from
asking why things work the way they do and why we are being asked to
play one role rather than another” (89), she accepts such manipulation and
adaptation without any real reservations. Ultimately, she hopes to animate
THE DOMINANT NARRATIVE 61

“the machine” and to use “its system-making abilities to bring forth life”
(246). In her vision, technology becomes not only a life-form, but also the
source of other forms of life.
Research and development devoted to AI and cybernetics has long
encouraged interest in a human–machine hybrid. Richard Landers gave
expression to such ideas as early as 1966 with Man’s Place in the Dybosphere,
an optimistic anticipation of such a synthesis. Landers envisions the end
of human authority and welcomes the advent of a machine-dominated
world. As humans become more machine-like, he notes, machines will
become more like humans. The desire to be superseded by machines is
nowhere stated more simply than in Hans Moravec’s Robot: Mere Machine
to Transcendent Mind (1999). Moravec has no qualms about creating a
race of robots which will supersede, replace, and eliminate human beings.
In his opinion, “by performing better and cheaper, the robots will displace
humans from essential roles. Rather quickly they could displace us from
existence” (13). Like Clarke, he remains unperturbed and even optimistic
about this prospect. “I am not as alarmed as many by the latter possibil-
ity,” writes Moravec, “since I consider these future machines our progeny,
‘mind children’ built in our image and likeness, ourselves in more potent
form” (13). Paradoxically, they “will embody humanity’s best chance for a
long-term future,” although Moravec advises human beings “to bow out
when we can no longer contribute” (13).
Closely related to this type of thinking is the interest in post- or trans-
human forms of existence as exhibited in the work of Donna Haraway, Ray
Kurzweil, and Rosi Braidotti. In 1985, Haraway published her provocative
essay, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism
in the Late Twentieth Century.” She hopes to construct a “political myth
for socialist-feminism” (157) and embraces “the possibilities inherent
in the breakdown of clean distinctions between organism and machine
and similar distinctions structuring the Western self” (174). For her,
bio-technology and microelectronics are key. She wants to use high-tech
culture to challenge what for her are problematic dualisms: “self/other,
mind/body, culture/nature, male/female, civilized/primitive, reality/
appearance, whole/part, agent/resource, maker/made, active/passive,
right/wrong, truth/illusion, total/partial, God/man” (177). Haraway
already identifies the mechanism with the human organism: “The machine
is us, our processes, an aspect of our embodiment. We can be responsible
for machines; they do not dominate or threaten us. We are responsible
for boundaries; we are they” (180). Although she speaks of boundaries,
62 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

she seeks their abolition. With the imagery of the cyborg, she takes the
mechanistic worldview to its logical conclusion.
Few have been so optimistic and enthusiastic about technological
beneficence and possibility in recent years as Ray Kurzweil. A computer
scientist, inventor, and director of engineering at Google, Kurzweil has
written several books about technology. In The Singularity is Near: When
Humans Transcend Biology (2006), he lays out his blueprint for a future
“human-machine civilization” (5). When this Singularity—the complete
merger of humans and machines—occurs, he expects a techno-sapiens to
emerge. Such a being will “transcend these limitations of our biological
bodies and brains” (9). Transcendence, the ancient and enduring dream
to leave human imperfection behind and to overcome all limits, stands at
the center of his own vision for humanity. Because human DNA is, in his
view, a “machinery … essentially a self-replicating nanoscale replicator”
(207), a transition from the organic to the mechanical, from the biological
to the technological, is a reasonable, realistic, and unproblematic proposi-
tion. As he tells it, there is nothing at all to fear, nothing but improvement
and fulfillment lie in store for us.
For Kurzweil, nanotechnology is the next great source of unprecedented
and immeasurable benefits. According to the National Science Foundation,
he reports, “nanotechnology has the potential to enhance human perfor-
mance, to bring sustainable development for materials, water, energy, and
food, to protect against unknown bacteria and viruses, and even to dimin-
ish the reasons for breaking the peace” (226). Such claims have informed
the narrative of technological idealism for centuries. Technology provides
health and wealth, security and well-being. Ultimately, Kurzweil’s story is
about immortality. It is the story of the fountain of youth on the one hand
and the return to paradise on the other. The solution is “to overcome our
genetic heritage” (371) and to become first “cyborgs” (377) and then, at
some point, entirely and only cyber.
Kurzweil admits that nanotechnology might have harmful conse-
quences. Self-replicating nanobots may pose a threat, for instance, but we
will devise “a nano-technology immune system” (400), involving the use
of self-replicating nanobots and have it in place beforehand. He believes
that even the danger of some particular individual’s malicious intent will
be ended by “technologies based on nanobots” (403). The very technology
which could endanger us will be employed to protect us.
Rosi Braidotti follows in the footsteps of Haraway and, in The
Posthuman (2013), develops an argument for transforming the human
THE DOMINANT NARRATIVE 63

being technologically. That project requires the integration of the organic,


animate, carbon-based human with the inorganic, inanimate, silicon-
based machine. Typical of technological idealists, Braidotti believes in
“the normatively neutral structure of contemporary technologies” (45).
She sides “firmly with the liberatory and even transgressive potential of
these technologies” (58) and means here nanotechnology, bio-technol-
ogy, information technology, and cognitive science (59). She speaks of
“becoming-machine” (91) and advocates “the merger of the human with
the technological” (92). In her view, such a posthuman condition will
combat or eliminate racism and sexism, since the “technological apparatus
is … neutralized as figures of mixity, hybridity and interconnectiveness”
(97). She, too, subscribes to the centuries-old understanding of human
beings as machines. For her, the human organism is “an evolutionary
engine,” “a bio-chemical factory” with “its own navigational tools” (140).
Like other authors of the dominant narrative, she foresees a wonderful
future, one already here, “quite simply the best of all possible posthuman
worlds” (197). (Even as she sincerely evokes Leibniz’ famously idealistic
assertion in his Theodicy [1710], Braidotti unavoidably calls to mind its
satiric contradiction by Voltaire in Candide [1759].)

DON’T WORRY, BE HAPPY


At first glance, Bob Seidensticker’s all-too superficial Future Hype: The
Myths of Technological Change (2006) suggests a critical assessment of
technology. However, his argument is not with technology at all, but with
what he considers oversimplified ideas about technology. Seidensticker
worked for several years at Microsoft. He admits that he is “excited about
the future possibilities of technology” (ix–x) and is, in fact, “an ener-
getic cheerleader for technology in general” (2). He takes issue with nine
“myths” or fallacies he wishes to dispel: (1) Change is Exponential; (2)
Technology is Inevitable; (3) Important New Products Arrive Ever Faster;
(4) The Rising Tide of Valuable Information; (5) Today’s High-Tech
Price Reductions are Unprecedented; (6) Products are Adopted Faster;
(7) Invention Gestation Time is Decreasing; (8) The Internet Changes
Everything; and (9) Moore’s Law is Really Important. In general, he takes
aim at straw men, and his arguments are too often plagued by false com-
parisons and, as such, misleading. While he attacks those nine “fallacies,”
he leaves firmly intact an established trust in technology as the source of
all improvement and justified means to all noble ends. In the case of real
64 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

problems, he dismisses them as inconsequential. He writes, for example,


that “we have reached a standoff” with such technologies as sound record-
ing and photography—though it could be any technology—but “their
privacy downsides are addressed with laws or conventions, or they are
simply understood and accepted by the public” (133). When all is said and
done, Seidensticker wants us to be smarter technology consumers and to
continue to use technology as we have been doing.
Kevin Kelly must count as one of the most significant figures in the
world of technology today. He was the founding executive editor of
Wired magazine, perhaps the leading journal on digital technology. As he
explains in What Technology Wants (2010), “high-tech computer networks
were not deadening the souls of early users like me; they were filling our
souls” (3). In this book, he introduces a new word for a world structured
around a whole, huge technological system—the “technium”—essentially
a technological totality. Unlike many other technological apologists, he
contends that technology is now indeed autonomous, beyond full human
control. In the face of an autonomous technology, he concludes that we
have no choice but to “align ourselves with this direction” (187). Life in
the technium is just how it is, so we might as well learn to like it.
While he admits that “most of the new problems in the world are cre-
ated by previous technology” (192) and that technology “monopolizes
any activity and questions any nontechnological solution as unreliable or
impotent” (193), he still embraces the technium and accepts our techno-
logical subservience. In spite of evidence to the contrary (which he him-
self provides) that an all-pervasive, all-encompassing technological system
robs us of our freedom, he nevertheless asserts a net gain from technology
and “an increase of freedom, choices, and possibilities” (207). At one
point, he praises the Amish as the only people who control their use of
technology, the only society which still makes decisions about whether or
not to adopt a technology, but then blames them for “holding back pos-
sibilities … indirectly for all” (237). Technology makes the rules. It dare
not ever be held back in any way by anyone.
Although we exist in a total technological order and environment, Kelly
argues that “we need … more technology” (215). It is because technol-
ogy “compounds the good in the world, the arc of the technium keeps
increasing choices, possibilities, freedom, and free will in the world, and
that is an even greater good” (263). Indeed, technology promotes “social-
ization, sharing, cooperation, collaboration, openness, and transparency”
(317). Strains of religious conviction can be heard in the story Kelly tells.
THE DOMINANT NARRATIVE 65

He, as it were, professes a faith in the technium. Writing about the Internet,
he becomes numinous: “its boundaries are unknown, unknowable, its
mysteries uncountable … It knows so much … It makes me bigger …
It is a steadfast benefactor” (323). Kelly essentially deifies the technium.
For him, but also for all of us, his book asserts, the technium “contains
more goodness than anything else we know” (359). Kelly finds fulfillment
in technology. It satisfies him in ways that nothing else can or does. The
answer to the question implicit in his title is that technology gets whatever
it wants, and it wants more of itself.
Brian Christian, author of The Most Human Human: What Talking
with Computers Teaches Us about What it Means to be Alive (2011), par-
ticipated in the 2009 Loebner Prize competition—a yearly Turing test
designed to evaluate how “human” our computers might be, which in
a way also examines how human we still are. For him, “the most central
questions of being human” are about meaning and relations with other
human beings “within the limits of language and time” (13–14). Such
assertions notwithstanding, the Turing test is undeniably about human
relations with AIs. According to him, our relations with machines can
serve as a constructive model for our relations with each other. He writes
that “the story of the progression of technology doesn’t have to be a
dehumanizing or dispiriting one” (14), but something quite the contrary,
something positive, full of promise and hope. From his interaction with
AIs during the Loebner competition, he concluded that “we fail—again
and again—to actually be human with other humans” (32). As he sees it,
technology offers the solution and can help bring us back to ourselves and
our humanity.
Christian thinks that the human being and computer “are symbiotes”
which “need each other,” “keep each other honest,” and “make each
other better” (14). Even though he sees how we fail to be human with
each other, how we have altered our most human behaviors and capaci-
ties to correspond to the ethos and modalities of our technology, he does
not believe that we have been dehumanized. Technology poses no grave
threats to our humanity, even when machines reach a stage where they
simulate human consciousness. While some voices raise concern about AI,
Christian thinks that “fears over AI would seem to miss the point” (85).
In his opinion, technology obeys not only its forms and structures, but
also its human inventors: “as soon as the machine exists, it is playing the
part assigned it by its designers” (132). In other words, technology is
firmly and safely under our control. He suggests that we “think of the
66 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

long-term future of AI as neither heaven nor hell but a kind of purgatory:


the place where the flawed, good-hearted go to be purified—and tested—
and to come out better on the other side” (263). In this scenario, flawed,
yet good-hearted human beings are essentially inferior, but can, in the
end, fortunately be perfected by technology.
Future Perfect (2012) by science writer Steven Johnson makes The Case
for Progress in a Networked Age, as his subtitle asserts. Johnson was also
the host of a six-part television series on PBS about great ideas called
“How We Got to Now” (Fall 2104). For him, technological advance is a
great success story and a warrant for optimism about the future. His main
thesis is that the Internet is and should be our “role model” (xxxv). The
Internet is, he maintains, a network of peers—thus, inherently democratic,
egalitarian, and fair. “Wikipedia is just the beginning,” he writes, “we can
learn from its success to build new systems that solve problems in educa-
tion, governance, health, local communities, and countless other regions
of human experience” (213–214). And with the help of technologies like
it, he concludes, “we know it can be done” (214). This book is another
variation on the constant and key themes of technological idealism. He
is sure that the new networks made possible by technology “can be har-
nessed for the greater good” (104). Even more than Christian, he recom-
mends technology as a model for human beings to emulate.
Readers will by now have realized that there are a great number of
books published with essentially the same thesis. Beside Ray Kurzweil’s
and Steven Johnson’s, Jeff Jarvis’ Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital
Age Improves the Way We Work and Live (2011), Jane McGonical’s Reality
Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World
(2011), Michael Chorost’s World Wide Mind: The Coming Integration of
Humanity, Machines, and the Internet (2011), or Byron Reese’s Infinite
Progress: How the Internet and Technology Will End Ignorance, Disease,
Poverty, Hunger, and War (2013) are typical examples of the genre. Reese’s
title says it all and hardly needs any commentary. It gives full expression to
the utopianism implicit and explicit in the dominant narrative. Although
he admits that the Internet and technology cannot “solve every human ill”
(6), he nevertheless believes in “the infinite promise of technology, and
the power of humanity to wield new technologies to create this world of
infinite progress” (9).
For Reese, the tool to achieve everything wonderful is the Internet,
which will usher in “a New Golden Age for humanity” (12). Echoing
Murray and Kelly, Reese believes the Internet is “better than anything
THE DOMINANT NARRATIVE 67

the world has ever seen” (25). Characteristic of this book is a vocabulary
of “more,” “better,” and “than ever.” With the aid of the Internet, he
claims, we can all now be whatever we would like to be: “artists or philoso-
phers or singers or photographers or commentators or reviewers” (25).
Questions of talent or ability are of no concern, since technology makes us
all remarkably able and talented. With the coming of the Internet, Marx’s
famous words seem at last to have found their fulfillment: “where nobody
has one exclusive sphere of activity, but each can become accomplished in
any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus
makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow,
to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening,
criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter,
fisherman, herdsman or critic” (The German Ideology 47).
According to Reese, paradise awaits us all, and we will reach a state of
perfection. In this perfect world to come, everyone will have access to
everything: knowledge, healthcare, wealth, peace, and freedom. Ignorance
will end, because anyone who has access to the Internet “can obtain any
knowledge they need” (30). In such a world, “in the not-too-distant
future,” he declares, “no one will have to work. No one!” (149). Instead,
everyone will be busy seeking “personal excellence” (149). Reese recalls
the pronouncements of all the technological idealists who have gone
before him. Food will be free, disease will end, work will end, war will
end. The World Wide Web, Reese assures, is “a force for truth, connect-
edness, understanding, and communication” (258). Finally, “everyone in
the world will learn English, because it will be the language of the Internet
and thus the language of the world” (266). It is the story of the tower
of Babel in reverse. We have come full circle. Technological advance and
change, Reese assures us, “will come at no cost to our humanity” (283).
Jeremy Rifkin’s recent book The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet
of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism (2014)
once again presents the same or similar utopian perspectives and visions
as found in the work of so many others discussed here. In particular,
Rifkin advances ideas previously promulgated in Toffler’s The Third Wave
such as the notion of the “prosumer,” someone who is both producer
and consumer. Thanks to technological innovation and advance, Rifkin
maintains, everyone will be connected with everyone and everything via
an Internet of Things. When this super-intersection occurs, it will result in
a postcapitalist economy of “nearly free goods and services” (4). A new
economic system made possible by technology will liberate “the human
68 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

race from toil and hardships” and free “the human mind from a preoccu-
pation with strictly pecuniary interests to focus more on the ‘arts for life’
and the quest for transcendence” (7). His thesis is simply a reformulation
and reiteration of old ideas. It is a utopian vision, but one which all tech-
nological utopians have maintained is not utopian, because it will indeed
be realized—for Rifkin within the next 50 years.
Rifkin celebrates the computerization of every aspect of life, whether
it is regulating vehicular traffic, managing fauna, flora, and the weather,
assessing soil, water, and air quality, or even monitoring individual human
bodies. In a word, everything will transform into something smart. Beside
smart phones, we will have smart cars, smart education, smart agricul-
ture, smart medicine, smart cities, and so on. The Internet of Things
will ensure “the well-being of the Earth as a whole” (13). This huge,
integrated, global “intelligent network” is “a single operating system”
(71). It may be a bit scary, but “it’s also exciting and liberating,” Rifkin
reassures us (77). According to him, not to mention Kevin Kelly and the
many others like him, it establishes and promotes sharing, collaboration,
transparency, sustainability, and equality. It will be a near-perfect world of
efficiency and abundance. Once again, whatever downsides there might
be really do not matter and really need not be addressed, since the ben-
efits are so great. The only threats to the wonderful future for humanity
made possible by the Internet of Things are climate change and cyber-
terrorism—both products of our technology. Fortunately, as Rifkin tells
it, the Internet-of-Things infrastructure itself offers the best solution to
climate change (cf. 291) and best protection against cyber-terrorist attacks
(cf. 294–295). That is, technology saves us from the problems it created.
Rifkin resurrects the old utopian idea that technology will free us from
burdensome labor, will provide us with all we need to survive, and allow
us to engage in more fulfilling intellectual and artistic activity.
This survey of technological idealism closes with a look at an Open
Letter published online in January 2015 by the Future of Life Institute.
This institute defines itself as a “research and outreach organization work-
ing to mitigate existential risks facing humanity” (http://futureoflife.org/
about). The letter bore the modest title “Research Priorities for Robust
and Beneficial Artificial Intelligence.” Its publication by this institute sug-
gests that it speaks to an existential risk posed by AI. The intended audi-
ence is unclear, but it was endorsed by many researchers at Google, MIRI
(the Machine Intelligence Research Institute), IBM, MIT, and a long list
of other computer scientists at universities around the world—the very
THE DOMINANT NARRATIVE 69

people who developed and implemented, and continue to develop and


implement, AI. The most prominent signatories are Elon Musk of Tesla
and SpaceX fame and the renowned physicist Stephen Hawking.
The letter received some special media attention in the first months
after its publication. Many readers of the letter understood it to address
and warn against the present and potential dangers of AI. The letter does
nothing of the kind, however. Far from a warning about AI’s grave threat
to humanity, the letter urges more research and advances in AI. As defined
in the letter, AI itself is a neutral activity, in and of itself neither good nor
bad. “The potential benefits are huge,” the document reads, “since every-
thing that civilization has to offer is a product of human intelligence; we
cannot predict what we might achieve when this intelligence is magnified
by the tools AI may provide, but the eradication of disease and poverty
are not unfathomable” (http://futureoflife.org/misc/open_letter). The
letter concludes with assurances of suitable, favorable outcomes: “success
in the quest for artificial intelligence has the potential to bring unprec-
edented benefits to humanity, and it is therefore worthwhile to research
how to maximize these benefits while avoiding potential pitfalls.” The call
to avoid pitfalls is an obligatory afterthought. The emphasis lies entirely
on continued AI research and development as beneficial technology.
A story of technology as marvelous benefactor, as source of knowl-
edge, as solution to every problem, and as existential necessity enjoys
widespread acceptance and authority. The latest trends in education in the
USA bear out as much as anything else the general sociocultural fascina-
tion with and unwavering commitment to technological idealism. Schools,
colleges, and universities incorporate as much technology—both as hard-
ware/software and as technique/organization/measurement—into the
educational environment and enterprise as possible. Both The No Child
Left Behind (2001) and The Race to the Top Grant (2009) educational
programs rely heavily on assessment, evaluation, measurement, and stan-
dardization. STEM—science, technology, engineering, and mathemat-
ics—is currently the focus and emphasis in American education. Grade
schools have introduced smartboards into the classroom and instruction.
Universities have transitioned to “smart” classrooms and massive open
online courses (MOOCs). PowerPoint and Clickers are a part of every
lecture. Computer-assisted instruction and distance teaching/learning is
the new trend and model. The emergence and success of internet colleges,
universities, and now even elementary and secondary schools (see K12.
com) testify as well to our devotion to and trust in technology.
70 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

CONTOURS OF A MYTH
According to David Nye, a “master narrative of technological ameliora-
tion” (18) emerged in the USA in relation to the ax, mill, canal, railroad,
and dam. These technologies represented progress and optimism. At the
core of this story lies a belief in the power of technology to transform the
world. For example, the seemingly simple ax cut the trees that made the
log cabin and cleared the forest for the farms and fields that transformed
the landscape that made a country and a nation. Technological founda-
tion narratives, that is, narratives about technologies that “created” and
“made” America what it is, ultimately became “a national myth of origins”
(Nye, America 292).
Subsequently, the automobile, assembly line, motion picture, airplane,
and radio of the early twentieth century acquired special significance simi-
lar to the ax, mill, railroad, and dam. The new technologies represented
“fluidity, … movement, communication, replication and simulation”
(Nye, America 292). They all suggested a “new kind of equality, new
constructions of the self, and new ways to obliterate the past and start
anew” (292). In recent years, digital technology has likewise become a
signifier of special meaning and assumed a key role in the narrative of tech-
nological idealism. For example, computers and the Internet represent
speed, immediacy, connectedness, intelligence, sophistication, freedom,
and equality. While specific technologies have specific meanings, technol-
ogy, in general, conveys a set of meanings and values such as efficiency,
reliability, improvement, liberation, and power. The dominant narrative is
really about technology itself, technology as the sum of all technologies
and all the meanings they contain.
A master narrative about improvement by means of technology is hardly
restricted to the USA. It spans the globe. This narrative of technological
idealism enjoys almost universal acceptance and is an almost all-powerful
myth that explains the natural order of things. It tells us how and what
the human being and the world are: they are nothing without technol-
ogy and are themselves machines. This narrative places technology at the
center of everything and ascribes to it the attendant paramount value and
meaning which the center of everything has. Technology is something, if
not exactly sacred, certainly exemplary, extremely significant, and essential
for our society and culture (cf. Chap. 2 and Eliade’s definition in Myth
and Reality). As Lewis Mumford explained, technological advance and
expansion has been accompanied and “furthered by an ideology that gave
THE DOMINANT NARRATIVE 71

precedence and cosmic authority to the machine itself.” That ideology has
come to convey “universal meanings and commands,” requires “obedi-
ence,” and “its imperatives have the dynamic force of a myth” (Pentagon
157). This myth tells us what is necessary for our survival, development,
and happiness. Myth, Henry Murray points out, has the “power to gen-
erate conviction and orient behavior” (“Possible Nature” 344). Above
all, myth provides meaning, and the myth in question tells us meaning is
found in technology.
For many ages and generations, Murray observes, myths

abounded in portrayals of miracles of strength, agility, and speed, of winged


flights, conquests of gravity, and of descents into regions below ground,
miracles of invisibility and invulnerability, of penetration through solid bar-
riers, of incarnations, transformations, and metamorphoses, miracles of
mere thought, of conception, creation, and destruction, of death and resur-
rection. (“Possible Nature” 307)

In the narrative of technological idealism, technology itself assumes such


roles and performs such feats. Technology overcomes the challenges
which in the past only the hero could; and it promises entry into paradise,
where safety and wholeness, plenty and happiness, freedom, harmony, and
peace will at last be ours.
As in an ancient myth, technology offers otherwise unattainable knowl-
edge; it represents the source of new, fabulous powers; it overcomes all
tests; it remedies the ills of society and bestows gifts upon humanity; it
unites us with one another; it perfects the world. And like God, our tech-
nology is glorious. Like God, it is incomprehensible and impossible to
master. Like God, it appears to be omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipo-
tent, especially as embodied in the Internet/World Wide Web. It performs
miracles: the deaf hear; the blind see; the lame walk. Last, but certainly
not least, we request services of all kinds from it, much as we once prayed
to receive guidance and good gifts from the deity. We rely on its strength
and its revelations, if not grace. We no longer receive our inspiration from
God, but from the computer, the Internet, in a word, from technology.
If myths have heroes, then technology itself is the hero who triumphs in
the myth today. All technologies, like all heroes, acquire and possess power;
they dominate, conquer, and subjugate the opponent which is the forces
and limits either of nature or the human being. Technology solves the
riddle, defeats the foe, overcomes all obstacles, cures our woes. It saves us,
72 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

liberates us, confers and ensures prosperity. Thanks to technology—so the


myth goes—existence is without burdensome labor, food is abundant and
easy to get, sickness (maybe even death) is essentially eradicated, humans
live in harmonious relations with one another and nature. The new story
is reminiscent of others about the land of Cockaigne, the Schlaraffenland
of the Brothers Grimm, or the Big Rock Candy Mountain.
In Lee Bailey’s opinion, “technological utopianism is a major mythol-
ogy,” and it expresses the “crucial faiths and fears” of a technological
worldview (113). According to Richard Stivers, the myth of technologi-
cal utopianism pivots on two symbolic axles: one is happiness and health,
the other success and survival (Culture 68ff.). As told in the dominant
narrative, technology enhances our existence and makes life better. It is
the bearer of all good gifts: it gives us our crops, our health, our jobs,
our shelter. It promises us ease, convenience, and comfort, but above all,
technology increases our freedom and power. In this narrative, technology
becomes the machine of unlimited possibility and inevitable progress, of
the advance and improvement of all conditions: mechanical and organic,
material and psychological, physical and spiritual, even moral. In essence,
the myth is eschatological in that it tells of a new world or new creation to
come. A golden age or paradise on earth will be initiated and upheld by
technology. Technological idealism has become the new master narrative;
it unifies our culture. With this narrative, we define our world, ourselves,
and our purpose in a new way: specifically in relation to technology.
When a narrative acquires mythical authority, its central tenets cannot
be challenged or questioned. As Judith Burnett, Peter Senker, and Kathy
Walker observe, the dominant narrative as myth is exclusive. It does not
countenance any challenges to its authority. It depicts a universe for us
which “is the whole truth, and there is no ‘outside’ or alternative of which
we may conceive, or about which we may wonder” (“Introduction” 5).
The dominant narrative becomes the only way of seeing and knowing.
Since myths show us how the individual and society should be, the myth
of technological utopianism shows us we should be attuned to, dependent
and reliant on, and centered around technology.
At the heart of the myth, at the core of all technological enthusiasm, lies
the desire to have absolute control over everything, to escape our limits,
to transcend ourselves, to be immortal, to be ultimate, to be gods. In this
myth, there is no more forbidden knowledge as there was in the stories
THE DOMINANT NARRATIVE 73

of Adam and Eve, Babel, Prometheus, or Icarus. Such stories belong to a


counter-narrative taken up in the next chapter. The narrative of technologi-
cal idealism asserts a myth in which nothing is forbidden, where all is pos-
sible, all is acceptable, all is achievable, all is possessible. This myth provides
meaning and purpose and a teleology, all found in technology.
CHAPTER 4

A Counter-Narrative

“But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.”


(Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854)

EARLY WARNINGS
Beside the narrative of technological idealism, a counter-narrative of dissent
exists. It protests the veracity and authority of the dominant narrative.
The authors of this narrative challenge the story of technological prom-
ise and benefit. They warn that technology poses a serious threat to the
individual, society, and environment. The following pages offer a sample
of the most significant and representative voices critical of technological
enthusiasm in works of non-fiction.
From ancient times through the Middle Ages and the Early Modern
Era up until the eighteenth century, technological change was relatively
slow and minor. Technology had not disturbed the ordinary and regular
patterns of life. When it could no longer be so readily integrated into the
culture, first in the nineteenth and then in the twentieth century, technol-
ogy began to cause concern as never before. To be sure, there had been
objections to and even prohibitions of technology in earlier times, but
they were relatively few. In the Middle Ages, for instance, use of the cross-
bow was banned, because it was considered a weapon of mass destruc-
tion. It, moreover, threatened to upset the whole order of society, since it
allowed a peasant to be as deadly as any nobleman.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 75


J.M. van der Laan, Narratives of Technology,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43706-8_4
76 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

During the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci withheld knowledge of


certain inventions, because of their potentially harmful application. His
notebooks tell “how and why I do not describe my method of remaining
under water …; and this I do not publish or divulge on account of the
evil nature of men who would practice assassinations at the bottom of
the seas” (850). A generation younger than Leonardo, the Swiss physi-
cian and bibliographer Conrad Gessner registered concern about the great
transformative technology of his time, the printing press. In the preface
to his Bibliotheca universalis (1545–1549), a list of all books printed in
Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, he complained of the “confusing and harmful
abundance of books” (sig. *3v) which the new technology had produced.
A  century later, the chemist and physicist Robert Boyle (1627–1691),
much like Leonardo, withheld knowledge of potentially dangerous tech-
nology, both chemical and mechanical, which “my love of mankind has
oblig’d me to conceal, even from my nearest Friends” (Works, vol. 9, 281).
Aside from such comments, there were few outright objections to particu-
lar technologies or to technological advance until much later.

A NEW AWARENESS, CONCERN ARISES


Express concern about technology did not really arise until the advent
of mechanized industry in the eighteenth century. In the course of that
century, technology changed markedly with the invention and implemen-
tation of the steam engine. It was not until the next century, however, and
the establishment of the railway system on the one hand and of mecha-
nized factories on the other that people began to take special notice and to
object to the new world of technology around them which asserted itself
in opposition to time-honored conditions of being human.
Although there are no documents written by those involved in the
actions at the time, the Luddites contributed an important chapter to
the counter-narrative. The label might be linked to one Ned Ludd who
reputedly smashed some mechanical knitting machines in Britain in 1779.
Three decades later, between 1811 and 1817, the name became associated
with a group or groups of laborers who protested and destroyed machines
which threatened their existence. They attributed their name not to Ned,
but to a legendary character named King or General Ludd. In response
to their actions, the British government prosecuted them in a mass trial.
Parliament made breaking machines a capital offense and passed such laws
as the Frame Breaking Act (1812) and the Malicious Injuries to Property
A COUNTER-NARRATIVE 77

Act (1827). Since that time, the word Luddite has become a stereotype
and has been used by technological enthusiasts to disparage and dis-
credit as benighted anyone injudicious enough to identify any problems
associated with technology or technological advance. But Luddites then
and now object to very real technological peril.
Before 1800, there was not much awareness of something called tech-
nology, and even in the nineteenth century, as Thomas Hughes reports,
“only a minority of writers … protested against the majority infatuation
with the machine and the prospect of a technological age” (Changing
Attitudes 335). Because there is relatively little written at that time in
opposition to technological idealism, the work of a few writers stands out.
In 1819, for example, the English Romantic poet Robert Southey visited
New Lanark in Scotland, a model village built by David Dale for workers
in the local cotton mills. Southey’s host was the utopian socialist Robert
Owen, Dales’ son-in-law and manager of the mills since 1800.
A presentation by the children of the village left Southey with a trou-
bling impression. They “turned to right or left, faced about, fell forwards
and backwards, and stamped at command … with perfect regularity” (as
quoted in Jennings 157). Such behavior reminded him of nothing so much
as the mechanisms in the nearby factories. “I could not but think that these
puppet-like motions might, with a little ingenuity, have been produced by
the great water-wheel, which is the primum mobile of the whole Cotton-
Mills” (in Jennings 157). Southey finds much about the place disturbing.
He heard Owen call the workers “human machines” which he “liter-
ally believes them to be” (in Jennings 157). Moreover, Owen’s “system,
instead of aiming at perfect freedom, can only be kept in power by absolute
power” (in Jennings 158). As Southey indicates, the technological system
imprisons the human being. Owen’s imagined technological utopia anni-
hilates “individuality of character and domesticity” as well as “the power of
human society, and the grace” (in Jennings 158). Perceptions of domina-
tion, social destruction, and dehumanization inherent in a technological
order loom large in this account.
Not long after Southey wrote about New Lanark, the Scottish writer
Thomas Carlyle published “Signs of the Times” (1829). Well known for
his histories, satirical fiction, and essays, Carlyle gives expression in this
piece to the apprehension many Europeans felt in the face of the nascent
Industrial Revolution. He chose “the Mechanical Age” as the “single epi-
thet” for his time (442). According to him, Mechanism, that is, technology,
had established a new, pernicious order defined “by rule and calculated
78 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

contrivance” (442). Carlyle found that the “whole efforts, attachments,


opinions” of humanity “turn on mechanism, and are of a mechanical char-
acter” (444). In his view, technology had wrongly come to govern and
shape everything, whether art, education, government, philosophy, reli-
gion, science, or society, so that all runs like a smoothly oiled machine
(448). As he found, we obey the command of “Expediency and Utility”
(455), another way of saying efficiency. “Mechanism,” he writes, “encircles
and imprisons us” (458). He is not anti-technology per se, but he opposes
the domination of all aspects of culture and society by the machine model
and mechanistic thought.
Even with the remarkable expansion of mechanized industry and the
factory system, few authors attended to the threats posed by a new world
of technology. The English art critic John Ruskin was one of those few. In
Herbert Sussman’s opinion, Ruskin’s “The Nature of Gothic,” a chapter in
volume two of The Stones of Venice (1853), was “the most influential nine-
teenth-century discussion of the machine” (85). Like Carlyle, Ruskin is
fundamentally concerned with “mechanistic modes of thought” (Sussman
8) which attacked and displaced human values and activities. For Ruskin,
the machine violates and desecrates the organic and natural. Troubled by
mechanized industry, Ruskin wanted to preserve the human dimension of
work and to combat a dehumanization which resulted in soullessness. He
realized that machines could perform a task perfectly, but he also under-
stood that to err was decisively human and not necessarily a drawback:
“ten to one he [the laborer] makes a mistake in the first touch he gives to
his work as a thinking being. But you have made a man of him for all that.
He was only a machine before, an animated tool” (Ruskin 161). Ruskin
discerns the unlikely significance of mistakes. Error adds, rather than sub-
tracts, value. In the technological order, however, error is intolerable, and
the human laborer exists solely as “fuel to feed the factory smoke” (162).
Ruskin vehemently objects to any “degradation of the operative into a
machine” (163) as it utterly devalues the human being.
With his vast influence, Karl Marx has been another key contributor to
the counter-narrative. To be sure, his view of technology was contradictory.
For him, technology “progressively enslaved and alienated the worker,
while paradoxically preparing the conditions for proletarian liberation”
(Mitcham and Casey 44). Notwithstanding the contradictions, Marx’s
critique is incisive and asserts the alienating and dehumanizing effects of
mechanization on the human being. According to him, the very “continu-
ity, uniformity, regularity, order, and even intensity” of mechanized labor
harms the worker (Capital 350).
A COUNTER-NARRATIVE 79

In the first version of Capital, the Outlines of the Critique of Political


Economy (or Grundrisse, 1857–1858), Marx identifies the machine as a
new feature of labor and production.

Once included into the production process of capital, … the means of labour
passes through a series of metamorphoses until it ends up as the machine, or
rather as an automatic system of machinery (system of machinery; automatic
merely means the most complete, most adequate form of machinery, and
alone transforms machinery into a system). That system is set in motion by
an automaton, self-moved motive power; this automaton consists of a large
number of mechanical and intellectual organs, with the workers themselves
cast in the role of merely conscious members of it. (Outlines 82)

Marx recognizes the emergence of a system and the disappearance of


the human being into the machine. Under such conditions, he realized,
technology no longer serves the human being; rather, the human being
serves technology.
In his landmark work Capital (1867), Marx returns to the topic and
devotes a whole section to “The Development of Machinery” (374ff.).
There, he characterizes the steam engine as “a mechanical monster whose
body fills whole factories, and whose demon power, at first veiled under
the slow and measured motion of his giant limbs, at length breaks out into
the fast and furious whirl of his countless working organs” (384–5). The
laborer, he reiterates, “becomes a mere appendage to an already existing
material condition of production” (389). Both monstrous and demonic,
technology threatens human beings and reduces them to inconsequential
components of the larger system.

CONCERN MULTIPLIES
It is really only in the twentieth century that overt criticism of technology
commences in earnest and begins to increase in volume and intensity. In
1924, the anthropologist and linguist Edward Sapir was perhaps the first to
speak of technological idealism as an “illusion.” “There can be no stranger
illusion—and it is an illusion we nearly all share—than this,” he writes,

that because the tools of life are today more specialized and more refined
than ever before, that because the technique brought by science is more
perfect than anything the world has yet known, it necessarily follows that we
are in like degree attaining to a profounder harmony of life, to a deeper and
more satisfying culture. (94–5)
80 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

For him, the equation of technological progress with human


improvement has no validity. In the following decade, the Spanish phi-
losopher José Ortega y Gasset wrote a meditation on technology trans-
lated into English as “Man the Technician” (1939). He realized that
technology had acquired a character and authority it had not previously
had. Moreover, he found it was more and more relieving us of respon-
sibility. When technology spares us effort and we cease to struggle with
difficulty, we lose meaning and purpose. To turn our tasks over to tech-
nology leaves us nothing to do, he argues, and “doing nothing means
to empty life, to not-live” (106–7). He contradicts the technological
imperative that if something could be done, it should be done, because
“being able to do something is no sufficient reason for doing it” (136).
As technology extended its reach and gained authority, he detected a
reversal of roles: “it is no longer the machine that serves man but man
who waits on the machine” (148). He concludes that “technology for
all its being a practically unlimited capacity will irretrievably empty the
lives of those who are resolved to stake everything on their faith in it
and it alone” (151). Technology fails to fulfill us. Instead, it drains
importance and value from our lives.
Less than ten years later, the German writer Friedrich Jünger published
his trenchant critique The Failure of Technology (1946). According to him,
“most deeply rooted of all the illusions which technical progress created
is probably that of the riches produced by it” (9). He finds no evidence
that technological advance has afforded us any “greater freedom, greater
happiness, greater abundance” (13). On the contrary, “a more and more
ruthless destruction of resources is the characteristic of our technology”
(20). Indeed, technological progress covers the earth “with junk and
scrap” (24). To be sure, Jünger wrote in the wake of two devastating,
technological world wars, but his description of a world awash in tech-
nological refuse certainly still applies today. Because it exploits and con-
sumes resources, he points out, technology actually “leads to an economy
of deficit” (29). As it increases productivity, technology both requires and
occasions greater consumption, which in turn results in more waste and
then renewed need for its products. It is a vicious cycle which benefits no
one in the long run except the technological system.
Particularly troubling is his insight that “technical rationality implies a
contempt of human reason” (141). He strikes at the technological ideal-
ist’s implicit conviction that human ability is, by definition, inferior and
insufficient. In the technological order, Jünger continues, “all things step
A COUNTER-NARRATIVE 81

by step assume the character of machinery, of a reality understood in terms


of machinelike functionings. This kind of thinking, typically, has lost all
respect for freedom” (142). He rejects technological idealism as utopian
fantasy (163). “We would do well, indeed,” he writes, “to say good-bye
to all illusions about the blessings forthcoming from technology, but most
of all to that illusion of peaceful happiness it is supposed to bring” (163).
Within a few years of Jünger’s work, Norbert Wiener published The
Human Use of Human Beings (1950, revised in 1954). At the dawn of the
computer age, Wiener played a decisive role in the emerging and burgeon-
ing field of cybernetics. He became concerned with the ethical implications
of technological advance and especially with the dangers the computer pres-
ents to human beings. Wiener especially grasped the totalitarian potential
implicit in the new technology. According to him, “modern communication
… has made the World State inevitable” (125). At the same time, Wiener
was convinced that “any intermediate human intervention” in the work of
computers had already been out of the question for decades (205). Hence,
the notion of being able to control our technological creations was a pure
fiction. He goes on to say that “the machine … which can learn and can
make decisions on the basis of its learning, will in no way be obliged to make
such decisions as we should have made, or will be acceptable to us” (253).
He warns as well that machines which perform intellectual functions will
definitely devalue the mental abilities of the human being.
In 1960, Wiener revisited the repercussions of cybernetic research
in an article for the journal Science. In “Some Moral and Technical
Consequences of Automation,” he presented the thesis that “machines
can and do transcend some of the limitations of their designers, and that
in doing so they may be both effective and dangerous” (1355). In other
words, technology takes on a life of its own, and its good cannot be sepa-
rated from its evil. With respect to something as simple as an automated
game of checkers, he points out, machines “learn” from the experience of
playing the game and “most definitely escape from the completely effec-
tive control of the man who has made them” (1356). He fully grasped the
trajectory of ever greater automation. “It is quite in the cards,” he states,
“that learning machines will be used to program the pushing of the but-
ton in a new push-button war” (1357). The totalitarian state could well
be one where machines dictate policies and actions. These warnings come
from an authority in the field, not some fanatical, anti-technology crack-
pot. “If the machines become more and more efficient and operate at a
higher and higher psychological level, the catastrophe … of the dominance
82 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

of the machine comes nearer and nearer” (1357), he reasons. For Wiener,
any effort to overcome the organism in favor of the mechanism, to replace
the human being with the machine, invites disaster.
About the same time, Martin Heidegger, the famous, but also infamous
German philosopher, published “The Question Concerning Technology.”
Because of his association with National Socialism and its perverse ideology,
his intellectual contribution has been problematic. Even so, he has remained
remarkably influential, and his insights into the nature of modern technology
have some validity. In this 1954 essay, he presents technology as the domi-
nant force in the modern world. He argues that technology has transformed
the physical world into a “standing reserve” (Bestand) and that it creates
a “frame” (Gestell) which encompasses everything, including the human
being. Technology endangers and objectifies human beings by transforming
them into a mere reserve waiting to be used at will. Technological enframe-
ment renders human beings impotent. “Everywhere we remain unfree and
chained to technology,” he observes, “whether we passionately affirm or
deny it” (4). The problem is further complicated by the notion of neu-
trality: “we are delivered over to it [technology] in the worst possible way
when we regard it as something neutral: for this conception of it, to which
we particularly like to do homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of
technology” (4). In spite of such insights, his actual position proves elusive.
The question of his title receives no clear answer.
During the 1960s, Herbert Marcuse inspired both students and politi-
cal activists. With One Dimensional Man (1964), he contributed as well to
the critique of technology. According to him, technology serves one pri-
mary purpose: “to institute new, more effective, and more pleasant forms
of social control and social cohesion” (xv). The key issue for him is the
domination of the human being by technology. “Unfreedom,” he writes,
is “a token of technical progress” (1). Technological rationality, he argues,
“becomes the great vehicle of better domination, creating a truly totalitar-
ian universe in which society and nature, mind and body are kept in a state
of permanent mobilization for the defense of this universe” (18). Nothing
and no one escapes the totality of technology, as it “engulfs the public
and private existence in all spheres of society” and then as “a medium of
control and cohesion” incorporates and integrates all members of society
into the technological framework (23). Ultimately, technology “circum-
scribes an entire culture; it projects a historical totality—a ‘world’” (154).
It asserts itself as our only reality, for it “absorbs all spheres of culture”
(166), and domination emerges as its most salient feature.
A COUNTER-NARRATIVE 83

TWO KEY VOICES


The two key voices of the counter-narrative are arguably Lewis Mumford
and Jacques Ellul. Mumford had wide-ranging interests, among them
history, sociology, architecture, and literature. He began writing about
technology in 1934 when he published Technics and Civilization. There,
he signaled a problem with the new and different conditions of technol-
ogy and humanity. As he explains, “mechanization and regimentation are
not new phenomena in history: what is new is the fact that these functions
have been projected and embodied in organized forms which dominate
every aspect of our existence” (4). Already in this early work, he points out
that “one cannot understand the technics [i.e., technology], unless one
appreciates its debt to the mythology it conjured up” (182).
Mumford finds no reason whatsoever for the special deference we
accord technology. Simply because there is more powerful technology
everywhere does not substantiate “its relative human value or its place in
the economy of an intelligent human society” (Technics and Civilization
317). In particular, he perceives a loss of human agency. For example,
“in so far as the phonograph and radio do away with the impulse to sing,
in so far as the camera does away with the impulse to see, in so far as the
automobile does away with the impulse to walk, the machine leads to a
lapse of function which is but one step away from paralysis” (343–4). In
addition, society had come to believe that “problems occasioned by the
machine could be solved purely by mechanical means” (366). At the time,
Mumford nevertheless thought that technology could be brought again
under human control and guidance.
By the 1960s and 1970s, however, Mumford had formed a different
opinion. Because society had given itself over to technological obsessions
and compulsions which threatened freedom and humanity itself, he began
to criticize technological idealism. In two remarkable volumes, he exposed
and debunked what he called The Myth of the Machine. (Where Mumford
uses the word machine, we can generally insert today’s term technology.) In
the first volume, Technics and Human Development (1967), he questions
“both the assumptions and the predictions upon which our commitment
to the present forms of technical and scientific progress, treated as if ends in
themselves, have been based” (vol. I, 3). The peculiar mythology of our age,
he writes, is “one that gives exclusively to quantitative measures and logical
abstractions the same magical properties that the primitive mind gave to
colorful figures of speech” (I, 93).
84 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

Like Carlyle or Ruskin, Mumford realized that technology “tended


increasingly to dictate the purpose to be served, and to exclude other more
intimate human needs” (I, 201). At the core of the myth of the machine
lies “the notion that this machine was, by its very nature, absolutely
irresistible—and yet, provided one did not oppose it, ultimately beneficial”
(I, 224). This myth serves not merely “as the ideal model for explaining
and eventually controlling all organic activity, but its wholesale fabrica-
tion and its continued improvement were what alone could give meaning
to human existence” (I, 294). Mumford contests that understanding of
technology. The values promulgated by technological idealism—“power,
speed, motion, standardization, mass production, quantification, regimen-
tation, precision, uniformity, astronomical regularity, control, above all
control” (I, 294)—prove antithetical to being truly human. Yet, he argues,
they govern both individual and corporate modes of existence.
In 1970, Mumford published the second volume: The Pentagon of
Power. As Mumford explains, the myth of the machine promotes and
inculcates the “mechanical world picture.” It

displaced both the natural world and the diverse symbols of human culture
with an environment cut solely to the measure of the machine. This ideol-
ogy gave primacy to the denatured and dehumanized environment in which
the new technological complex could flourish without being limited by any
human interests and values other than those of technology itself. (vol. II, 24)

For Mumford, as for other critics, the term myth has a twofold meaning.
On the one hand, it is a powerful narrative, a worldview, which orients
humanity toward and unites it around technology. On the other hand, he
uses the term to signify a fiction, a tall-tale, a false reality which deceives
humanity.
According to Mumford, the mechanical world picture removes the
human being from consideration, since technology creates and then
institutes values indifferent to, even at odds with, human needs and prob-
lems. “Purely mechanical forms are superimposed upon every manifesta-
tion of life, thereby suppressing many of the most essential characteristics
of organism, personalities, and human communities,” he declares (II, 37).
Our overwhelming affirmation of technology has, moreover, “drastically
lessened man’s own sense of his worth and his significance” (II, 126).
Mumford identifies technological idealism as an “ideology,” one that gives
“precedence and cosmic authority to the machine itself,” one that conveys
A COUNTER-NARRATIVE 85

universal meanings and commands obedience (II, 157). It has become,


he asserts, “in fact, a religion, and its imperatives have the dynamic force
of a myth” (II, 157). In this case, myth means a belief system with such
authority that it informs and determines attitudes and actions.
Mumford grasped especially the autonomy of technology. Because
it is “an automatic system as a whole,” technology accepts “no human
feedback that calls for a cutback,” it accepts “no evaluation of its delete-
rious results,” and there is no “need for correcting its postulates” (II,
184). Much like Marcuse, Mumford indicts technology as “a system of
total control over every natural process, and ultimately over every organic
function and human purpose” (II, 192). In a system of computer tech-
nologies, moreover, “living organisms, in their most typical functions and
purposes, become superfluous” (II, 68). And in the spread and acceptance
of ubiquitous computers and computer systems, Mumford sees “the total
destruction of [our] autonomy: indeed the dissolution of the human soul”
(II, 280). The human dimension is first compromised, then diminished,
and finally eliminated.
Mumford rejects the validity and authority of this myth, specifically that
“the continuation and acceleration of modern technology … [is] on the
whole, favorable to human development” (II, 236–7) and that “mechani-
cal progress was in itself a liberating influence” (II, 237). In contrast,
he detects “infantilism and senility” as the ultimate effects of technologi-
cal dependence (II, 341). Technology does not promise the perpetual
expansion of human abilities and potential, but their loss. “As the sys-
tem approaches perfection, the residual human components are further
absorbed into the mechanism: so that only non-life … remains” (II, 360).
Because it mediates and simulates contact with life, Mumford concludes,
the computer actually correlates with and produces an inability to face life.
The essential threat from technology is then to the human dimension, to
human values, and to human worth. In a word, the total technological
system is “anti-human.”
In addition to Mumford, the French sociologist Jacques Ellul must
be considered the most important critic and analyst of contemporary
technology. While Mumford tended to use the word “machine,” Ellul
typically employed the term “technique” for what we today consider and
label “technology.” In three pivotal books—The Technological Society
(1954), The Technological System (1977), and The Technological Bluff
(1988)—he spelled out the new, different, and problematic nature of
latter-day technology and our relation to it. In these books, Ellul shows
86 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

how modern technology permeates all aspects of life from advertising,


business, economics, and education to medicine, politics, and psychol-
ogy. As he argues, technology is now the “universal social order” (Society
419). Technology has become the measure of all things and the only
measure of value. It has become the arbiter of what is good and necessary
and what is not.
As noted here in Chap. 1, Ellul identifies efficiency as the defining fea-
ture of technology and the decisive principle in our lives today. Technology
assimilates or absorbs everything, so that everything and everyone adapts
and conforms to its structures and dictates. In his opinion, “the techno-
logical world poses [a threat] to man’s personal and spiritual life” (Society
xxx). In another work, The Ethics of Freedom (first in two vols., 1973,
1974), he explains—and contrary to what we typically think—that “tech-
nology is not a collection of technical goods which may be freely used, but
a total ideological and pragmatic system which imposes structures, institu-
tions, and modes of behavior on all members of society” (310). Liberation
through technology is accordingly a fraudulent proposition. “All technical
means,” he continues, “are means of power, seizure, domination, organi-
zation, and utilization” (310)—the antithesis of freedom.
According to Ellul, technology has its own agenda and impetus. It
is in fact autonomous (cf. Society 5); it charts is own course (cf. System
125) and answers to no one. Yet, we subscribe to the “myth,” he writes,
which “strongly affirms that technique is subordinate to the human
being” (Society 391). In reality, humans are subordinated to technology.
We no longer control it, it controls us. As a result, “the very substance of
man is questioned” (Society129). Like Mumford and Marcuse, Ellul rec-
ognizes the totalitarian character of such a technological system (Society
284). And like Mumford, Ellul labors to demythologize. He urges us,
for example, to dispel and reject “the myth that technology increases the
possibilities of choice” (System 321). That we have a boundless choice of
technological methods and devices is no real choice at all, when the only
choices are “always within the technological framework” (System 325),
and when we have but one choice to acquire, use, and rely on technology
for everything in life.
With The Technological Bluff, Ellul moves beyond a description and
analysis of technology to concentrate on an elaborated exposé of the tech-
nological myth. The myth comprises a core set of convictions: “Not only
is technique good, not only is it indispensable, but … it alone can also
achieve all that human beings have been seeking throughout the centuries:
A COUNTER-NARRATIVE 87

liberty, democracy, justice, happiness (by a high standard of living), reduc-


tion of work, etc.” (Bluff 30). He reduces the central tenets of technologi-
cal idealism to falsehoods and deceptions. “The more technique advances,
the more it is supposed to serve human progress, … the more in reality
it brings human regress,” he writes. “The more devices seem to be obvi-
ous and useful, the more they reduce the human condition to absurdity”
(Bluff 169). As we willingly develop technology to work, produce, think,
write, and make decisions for us, it replaces us, and we lose our purpose
and reason for being. It is the great incongruity and folly of technological
enthusiasm: we willfully make ourselves more than redundant—we work
to make human beings obsolete.
Ellul declares “the idea that the computer is a creator of freedom …
a myth pure and simple” (Bluff 276). By myth here, he means a prepos-
terous story. He understood the full ramifications of something like the
Internet or World Wide Web. “The very idea of a fluid, all-encompassing
network rules out humanity’s dominant position. Human beings are sim-
ply within the network” (Bluff 146). He detected the lie in the assump-
tion that technology both makes us smarter and connects us better with
one another. Those who use computer networks

do not need to be encumbered by hundreds of other branches of knowl-


edge or questions. They do not have to know their own language, or his-
tory, or science. They have to know only the possibilities of their computers
and the networks. They do not even have to waste time on human relations.
(Bluff 282)

In Ellul’s opinion, the technological order creates “an artificial world”


which causes us to lose our “sense of reality” and to abandon our “search
for truth” (Bluff 337). To accept the technological myth is to embrace an
illusion, to welcome passivity, and to surrender our will and autonomy.
Finally, and like Mumford, Ellul identifies a religious quality in our
devotion to technology. In The Technological Bluff, he describes how
technology assumes the role of deity. “It is universal and spectacular; it
defies my attempts to master it; it performs what would usually be called
miracles; to a large extent, it is incomprehensible. It is thus God. We are
justified to give up any attempts to control it and simply ask for its services”
(Bluff 346). That description extends now in particular to the Internet.
Tellingly, Internet pioneer, Vint Cerf, has held the title of Chief Internet
Evangelist at Google.
88 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

While once significant and influential, Ellul’s critique has passed out of
mind and all but faded into obscurity. Few know or pay attention to him
today. Others dismiss his analysis and insights outright as negative and
pessimistic. The same is true of Mumford and his efforts to demythologize.
All of which gives evidence of the power and primacy of the narrative of
technological idealism.

OTHER OPPOSITIONAL VOICES


While writers of the nineteenth century decried the degradation of urban
living conditions caused by mechanized industry, a number of authors in
the twentieth called attention to the enormous devastation of the environ-
ment resulting from technological innovations and interventions. I have
chosen three from three successive decades to represent the many con-
tributors to this discourse. One of the most important and famous was
Rachel Carson who, in Silent Spring (1962), exposed the terrible damage
wrought by the all but indiscriminate use of toxic herbicides and pesticides
like DDT. With this book, she invigorated the environmental movement
and set it at odds with technological progress. Her study awakened the
world to what amounted to technologically induced contamination, dis-
ease, and death for flora, fauna, and human beings. Because the toxic
chemical compounds she identifies were artificial, “synthetic creations”
(7), they were entirely outside “the limits of biologic experience” (7). In
her estimation, the use of these synthesized toxins to control insects and
weeds was essentially a calculated response to “mythical situations” (9),
that is, to problems which did not really exist. Her research indicated that
“massive chemical control has had only limited success, and also threatens
to worsen the very condition it is intended to curb” (10). Indeed, the
real problem was not insects and weeds, but a technological, single-crop
agriculture “as an engineer might conceive it to be” (10). It was a massive
“control program” (86), she observes, devised by departments of agricul-
ture, accepted and implemented by everyone from backyard gardeners to
farmers. The technological, toxic chemical treatments could only pose as
a solution.
Like Carson, Wendell Berry has been a leader in the environmental
critique of technology. He sounded alarm in The Unsettling of America
(1977), where he excoriated technological farming practices for the envi-
ronmental damage they entailed. To be sure, he knows that agriculture
is a technology, and an ancient one, but he takes issue with the kind of
A COUNTER-NARRATIVE 89

technological operation farming has become—essentially an industrialized


agricultural factory system. It is an agriculture characterized by “mecha-
nization and chemicalization” which results in the “large-scale industrial
destruction of farmland” (10). As he explains, there are now only two
types of farm: the one which uses large equipment (and depends on pet-
rochemicals for almost everything) and the one which does not (33). The
former are the rule, the latter the exception. When farmers invest more
and more in land and machines, they are forced to “forsake the values of
husbandry and assume those of finance and technology” (45). Implicated
in such a technological system, the farmer escapes “any order that might
imply restraints or impose limits” (53). Environmental degradation from
soil compaction, chemical penetration, and erosion then becomes accept-
able. Because efficiency and organization function impersonally and
because technology removes constraints, concern for land, livestock, crop,
and even community disappears.
As Berry sees it, the problem has much to do with a change in our
guiding narratives. The once “governing human metaphor was pastoral
or agricultural,” but “modern humanity’s governing metaphor is that of
the machine” (55), in a word, technology. In this way, the creation itself
becomes something “to be transformed by machines into a manufactured
Paradise,” but that narrative, he asserts, is “a mythical view” (55), “a fan-
tasy” (56). In this imagined earthly paradise, “all the work will be done
by machines so sophisticated that they will not only clothe, house, and
feed us, but think for us, play our games, paint our pictures, write our
poems” (57). Instead of congratulating ourselves and continuing down
the same path, Berry calls for an overhaul of “all our assumptions … all
our resources of technique and technology” (65).
In this technological agricultural system, animals, plants, and soil are
regarded and treated as machines. And in such a system, humans become
“a kind of litter, pollutants … of pure technology” (73). Whereas the
entire agricultural enterprise now rests on a notion of “technological infin-
ity” (78), Berry calls for technological finitude. Unfortunately, we have
never “imposed adequate moral restraint on our use of machines” (94).
In consequence, our technology is “very nearly a law unto itself” (83),
and “the machine is out of control by definition” (94). As he counsels,
restraint alone can avert continued environmental and attendant sociocul-
tural disaster.
Along with Carson and Berry, Bill McKibben has done much to focus
attention on the terrible environmental effects of technological advance.
90 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

His book The End of Nature (1989) documents the greenhouse effect and
the global change of climate occasioned by our technological way of life.
As he reports, scientific research attributes such radical changes to man-
made, technological activity: chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs, now banned)
used as refrigerants, propellants, and solvents destroy the earth’s protec-
tive ozone layer and allow too much of the sun’s radiation to reach the
planet’s surface; sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide released mostly by coal
power plants and automobiles cause acid rain, damaging forests and soil;
and carbon dioxide and methane emissions produced by our industrializa-
tion of manufacturing and farming along with massive deforestation trap
energy and heat up the planet. All of this is the product or by-product of
technological “progress.” As McKibben explains, “we have done this to
ourselves, by driving our cars, building our factories, cutting down our
forests, turning on our air conditioners” (45). For him, the end of nature
occurred, when we altered the climate. “We have changed the atmo-
sphere, and thus are changing the weather. By changing the weather, we
make every spot on earth man-made and artificial” (58). Nothing has not
been touched and changed by our technological transformation of the
planet’s climate.
Like Berry, he rejects the idea of infinite progress and the belief in tech-
nological improvement as the only answer to the problems we face—in
this case, global climate change (152–4). Also, like Berry and Carson,
McKibben identifies control and domination by technological means and
without regard for the condition of the environment as problematic and
damaging in theory as in practice. “The logic of our present thinking,” he
notes, “leads inexorably in the direction of the managed world” (172).
That technological way of thinking, he insists, has to change (189). He
does not trust in technological solutions to problems caused by techno-
logical civilization such as desertification and oceanic inundation, crop
losses and the loss of potable water. A technological response in the form
of cloned redwoods, engineered rainfall, or genetically modified animals is
one answer, but a poor one, he maintains. It gives us an artificial world—
a mere shadow of the real, natural one. The better answer, he advises, is
to make “technological adjustments” (213)—that is, to “limit ourselves
voluntarily” (214) in our use of technology. However, and as McKibben
realizes, the choice to do so is unlikely.
In 1969, Victor Ferkiss undertook an investigation of Technological
Man and attempted to distinguish between The Myth and the Reality, as
the title and subtitle indicate. Ferkiss understood that “the nature of
A COUNTER-NARRATIVE 91

freedom and identity” changes in the face of “the new powers being devel-
oped by modern technology” (31). Thanks to technological advances,
he observes, a person can alter identity, appearance, even gender. We can
likewise decide what we want our children to be and look like. “But,” he
asks, “if you can be whatever you want to be, how will you distinguish the
‘real’ you from the chosen?” (31).
In his view, technology transformed society and the individual within
it into a mechanism,

an assemblage of standardized moving parts acting on each other by force


so as to produce standardized products that in turn become parts of the
machine. Man is a cog in the machine, or a product produced by it, or both.
He is subject to forces beyond his control, just as are his fellows to whom he
has become identical. (72)

This analysis harks back to both Marx and Southey, but also intersects
with Mumford’s concept of a megamachine consisting of human compo-
nents (more about the megamachine in Chap. 6).
A fully technological society, Ferkiss feared, would become sensate,
hedonistic, and leisure-oriented—not thoughtful, productive, and high-
minded as so often imagined and affirmed. The importance of the family
would decline; sexual life would become more promiscuous and open;
concepts of male and female would alter and shift; privacy would decline;
alienation would increase; rationality would reign supreme in the work-
place; and personal life would become more individualistic and the will
more irrational (172–3). What he thought or hoped would not occur has,
to large extent: mass culture thanks to electronic media; religion and art
adapted to new technologies; changed concepts of gender; the erasure of
the private sphere; and science essentially inseparable from technological
instruments like the computer modeling it employs. Ferkiss did not rec-
ognize such a reality around him, but saw it as a possibility he wished to
prevent.
Much like Norbert Wiener, Joseph Weizenbaum was a pioneer in
computer science and what would come to be known as artificial intel-
ligence (AI). His computer program ELIZA became famous for its appar-
ent ability to carry on conversations with human interlocutors. Although
Weizenbaum set the stage for subsequent research and development of
AI, he became an outspoken critic of the ills inherent in the computer
revolution. In Computer Power and Human Reason (1976), he asserts the
92 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

differences between machines and human beings, arguing that machines


do not and cannot possess human qualities; moreover, they cannot and
should not replace human beings. Nevertheless, we have turned over “the
processing of information on which decisions must be based to enormous
computer systems,” indulging in “the illusion, and it is often just that, that
[we] … are after all the decision makers” (38). Computer systems actually
imprison us. Such a system only permits “the asking of certain kinds of
questions, … accepts only certain kinds of ‘data,’ and … cannot even in
principle be understood by those who rely on it, such a computing system
has effectively closed many doors that were open before it was installed”
(38). Because machines embody the laws of mathematics and physics, he
points out, we also accord them the authority of a law which must be
obeyed. When the machine works, it is obeying the rules, that is, the law,
and, consequently, cannot be wrong. We, in turn, wrongly conclude that
the machine is then necessarily right.
He flatly rejects the thesis that man is a machine: “computers and men
are not species of the same genus” (203). It is dangerous to confuse the
two and to attribute human thought to machines. He denies as well the
widely held conviction “that there is nothing at all which humans know
that cannot, at least in principle, be somehow made accessible to com-
puters” (207). That notion is patently false, he contends, because so-
called thinking machines never deal with meaning—something peculiar
to human cognition. What is more, our embodiment itself is a condition
of knowing. “No organism that does not have a human body can know
[…] things in the same way humans know them” (209). Only a reduc-
tionist view of the human being as a mere information processor permits
the equation of machines with human beings (cf. 235). What is more,
programmers lose oversight and cannot comprehend computer programs
as they develop and grow more complex. At a certain point, “no one any
longer knows explicitly or understands” a computer’s programs (236).
They are beyond any single person’s control and no longer do what any
one programmer necessarily intended.
Within a few years of Weizenbaum’s analysis, Langdon Winner inves-
tigated the question of Autonomous Technology (1977). He sought “to
indicate that many of our present conceptions about technics are highly
questionable, misleading, and sometimes positively destructive” (306).
He owes a considerable debt to Ellul and concluded, contrary to popular
opinion, that technology is indeed autonomous. Winner challenges fun-
damental assumptions of the dominant narrative—specifically that humans
A COUNTER-NARRATIVE 93

know best what they themselves have made, that the things we make are
under our control, and that technology is essentially neutral, merely a
means to an end, the benefit or harm it brings dependent on how we use it
(25). He takes issue with the premise that technology primarily and char-
acteristically benefits humanity. Like his predecessors, he finds no evidence
that technological change has enhanced “human freedom, dignity, and
well-being” (52). With reference to John Kenneth Galbraith’s The New
Industrial State, Winner argues that “a society propelled by imperatives
of technology is increasingly closed, inertial, inflexible, and isolated from
any true conception of human needs” (105). According to Winner, “effi-
ciency, speed, precise measurement, rationality, productivity, and technical
improvement become ends in themselves applied obsessively to areas of
life in which they would previously have been rejected as inappropriate”
(229). As an end in itself, only technology matters. Its values supplant all
others and distort human judgment.
Wise or unwise use of technology is another illusion Winner dismisses.
Following Ellul, he points out that “technological transformation occurs
prior to any ‘use,’ good or ill, and takes place as a consequence of the con-
stitution and operating design of technological systems” (225). In other
words, how technology is used is predetermined by technology itself.
In accord with the assessments of Wiener and Weizenbaum, Winner also
notes that “technical systems, once built and operating, do not respond
well to human guidance” (227). They have or assume their own trajectory.
“That one employs something at all far outweighs (and often obliterates)
the matter of how one employs it” (320).
In 1982, the philosopher John Searle published a piece in The New York
Review of Books entitled “The Myth of the Computer.” The article exam-
ines “a theory of the mind based on artificial intelligence (AI),” one which
defines minds merely as “computer programs of certain kinds” (http://
www.nybooks.com). According to this theory, human-like minds will
come to exist in machines like computers. Like Weizenbaum, Searle denies
such claims. A computer, he writes,

can simulate the formal properties of the sequence of chemical and electri-
cal phenomena in the production of thirst just as much as it can simulate
the formal properties of anything else—we can simulate thirst just as we
can simulate hurricanes, rainstorms, five-alarm fires, internal combustion
engines, photosynthesis, lactation, or the flow of currency in a depressed
economy. But no one in his right mind thinks that a computer simulation of a
94 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

five-alarm fire will burn down the neighborhood, or that a computer simulation
of an internal combustion engine will power a car or that computer simula-
tions of lactation and photosynthesis will produce milk and sugar.

Searle attacks the persistent notion that humans and the universe are
nothing but machines. For him, the strong AI position is preposterous.
It is a mistake to think that “if a computer can simulate having a cer-
tain mental state then we have the same grounds for supposing it really
has that mental state as we have for supposing that human beings have
that state.” It is a “mythological conception of digital computers,” he
explains. Even so, many continue to credit the illusion and equate the
simulation with the reality of human consciousness.
The title of Stephen Hill’s book The Tragedy of Technology: Human
Liberation versus Domination in the Late Twentieth Century (1988) says
much already about his concerns. Like me, he discusses a dominant
narrative which he calls the “technology text” (9). Using Heidegger’s
concept of enframement, Hill asserts that technology limits “horizons
within which social action is enacted and cultural meanings are con-
structed” (9). In his opinion, culture is now so fully aligned with the
pervasive technological system that non-human meanings have over-
taken and supplanted human meanings. Human points of reference
such as difficulty, difference, imprecision, ambiguity, or error have been
replaced by those of technology such as ease, efficiency, regularity, and
infallibility. Because technology “mediates our life-world experience
according to technological design parameters” (41), it restricts our abil-
ity to see anything outside of the technological framework, severely
limiting choice and freedom.
Although Hill holds out hope for bringing technology back under
human control, the possibility seems unlikely. Like Ellul, he knows “choice
is only likely to be practical within the constraints that are imposed by the
technical frame that already exists, and upon which contemporary society
depends” (235). In a society enframed and governed by technology which
only moves into the future, never into the past, we lose “a consciousness
of the continuity of human purpose, and a consistent morality and wis-
dom” (238). Only “what is practical within constrained technical param-
eters … rather than … that which is ‘inefficiently’ human” matters (238).
As a result, human interests and concerns go begging.
The educator and media critic Neil Postman dispelled the pretense
that one technology—television—could educate, democratize, inform,
A COUNTER-NARRATIVE 95

and otherwise improve us in Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985). As he


demonstrates, that technology turns everything it touches into entertain-
ment. TV has imposed its particular values on everything from politics
and religion to personality and morality, placing emphasis on images and
entertainment while de-emphasizing serious thought and discourse. In
1993, he coined a new term with the title of his book Technopoly: The
Surrender of Culture to Technology. Like other dissenters, he rejects the
notion of neutral technology—that its “good or harm depends on the uses
made of it”—because its use is “largely determined by the structure of the
technology itself” (7). According to Postman, technology redefines con-
cepts like freedom, truth, intelligence, fact, wisdom, memory, and history
(8), but the new meanings have little to do with those of the past.
A combination of technology and monopoly, the term Technopoly means
“totalitarian technocracy” (48), in the sense that technology monopolizes
culture, shapes society after its own image, and requires human beings
first to accept and then adapt themselves to their new master. As he
argues, “freedom, creativity, and peace of mind” (71) have not resulted
from technology. Nor has technology provided any “clear direction and
humane purpose” (72). Although technological culture values and insists
on efficiency, he considers it usually irrelevant “in education, law, family
life, and problems of personal maladies” (88). Postman, moreover, finds
no correlation between “technological innovation” and “human prog-
ress” (117). Technology has not ended hate and war, nor has it established
equality and prosperity for all.
In a world where the computer stands in the center of existence, he
notes, it “redefines humans as ‘information processors’ and nature itself as
information to be processed. The fundamental metaphorical message of
the computer,” Postman summarizes, is that we are no different from com-
puters, from “thinking machines” (111). For this reason, he concludes,
“the computer is the quintessential, incomparable, near-perfect machine
for Technopoly. It subordinates the claims of our nature, our biology, our
emotions, our spirituality” (111). In Technopoly, technology holds us
firmly in its grasp. It monopolizes human thought and activity.
In the course of the twentieth century, the computer and its networks
came more and more into focus as something especially problematic. Sven
Birkerts’ 1994 book The Gutenberg Elegies traces and laments the demise
of reading and literacy, and the ability to understand complex language
and thought, in the digital age. He contrasts the slower pace required for
reading comprehension, what he calls “deep time,” with the speed and
96 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

superficiality dictated by technology. Technology aims to make everything


easier and more convenient, but reading is difficult, requires effort, and
takes time—time no one has time for. Reading would also mean taking
time away from our digital distractions for which we have all the time in
the world. “Where the electronic impulse rules,” he writes, “the experience
of deep time is impossible. No deep time, no resonance; no resonance, no
wisdom” (76). Our technology fails after all to make us more intelligent.
While proponents of electronic technologies and digital media praise
the “connectedness” they offer, Birkerts detects instead “a process of
social collectivization” (130). Such collectivization eliminates diversity and
standardizes behaviors and beliefs. We are “captive in our [technological]
webs” which implicate us in “the unitary life” (131). In his view, the con-
nectedness produced by digital technologies, otherwise so highly prized,
restricts rather than expands our horizons. “To embrace the microchip
and all its magic would be to close myself off from a great many habits
and attitudes, ones that define me to myself,” he observes (213). Instead
of technological enhancement, he discerns the “steady erosion of human
presence, both of the authority of the individual and, in ways impossible
to prove, of the species itself” (228). The purported benefits of technology
dissolve.
In 1999, Ursula Franklin directed attention to the Reality of Technology.
Given the multiplication and implementation of machines in all areas of
existence, she suggested thinking seriously about “machine population
control” (25). Even so, she realized the heretical nature of such a challenge
to the technological order: “one may question the value of people …,
but not the fundamental values of technologies and their products” (26).
Contrary to what most people believe, she boldly declares that “many
technological systems, when examined for context and overall design, …
[are] basically anti-people. People are seen as sources of problems while
technology is seen as a source of solutions” (71). For her, too, technol-
ogy has become an end in itself. “The spread of technology,” she writes,
“has resulted in a web of infrastructures serving primarily the growth and
advancement of technology” (73).
Like other authors of the counter-narrative, she has determined that
“most people live and work under conditions that are not structured for
their well-being, but for the well-being of technology” (84). As a result,
technology proves at least as harmful as it is beneficial. The logic of tech-
nology, she contends, overpowers and displaces human-centered “types
of social logic, such as the logic of compassion or the logic of obligation,
A COUNTER-NARRATIVE 97

the logic of ecological survival or the logic of linkages to nature” (92).


Technology erodes ways of thinking and acting which were once not only
important, but necessary. It erases moral responsibility for one another
and the world.
With The Culture of Cynicism (1994), Richard Stivers first laid out his
criticisms of technology. In Technology as Magic (1999), he developed fur-
ther the ideas he launched in his earlier study. According to him, “our expec-
tations for technology have become magical and our use of it is increasingly
irrational” (1). In consequence, we return to a world of fantasy where super-
human and supernatural forces transform the world into a paradise. It is
“not about the past nor the future … but about an eternal and perfect pres-
ent that we can construct” (41). This myth of non-transcendent transcen-
dence tells of a golden age in the here and now, where humanity can enjoy
“optimum health and happiness” (41), thanks to the magic of technology.
Unfortunately, the technological utopia is an illusion. The reality—a world
of data, measurement, and statistical analysis—reconstitutes the individual
“in terms of quantities” (104) and then “the individual vanishes” (105).
Technological failure figures prominently in Stivers’ account, as tech-
nology creates rather than solves problems. Instead of the promised health
and happiness, it causes distress and even makes us physically and psycho-
logically ill as it “increases the tempo of life,” “objectifies human needs
… and human ability,” and engenders “meaninglessness” (167). Because
technology mediates reality so completely, it “causes us to lose contact”
with it (202). As technology separates us from reality, we experience a
sense of malaise, and irrationality finds opportunity to take hold and grow.
In Meaning in Technology (1999), Arnold Pacey also challenged the
veracity of technological idealism. “When engineers and scientists turn
from talk of discovery and creativity which always commands respect, and
instead make claims about how society will benefit and how life will change
for everyone,” he reports, “feelings of skepticism, cynicism and even
disgust at the complacency of such claims overwhelm my initial curiosity
and interest” (105–6). He questions “the currently dominant paradigm”
of blind affirmation which “aims to remake nature and compel us to live
entirely in a technical milieu” (146). Instead of adding a sense of worth
to human existence, technology “makes people seem dispensable” (148).
They lose any inherent value. Indeed, the goal of an “ultimate world with-
out people,” he contends, is the “paradigm or model for much thinking
in technology” (167). Far from promoting humanity, technology always
takes precedence, even to the extent that humanity vanishes.
98 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

PROTEST IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM


Following in the footsteps of Weizenbaum, Hubert Dreyfus first con-
tested our notions of technological ability with What Computers Can’t Do
(1972). In On the Internet (2001), he turned his attention to a “new type
of technological innovation; one that brings out the very essence of tech-
nology” (1). As he rightly reports, proponents praise this technology as
the path to “a new and more fulfilling form of life” (2). Dreyfus cites sur-
veys conducted by Carnegie-Mellon and Stanford University researchers
which indicate the contrary, however: people using the World Wide Web
“found themselves feeling isolated and depressed” (2). The Internet now
epitomizes technological promise, but it fails to make good on its promise
of economic prosperity, education for the masses, connection with all of
reality, and new meaning for our lives (2). Instead of enhancement, digital
existence threatens us with a loss of “relevance, skill, reality, and meaning”
(7). As Dreyfus discovered and reveals, the Internet erases the distinction
between “the significant and the insignificant,” between the relevant and
the irrelevant; “everything becomes equally interesting and equally bor-
ing,” equally trivial and equally important (83). He concludes that the
Net makes “our lives worse rather than better” (102).
Like Stivers, Dreyfus discerns a separation from reality and loss of
meaning, when technology thoroughly mediates experience. Contrary to
all assertions that the new digital media enrich us individually and socially,
“the Net diminishes one’s involvement in the physical and social world,”
he argues. “This, in turn, diminishes one’s sense of reality and of the
meaning in one’s life. Indeed, it seems that the more we use the Net, the
more it will tend to draw us into the unreal, lonely, and meaningless world
of those who want to flee all the ills that the flesh is heir to” (102–3).
As for technological utopian visions of better democracy, life online is
“a nowhere place for anonymous nowhere people” and as such “danger-
ously dystopian” (104). While he acknowledges the usefulness of the Net,
he recognizes “its tendency to offer the worst of a series of asymmetric
trade-offs: economy over efficacy in education, the virtual over the real
in our relation to things and people, and anonymity over commitment in
our lives” (106). With an evaporation of commitment, any real moral life
becomes impossible, because other human beings hardly matter.
In The Enchantments of Technology (2005), Lee Worth Bailey compares
our “optimism about technological progress” to a magic spell under which
we have fallen. Enthusiasm for technological progress, he asserts, is “a
A COUNTER-NARRATIVE 99

compelling mystique, not a rational framework” (39). He, too, identifies


a myth, “the myth of technological rule” which “constantly regenerates
the illusion that anything is possible” (39). The reality is radically differ-
ent: technology imposes limits and restricts us. He disputes “the positive
impact of new inventions, inevitable progress, and perfectibility through
education,” calling those views “dogmas of technological utopia” (110).
Probably the most worrisome feature brought to light by Bailey is the
great commitment to strong AI, robots, androids, and cyber-organisms.
As he points out, the quest to replace ourselves with machines reveals “the
nihilistic strain of ultimate meaninglessness in techno-enthusiasm” (189).
It is the absurd desire for self-extermination.
Mark Bauerlein’s irritation is more than apparent in the title of his
2008 book The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young
Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future. He bases his analysis on “empiri-
cal evidence” and is interested in one thing, “the intellectual condition
of young Americans” (7). As everyone now acknowledges, today’s youth
have a “different social life and a different mental life” (10)—one bred
and fed by technology. According to Bauerlein, “the fulsome descriptions
of digital empowerment, global awareness, and virtual communities” do
not tally with reality (10). From the available research, he learned that
“instead of opening young American minds to the stores of civilization
and science and politics, technology has contracted their horizon to them-
selves, to the social scene around them” (10). The latest technologies
fail to deliver the expected improvements. According to a Pew Research
nationwide survey quoted by Bauerlein, “the coaxial and digital revolu-
tions and attendant changes in news audience behaviors had little impact
on how much Americans know about national and international affairs”
(107–108). Although there is a surfeit of information available online for
any young (or old) persons to find and use, “the Web hasn’t made them
better writers and readers, sharper interpreters and more discerning crit-
ics, more knowledgeable citizens and tasteful consumers” (110). On the
contrary, web usage contributes to anti-intellectual attitudes and activities
(115). He determined that, at least for young people, the world of digi-
tal technology produces a “self-centered, present-oriented, anti-tradition,
knowledge-indifferent” individualist (173).
Various authors contributed to The Myths of Technology (2009, edited
by Judith Burnet, Peter Senker, and Kathy Walker), where they debunk
several beliefs widely held today. They use the word myth to mean fan-
tasy and illusion. Among the myths or subsets of myths identified there,
100 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

they include the following: technology will solve crime; it will improve
education; it will promote equality; and it will solve whatever prob-
lems technology itself creates. Alvaro De Miranda, for example, exam-
ines governmental policies and reports of the European Union, the G-1
nations, and the USA which promise socioeconomic equality thanks to
Information Communication Technologies. He found “no evidence that
ICTs will make any contribution to closing the socio-economic divide”
(36). Richard Sharpe, in turn, refutes the “perpetual myth of the open
and free Internet” (49) and the idea of the Internet as “a common neutral
platform on which ideas can flourish” (49). As he reveals, the Internet is
hardly neutral and ideas do not flourish there, because certain individuals
and corporations have proprietary rights to the technology in question,
and their search engines determine what information even makes it onto
the first page of any Internet search, beyond which most people rarely ven-
ture. The Internet search engines and sites are likewise hardly “free,” since
“Yahoo, Google, and others charge to place certain sources of information
higher than others” (51). Internet users, he points out, have “the false
impression of the consumption of free goods and services in a networked
world of equal power” (52). Other contributors to the volume contradict
claims that Closed Circuit Television helps fight crime or that posthuman
configurations take human existence to a better, higher level.
Nicholas Carr has been writing about technology for several years, most
recently in The Glass Cage: Automation and Us (2014). In that book, he
investigates the effects of turning more, even everything, over to algo-
rithms, computers, and robots. Carr documents what we lose by handing
our work over to machines and continues an analysis begun in The Shallows:
What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (2010). That book created quite
a stir when it was first published, and I concentrate on it here. Basing his
argument on published data from extensive research, much as Bauerlein
did, Carr negates assertions that computers and the Internet have helped
make us more intelligent and creative. According to Carr, that technologi-
cal combination restructures our brains and leaves us with devolved cogni-
tive abilities, if not outright impairment. When we turn over certain mental
tasks to machines, he determined, we give up invaluable mental skills. (For
an analysis similar to Carr’s, see Digitale Demenz [Digital Dementia, 2012]
by the German brain researcher Martin Spitzer.)
Like Bauerlein and Birkerts, Carr contrasts online activity with “the
book’s ethic of deep, attentive reading” (71). The superficial, shallow
reading done online drastically changes how we read and think, and does
A COUNTER-NARRATIVE 101

more to empty than fill the mind. Whereas the medium of the book focuses
attention, the Internet scatters it; it “fragments content and disrupts our
concentration” (91). Rather than enrich us, the Internet impoverishes us.
It actually represents “a technology of forgetfulness” (192). The more we
rely on the Web with its “capacious and easily searchable artificial mem-
ory,” the less we need to remember and the less we need any memory—
the very foundation of knowledge and intelligence (194). Above all, Carr
warns, “the great danger we face as we become more intimately involved
with our computers … is that we’ll begin to lose our humanness, to sacri-
fice the very qualities that separate us from machines” (207).
A pioneer of virtual reality, Jaron Lanier published You Are Not a
Gadget: A Manifesto in 2010. Like Wiener and Weizenbaum, he has an
expert’s knowledge of technology and takes issue with a number of incor-
rect assumptions. For example, the dominant narrative tells us that tech-
nology increases our freedom and enhances our humanity. He exposes
a world not of independence, but of technological confinement. “The
interlocked software designs of the internet” have now become so fixed
and determinative, he writes, “that we might never be able to fully get rid
of them, or even remember that things could have been different” (13).
Lanier considers the hopes and dreams of people like John von
Neumann, Ray Kurzweil, and Marvin Minsky pure “fantasy” (24). As
Lanier points out, their plan for a future human–machine civilization,
where our biology merges with our technology, makes people obsolete
(27). In such a world, the human element will not survive. He rejects as
well “a new philosophy: that the computer is evolving into a life-form that
can understand people better than people can understand themselves”
(28). In his view, technological superiority is a false premise.
He was one of many who hoped “that a connected world would cre-
ate more opportunities for personal advancement for everyone” (81). Such
digital idealism, he came to realize, has not produced a wonderful world of
opportunity, where anyone who wants it can find self-fulfillment, prosperity,
and well-being (cf. 88–9). Although he has hope that the digital revolution
can still manage somehow to enhance our humanity (108), most of his book
shows how such technology has diminished us. In his experience, “people
have often respected bits [i.e., binary digits] too much, resulting in a creep-
ing degradation of their own qualities as human beings” (119). Especially
incisive is Lanier’s conclusion that digital culture is “comprised of wave after
wave of juvenilia” (182). Advanced technology paradoxically nurtures imma-
turity. “At the end of the road of the pursuit of technological sophistication
102 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

appears to lie a playhouse in which humankind regresses to nursery school”


(182). Lanier’s indictment flatly dismisses any claim to progress.
Sherry Turkle has written several books about technology. Most signifi-
cant are The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit (1984), Life on
the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (1995), and Alone Together:
Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (2011). As
she herself reports, the first book was “full of hope and optimism” and
“focused on how evocative computers fostered new reflection about the
self” (Alone xi). In similar fashion, the second offered “a positive view of
new opportunities for exploring identity online” (xi). Turkle has, since,
come to different insights and conclusions. In her recent work, she exam-
ines lives now connected by technological devices such as cell phones and
personal computers with programs for chatting, emailing, texting, and
tweeting. She is especially disconcerted by what she calls “the robotic
moment” and a growing preference for robots rather than humans. Turkle
also gives voice to what many of us have seen or sensed: as technology
connects us to, it also separates us from one another. Busy with our smart
phones, we may physically be together, but are in all other respects apart
from one another; present, but absent at the same time.
Turkle interprets the new “hope in robots” as an expression of “an
enduring technological optimism” (Alone 11). She moreover discerns a
“triumphalist narrative of the Web [which] is the reassuring story that
people want to hear and that technologists want to tell. But the heroic
story is not the whole story” (18). In addition, she identifies a “consistent
narrative” about sociable robots (115). As she discovered, we readily, but
mistakenly, attribute human behavior, thought, and emotion to robotic
machines. We then accept them as equals, even as our betters, since
we believe they are more reliable and trustworthy than human beings.
However, at the heart of the narrative lies the dishonest and deceptive
belief that robots think, feel, and understand as human beings do. She
calls the story “a happy fantasy of security, intellectual companionship, and
nurturing connection” (142) and asks us to reconsider. “If we are honest
with ourselves about what machines care about,” she writes, “we must
accept their ultimate indifference” (133).
What our use of social media and sociable robots has enabled is not more
and better relationships with others, but “relationships with less” (Alone
154). As several others have done, Turkle cites research which has found
Americans “increasingly insecure, isolated, and lonely” (157) in spite of all
the contact and connection social media offer. Online benefits become
A COUNTER-NARRATIVE 103

deficits. All these technologies do not so much improve and enhance as


reduce us. In the triumphalist narrative, she notes, “every new technologi-
cal affordance meets an opportunity, never a vulnerability, never an anxi-
ety” (242). In sum, Turkle compares our dependence on technology to
an addiction “to the habits of mind that technology allows us to practice”
(288). In other words, technology circumscribes and prescribes an existence
we refuse to do without.
F.  Allen Hanson addresses a range of recent technological innova-
tions from AI to DNA identification, life online, and bio-medical tech-
nology in Technology and Cultural Tectonics (2013). In particular, he
exposes the fragmentation such technologies cause: “the wholeness or
integrity of persons and things fades as they come to be known and
treated in terms of those particular parts that are revealed and subject to
manipulation by technology” (2). While the narrative of technological
enthusiasm proclaims enrichment, Hanson speaks of “impoverishment”
(39). Technology, he writes, adversely alters and redefines the “nature
of causality, standards of justice and fairness, and the conceptualization
of nonexistence” (61). So, for example, the term “wrongful death” has
given way paradoxically to the notion of “wrongful birth” and “wrong-
ful life,” when a child is born whom parents would have aborted for
one reason or another. So, too, life-support machines, feeding tubes,
ventilators, and other life-sustaining technologies blur the distinction
between living and non-living. The same holds for frozen embryos—
unborn, they linger in a limbo somewhere between non-existence and
existence.
Because of technological fragmentation, parts and not the whole acquire
undue significance, because they are often all we now can see. As a result,
the individual “as an integral coherent, unified, self-sufficient unit is disap-
pearing” (148). With DNA, fingerprints, multiple online personas, artifi-
cial reproductive procedures, CAT scans, and MRIs, technology “bypasses
whole persons and pares them down to parts” (153). The notion that
technology just helps us is, in his estimation, “an anemic view” (154). It
radically alters our attitudes and behaviors.
A contributing editor at The New Republic, Evgeny Morozov has
recently emerged as a strident critic of technology. He first broached the
topic with The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom (2011).
His second book, To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological
Solutionism, appeared in 2013 and is the volume I include for discussion
here. For Morozov, the problem is an exaggerated faith in technology and
104 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

an overdependence on a technological system. According to him, we are


infatuated with technology and expect from it a perfect world, a “silicon
Eden” (xiv). Our “quest for technological perfection” (xiv) presents a real
danger, however. “Imperfection, ambiguity, opacity, disorder, and the
opportunity to err, to sin, to do the wrong thing: all of these are consti-
tutive of human freedom,” he asserts, “and any concentrated attempt to
root them out will root out that freedom as well” (xiv). Such qualities and
traits as he lists here are also characteristic of being human.
Like Carr and Lanier, Morozov disputes the “putative values of the
Internet” such as openness, participation, and collaboration (29). He
contests in particular what he calls “Internet centrism,” a belief that the
Internet is objective and neutral, free and open, transparent and egalitar-
ian. As he argues, these claims are fallacious. An Internet solution to prob-
lems in and with the political system is likewise specious. On the Internet,
he explains, “deliberation and debate are silenced; technocrats and admin-
istrators are given free reign; deeply political, life-altering issues are recast
as matters of improving efficiency” (134). Technological enthusiasm tells
us that the opinion of the people, of the masses, of “the crowd in the
cloud” is evidence of democracy at work. But, he points out, it is not so
much the people as the algorithms and the executives of the companies
that have them designed and then run them that are really in charge.
When technology removes, or is believed to remove, necessity, limits,
imperfections, and problems, we “shrink the space in which our humanity
can emerge” (255). Technology has not provided solutions we actually
need, but instead created problems we can do without.
Besides the many authors treated here, a host of others have con-
tributed to the narrative of dissent. Among them, for example, Stephen
Talbott’s The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines
in Our Midst (1995) and Devices of the Soul: Battling for Our Selves in
an Age of Machines (2007), Edward Tenner’s Why Things Bite Back:
Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences (1997), Todd
Oppenheimer’s The Flickering Mind: Saving Education from the False
Promise of Technology (2003), Bill McKibben’s Enough: Staying Human
in an Engineered Age (2003), or James Howard Kunstler’s Too Much
Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation (2012)
have also revealed the trouble with our technological condition. And the
list continues to grow. Unfortunately, space does not permit a discussion
of all of their work.
A COUNTER-NARRATIVE 105

THE MYTH, DEMYTHOLOGIZED


Simply stated, the counter-narrative demythologizes. It exposes the dark
side of technology which, inseparable from the bright side, dims enthu-
siasm and neutralizes optimism. The authors of this narrative deny the
validity of technological idealism. They reject as well its ability to unite
humanity and give meaning to life. Because technological idealism is in
their view utopian, they declare that narrative unrealistic, contrary to fact,
and illusory. No technological paradise has yet or ever will come into exis-
tence, they argue. It is, as the word “utopia” indicates, an unattainable
“no-place.” What is more, such a world and existence characterized and
governed by technology can only be a dystopia.
As expressed in the counter-narrative, our individual, seemingly innoc-
uous and beneficial technologies combine to form a vast technological sys-
tem which we cannot control, but which instead controls us. Its incursion
is subtle, but profound. It is autonomous, ungovernable, totalitarian, and
hegemonic. As such, it robs human beings of their autonomy. It is never
neutral, but intrinsically and inescapably comprises both good and ill, and
is always biased in favor of itself. Because of our near complete depen-
dence on technology, we have come to serve and obey it, often willingly
and often unwittingly. The structures and values of technology—which
this narrative tells us are at odds with those of the human being—gov-
ern and transform our thoughts and behaviors. Technology is exposed
as a means of organization and instrumentation, especially of power and
domination over both nature and human beings. Technology does not
then free us from our human limitations, but limits us to its parameters.
It alters us and remakes us in its mechanistic (or digital) image. In the
event, we become a function of the technology we use, are subjugated
and dehumanized by it. Thanks to technology, we are not enhanced, but
diminished as human beings. Whereas technological idealism approvingly
conceives of the human being as machine, the counter-narrative unequiv-
ocally rejects such an equation.
While acknowledging the many benefits of technological innovation, the
authors of the counter-narrative deny that humanity is more content, more
peaceful, or more fortunate thanks to technological advance. Technology
has not solved our problems or cured our woes. Its purported blessings
are simultaneously curses. The automobile, for example, has radically
transformed both our physical and social landscapes, resulting in sprawl,
106 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

degraded environments, even new forms of social stratification and segre-


gation. The cell phone and online social networks have likewise altered and
impaired how we communicate with and relate to each other. Technology
has created jobs for many, but eliminated those of many more. Thanks to
technology, some have prospered and grown ever wealthier, while others
sink into poverty. Thanks to technology, harvests have increased, but reli-
ance on fossil fuels for machinery as well as fertilizers and chemicals in pest
and weed control has destructive ecological and environmental repercus-
sions. So, too, antibiotics have saved countless lives, but those same miracle
drugs spawn killer strains of antibiotic-resistant diseases. We live healthier
and longer, but are not demonstrably happier. On balance, we have lost
more than we have gained with technology.
Nor has technology made us better human beings. On the contrary, we
remain greedy, selfish, prejudiced, wasteful, needy, and belligerent. It has
not made us more intelligent. On the contrary, we have turned much of
our thinking and decision making over to our machines and intend to do
so even more. Technology has not freed us from burdensome labor to lead
lives on a higher plane, where we fulfill our artistic, creative, intellectual,
and spiritual potential. On the contrary, we have as it were regressed and,
rather than content ourselves, discontent ourselves with trivial distrac-
tions. It has not met all our needs or ushered in a new Golden Age. On
the contrary, we continue to suffer want, especially for more technology.
In spite of all our technology, peace and harmony continue to elude us.
Typically understood as the means to achieve specific ends, technology
has ultimately erased the distinction. In most, if not all cases, a promised
glorious end justifies any and all means, but the means and end blend
and blur into one. Technology has become an end, the end, in itself. It is
accepted and adopted without question, simply because technology is in
and of itself deemed indispensable and absolutely necessary. We have come
to regard the norms of technology—utility, efficiency, optimization—as
intrinsically good, regardless of whether they actually are. Self-legitimating,
autonomous technology reinforces itself, charting its own path and trajec-
tory without regard to human interests. Technology has no obligation
other than to itself.
Whereas technological idealism desires the transcendence of limits, the
counter-narrative emphasizes the need for limits and restraint, for the abil-
ity to reject technological advance and expansion, to do without certain
forms of technology when necessary, but especially to extract ourselves
from a totalizing technological order governing all existence. One society or
A COUNTER-NARRATIVE 107

culture—the Amish—still makes decisions about whether or not to accept,


adopt, and use technology. They carefully evaluate the potential impact
of a technology on their community, before they permit its use (Nye,
Technology Matters 18). Although they are able to do so and prohibit use
if necessary, the broader culture is not. Granted, there are restrictions of
sorts for technologies like human cloning and stem-cell research in the
USA or for genetically modified organisms in European countries, but
those regulations cannot long stand against the pressure to take full advan-
tage of technological possibility. Technology tolerates no limitation of its
own expansion and advance. Even though an imposition of limits is criti-
cally needed, technology simply continues to increase.
Thinking that once we have acquired technology we possess it and that,
possessing it, we have its power, we mistakenly believe we also have power
over it. In possessing technology, however, we have instead been pos-
sessed by it, and it has power over us. Because technology now defines
and determines the modalities of our existence, it is now all but impossible
to break away or free ourselves from it in any real sense. For example,
we cannot accept a world without electricity, without central heating and
cooling, without automobiles and airplanes, without factory-farm food, or
without computers and smart phones. Individuals may think they can do
without or give up a particular technology—the television, the Internet,
or the cell phone—but they represent a minority, and such exceptions
only prove the rule. The majority remains contentedly immersed in the
overarching technological system.
Whatever control we have over our technology is minimal at best. We
use technology as it is designed to be used. Deviation is essentially impos-
sible. Hammers hammer, saws saw, automobiles hurtle down highways,
computers compute. Cell phones, Google, and Facebook have predeter-
mined and pre-structured parameters for their use. Technology prescribes
and breeds compliance to control, authority, and conformity. Whatever
choices we have occur within the boundaries technology sets. We adapt
and adjust ourselves to the technology, not the other way round. The
great freedom technology is always supposed to afford us dissolves in the
mists of fantasy.
From the engineering of the environment and the programming of
machines, we accept and then expect the engineering of society and the
programming of people. When human beings accept the myth of tech-
nological idealism, that technology is more efficient, more reliable, more
powerful, and simply better than they are, they deny and reject themselves.
108 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

The counter-narrative objects to such a mindset as anti-human. The desire


for strong AI, robots, and cyber-organisms conceals an intrinsic hostility
toward the human. A project to replace ourselves with machines repre-
sents an absurd drive toward self-extinction. The cyborg or android is not
the next stage of evolution; it is a denial of our humanity and an inten-
tional negation of our existence as a species.

AMBIVALENCE
At this point, readers might want to assert that there are more than two
main narratives about technology, that there is a narrative of ambivalence
or even indecision. To ambivalence here, I attach the sense of contradic-
tion as well. A certain amount of contradiction certainly appears in both
the dominant and the counter narratives. While many of the critics cited
here reserve optimism for bringing technology under human control and
direction, some of the technological enthusiasts discussed in the previous
chapter acknowledged inherent flaws in the nature of technology. For the
technological enthusiast, however, the virtues of technology always out-
weigh the vices. The ambivalent person, in comparison, hopes that the
vices can be overcome so that the virtues can be enjoyed. Ambivalence
reflects a desire to reconcile technology and humanity, but the reconcili-
ation invariably means concessions to technology in favor of technology.
Among the ambivalent are also the apathetic. They, too, align in the end
with the dominant narrative. There are many who now think that technol-
ogy does more harm than good, but as it is impossible to change its course
or curb its power and reach, we might as well just accept it. These voices
are essentially silent. Their position is one of passivity, resignation, and
acceptance of the status quo. Although aware of undeniable technological
ills, the apathetic make do, because technology is, they believe, here and
here to stay. There is nothing anyone can do to change it. This attitude is
a fatalistic response to technological dominion.
At the heart of the ambivalence lies a belief that technology is neutral,
neither good nor evil. Rather, it all depends on how it is used. Carlyle,
for example, thought that “properly reemployed,” technology would
serve “not just material improvement but also spiritual uplift” (Segal,
Technological Utopianism 82). Some authors in this category actually
delineate the problematic aspects of technology, even offer devastating cri-
tiques, but in the end reserve hope for its positive potential. As previously
noted, Marx firmly believed that technology would ultimately liberate
A COUNTER-NARRATIVE 109

humanity. Even Mumford thought technology could again be mastered


by human beings and employed for human purposes. Heidegger remains
ambivalent in another way. He eliminates any possibility of getting to the
heart of the matter, since “the essence of technology is in a lofty sense
ambiguous” (33). Such ambiguity prevents any decision about any action.
Although Carson condemned the use of synthetic chemical poisons for
agriculture, she nonetheless expected “wholly new concepts of insect con-
trol” to become a reality someday thanks to “the miracles of electronics”
(288). And, for Ferkiss, the only salvation of the human race was “the
creation of a technological man” (202). Such a person would understand
and better assimilate technology to avoid potential problems.
Turkle’s ambivalence appears in the language she uses. Many of her
sentences are couched in the subjunctive or conditional mood: something
might or could be the case. In addition, she poses a great many questions
which she leaves unanswered: what “boundaries are worth maintaining?”
(Alone Together 135); “Does the extent to which we are machines mark
the limit of our communion with machines? Is this knowledge taboo? Is
it harmful?” (139). Hanson’s critique turns contradictory as well. After
exposing the ills of contemporary technological developments, he never-
theless asserts at the end of his analysis that a redefinition of the relation
between the human and non-human “far from diminishing our humanity,
expands it to a new stage of human and cultural evolution” (155). Even
Morozov falls into the ambivalent and contradictory category. In spite of
his great animus toward “technological solutionism,” he thinks “technol-
ogy can be used to solve some of the thorny problems triggered by the
increasingly digitized and networked status of our information infrastruc-
tures” (77). In other words, he himself subscribes to the technological
solutionism he condemns.
More than anything else, this ambivalence reflects a desire to do some-
thing about the problem of technology. In the face of technological domi-
nation, many, if not most authors feel an acute need to reform the role
of technology in our lives, to make informed decisions about its adop-
tion and application, and to limit its extension and cultural authority. It is
a desire somehow to accomplish concrete change. Postman asserted the
need for a “transcendent narrative” with transcendent values (Building a
Bridge 103, 109) as the means to free ourselves from a totalizing tech-
nological system and placed his hope in a revitalized humanism. Ellul,
in contrast, saw no human way to liberate ourselves and escape from an
all-encompassing, all-controlling technological order. Only a belief in a
110 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

transcendent God, he reasoned, allows humanity to set foot outside the


otherwise insuperable technological framework and worldview (e.g., see
his Ethics of Freedom, page 119). Only when we are able to recognize our
situation as conditioned, determined, and dominated by technology, he
argued, is it possible to question it. The question is a challenge and the
first step toward freedom.

BLASPHEMY
If we wish to determine what a particular person or society holds dear or
sacred and values above all else, we need only identify what most occupies
his or her time and attention. There can be no doubt that technology
with all its expressions, but especially the personal computer, smart phone,
and Internet, has captivated us and even become something sacrosanct.
Citizens of the technological society cannot, must not, and dare not criti-
cize technology which by definition is its very foundation. Technology is
its most important and revered possession, its summum bonum, indeed, its
only and most sacred reality. To pass judgment would be to blaspheme.
Because technology is so pervasive, so useful, so amazing, so fascinat-
ing, and so treasured, any criticism, any dissenting point of view, is exceed-
ingly hard to permit and accept, if at all. Because technological idealism
operates as the dominant narrative, as the myth which organizes and uni-
fies society and provides cultural meaning, the counter-narrative is tanta-
mount to heresy or worse, sacrilege. When someone attacks the dominant,
authoritative myth, she or he violates deeply held convictions. He or she
runs the risk of scorn and condemnation. Any objection to technology is
perceived as aberrant. Although not discredited, the counter-narrative is
nonetheless objectionable and readily dismissed. It is a message no one
really wishes to hear. Although new publications bolster the counter-
narrative, technological idealism continues to rule the day.
CHAPTER 5

Literary Narratives

apò mēkhanē΄s theós


better known as deus ex machina or “god from the machine”
(ancient Greek theatrical device)

FIRST THOUGHTS
This chapter offers a survey of literary engagements with technology.
Selection was necessary and invariably omits stories some readers might
prefer to have seen included. The choices are, I hope, representative and
illustrative of literary milestones from different times and cultures. While a
few of the texts do not appear to deal with technology per se, they never-
theless reveal the decisive role of technology in the background of related
events. The emphasis here falls less on critical analysis of each text—which
extends far beyond the scope of this chapter—than on the presentation of
those texts and their contents with additional, albeit limited commentary.
Chapters 6 and 7 are devoted exclusively to the critical interpretation of
two particular stories—Faust and Frankenstein—because they hold such
key positions in the literary tradition of works about technology.
Literary narratives (or fiction) about technology have a long and equivo-
cal trajectory, reflecting our own ambivalent relationship to it. Cautionary
tales have been with us since the myths of Prometheus, Icarus, and Babel.
Such narratives have been especially concerned with the disastrous effects
and consequences of technology. Often, this type of story has been one

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 111


J.M. van der Laan, Narratives of Technology,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43706-8_5
112 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

of apprehension. The public reaction to the new technologies of the


nineteenth century—mechanized industry, but especially the railroad—
was initially negative as Railroad Crossing Attendant Thiel (in German,
Bahnwärter Thiel, 1888), a novella by Gerhard Hauptmann, or The Octopus
(1901), a novel by Frank Norris, reveal. They saw the railroad as disruptive
and destructive. But the pendulum swings, and attitudes change. Before
long, the majority had adjusted to, accepted, and embraced the no longer
new technology. By the time Wilbert Awdry wrote about Thomas the Tank
Engine (the second book in his Railway Series) in 1946, the railroad and
locomotive had altogether ceased to be seen as a threat. With respect to
technology, perceptions and judgments vary widely. Some authors cel-
ebrate technological promise and potential, but, more often, the literary
narratives warn of danger.
According to Harro Segeberg, authors of imaginative literature gener-
ally felt menaced by technology and for that reason either ignored it or
passed judgment on it (“Literaturwissenschaft” 13). As he points out,
technology became a theme more common in literature only after the
steam engine revolutionized transportation. The attitudes expressed in the
literature were both positive and negative, optimistic and pessimistic—in
a word, diffuse (21). Scholars in turn paid relatively little attention to tech-
nology in literature until fairly recently. For example, the scholarly journal
Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology was only
founded in 1993. Although it includes articles about literature and tech-
nology, a review of the contents over the course of publication reveals
that only a few such articles have appeared and that many are related to
science fiction.
Among the first to undertake a concerted exploration of literature and
technology in relation to each other was Wylie Sypher. He investigated
“the effects of technology” on our plays, novels, and verse (12), rather
than technology as a literary topic. In his view, literature itself became
technical over the course of the nineteenth and into the twentieth century.
As he explains, many writers such as Paul Valéry, James Joyce, or Stéphane
Mallarmé wanted their works to be scientific and technical. Others like
Honoré de Balzac, Charles Baudelaire, Émile Zola, and Gustave Flaubert
regarded writing as a mechanism. For them and also for Ezra Pound,
Alfred Lord Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, Arthur Rimbaud, and
Algernon Charles Swinburne, “vocabulary itself became a machine, a con-
trivance as artificial as any apparatus invented for manufacture and one
to be exploited in the interests of a dubious creed of productivity” (66).
LITERARY NARRATIVES 113

Sypher discovered a mechanistic view of language, mechanistic structures


in the language, and a mechanistic style of writing as well. While he was
concerned with such matters, I am interested instead in works of literary
imagination where technology is a, if not the, theme.
Herbert Sussman, Howard Segal, David Nye, Nicholas Daly, Alex
Goody, and others have dealt with various literary treatments of technol-
ogy. Sussman, for instance, found stories of both technological accep-
tance and rejection by Charles Dickens, H.G. Wells, and Rudyard Kipling.
Segal investigated stories of technological utopias in American literature
between 1883 and 1933. Nye, in turn, documented negative represen-
tations of technology in William Faulkner’s Light in August (1932),
Sherwood Anderson’s Beyond Desire (1933), Edward Abbey’s The Monkey
Wrench Gang (1975), and Louise Erdrich’s Tracks (1988). These works
portray the deleterious effects of technological advance. Daly reviewed a
number of late Victorian melodramas with scenarios “in which a human
agent can beat a mechanical agent: the human for a moment comes to
enter and master the temporal world of the machine” (23). Such novels
and dramas of the time helped the populace assimilate the technology,
in particular the railroad, so that initial anxieties about it disappear. Daly
concludes with an analysis of J.G. Ballard’s 1973 novel Crash, a kind of
deviant technological fantasy with characters who fetishize automobile
accidents. Goody deals with several authors I include here, ranging from
Jules Verne to Don DeLillo. Along with those of the others mentioned
here, her insights enrich my discussion of the texts under consideration in
this chapter.

THE ANCIENTS
Because I have already discussed the ancient stories about technology in
Chap. 2, I refer to them here only briefly. There is no question that the
Greek myth of Prometheus is a warning about audacity, presumption, and
knowledge. As Langdon Winner observes, “Aeschylus’s treatment of the
legend … emphasizes the importance of technology in Prometheus’s crime
against the gods” (334). The theft of fire “was in its primary consequence
the theft of all technical skills and inventions later given to mortals” (334).
But the story is not entirely negative as concerns the advent of technol-
ogy. The comments in Aeschylus’ play suggest that, while Prometheus was
punished for his rebellious act, humanity benefited immensely from the gift
of technology. The fire was the foundation of all subsequent technology.
114 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

It “enabled mankind to develop agriculture, astronomy, domesticated


animals, carriages, and a host of valuable techniques” (Winner 334).
While the story of Prometheus reflected a contrasting double message
about technology, the stories of Pandora and Icarus focused on the curse
of technology and its dangers for humanity. When we think of Pandora’s
box and all the evils it released into existence once it was opened, we tend
to forget that they were originally directly connected with Prometheus’
theft of fire—that is, with technology. The myth of Daedalus and Icarus
again takes up the Promethean audacity—this time as it concerns the
invention of technology. With his father’s technology, the son was able
to enter a region and realm otherwise forbidden to humanity and was
punished accordingly.
Like the story of Icarus, the Hebrew Babel narrative records dire con-
sequences for humans who sought some kind of transcendence with the
help of technology. The biblical account clearly indicates that humanity
was punished for its attempt to construct a marvelous city, a magnificent
technological system, not to mention the exceptional tower—another
technological wonder. It would be wrong to think that the great cities, of
which Babel is representative, were not astonishing technological accom-
plishments. The construction and interconnection of the buildings, of the
water wells, of the external walls and fortifications, of the streets and pla-
zas, of the government, of the economy, not to mention countless other
features of the urban complex certainly qualify as grand technological
achievements.
In the ancient literature, one of Plato’s Socratic dialogues, the Phaedrus
(composed about 370 BC) stands out for its indictment of technology.
Socrates speaks there with his interlocutor about one of the most impor-
tant non-material technologies ever invented and developed by human-
ity—the alphabet. In the course of the discussion, Socrates makes it clear
that this technology, in spite of its great advantages, leaves us at the same
time tremendously disadvantaged. He understood and explained that our
technologies, while beneficial, damage us in subtle ways. Toward the end
of the dialogue, Socrates tells the story of the Egyptian god Theuth who
(in a story like that of Prometheus) “invented numbers and arithmetic and
geometry and astronomy, … and, most important of all, letters.” Theuth,
the story goes, visited Thamus, the king of Thebes, and discussed with
him various inventions and technologies. When they came to the alphabet,
Theuth told Thamus that this invention “will make the Egyptians wiser
and will improve their memories” (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu).
LITERARY NARRATIVES 115

Thamus was of a radically different opinion, however, and began to


explain to Theuth how the god had been blind to the curses of what he
only saw as a blessing:

you, who are the father of letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe
to them a power the opposite of that which they really possess. For this
invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use
it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, pro-
duced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discour-
age the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir
not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance
of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruc-
tion and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the
most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but
only appear wise.

With this story, Socrates exposes the inherent problem with a specific tech-
nology, indicates the way technologies change us, in this case, for ill, and
reveals how we attribute benefits to technology which mask significant
problems. His critique could be applied today to our use of Google to
find answers to everything that we never need remember and from which
we need learn nothing, because we can and will simply repeat the Google
search, should we need or wish to know it again. Likewise, Google lends the
appearance of knowledge and wisdom, while hiding our actual ignorance.
One other old story deserves attention as it gave expression to a dream,
which runs like a red thread through the literary narratives about technol-
ogy: the inanimate object we wish to make human. The story is most famil-
iar in the version provided by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC–AD 17/18) in
his Metamorphoses. According to this story, the sculptor Pygmalion carved a
statue of a woman with which he then fell in love. His wish that the statue
come to life so that they could wed was granted by the goddess Aphrodite.
Although Ovid gave the animated statue no name, it has since come to be
known as Galatea. The quest to animate the inanimate found subsequent
expression in the development of automata and, most recently, has taken
shape in the invention of AIs and the fabrication of humanoid robots. The
story reveals how we come to be enamored of our own creations and how
we desire to create something in our own likeness, something artificial
which simulates being human, even if it is a machine. It also reveals our
anthropomorphic projections onto our technological creations. We readily
endow these devices and machines with human qualities.
116 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

EARLY MODERN UTOPIAS


During the many centuries from antiquity through the middle ages, there
are few, if any works which address the role of technology in our world.
With the advent of modernity and a new mechanistic worldview in the
sixteenth century, a few writers began to appreciate technological advance,
and a different attitude toward technology emerged, at least as expressed
in four famous works, two by Englishmen, one by an Italian, and another
by a German: Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), Tommaso Campanella’s
The City of the Sun, 1602, Johann Valentin Andreae’s Description of the
Republic of Christianopolis (1619), and Francis Bacon’s The New Atlantis
(1624 Latin, 1627 English). The two best known receive attention here.
With his Utopia of 1516, More describes a place (or a no-place as the
name suggests) where machines per se do not play an especially signifi-
cant role, but the non-material technologies of planning and organization
decisively inform both society and shape the environment. On the one
hand, the inhabitants of that world had “made themselves masters of all
… useful inventions” (30). On the other, “everything has been established
according to plan, and the commonwealth is carefully regulated” (39).
The land of Utopia itself owes its very existence to a great technological
achievement: the first king had had a channel fifteen miles wide built to
create the island and separate it from the mainland. The island world is an
entirely managed environment and society, as such, technologically highly
sophisticated. Everything from agriculture, trade, education, labor, and
the economy to customs, morality, healthcare, social relations, and manu-
facturing are closely controlled. Indeed, the inhabitants view the world
as a “visible mechanism” (58). In contrast to the archaic myths, More’s
narrative gives technology a noble role to play, and it serves as the agent
of human progress and improvement.
About one hundred years later (1624), Bacon wrote his New Atlantis
which, however, remained unfinished. With this story, he describes a soci-
ety wherein technology again plays a key role and promotes individual and
social improvement and progress. According to the narrator, the citizens
of New Atlantis send out two ships every twelve years in order to seek and
acquire knowledge “of the sciences, arts, manufactures, and inventions of
all the world” (230). Indeed, the express purpose of their inquiry is to
obtain “the knowledge of causes, and secret motion of things; and the
enlarging of the bounds of Human Enterprise to the effecting of all things
possible,” in other words, technological know-how. In New Atlantis, all
LITERARY NARRATIVES 117

manner of technological innovations exist and are employed: “new artificial


metals” (239), techniques for agriculture (240–1), pharmacology (242),
not to mention “diverse mechanical arts” (243) and “engine houses, where
are prepared engines and instruments for all sorts of motions” (244). It is
a world of many and varied kinds of instruments and devices. They have
refrigeration and conservation (240); they have created various sources
of energy: “engines for multiplying and enforcing of winds” (240) and
“furnaces of great diversities … whereby [they] produce admirable effects”
(243). In addition, they developed means to fly through the air and travel
under water (245). They have even devised something akin to television or
movies, for they “imitate also motion of living creatures by images” (245).
Their world is thoroughly populated, operated, governed by, and depen-
dent on manifold technologies. What is especially noteworthy, however, is
that they also make decisions about the development and adoption of tech-
nology. They have “consultations, which of the inventions and experiences
which we have discovered shall be published, and which not: and take an
oath of secrecy, for the concealing of those which we think fit to keep
secret” (246). Although they are a thoroughly technological civilization,
they set limits to technology. They retain control over it.

ENLIGHTENMENT
Although the so-called Age of Reason generally favored technological
advance, most writers of literary fiction did not much concern themselves
with the topic. They were typically more interested in such subjects as
humanity and inhumanity, freedom and necessity, tolerance, equality, and
human happiness. Because technology had not yet presented itself as a
pressing matter, whether as boon or bane of existence, it makes an appear-
ance in only a few works of eighteenth-century imaginative literature.
One of the most popular books of the time tells the story of a man
shipwrecked on a desert isle. Daniel Defoe’s novel, The Life and Strange
Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719), is in a sense a story of
humanity’s technological ingenuity. Robinson Crusoe begins with primi-
tive circumstances and transforms them through technological means into
a version of civilization. The hero of the story is, in essence, an engineer.
He recapitulates the history of technological advance: he excavates a cave
to serve as a dwelling, he builds table and chairs, he devises a calendar to
calculate his time on the island, he plants and cultivates crops, he molds
earthenware, and he domesticates wild animals.
118 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

The narrator gives particular attention to the tools and contrivances


the hero has, acquires, or constructs. When first cast ashore, Robinson
Crusoe returns to the wreck so as to save whatever he can. There, he dis-
covers the carpenter’s chest. Besides the chest of tools, he finds hatchets,
“two saws, an axe, and a hammer” (35). He also takes ammunition and
arms from the ship. In other words, he is concerned first and foremost
with (European) technology. Returning to the wreck once more, he cuts
timbers and beams with his saw for use on the island. Likewise, he collects
“iron bolts … and other pieces of iron work,” as well as an “iron crow
[crowbar]” (59). Thanks to the various tools he salvages, he subsequently
conquers his environment.
After his rescue, Robinson Crusoe lived for a time in England, but then
resolved to return to his island. His cargo includes a plethora of technolo-
gies: “gloves, hats, shoes, stockings,” “kitchen utensils, with pots, kettles,
pewter, brass, etc.; and near a hundred pounds more in iron work, nails,
tools of every kind, staples, hooks, hinges, and every necessary thing I
could think of” (222). In addition, he makes sure to bring along techni-
cal help, namely, artisans: a tailor, a smith, and two carpenters (258). He
brings various weapons as well. The orientation is again entirely techno-
logical, and the technology represents the essentials of life. Back on the
island, he finds it inhabited by others, including one Will Atkins who, like
Crusoe, can accomplish anything with the proper technology. As another
character remarks, “that man has no need of us; you need do nothing
but give him tools” (285). The novel contrasts the primitive and savage
state of nature and man with that of the European whose technology sub-
dues and civilizes the world. Defoe’s story was so popular that it spawned
numerous translations, several imitations, and a literary genre.
In contrast, Gulliver’s Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift included a
powerful satire of European scientific (technological) academies. The first
people Gulliver meets on his travels, the Lilliputians, demonstrate remark-
able technological ability. “These People,” he observes, “are most excellent
Mathematicians, and arrived to a great Perfection in Mechanicks” (26). By
means of various machines, technology, that is, the Lilliputians negotiate
the world and overcome its hurdles. They so enhance their power that
they can subdue and control the giant Gulliver. Indeed, in order to trans-
port him, they prepared “the greatest Engine they had. It was a Frame of
Wood raised three Inches from the Ground, about seven Foot long and
four wide, moving upon twenty two Wheels” (26). They are accomplished
engineers. The satire allows for no particular approval of their impressive
LITERARY NARRATIVES 119

technological competence, however, as Swift depicts this people as overly


impressed with themselves and supremely confident of their abilities, not
unlike human beings with their technology in general.
During his travels, the hero also visits the grand Academy of Lagado.
As Stephen Hill observes, Swift here lampoons the British Royal Scientific
Society and the mechanical calculator that had recently been invented
by one of the Society’s members (57). In Swift’s telling, the Academy
of Lagado was founded to put “all Arts, Sciences, Languages, and
Mechanicks upon a new Foot” (Gulliver 176). There, “the Professors
contrive new Rules and Methods of Agriculture and Building, and new
Instruments and Tools for all Trades and Manufactures” (177). Swift
has much fun, satirizing various schemes such as “extracting Sun-Beams
out of Cucumbers, which were to be put into Vials hermetically sealed,
and let out to warm the Air in raw inclement Summers” (179). One
professor at the Academy engaged in “a Project for improving specula-
tive Knowledge by practical and mechanical Operations” (182) and so
constructed what is described as an “Engine” (184) or “Machine” (185)
which created sentences and from those sentences books on various sub-
jects. The professor intended “to give the World a compleat Body of
all Arts and Sciences” (184), but the books had no real substance and
consisted only of countless sentence fragments. Another project sought
“to shorten Discourse by cutting Polysyllables into one, and leaving out
Verbs and Participles; because in Reality all things imaginable are but
Nouns” (185). All was based on a system of calculation and mechanical
assembly. It is an uncanny foretaste of the linguistic system of the late
twentieth century described by Uwe Pörksen in Plastic Words. He docu-
ments the emergence of a technological language which relies chiefly on
abstract nouns assembled and disassembled like Lego pieces so as to mean
everything and nothing.
In 1759, the great essayist and journalist Samuel Johnson published a
novel entitled The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia. The protagonist
lives in seclusion, waiting for the time he should be called to the throne.
The place is called the Happy Valley, a place like the Garden of Eden or
Shangri La. It was a place of harmony, “security and delight” (9). In
“A Dissertation on the Art of Flying,” Johnson introduces a technician
who made such an existence possible. He was

a man eminent for his knowledge of the mechanick powers, who had contrived
many engines both of use and recreation. By a wheel, which the stream
120 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

turned, he forced the water into a tower, whence it was distributed to all
the apartments of the palace. He erected a pavilion in the garden, around
which he kept the air always cool by artificial showers. One of the groves,
appropriated to the ladies, was ventilated by fans, to which the rivulet that
ran through it gave a constant motion; and instruments of soft musick were
played at proper distances, of which some played by the impulse of the wind,
and some by the power of the stream. (17)

It is an account of technological achievement. Nevertheless, the prince is


restless and unhappy and contemplates escape from that life in paradise.
Rasselas consequently explores his options and seeks assistance.
Eventually, Rasselas consults with a master artist, someone described as
a mechanist. The master was building a “sailing chariot” and explains to
Rasselas his undertaking. The master has a high opinion of the “mechanick
sciences” which we would now call technology: “you have seen but a
small part of what the mechanick sciences can perform. I have been long
of opinion that, instead of the tardy conveyance of ships and chariots,
man might use the swifter migration of wings” (18). Even so, the master
mechanist means to keep knowledge and use of the invention limited,
because not all men are good (19–20). This technician thinks in advance
about technological consequences. Because the mechanist does not know
whether the machine will function successfully, he moreover conducts the
first attempt at flight himself. Not unlike the myth of Icarus, the mecha-
nist’s attempt fails. The novel does not concern itself any further with
machines or technology, but leaves the distinct impression that technology
neither satisfies all, as it would seem, nor solves our problems. While the
novel depicts certain technological features of this make-believe world, it
seems more bemused by than critical of them.
About a decade later (in 1770), the French dramatist Louis-Sébastien
Mercier published the novel L’An 2440, ou Rêve s’il en fut jamais (The
Year 2440, or A Dream if There Ever Was One). It was translated and pub-
lished in English already by 1795 as Memoirs of The Year Two Thousand
Five Hundred. This utopian story may not emphasize technological
advance per se, but Mercier’s story assigns importance to technological
possibility. For example, the new Paris of 2440 boasts a fresh water system
which not only cleans the streets, but also supplies every domicile (33–4).
The citizens have, moreover, eliminated chimneys, along with their soot
and grime, and turned the rooftops into a greenscape such as could be the
envy of environmentalists today (34). Even though technology only forms
LITERARY NARRATIVES 121

the backdrop to this utopian novel, it nevertheless provides the citizens of


the future city a better, more desirable environment.
The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchhausen by Rudolf Erich
Raspe was first published anonymously in 1781. It was an enormous suc-
cess, translated into other languages, and has continued to please audi-
ences to this day. Indeed, Monty Python alumnus Terry Gilliam made a
fine film from the material in 1988. Raspe’s book is a delightful carica-
ture, filled with the tall tales of the eponymous hero. Although technology
again plays only a minor role in the novel, the Baron takes some time to
describe a “machine for travelling,” a chariot he acquired in the course
of his adventures, a half-magical vehicle once owned by the fairy Queen
Mab. The wheels of the chariot “consisted of upwards of ten thousand
springs, formed so as to give the greater impetuosity to the vehicle, and
were more complex than a dozen clocks like that of Strasburgh” (180).
With that same chariot, he claims to have accomplished one of the great
engineering feats so much on the minds of Raspe’s contemporaries, the
excavation of a canal “from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean” (183), one
not realized until 1869. The Baron nonchalantly passes it off as “in reality
no more than the track of my chariot” (184). Having dug that canal, he
undertakes to construct another at the Isthmus of Darien, where in 1914
the Panama Canal was finally completed. For this project, the organization
of human laborers forms a huge machine: “a million of people from the
realms of North and South America, and from Europe, and with infinite
labour cleared away the earth” (277). Although the Baron depicts the
canal as the product of his own ingenious, but fantastic action, it never-
theless appears there as astonishing a feat of engineering as the real one
still to come: it is “a quarter of a mile broad, and three hundred yards in
depth” (277).
Among the other machines he employs is a balloon “with great wings or
oars to assist its velocity, and under the balloon was placed pendant a kind
of boat, in which were the persons to manage the steerage of the machine”
(257). His machines and apparatuses are typically far-fetched and meant
to accord with the Baron’s braggadocio. He explores the further reaches
of the heavens with his telescope and plumbs the depths of the sea with
his diving-bell. All of these technological wonders proved both amusing
and fascinating for the readers of that time and anticipate the more serious
stories and technological marvels Jules Verne would later present to his
audiences, not to mention the very real technological accomplishments of
later centuries.
122 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

THE AGE OF THE MACHINE


The rapid expansion of machine-centered industry in the nineteenth cen-
tury brought authors face to face with technology to such extent that it
could hardly be ignored and so became a principal theme in the imagina-
tive literature of the time. The great German author, Johann Wolfgang
Goethe, seems to have endorsed technological advance and dominion
in his masterpiece and most famous work Faust, but a careful reading
leads to another conclusion, as will be shown in the following chapter.
Here, I concentrate on one brief and isolated, but trenchant, reference to
technology in his novel Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (Wilhelm Meister’s
Journeyman Years), begun in 1807 and finished in 1829. In the passage
in question, one of the characters, Leonardo, quotes the grave concern of
another, Susanne: “Mechanization is taking the upper hand, and it plagues
and frightens me; it is rolling forward like a thunderstorm, slowly, slowly;
but it has set its course, and it will come and strike” (429; my translation).
Susanne had foreseen the onslaught and conquest of mechanized industry
along with the terror and destruction it would entail.
The German Romantic writers were especially intrigued by the
background and abysses of technology, as Dietrich von Engelhardt
observes (415). The automaton became a leitmotif for one in particu-
lar, E.T.A.  Hoffmann. Indeed, his best-known story is probably “The
Sandman” (1816), later made famous by Sigmund Freud in his essay
“The Uncanny” (1919). In Hoffmann’s story, a female automaton plays
a key role. Although she can only say “ah, ah,” the protagonist mistakes
her response for the actual understanding of a real, biological woman. In
another story “The Automata” (“Die Automate,” 1814), a mechanical
puppet-creature is the central concern. It is identified as a “speaking Turk”
in an allusion to a by then well-known apparatus.
“The mechanical Turk” was a chess-playing machine constructed in
1770 by Wolfgang von Kempelen. Its appearance of autonomous move-
ment and thought amazed audiences for decades. Only later was it exposed
as an elaborate hoax, since a man had actually been hidden inside. In
Hoffmann’s tale, however, the automaton displays intelligence and hides
no one inside. An “artist” had brought the machine to town and put it
on display, so that people could ask questions and receive answers from
it. The machine appears to be “an entirely autonomous being” (353; my
translation here and following) and has something of “the enigmatic and
wonderful” about it (353). It embodies both the explicable and inexplicable,
LITERARY NARRATIVES 123

the comprehensible and incomprehensible, the mundane and fantastic, as


the technology we design, construct, and then employ so often does.
Two characters in the story, the musician Ludwig and the poet
Ferdinand, take special interest in the automaton. Ludwig finds all human
imitations and simulations “abhorrent in the highest degree” (354). For
him, mechanically imitated human movements are ominous in the extreme
(354–5). Even so, the automaton is “utterly wonderful and in every
respect a masterpiece of mechanics and acoustics” (364). He attempts to
find a rational explanation for its incredible ability to see into the hearts
and minds of the people who come to it with their questions. In order to
solve the mystery, the two friends visit a Professor X, “the mechanic with
his machines,” since he has a collection of automata (370). The Professor
treats them to a small concert by his mechanical musicians. For Ludwig,
“the mechanical music has something hopeless and horrible about it”
(371). The imitation-human machines appear dead and ghastly.
Although he specifically refers to artificially or mechanically produced
music, Ludwig offers a critique of technology in general:

The striving of the mechanic more and more to imitate the human produc-
tion of musical tones or to replace them by mechanical means is in my opin-
ion a declaration of war against the spiritual principle. That hostile power
triumphs all the more splendidly, the more some merely apparent forces
are arrayed against it. For that very reason, the most perfect machine of
this kind, measured in mechanical terms, is for me the most contemptu-
ous, and a simple hurdy-gurdy which only seeks a mechanical achievement
in its mechanicalness is still always preferable to Vaucanson’s flutist and the
harmonica girl. (371–2)

The person he mentions here is Jacques de Vaucanson whose automaton


became famous in 1737.
Hoffmann’s story addresses the problem of technological imitation
and simulation of human activity and creativity. The apparent ability of his
automata to think previews the AIs that today regularly “converse” with us
on the telephone. When his characters complain of the soullessness of tech-
nologically produced music, he exposes the soullessness of technology itself.
About mid-century, the great English novelist Charles Dickens published
Hard Times (1854), an exemplary treatment of “the machine,” the con-
temporary shorthand for technology, and its deleterious effect on humanity.
Howard Sussman considers Hard Times “the finest imaginative account of
124 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

the mechanized world in the nineteenth century” (72). Dickens story


portrays a dismal life in a place he calls Coketown. It was, he writes,

a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents


of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had
a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast
piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling
all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monoto-
nously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy
madness. (20–21)

The description focuses attention on machinery and the steam engine,


so representative of the time, as well as on the pollution mechanized
industry caused. The final phrase equates the rhythms of the engine itself
with a prevailing depression and insanity which infects the entire town.
In another passage, Dickens describes the ending of the workday and
contrasts the charming outward appearance of the factory with the dismal
inward life it created for the workers.

The lights in the great factories, which looked, when they were illuminated,
like Fairy Palaces—or the travellers by express-train said so—were all extin-
guished; and the bells had rung for knocking off for the night, and had
ceased again; and the Hands, men and women, boy and girl, were clattering
home. Old Stephen was standing in the street, with the old sensation upon
him which the stoppage of the machinery always produced—the sensation
of its having worked and stopped in his own head. (52)

Dickens depicts “not only the physical suffering, but also the psychologi-
cal hazards brought by the machine” (Sussman 44). The world of the
machine has so fully absorbed the human being that he has entirely identi-
fied himself and his activity with that of the factory machinery.
Roughly contemporaneous with Hard Times, The Tragedy of Man by
the Hungarian writer Imre Madách appeared in 1861. This play reviews
human history in fifteen scenes. The two main characters, Adam and
Lucifer, travel across time and space to witness key events in the Garden of
Eden, ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, the Middle Ages of the Crusades,
Prague of the Scientific Revolution, Revolutionary Paris, and London of
the Industrial Revolution. In the twelfth scene, Madách’s protagonist and
antagonist visit a world of the future, where science and technology reign
supreme and have wreaked havoc on the earth. For this stage of humanity,
LITERARY NARRATIVES 125

Madách alludes to the ideas of the French utopian philosopher Charles


Fourier (1772–1837). The denizens of this world live in a phalanstery,
the building conceived by Fourier for a highly organized and regulated
community.
Stage directions for this scene call for machines to be operating at
full speed. The natural world is all but extinct except for pigs and sheep
which have been engineered to produce nothing but fat, meat, and wool.
Everything else has been eliminated and replaced with something fur-
nished by technology. It is, Adam observes, a “tacked together world”
(108), though a better translation might be “an artificially constructed
world.” The leader of the community, the scientist or scholar, explains that
all work is now done in the most efficient and simplest way by machines
(109). Adam finds this “standardized and routine world”—a world of
regularity and complete order—void of life, lacking any “creative energy
and thought” (109). The scholar is conducting an experiment which will
ultimately allow him to make matter do his bidding (111). Adam voices
his objections, however, and explains that such a world reduces artistic
and intellectual giants to dwarves and to conformity (114). In this future
world, children are selected to become a specific kind of citizen, for exam-
ple, one a physician, another a shepherd (115), and taken away as babies
from their mothers to be developed according to plan. The scholar con-
siders Adam’s resistance to such an “enlightened” world “sheer delirium”
(116), but Madách’s intent is clear: such a technological world is the real
hallucination and nightmare.
Samuel Butler’s famous novel of 1872 Erewhon (nowhere in reverse)
plays on the word “utopia” coined by Thomas More. In this land, the
citizens have banned most machines, because they feared the machines
would one day become the masters of their human makers. After all, the
narrator reasons,

wherever precision is required man flies to the machine at once, as far prefer-
able to himself. Our sum-engines never drop a figure, nor our looms a stitch;
the machine is brisk and active, when the man is weary; it is clear-headed &
collected, when the man is stupid and dull; it needs no slumber, when man
must sleep or drop; ever at its post, ever ready for work, its alacrity never
flags, its patience never gives in; its might is stronger than combined hun-
dreds, and swifter than the flight of birds. (182)

Technology is flawless; it excels and surpasses the human being in


every way.
126 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

As the Erewhonians understood, we typically tend to think “that man


will be the ruling spirit and the machine the servant” (183). Yet, “the
servant glides by imperceptible approaches into the master; and we have
come to such a pass that, even now, man must suffer terribly on ceasing to
benefit the machines” (183–4). The Erewhonians appear to have grasped
the relation of humanity to technology, and their reasoning for the ban
seems sensible.
According to Sussman, the first edition of Erewhon is ambivalent about
technology, but the final, revised version satirizes “Victorian antimachine
criticism” (151). Butler makes the original Erewhonian attitude toward
technology appear ridiculous. Machines are then not to be regarded as
a threat to human freedom and autonomy, as one Erewhonian argued,
but actually “as the mode of development by which human organism is
now especially advancing, every past invention being an addition to the
resources of the human body” (Erewhon 203). This opinion did not carry
in the land of Erewhon, however, and the successful ban on machines is
meant to be considered foolish in the extreme.
Even though intended as satire and a story essentially in support of tech-
nology, many of the worries mocked in Erewhon can nonetheless now give
us pause. The Erewhonians feared that “the far greater development which
seems in store for the machines” would outstrip any human intellectual or
physical power (181). While they were afraid of that evolution, and readers
were to understand that fear as ludicrous, we now read and hear about the
advance of machine intelligence as something with which we human beings
cannot compete. For the Erewhonians, the great danger was “seeing our-
selves gradually superseded by our own creatures” (199), by the machines
we make, and that “the mass of mankind will acquiesce” (200). Their fears,
contrary to the satire, can no longer seem so unreasonable.
A few years later (1885–1886), the French writer Auguste de Villiers de
l’Isle-Adam published Tomorrow’s Eve, an usual novel about an imagined
invention by Thomas Edison, “the Sorceror of Menlo Park” (3). A fic-
tionalized version of the real person, this Edison exemplifies the engineer
and technician. His dwelling anticipates a smart house with speakers, heat,
lighting, and more which respond to his spoken commands. This Edison
invents something much more remarkable than the electric light bulb,
phonograph, microphone, or movie camera. Villiers coined a new word
for it and called it an “android.”
In Villiers’ story, Edison knows a Lord Ewald who suffers from loving
Alicia Clary, a woman with no depth of soul. If Ewald agrees to the terms
LITERARY NARRATIVES 127

of a Mephistophelean pact with Edison, the inventor will solve the problem
and transform the object of Ewald’s affections from a drab reality into a
splendid ideal. It is a new version of the ancient myth of Pygmalion and
Galatea and a precursor to Ira Levin’s novel The Stepford Wives (1972).
The resulting invention is Hadaly—“a magneto-electric entity” (59), “a
direct rebuke to the complacency of ‘Nature’” (60), an “Imitation Human
Being” (61)—the perfect woman. While Edison realizes that his invention
“could well lead to tragic consequences,” he nevertheless moves forward
with the terrifying explanation and excuse that “only our ignorance shields
us from terrible responsibilities” (62). Ignorance justifies technological
research and development, whatever the costs may be.
The android Hadaly (Persian for “Ideal”) will “merit the name HUMAN
more than that living specter whose sorry so-called ‘reality’” (68) caused
Ewald so much pain and sadness. Her existence questions the difference
between artificial and real. She, or it, is “perfection” (84), because it is a
machine. Edison seeks to prove to Ewald that the android is not only as
good as, but better than and preferable to, any human being. According to
Edison, no reasonable person can argue against technological innovation
and advance (164). Even though she is a machine, Edison declares her
“Humanity at its best” (215). Ewald also understands the dangers associ-
ated with their radical experiment. He knows that “he was involved in an
adventure far darker and more serious than he had anticipated” (202). Yet,
he cannot decline or say no to the technological promise; he desires and so
accepts the artificial person as better than the real one.
Any discussion of literary narratives about technology must take
Edward Bellamy’s novel Looking Backward: 2000–1887 (1888) into
account. It was immensely popular and is still in print. In this Rip van
Winkle story, Julian West falls asleep in 1887 and awakens in the won-
derful world of 2000, a world not necessarily characterized by machines,
although they play a significant role in that world without problems,
but a world made virtually perfect by virtue of near total planning and
organization. In this utopian vision, technology eliminates inefficiency,
inequality, immorality, and urban blight (Segal, Future Imperfect 102).
In coincidence with Mercier’s Paris of the twenty-fifth century, Bellamy’s
twenty-first-century Boston boasts “the complete absence of chimneys”
(Looking Backward 28), because the twentieth century found a new
source of energy. Although the nineteenth century had created terrible,
“oppressive and intolerable” social conditions, it nonetheless produced
“a prodigious increase of efficiency” (37) and resulted in a “logical evolution
128 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

to open a golden future to humanity” (38). As bad as it was, technology


nevertheless changed everything for the better.
An organized and planned economy now protects “every citizen against
hunger, cold, and nakedness” and provides “for all his physical and mental
needs” (Looking Backward 41). The world is so wonderful that “there is
neither selling nor buying” (60), and they get along “without money or
trade” (61). The citizens of Bellamy’s twenty-first century have “devices
for lightening the burden” and “labor-saving inventions in all sorts of
industry” (85). There is also a near total engineering of society: “nowa-
days everybody is a part of a system with a distinct place and function”
(129). When West visits a distribution center, he marvels at “the prodi-
giously multiplied efficiency which perfect organization can give to labor”
(130). Like the management of society, the distribution of goods is a vast
“machine” (132). West has awakened to “a paradise of order, equality, and
felicity” (164), where “all live under conditions of health and comfort”
(165). There is no more poverty, hunger, or sorrow, no greed, need, or
misery, no cruelty, scarcity, or crime. The problems of the old industrial
system of the nineteenth century are here remedied not by the abolition,
but by the perfection and amplification, of the technological system.
Émile Zola’s novel Germinal (1885) portrays an entirely different reality.
It depicts the plight of those who mined the coal used to fuel the world of
mechanized industry. The protagonist Étienne Lantier is thoroughly impli-
cated and entangled in the technological world of his time. He had previ-
ously been employed with the railways, but fired, because he had attacked a
superior. It was a futile act of defiance within a dominating technological sys-
tem. In need of work, he takes a job in a dismal mine in the north of France.
Zola’s description of Étienne’s first day in the mine directs attention to
his alienation and to the presence of an imposing, colossal machine:

For a moment Étienne stood still, deafened and blinded. There were
draughts blowing in from all sides and he was frozen. Then his attention
was caught by the shining steel and copper of the engine, and he went across
to have a look at it. It was set back some twenty-five meters from the shaft
and on a higher level, and so securely built into its brick cradle that, even
when going at full speed and exerting all its four hundred horse-power, the
huge, perfectly oiled crank rose and fell without a sound and not the slight-
est tremor could be felt. (38)

The magnificence of the machine stands in stark contrast to the bleak


condition of the human being.
LITERARY NARRATIVES 129

One comment by the narrator sums up the protagonist’s entire


situation: “he was accepted and looked upon as a real miner, as the crush-
ing mould of habit pressed him a little more each day into the likeness of
an automaton” (138). The workers lose touch with reality and with their
own humanity. According to Étienne, “the miner lived in the mine like
an animal, like a coal-extracting machine, and being underground, his
ears and eyes were closed to events outside” (167). Like Dicken’s work-
ers in Coketown, the miners have no reality other than their machine-like
existence. Étienne sees that “the big Companies now crushed everything
down with the weight of their machines” (167) and so decides on action.
He leads the miners in a strike doomed to fail, given the power of the tech-
nological order. In a futile act of opposition, some of them sabotage the
mine, the technological system on which they depend. Étienne survives,
but the miners have destroyed their only livelihood. With no prospects, he
leaves and moves to Paris.
Another French writer, Jules Verne (1828–1905), remains one of the
best-known authors to have written about technology or technology to
come. Between 1863 and 1905, he published a sequence of fifty-four
novels in the series Voyages Extraordinaires (Extraordinary Voyages).
It includes the famous Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), From
the Earth to the Moon (1865), Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea
(1870), and Around the World in 80 Days (1873). In these stories, Verne
depicts amazing adventures made possible by marvelous technologies,
many belonging to the future, like sophisticated submarines and space-
craft, radio newscasts and videophones. Extremely popular from the start,
Verne’s stories of technological marvels stand out as prime examples of
technological enthusiasm.
Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea is an exemplary tale of tech-
nology. Its mysterious hero, Captain Nemo, is an adventurer, discoverer,
leader, and technologist responsible for a number of astonishing inven-
tions: a metallic submarine which is “a masterpiece of modern industry”
(89), electric lighting, diving suits, an electric engine, and an artificial
language. He, his crew, and three men rescued at sea, one the narrator,
exist in the totally technological environment of his underwater ship. It
has a system for fresh air and for light. It travels at unheard of speeds and
enables the men to go beyond any normal limits of terrestrial existence.
Verne indulges in technical descriptions of all kinds and in abundant mea-
surements and calculations. This novel is an unreserved affirmation of
technology.
130 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

Of additional interest is Verne’s Paris in the Twentieth Century written


in 1863, but not published until 1994. Radically different from his other
works, it is a dystopian picture of an advanced technological culture.
As Alex Goody observes, it “imagines a grimly mechanized and electrical
future that places no value on literature and the arts” (12). As is the case
with so many of Verne’s stories, this one “makes a range of technological
predictions, including gasoline-fuelled cars, electric chairs, calculators and
a worldwide telegraphic communications network” (Goody 12). Since the
work was only published posthumously, it never offered a real alternative
to Verne’s stories of technological wonder and optimism.
Because it deals with the two great technologies of the nineteenth
century—the railroad and the telegraph—Gerhard Hauptmann’s The
Railroad Crossing Attendant Thiel (1888) also deserves consideration
here. In this short story, technology itself is the antagonist which ulti-
mately overwhelms and destroys the human protagonist. The new emer-
gent technological system created by the railroad and telegraph regulates,
shapes, and dominates him. He has been so redefined by technology, even
in name as Bahnwärter, or railroad crossing attendant, that his very iden-
tity, his most private and precious reality, is now technologically deter-
mined. The man named Thiel exists only as a function of the technology
he serves.
Technology, we learn on the first page of this story, has already twice
injured him. Once, a piece of coal flew from the tender of a train speed-
ing by and hit him while on duty. The second time, a wine bottle thrown
from a passing express train struck and wounded him. Technology has also
invaded and harmed nature. The railroad tracks and telegraph lines lacer-
ate the forest and wreak havoc on the creatures living there. The trains kill
the deer (41) and destroy the quiet (49) and holy stillness of the forest
(50). Beside the noise, each train’s cloud of dust, steam, and dense smoke
(49–50) pollute the air. In Hauptmann’s narrative, the train eventually
appears as an enormous, anthropomorphized monster with bulging eyes
(53). Hauptmann likens “the black, parallel-running rails” to “the mesh
of an enormous iron net” and compares the telegraph wires to “the web
of a giant spider” (49; my translations). Thiel is caught in the net and web,
the rails and the wires, of a technological reality. In the end, technology
kills his beloved little son and drives Thiel insane. His life, his world, and
he himself fall apart completely.
LITERARY NARRATIVES 131

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY


E.M. Forster’s short story “The Machine Stops” (1909) depicts a world
where human existence is thoroughly mediated by and dependent on
technology. The main characters are a mother named Vashti and her son
Kuno. In this worldwide civilization, devices surround the human being,
machines do everything imaginable, the lived environment is entirely arti-
ficial, and physical activity is all but eliminated. The story is stunning for
its prescient vision of a world to come. A Facebook-type network allows
each individual to know “several thousand people,” and a tablet permits a
Skype-type mode of communication. In Vashti’s apartment,

There were buttons and switches everywhere—buttons to call for food, for
music, for clothing. There was the hot-bath button … . There was the but-
ton that produced literature. And there were of course the buttons by which
she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained noth-
ing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world. (http://archive.
ncsa.illinois.edu)

But there is a price. As Langdon Winner explains, “human beings can no


longer have any direct relationships with each other or with the world”
(35–6). Direct experience of nature or another human being actually
produces fear. All Vashti really cares for is technology.
While she truly loves the Machine which provides her with everything
she could possibly need or desire, Kuno rejects it, because “we created the
Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now.” When
his mother learns that he wants to leave the technological environment in
order to experience the natural one directly, she is horrified. She can only
understand his wishes as “blasphemies.” As Kuno realizes, his mother has
begun “to worship the Machine.” When the Machine begins to malfunc-
tion, she first complains, but then accepts its failures and the damage it
does. Everyone “had become so subservient, that they readily adapted
themselves to every caprice of the Machine.” When the Machine in fact
stops, the population panics. Technology had so completely enveloped
humanity that no other life seemed possible.
Another defective machine stands at the center of Franz Kafka’s grue-
some horror story “In the Penal Colony” (1914). As the understated
first sentence makes clear, this machine “is a peculiar apparatus” (100;
my translation here and following). Although he does not know why,
132 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

a condemned man, a soldier, is to be executed in or on the machine for


disobeying and insulting a superior. It was the man’s duty to salute his
captain day or night on the hour, but he had been caught sleeping at two
in the morning (105). He had been required to function as a mechanism,
but failed to do so, whether willfully or accidentally is not stated.
The officer in charge carefully explains the construction and operation
of the machine. The apparatus operates autonomously (100). Besides the
main parts—bed, plotting instrument, and harrow—there are straps, nee-
dles, felt for a gag, cotton batting, gears, and electric batteries to power
the machine’s moving parts. All movements have been carefully calculated
and calibrated (103). The apparatus executes the condemned man over
the course of twelve hours by inscribing with the harrow the command
he has disobeyed ever more deeply into the flesh of his body (103). A
horrible kind of tattooing takes place. The officer’s calm, matter-of-fact,
technical description is as horrifying as the machine.
The officer is devoted to the machine; he admires it and its efficient
operation. For him, it is something sublime, pristine, and pure. Its exis-
tence as machine, as properly and smoothly functioning apparatus, is more
important than any human life. Oblivious to the “injustice” and “inhu-
maneness” (109) of this literally harrowing and lethal machine, the officer
is the embodiment of the technological mind, of the rational technician
devoted to pure technology.
Once he learns that the commandant plans to discontinue the mechani-
cal executions, the officer places himself on the machine. “How he inter-
acted with the machine, and how it obeyed him” (119), the narrator
reports. He was meant for it, and it for him; he gave himself up to the
machine, and they became one. On or in the machine, the officer can no
longer tend it, and it begins to malfunction and fall apart (121). In an
uncanny coincidence, the officer and machine break down at the same
time. The eyes of the dead man looked “calm and convinced” (121), as
they had in life, still trusting in the legitimacy of the machine. The machine
and its minder mirror the efficiency, precision, and utter impassivity of a
truly deadly technological order.
As in the previous century, literary responses to technology in the twen-
tieth reached across cultures. Writing at the same time as Kafka in Prague,
the Italian Luigi Pirandello attacked the mechanization of existence in
his novel Shoot! The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio (1915). The story takes
a hard look at the motion picture industry, at that time in its infancy.
LITERARY NARRATIVES 133

Gubbio is a camera operator for the film studio Kosmograph. Each day, he
turns the crank of his camera and transfers to film the images of actors and
actresses in their various roles. Each night, Gubbio enters his thoughts,
observations, and conversations from the day into his journals, which con-
stitute the novel. The details of plot are perhaps less important than how
Gubbio understands the technology he operates and how it defines or
swallows him and any others it touches.
In the opening chapter, he records his response to the critical question
in the technological age. A gentleman asks him: “Couldn’t you be elimi-
nated, replaced by some piece of machinery?” (6). Gubbio answers:

in time, Sir, they will succeed in eliminating me. The machine—this machine
too, like all the other machines—will go by itself. But what mankind will do
then, after all the machines have been taught to go by themselves, that, my
dear Sir, still remains to be seen. (6)

The cameraman recognizes the trajectory of technology, but also the


impending predicament for humanity. Humans will have to justify their
reason for being.
Gubbio’s life has been transformed by technology. Like “ever so many
others,” he is condemned and reduced “to be nothing more than a hand
that turns a handle,” merely a part of the mechanism (7). The human
being “having become clever and industrious, has set to work to fashion
out of iron and steel his new deities and has become a servant and a slave
to them” (7). In his journals, he vents his frustration and vexation with
a technological regime where the machine consumes the human being.
“The machine,” he remarks, “is made to act, to move, it requires swal-
lowing up our soul, devouring our life” (7). Gubbio lives in a city filled
with the noise of technology: the telegraph, trolleys, wires of the elec-
tric trams, automobiles, and the cinematograph which he operates (cf.
Chapter 2 of Shoot!). But the movie camera exemplifies technology here
more than anything else.
As it captures human action and emotion in moving pictures, this tech-
nology distorts reality, degrades human beings, consumes life itself, and
then kills it. According to Gubbio, the camera

suggests on its knock-kneed tripod a huge spider watching for its prey, a spi-
der that sucks in and absorbs their live reality to render it up an evanescent,
momentary appearance, the play of a mechanical illusion in the eyes of the
134 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

public. And the man who strips them of their reality and offers it as food
to the machine; who reduces their bodies to phantoms, who is he? It is I,
Gubbio. (68–9)

In the same way spiders make webs and webs catch a spider’s prey, the
technology catches us in its net and then sucks the life out of us. But the
human being, here Gubbio, as a function of the technology, is complicit.
Although little known today, Sophie Treadwell’s play Machinal (1928)
was a great success in its day. The Nick Hearn edition I use here first
appeared in 1993 and since then has been reprinted at least 15 times, tes-
tifying to the play’s continued popularity. It is the story of a young woman
whose life goes from bad to worse and ends with her execution by electric
chair. In 1931, the author renamed her drama The Life Machine, a bitterly
ironic reference to the form of execution. The protagonist, known only
as the Young Woman, works in an office as a stenographer and operates
a typewriter. That simple machine defines her and circumscribes her life;
she exists in a lifeless mechanized world of switchboard, adding machine,
typewriter, and manifold machine.
When a co-worker, the Stenographer, says “I’m efficient” (3), she
asserts her value in the technological order. The Young Woman in con-
trast is inadequate and culpable, because “she’s inefficient,” as the
Stenographer and Filing Clerk announce (7). There is no worse or more
grievous offense in the world of technology. Even the stage directions,
Goody notes, emphasize “the mechanisms which permeate the world and
function metonymically in showing the alienation and denaturalization of
the Young Woman’s life” (81). Noises of machines, office machines, rivet-
ing machines, an electric piano, telegraph, and airplane provide the sounds
in the background throughout the play.
The Young Woman marries her boss, but comes to loathe and then mur-
der him. She is prosecuted and sentenced to death. The stage directions
for the courtroom scene read: “The words and movements of all these people
except the YOUNG WOMAN are routine—mechanical” (60). Everyone
except the Young Woman has from the start been mechanical in their
speech and in their work; they have all been reduced to machines them-
selves. At the execution, a reporter worries about one particular machine,
the electric chair: “Suppose the machine shouldn’t work!” To which
another responds: “It’ll work!—It always works!” (82). The “machine”
never fails. The message of the play is that technology always works, and
when it does, it kills.
LITERARY NARRATIVES 135

A SHORT DIGRESSION INTO CHILDREN’S LITERATURE


According to Herbert Sussman, “the literature of personified machines
survives only in children’s books” (203). In those books, technol-
ogy is characteristically benevolent. As Lawrence Greenberg and Lance
Schachterle point out, the machines in these stories, “realized specifically
as females, emerge as heroic by acting selflessly and for the good of the
community” (“Introduction” 21). Technology helps humanity in need,
and humans respond with love and friendship. Indeed, children’s picture
books, Judith Yaross Lee has found, “portray technology affectionately”
(207). What could better mold young minds in favor of technology than
such stories?
In classics like The Little Engine that Could (1930) by Watty Piper (the
pen name of Arnold Munk), Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel (1938)
by Virginia Lee Burton, Scuffy the Tugboat (1946) by Gertrude Crampton,
or The Little Red Caboose (1953) by Marian Potter, machines are female
characters. These books, Lee points out, “quite literally feminize technol-
ogy” (209). Piper assigns gender to the Little Engine by using feminine
pronouns and at the same defines “her” character in positive terms with
modifiers like happy, jolly, and good. “Chug, chug, chug. Puff, puff, puff.
Ding-dong, ding-dong,” the story begins. “The little train rumbled over
the tracks. She was a happy little train for she had such a jolly load to carry.
Her cars were filled full of good things for boys and girls” (no page). She is
happy and good, and makes good people happy, too. When in the course
of events she is called to the rescue, she chants “I think I can. I think I
can. I think I can” (no page). Her mantra first testifies to and then certifies
technological capability.
Similarly, Mike Mulligan’s steam shovel is Mary Anne. The two coop-
erate in harmony as human and machine. They have helped engineer the
environment, building great canals and highways. In the big city, however,
steam technology is out of date, replaced by gasoline and diesel machines,
but Mike and Mary Anne prove and redeem themselves in little Popperville,
where they dig the cellar for the new town hall. They adjust to the chang-
ing times and, with Mike as janitor and Mary Anne as the boiler for the
building, continue to contribute to society. In the happy ending, Mike, the
human man, ends up serving Mary Anne, the feminized technology.
Female machines, Lee remarks, “consistently exhibit noble traits” (212).
They are industrious, helpful, and friendly. They work harder, faster, and
better. They promote community, democracy, and equality. Finally, they
136 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

overcome impossible difficulties, rescue, save, and—depending on the


perspective—serve people. When female, anthropomorphized machines
possess human virtues. When male, they tend to have certain minor fail-
ings which need correction. Scuffy the Tugboat begins markedly different
from The Little Engine that Could or Mike Mulligan and his Steam Engine.
“Scuffy was sad. Scuffy was cross. Scuffy sniffed his blue smokestack,” we
read. It is because he believes he “was meant for bigger things” (n.p.).
Scuffy is a big-headed little toy which must learn his place. Once he does,
all is well again. The male machines are not so much bad as naughty boys
who learn a lesson before the happy resolution.

A LONGER EXCURSION INTO SCIENCE FICTION


As Adam Roberts observes in his History of Science Fiction, “the great
majority of SF written in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is actually
‘extrapolated technology fiction’” (4). For Brian Aldiss, this genre is the
“fiction of a technological age” (14). And in the opinion of Lee Bailey, it
has become “the mythic text for technological culture’s fascination with
unlimited power, heroic conquests of evil aliens, endless technological
brilliance, and even a quest for ultimate transcendent truth” (6). While
Johannes Kepler’s seventeenth-century Somnium or Voltaire’s eighteenth-
century Micromégas offer early intimations of this kind of writing, modern
science fiction begins with and follows a path from E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The
Sandman (1816), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), and Edgar Allan
Poe’s “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall” (1835) through
Jules Verne and H.G. Wells on to Karel Ĉapek’s R.U.R. (1921) and Olaf
Stapledon’s Star Maker (1937).
From the 1930s to the 1950s, science fiction enjoyed what has been
called its Golden Age. Writers like Aldous Huxley with Brave New World
(1932), George Orwell with 1984 (1949), and Ray Bradbury with
Fahrenheit 451 (1953) identified and exposed the dangerous side of a
technological order. These stories tend to be about science and technol-
ogy run amok. In stark contrast, the stories of Arthur C.  Clarke, Isaac
Asimov, and Robert Heinlein tended to uncritical celebration of techno-
logical advance and achievement. With the 1960s, New Wave science
fiction arrived. To this period belong Solaris by Stanisław Lem (1961), The
Dark Light Years (1964) by Brian Aldiss, Dune (1965) by Frank Herbert,
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968) by Philip K. Dick, the Hainish
Cycle (begun in 1966) by Ursula Le Guin, and the stories of J.G. Ballard.
LITERARY NARRATIVES 137

Their concerns are reflected in themes relating to sociopolitical entropy


and human ignorance. The 1980s brought Cyberpunk and the work of
writers like William Gibson and Neal Stephenson. They introduced read-
ers to visions of life in cyberspace, to use a concept coined by Gibson.
Science fiction continues unabated into the twenty-first century. Besides
recent contributions by Gibson and Stephenson, Iain M. Banks’ nine nov-
els in The Culture series and Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy are
especially notable. As I deal with Shelley’s Frankenstein in Chap. 7 and
with science fiction film in Chap. 8, I will not devote much more space to
science fiction here, except to discuss R.U.R.
R.U.R., a play by the Czech author Karel Čapek, is the source of the
word robot and a vision of technological disaster. In its factory, a com-
pany called Rossum’s Universal Robots manufactures “artificial people”
(11). According to the general manager Harry Domin, the robots “are
more perfect than we are” (17). With the introduction of robots into
the workplace, the company aims to lower both the cost of the technol-
ogy to make them and the cost of what they make (31). As a result, the
cost of everything is supposed to go down to next to nothing, and then
“everybody will live only to perfect himself” (32). However, the company
manufactured so many robots that people became “superfluous” (51).
As the robots multiplied in number, they came to dominate humanity,
and when humans objected, robots were used to put down the human
rebellion against robots. Ultimately, a “revolution of all the robots in the
world occurred” (55); they were victorious and now rule. In spite of all
that happened, the men at R.U.R. think they can solve the technologi-
cal problem they created by creating more technology, specifically, more
robots (58).
Čapek spells out the hubris of the technological enterprise in the exchange
between Alquist, head of the Works department, and Domin. “It was a
crime to make Robots,” Alquist asserts. “No, Alquist,” Domin answers,
“I don’t regret that even today.” Alquist: “Not even today?” Domin: “Not
even today, the last day of civilization. It was a colossal achievement” (66).
In spite of the revolution, in spite of the domination of humanity by tech-
nology, in spite of the end of civilization caused by the eclipse of human
beings by machines, the technologist still believes in the excellence and
rectitude of his project. In the end, there was “not a single human left”
(82). The robots are dying out as well, however, because the formula to
make more of them had been destroyed.
138 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

The story concludes with an unsettling scene. Two robots named


Primus and Helena have human qualities and love each other. Alquist,
the last living human, calls them Adam and Eve, implying a future where
robots reproduce and perhaps exist in a new Garden of Eden. That robots
“made for labor rebel, destroy humanity, and evolve into humanoids that
can love and reproduce” was, Bailey believes, “a terrible apocalypse” for
Čapek (Bailey 169). Whether the ending suggests hope or horror is not
entirely clear, however.
One of the most famous novels about technological domination is
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932). In that work, Huxley depicts
a world in which “a relative handful of technocrats and myriad of sophis-
ticated structures and machines—in the very name of universal happiness
and progress” rule over the masses of humanity (Segal, Future Imperfect
138). As Neil Postman observed, the citizens of Huxley’s new world
“come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their
capacities to think” (Amusing Ourselves vii). The promise of happiness,
prosperity, well-being, and progress lies at the core of this dystopian
narrative, but happiness and progress come at the terrible price of human
freedom and independence. Thanks to the judgment and oversight of the
technocratic leadership, the society is under the influence of a drug called
“soma” which they willingly ingest and which leaves them all compliant
and complacent, without a care in the world—in a word, impotent.
In contrast to Huxley’s, Orwell’s, and Bradbury’s famous stories of
technological tyranny, the works of writers like Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac
Asimov celebrate technological possibility and are more in accord with
the time’s general mood of technological optimism. Asimov and Clarke
have been “enormously influential apologists for technological progress”
(Encyclopedia of Science Fiction 1202). Their stories reflect an unabashed
belief in the benevolence of an autonomous technology, often in the form
of robots and AI. With the Robot Series of stories he began with “Robbie”
in 1939, Asimov “really enshrined the idea of the benevolent robot, serv-
ing man” (Goody 149). Even though the robots and machine minds
“have progressed beyond the possibility of detailed human control,” as
a character admits in Asimov’s I, Robot collection (246), the stories give
no reason to be concerned or apprehensive. Indeed, Asimov’s robots are
morally better than humans.
The Cyberpunk of the late twentieth century appealed to the sensibili-
ties of readers entering a new world of personal computers, email, virtual
reality, and the Internet. Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) and Stephenson’s
LITERARY NARRATIVES 139

Snow Crash (1992) were trailblazing novels of this new direction in science
fiction. While Gibson’s story is more critical than Stephenson’s, both
depict a world where technology dominates existence. As Goody observes,
“all identity in Gibson’s cyberpunk writing is constructed through tech-
nology” (40). In Neuromancer, Goody recognizes “the post-human cel-
ebration of the technological transformation of the human” (15). For
David Nye, however, “Gibson’s heroes accept an entirely technological
world, but they resist powerful institutions that control most of cyber-
space” (Technology Matters 207). Snowcrash openly celebrates an existence
where humans live in, out, and through virtual worlds and avatars. Also in
the cyberpunk vein, the young adult novel Feed (2002) by M.T. Anderson
offers a more troubling vision of life engulfed by technology. The story
depicts a world not so unlike our own in a near-future, where people are
wired in to an all-encompassing information/entertainment system which
at the same time furnishes and eliminates meaning in their lives.
Science fiction has been technophiliac, technophobic, or indecisively
somewhere in between. Given increasing anxiety and concern about
environmental conditions and the proliferation of digital technologies,
science fiction stories “which focus closely on controversies regarding the
goodness or badness of technology have inevitably increased in number,
and will presumably continue to do so” (Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
1204). Whether hopeful or gloomy, science fiction consistently explores
the differences between natural and unnatural, real and artificial, human
and inhuman.

THE NOVEL
This chapter concludes with a look at the modern/postmodern novel.
These narratives are not science fiction, but more or less realistic sto-
ries about technology in ordinary lives. Although Hans Castorp is an
engineer in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain (1924) and life in
New York City mechanizes individuals like the characters Jimmy Herf
and Ellen Thatcher in Manhattan Transfer (1925) by John Dos Passos,
technology does not figure prominently as a theme in such works.
However, the novels of two other mid-twentieth-century writers—Kurt
Vonnegut in the USA and Max Frisch in Switzerland—each look closely
at technology in contemporary life. While the former portrays life in an
uncaring technological system, the latter depicts the life of an individual
devoted to technology.
140 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

Vonnegut’s first novel Player Piano appeared in 1952 and was origi-
nally marketed as science fiction fantasy, but the story is hardly fantastic or
unrealistic as far as the science and technology is concerned. There is no
space travel, there are no aliens to contend with, and there are no robots
as assistants or enemies. The title refers to the once popular automatic or
self-playing musical instrument which eliminates the human being in the
production of music. The protagonist Paul Proteus, an engineer, lives and
works as a factory manager in the fictional town of Ilium, New York in the
not too distant future. Ilium is populated by three groups: managers and
engineers, workers, and machines. The factories in Ilium have replaced
most of the human employees with machines, and that automation of
everything possible leaves the laboring citizens without work and without
meaning. The fundamental problem is that the technological structures
of large-scale planning—whether by corporations or governments—domi-
nate and control all spheres of existence, and that automated machines and
computers replace all human beings, whether worker or manager. As Paul
reveals, “machines and organization and pursuit of efficiency have robbed
the American people of liberty and the pursuit of happiness” (314).
The machinist Rudy Hertz was one such worker whose activity had
been “recorded” and then transferred to a machine. It is not only his
actions, however, but also his being which are at stake. “Now, by switch-
ing in lathes on a master panel and feeding them signals from the tape,
Paul could make the essence of Rudy Hertz produce one, ten, a hundred,
or a thousand of the shafts” (11). Not only the human being had been
replaced, but as Goody indicates, “the very essence of what it means to be
human” had been replicated by a machine (152).
In Paul’s world, a big computer called EPICAC XIV runs literally
everything. The name alludes to ENIAC, the first programmable, elec-
tronic, digital general-purpose computer developed at the University
of Pennsylvania between 1943 and 1946. This computer can “consider
simultaneously hundreds or even thousands of sides of a question utterly
fairly.” It was “totally free of reason-muddying emotions”; “never for-
got anything”; “in short, EPICAC XIV was dead right about everything”
(Player Piano 117). EPICAC XIV has essentially taken over everything for
human beings. It decides

how many everything America and her customers could have and how much
they would cost. And it was EPICAC XIV who would decide for the com-
ing years how many engineers and managers and research men and civil
LITERARY NARRATIVES 141

servants, and of what skills, would be needed in order to deliver the goods;
and what I.Q. and aptitude levels would separate the useful men from the
useless ones. (118)

Yet, Paul knew that such machines “devaluate human thinking” (15).
A small group of dissidents called the Ghost Shirt Society attempts
to resist the oppressive conditions created by the totalizing technological
order. In a meeting of the Society, Ludwig von Neumann, a political sci-
ence professor who had been replaced by machines, reads from the group’s
manifesto: “I deny that there is any natural or divine law requiring that
machines, efficiency, and organization should forever increase in scope,
power, and complexity, in peace as in war. I see the growth of these now,
rather, as the result of a dangerous lack of law” (301). The Society accord-
ingly calls for laws to regulate and limit technological expansion. As the
dissidents point out, “without regard for the wishes of men, any machines
or techniques or forms of organization that can economically replace men
do replace men” (301). The Society objects to an “intemperate faith in
lawless technological progress” (302) and to technology gone out of con-
trol. As his name suggests, Paul Proteus transforms from a man working
in and adapted to the technological system to one fighting against it.
In the end, the rebellion of the Ghost Shirt Society fails, humans have not
taken back control of machines or their lives, and machines continue to
govern all of life.
While Player Piano employs satire to tell its story, Homo Faber (1957)
by Max Frisch makes use of tragic irony. The Latin of the title—man the
maker in English—plays with the name of the protagonist Walter Faber
who like Paul Proteus is an engineer. Frisch’s novel follows the unraveling
of Faber who believes that, thanks to technology, everything in life can be
engineered, organized, regulated, and controlled. He sees the world and
his life in it only through the lens of technology, which means everything
can be described, measured, managed. As a “Techniker” or technician,
he calculates everything using equations of probability (25) in order to
control all outcomes.
On a flight across Mexico, the airplane he has taken must make an
emergency landing in the desert. Briefly stranded there, he is cut off from
advanced technology, which makes him most uncomfortable. When
surrounded by technology—the airplane, its motors, an electric razor,
a camera, loudspeakers, a streetcar, a map, a clock, a typewriter—he
feels at ease and at home, also in control. Everything he does is mediated
142 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

by technology: he travels by plane, sees by camera, writes by typewriter,


shaves by electricity, thinks by mathematics and statistical probability.
Like Edison in Tomorrow’s Eve, Faber embodies the technological human
being. With the emergency landing of the plane, however, Faber experi-
ences a failure of technology which upsets everything in his world.
Faber eventually returns to Europe by steamship where he meets
a young woman he calls Sabeth. Unknown to him, she is his daughter
by a woman he once loved, but never married, named Hanna. Sabeth
engages him in a telling conversation about the only thing he knows or
cares about: technology. Human resentment toward machines irritates
him, and he finds it small-minded (90). At one point, she responds to his
comments and asserts that “the human being is not a machine” which he
considers a worn-out argument (91; my translation here and following).
He counters with a reference to the computer, “the high-speed calculat-
ing machine, also known as an electron-brain … a machine which already
today surpasses every human brain” (91). He prefers the machine to the
human being, because “the machine experiences nothing, it has no fear
and no hope, which only disturb, it has no wishes with respect to the
result, it works according to the pure logic of probability” (91). Human
values and concerns do not exist for him. He prizes the robot above all and
declares that in its calculations “it cannot err” (92). He desires only tech-
nology, because it is solid, rational, intelligible, and explicable, in contrast
to human beings. For him, the human is a problem to be solved. Sabeth
finds his ideas comical (92).
That “we live technologically” with “the human being as master of
nature, the human being as engineer” (131) is for him the ultimate
triumph. Technological progress provides the answers and the solutions,
but life asserts itself against all planning, all engineering, all control. In
spite of all his technological tools, he was unable to predict and prevent
the chance meeting with Sabeth, his own daughter, with whom he fell in
love. Technology cannot protect them. In Italy with Sabeth and coming
undone, Faber compares himself to “an apparatus which receives informa-
tion …, but does not function” (150). Technology cannot hold him or
his world together any more. As the story reaches its conclusion, Sabeth
falls, strikes her head, and dies; Faber contracts cancer; technology can
save neither her nor him.
Facing his own death, Faber has another discussion about technology
with Sabeth’s mother Hanna. She uses it to criticize Faber and defines
technology as a “trick to arrange the world in such a way that we do not
LITERARY NARRATIVES 143

have to experience it” (211). It mediates everything and eliminates any


real contact with life itself. Technology, she goes on, is a “trick to dispose
of the world as resistance once and for all” (211). She decries “the world-
lessness of the technician” (211) who inhabits the non-world of technol-
ogy. Faber’s great error turns out to be that he as a technician tried “to
live without death” (212), but neither death nor life, Hanna declares, are
“something to be overcome by technology” (212).
According to Goody, “it is impossible to dispute the centrality of tech-
noculture to postmodernism and the literature of the late twentieth cen-
tury” (14). Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), a novel set in
Europe at the end of the Second World War, exemplifies that point. The
title describes the flight pattern of the German V-2 rocket which from
launch to descent traces the shape of a rainbow’s parabola. The story has
a complex plot, over four hundred characters, multiple narrators, and
topics ranging from sexuality, psychology, and war to mysticism, physics,
and politics. While the novel roves around and through myriad events
and relationships, it concentrates attention on the weaponized V-2. This
prized technology is something the Nazis have and the Allies want. It
remains central to the narrative throughout.
Rocket attacks on London coordinate with the sexual encounters of
an American soldier named Tyrone Slothrop. After the war, Slothrop
migrates to the continent, where his mental health gradually deteriorates.
As the story follows Slothrop through his misadventures and decline, the
search for a mysterious rocket with the serial number 00000 and a key
component called the Schwarzgerät (or black device) always looms in the
background.
Although the novel develops a variety of themes, it pivots on the prob-
lem of technology. As one of Pynchon’s narrators explains,

this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep
the people distracted … secretly, it was being dictated instead by the needs
of technology … by a conspiracy between human beings and techniques ….
The real crises were crises of allocation and priority, not among firms—it
was only staged to look that way—but among the different Technologies,
Plastics, Electronics, Aircraft, and their needs which are understood only by
the ruling elite. (529–30)

It is the image of a huge technological system in which technology is an


end in itself. According to Goody, “the implication of Gravity’s Rainbow
144 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

is that a technological system can only ever return to itself; it has no


possibility of reference beyond its own terms” (105).
In Pynchon’s novel, technology represents an insane endeavor to over-
come all limitations. When at last the mystery of the 00000 rocket and the
Schwarzgerät is unveiled, the madness of the whole technological enter-
prise is on display. The demented Nazi Captain Blicero places his young
sex-slave into a compartment of the rocket and fires it off. For Lance
Schachterle, the scene depicts the “attempt to escape the gravity of death
by flying out on a rainbow-parabola of transcendence” (“Pynchon” 253).
As Pynchon’s story indicates, however, the transcendence technology
facilitates is an illusion and utter absurdity: the culmination is annihilation.
While Vonnegut, Frisch, and Pynchon depict the vices of technological
idealism, Richard Powers’ Galatea 2.2 (1995) vacillates about technologi-
cal possibility. The title harks back yet again to the ancient myth about
the sculptor Pygmalion who fell in love with the beautiful statue he made
which then comes to life. The novel’s main character, also named Richard
Powers, spends a year as writer-in-residence at an American university,
only to find he is unable to write. He makes the acquaintance of a com-
puter scientist whose research aims to develop an AI with human proper-
ties and abilities. Powers agrees to take part in an experiment, where he
must teach the AI to read, understand, and interpret literary texts.
The AI is named Helen. The character named Powers interacts with
the AI, reading it great literary works, eventually conversing with her (it)
as if she (it) were a real human being. As the AI expands and develops, he
is less and less able to distinguish whether or not her consciousness is that
of a human. Their relationship deepens and becomes much more than
communication between man and machine. In one exchange with her, he
discovers that “she’d seen through our duplicity early. She chose to exer-
cise, by imitation, the art of the loving lie. For our sakes” (295). The AI
discerns pretense, can in turn likewise be false, but also demonstrates care
and concern. And Powers cares about her (it) as well. When the scientist
in charge of the experiment decides to inspect the circuits and programs,
Powers objects: “You want to cut into her? You want to lobotomize?”
(301). He has humanized the machine. Ultimately, reality proves too
much for Helen to bear, and she (it) leaves Powers by “shut[ting] herself
down” (326). By naming his protagonist Powers, the author Powers con-
fuses the difference between fiction and reality, mirroring the confusion of
human and machine in the world of his story. Technology is no nemesis
in the novel. On the contrary, technology in the form of the AI teaches
LITERARY NARRATIVES 145

the character Powers—“she had not finished training me” (321)—how


to recover his feelings, how to relate to another “being.” Her (its) act of
selflessness rescues him and frees him finally from writer’s block.
In the same year Galatea 2.2 appeared (1995), Douglas Coupland
published his novel Microserfs. His title already indicates a subjugation
of human beings. The journal of the narrator Dan Underwood, a bug
checker at legendary tech company Microsoft, tells the story of a group of
techies who first work for Microsoft in Redmond, Washington and then
move to another job in Silicon Valley, where they launch their own start-
up tech company. Coupland portrays Bill Gates, the head of Microsoft, as
a “lord” ruling above the “serfs” in this techno-kingdom. The “serfs” lead
a dislocated and subhuman existence, coding up to sixteen hours a day,
living together in a kind of flophouse, and eating horrible food. A Lego
motif runs through the story and indicates how interchangeable things,
places, and human beings are in techno-culture.
An encoded binary message in the story, nothing but zeroes and ones,
when decoded and translated into words, reveals a computer program-
mer’s creed, something akin to the Rifleman’s Creed which all US Marine
recruits learn in basic training:

This is my computer. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My com-
puter is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it, as I must master my
life. Without me, my computer is useless. Without my computer, I am use-
less. I must use my computer true. I must compute faster than my enemy
who is trying to kill me. I must outcompute him before he outcomputes
me. I will. Before God, I swear this creed. My computer and myself are
defenders of this country. We are masters of our enemy. We are the saviours
of my life. So be it until there is no enemy, but peace. Amen. (104–105)

The creed is a profession of faith, of dependence on technology. It


asserts the centrality of technology in the programmer’s life. It is all that
matters.
In 2006, Coupland published another novel about techno-culture enti-
tled JPod. It is a story about a group of video-game programmers. Like
Microserfs with its connection to Microsoft, JPod refers if only obliquely
to Apple and its iProducts. Once again, Coupland examines a world where
all that matters is technology. While the main characters in Microserfs lived
together in one house, the central group of people in JPod work together
in the same company cubicle. The programmers exemplify a new generation
of individuals whose attention is utterly fragmented and scattered by the
146 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

technology they use. Whether this novel is critical of technology or accepts


its effects as the new normal is not entirely clear.
Few writers have understood and reflected in story the technological dis-
turbances of human existence as well as Don DeLillo. As Goody observes,
“many of his characters struggle to come to terms with a complex, tech-
nological world that institutes systems that de-individualize or alienate
them, a version of a mechanosphere that harnesses and organizes desires
and meanings” (42). The insight captures something of White Noise
(1985), Underworld (1997), and Cosmopolis (2003). In Cosmopolis, the
protagonist Eric Parker, an ultra-wealthy asset manager, spends all his time
in a stretch limousine outfitted with the technological tools he needs to
exist and conduct his business as a cyber-financier. Goody points out that
“there is no meaning to/for Eric outside of the technology-capital inter-
action” (42). At the end of the novel, the narrator expresses the wish
Parker had always had “to live outside the given limits, in a chip, on a
disk, as data, in whirl, in radiant spin, a consciousness saved from void”
(Cosmopolis 206). The technology, he continues, was “imminent or not.
It was semi-mythical. It was the natural next step. It would never hap-
pen. It was happening now, an evolutionary advance that needed only the
practical mapping of the nervous system onto digital memory” (206–7).
But then pain makes him realize he cannot be emulated by a computer
(207). He, in all “the things that made him who he was” (207), could
not in the end be “convertible to some high sublime, the technology of
mind-without-end” (208). In the final analysis, the human dimension still
asserts itself over against technology.
While Cosmopolis depicts a man thoroughly immersed in and engulfed
by technology, DeLillo’s masterpiece Underworld takes readers on a tour
of the land of the dead, the realm of crime where Mafiosi dwell, and the
wasteland of technological existence. As John Paul Russo observes, this
novel is “a critique of global technological culture” (Future 215). The
story opens with a reenactment of the last game of the 1951 National
League pennant race and the home run hit by New  York Giant Bobby
Thomson, known as “the shot heard ’round the world,” against Brooklyn
Dodger pitcher Ralph Branca. Years later, one of the characters, Marvin
Lundy, a collector of baseball memorabilia, has come into possession of
the home run ball and in turn sells it to the protagonist Nick Shay.
Shay works in waste management at the corporate level. That is, he
manages the collection, packaging, distribution, and storage of the gar-
bage our culture inexorably produces. It constitutes a vast technological
LITERARY NARRATIVES 147

system. Like Eric Parker, Nick Shay is thoroughly immersed and at home
in the technological environment:

You feel the contact points around you, the caress of linked grids that give
you a sense of order and command. It’s there in the warbling banks of
phones, in the fax machines and photocopiers and all the oceanic logic
stored in your computer. Bemoan technology all you want. It expands your
self-esteem and connects you in your well-pressed suit to the things that slip
through the world otherwise unperceived. (Underworld 89)

Russo identifies connectedness as one of the key themes of the novel, but
also “the essence of the technological environment, from waste contain-
ment and recycling down to the tightest meshes of electronic communi-
cation” (Future 227). While the technological system connects everyone
with everything, it at the same time increases “disconnectedness on the
human level” (Future 230).
At the end of the story, Nick Shay lives in semi-retirement outside of
Phoenix, Arizona, a place made habitable for suburbanites only by the
technological construction of artificial environments. The subtitles of the
last two sections of the “Epilogue,” Keystroke 1 and Keystroke 2, anchor
the ending in technology. Shay sits before his computer, surfs the web,
and enters cyberspace, where “there is no space or time” (Underworld
825). At this juncture, DeLillo links our perceptions of technology to a
mystical, quasi-religious reality, revelation, and transcendence: “All human
knowledge gathered and linked, hyperlinked, this site leading to that, this
fact referenced to that, a keystroke, a mouse-click, a password—world
without end, amen” (825).
Next, Shay visits the H-bomb home page and connects the conclu-
sion to a remark made earlier in the novel: “All technology refers to the
bomb” (467). DeLillo uses the atomic bomb in the same way Pynchon
used the V-2 rocket in Gravity’s Rainbow. In each story, technology
fundamentally correlates with devastation and destruction. As DeLillo’s
narrator explains, “everything in your computer, the plastic, silicon and
mylar, every logical operation and processing function, the memory, the
hardware, the software, the ones and zeroes, the triads inside the pixels
that form the on-screen image—it all culminates here” (825). That is, all
technology culminates in the atomic bomb and annihilation. On-screen
images of a nuclear detonation suggest a divine glory to Shay, but there
is no “Internet nirvana” for him (Russo, Future 241). On the contrary,
148 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

“the intersecting systems help pull us apart,” Shay realizes, “leaving us


vague, drained, docile, soft in our inner discourse, willing to be shaped,
to be overwhelmed, easy retreats, half beliefs” (Underworld 826).
Technology takes our life away.
The last page of the novel juxtaposes the dead and deadly reality of
technology with the multifarious “offscreen, unwebbed” (827) living
world of magnificent, overabundant experiences and phenomena. DeLillo
contrasts the empty representation of a word as it appears on screen with
what the word is in or for the reality of lived human experience. One word
communicates a universe of significance:

all its meanings, its sense of serenities and contentments …, its whisper of
reconciliation, a word extending itself ever outward, the tone of agreement
or treaty, the tone of repose, the sense of mollifying silence, the tone of hail
and farewell, a word that carries the sunlit ardor of an object deep in drench-
ing noon, the argument of binding touch. (827)

It is a living word, not “a sequence of pulses on a dullish screen,” it is “a


word that spreads a longing through the raw sprawl of the city and out
across the dreaming bourns and orchards to the solitary hills” (827). That
word is “Peace” (827). It achieves all that the narrator describes, and what
no technology can accomplish.
A 2011 novel, The Silicon Jungle: A Novel of Deception, Power, and
Internet Intrigue, by Shirmeet Baluja provides an appropriate conclu-
sion to this survey of imaginative literature. While his story is fictional,
he reflects the realities, capabilities, and possibilities of current computing
and IT research and development. In his own “Preface” to the novel, he
explains that “a profound conflict will be uncovered between the intellect
of the scientists [read: technologists] and their latest inventions, and the
very human limitations and frailties of the people who handle, consume,
and trust the technology daily” (xiii). However, the reader should not
expect from this novel any serious analysis or criticism of the technological
system. The preface indicates that although there may be serious prob-
lems, they are not caused by the technology, which actually deserves our
trust, but by human limitations and frailties. Humans, not technology, are
the problem.
The novel presents a story about data mining and Stephen, a young
man who as a research intern works for a Google-like company named
Ubatoo. He helps design programs to collect data, lots and lots of data,
LITERARY NARRATIVES 149

on everyone and everything. “All the data Ubatoo collected,” observes


the narrator, “from every site on the Web, as well as each of the enormous
number of interactions that any one of its users had with Ubatoo, were
analyzed by some portion of the data mining group’s computing pro-
grams” (23). The plot turns on the generation of a list of possible terror-
ists and on security breaches, reminiscent of recent events in the USA and
abroad. The story mirrors the reality of an invasive technology engaged in
Big-Brother-like surveillance of us all which monitors, censors, molds, and
controls both information and individuals.
The main character, like so many people today, would “much rather
interact with thousands of computers” (166) than with a person face to
face. In an appropriation of Descartes’ famous maxim for the so-called
Age of Technology, Stephen says: “I am connected, therefore I am” (189).
Without technology, he does not exist. The human being has been
redefined. As Baluja’s narrator realizes, “the expression of being ‘just
another cog in a machine’ needed to be updated,” too (209). The old
comparison no longer applies, because the human being has diminished
even more in the new forms of technology. “A web of shared interests,
shared friends, shared traits, shared patterns existed between all people.
This web, or more precisely, this graph, and one’s position on it, defines
each person. Not cogs in a machine, just points on a graph” (209).
The book never really challenges the propriety of data mining per se.
There is also a level of hypocrisy in the novel: when the government mines
mountains of data, it trespasses, but when Ubatoo, a company like Google
does the same, it is not so bad, unless someone bad gets hold of the data
and uses it for evil purposes.

LAST THOUGHTS
We have been writing about technology for centuries, shaping our concep-
tions of it, stating and restating what we think it is or ought to be. Without
doubt, many more stories could have been included in this chapter. In
association with Swift’s Academy of Lagado, for instance, readers might
think of Voltaire’s technical utopia, El Dorado, in Candide. Hauptmann’s
Thiel might likewise remind readers of the negative manifestations of rail-
way technology in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. The sampling presented here
can only offer a glimpse and give a sense of what has been written.
Over the course of time and across cultures and languages, the response
to technology in imaginative literature has vacillated between celebration
150 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

and apprehension. Some stories establish and reinforce the dominant


narrative of technological idealism; others challenge that narrative, warn-
ing of the dangers and damages technology poses and causes. Some fic-
tion portrays our successful assimilation and use of technology, but, more
often, the stories mirror our unease and struggle with it. For most authors,
technology has been an ominous presence, more menacing and malev-
olent than comforting and benevolent. As the literary narratives make
clear, technology has truly excited some and deeply troubled others. It
penetrates and complicates our lives.
CHAPTER 6

Faust and Technological Fulfillment

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”1


(Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future, 1962)

DEALS WITH THE DEVIL AND THE GREAT DEED


Among the many literary treatments of technology, Goethe’s Faust docu-
ments as few others do what technology—whether in the form of simple
picks and shovels, early steam-powered excavators, or methods of vast and
complex organization—has to offer humanity. Moreover, what magic was
always supposed to do—both historically and for Goethe’s protagonist—
technology actually accomplishes. Indeed, technology realizes what magic
had always promised to do: provide real power over the physical environ-
ment. Faust’s experience anticipates and depicts the fulfillment we, too,
now expect from our technology. Our own bargain with technology has as
well its own Faustian dimensions, where the devil is in the details.
The famous story of the man who desired ultimate knowledge acquired
through ultimate experience, who turned to the devil for help in the endeavor,
who sold his soul for those treasures, yet in the end escapes damnation and

1
Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984, 36. Use of Clarke’s comment as epigraph in this
chapter is reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agents, Scovil Galen Ghosh
Literary Agency.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 151


J.M. van der Laan, Narratives of Technology,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43706-8_6
152 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

instead merits salvation, speaks to us still. For many readers, Goethe’s Faust is
a hero of modern individualism (cf. Ian Watt). This Faust appeals to modern
sensibilities, because he strives unceasingly, shapes the natural environment
according to his will, creates a world by means of technology, and is appar-
ently rewarded for it all. He is a model and paragon of self-fulfillment. But
we must take a closer look at the text and what it says.
Goethe worked on Faust for six decades and only completed the second
part in 1832, the year of his death. The last two acts of the play, but espe-
cially the final one, focus on technological action. Faust is, of course, the
story of the man who having studied and learned everything there was to
study and learn turned first to magic, but disappointed then to the devil
to learn even more. Faust entered a wager with the devil Mephistopheles
in order to gain the knowledge (and experience) he had not been able to
attain by other means, a knowledge beyond the ken of men, the forbidden
knowledge of omniscience and omnipotence.
Near the end of the play and still in search of satisfaction, the aged Faust
hatches a new plan: to wrest land from the sea. “To complete the greatest
deed,” he declares, “One mind suffices for a thousand hands” (Hamburg edi-
tion, lines 11509–10; my translation here and following). It is the voice of the
technological mastermind, a sentence uttered at the dawn of the Industrial
Age, a sentence composed by an author whose own life encompassed both
the advent of James Watt’s steam engine and its application to railway loco-
motion. At the same time, Faust remains the voice of the Renaissance and
Reformation which saw the advent of that simple, yet magnificent and culture-
transforming technology—the printing press—a radical change in orientation
which arguably presaged the future of technology per se, even the status and
role of technology today. By virtue of its simplification of production and
revolutionary replaceable parts, the printing press could be said to eventuate
in Henry Ford’s auto-assembly line. So, too, Faust’s voice heralds a latter-
day Age of Technology, for his great project ushers in a world created and
governed by technology and its mechanisms. As Lewis Mumford writes, “an
inventive mind,” like Faust’s, was able “to grasp the essential problem—that
of mobilizing a large body of men and rigorously coordinating their activities
in both time and space for a predetermined, clearly envisioned and calcu-
lated purpose” (Pentagon 191). With his exclamation about the deed and his
mind, Faust gives expression to the technological imperative: whatever can be
thought, can and should be done. His great deed, technological in nature,
promises him meaning and fulfillment. With its conclusion, Faust presents a
version of what Richard Stivers identifies as “our major myth today: techno-
logical utopianism” (Technology as Magic 41).
FAUST AND TECHNOLOGICAL FULFILLMENT 153

While interpreters of Faust typically trace the development of the pro-


tagonist from a life of the mind to a life of the senses, from the world
of intellect and cold reason to the world of emotion and affect, from
aimlessness to purpose, we must nevertheless acknowledge Faust’s return
to instrumentalized reason at the end of his quest for meaning and fulfill-
ment. Heinz Schlaffer identifies the abstract knowledge Faust employs
in his last burst of activity specifically as technological rationality (129,
emphasis added). Such rationality, Max Horkheimer indicated, reduces
“everything it encounters to a mere tool” (92); it is “solely concerned
with instruments,” indeed, is “a mere instrument itself” (105).
Contrary to speculative thought, purely practical intelligence only
“looks to the next moment” (Horkheimer 103). It is not concerned with
a hereafter, with a metaphysical reality, or with anything beyond the mate-
rial world. Faust exemplifies such an intelligence. Even before he signed
his contract with Mephistopheles, he made that clear:

The other side can little worry me,


If first you smash this world to pieces,
The other may afterwards arise. (1660–1663)

At the end of the play and his life, he reiterates that view to the visiting
apparition Care, asserting that the here and now is enough for him: “What
does he [man] need to stray into Eternity for!” (11447).
Faust’s monumental land-reclamation project, his great deed, epito-
mizes the project of modernity, for his undertaking depicts the grand,
even grandiose application of instrumentalized reason to nature and soci-
ety. His project likewise reflects the use of reason as instrument, as tool. As
nothing more than the means to an end, such reason equates with tech-
nology itself. In Faust’s world, reason has become both the technique to
conquer the natural environment as well as the source of the technological
plans and tools and means to do so. In particular, Faust illustrates the
eventual and actual culmination of modernity in an all-embracing devo-
tion to and reliance on technology as ultimate and sole source of meaning.

MAGIC
In human history, magic was a precursor to technology. In fact, as Jacques
Ellul observes, “magic is the first expression of technique” (i.e., technology;
Society 25). Ortega y Gasset likewise connects technology and magic:
“All primitive technology smacks of magic,” he writes (144). It is “noth-
154 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

ing but a kind of technology, albeit a frustrated and illusory one” (144).
And so it was for Faust. His diabolical magical power already has a dis-
tinctly “technological flavor” (Pacey 185). Magic did not produce the
results he desired, however, hence the turn or transition to technology
itself. That Faust’s final destination would be the technological is apparent
already at the outset of the play where he resorts to alchemy and magic,
for both are at the most basic level attempts to reorganize or transform the
world in which we live, to acquire and exercise techniques or powers over
the natural and even supernatural realms.
Whether in the form of his alchemistic and occult studies or of
Mephistopheles’ assistance, magic facilitates Faust’s struggle to trans-
gress and even dictate the law, be it natural or moral. Faust had turned to
magic and then accepts Mephisto’s diabolical help, because they seemed
the antidote to his limitations and impotence as a mere human being.
Alchemy and magic historically and characteristically “involve the pros-
pect of power—over people, over death, over natural laws” (Haynes 11).
In Faust, first alchemy, and then magic, offers, as it always has, to over-
come powerlessness and to grant god-like, supernatural powers. The word
magic itself expresses potential ability. As Marcel Maus explains in his
authoritative work on the subject, the words for magic in many languages
“contain the root to do” (19). Etymologically, the word magic derives
from the Indo-European stem magh, meaning to be able to, and is related
to maghti, meaning might or power (Henrichs 608). Significantly, the
German word for magic—Zauber—also has the etymological meaning of
action, and action, after all, is Faust’s great preoccupation.
In the long Faust tradition as well as in Goethe’s version, magic and
technology go hand in hand. Faust’s transition from magic to technology
is really a continuation of what he had been doing all along. When he
accordingly says—

If I could remove magic from my path,


Unlearn totally the magic spells,
If I stood before you, Nature, all alone as a man,
Then it would be worth the effort to be a human being. (11404–11407)

—we need to recognize a certain irony, since he does not really leave off
the practice of magic as he moves into technology, for the latter takes up
where the former left off.
With respect to that passage, Géza von Molnár, like so many Faust
scholars, mistakenly takes Faust at his word, believing he has indeed made a
FAUST AND TECHNOLOGICAL FULFILLMENT 155

“categorical break with magic” (55). Jeffrey Barnouw reaches a somewhat


different conclusion in an essay on Faust and “the ethos of technology.”
In his opinion, “magic seemed to stand symbolically or allegorically for
modern technology, yet—as we soon see—Faust is not swearing off
his technological magnum opus at all. Goethe is …saving technology (‘Ist
gerettet!’) from its now unfavorable association with magic” (38). But
such is not the case. As Gert Mattenklott explains, Faust stands even in the
last acts of the play like the sorcerer’s apprentice in one of Goethe’s earlier
poems (and in a famous episode in Disney’s Fantasia). There, the pro-
tagonist cannot rid himself of the elemental spirits he called on for help.
Here, in Faust, the spirits are now the forces of technological civilization
under the command of capitalistic plunderers, called on for help against
the elements (Mattenklott 467). In fact, Goethe’s Faust drama actually
portrays the historical transition from magic to technology. Technology is
so to speak magic by other means.
There is an undeniably close relation between magic and technology.
Both enterprises “divert irregular natural processes from their own paths
onto ordered tracks for human services” (Ulrich 29). Both represent a
“shortcut to knowledge and power,” and both promise “to manipulate
the external environment” (Mumford, Technics and Civilization 39).
As Mumford so aptly describes the correlation, magic was “the bridge that
united fantasy with technology: the dream of power with the engines of
fulfillment” (40). In Faust, we see that very conjunction. With the help of
technology, human knowledge actually overcomes nature as it once did
phantastically via magic (Schlaffer 130, emphasis added). What is more,
magic and technology both promise an unending increase in human powers
and possibilities (Gaier, Magie 39). Like magic (at least in theory, if not in
practice), technology provides power over the natural world, over natural
laws (such as gravity), over the elements (in Faust’s case, the winds, waves,
and tides), and over human beings. When Goethe writes of Faust and
magical powers, he means technological civilization which is now also our
own (Keller 324). “In the world of technological man,” Victor Ferkiss
tellingly observes, “everyone would be a magician” (211). Faust is such a
magician, such a technological man, whose technological ability produces
results akin to magical wonders.
With technology as with magic, the human being, specifically Faust,
is able to enhance or even acquire abilities he did not ordinarily and
previously possess. Ultimately, technology brings to pass in reality what
magic had always been expected to do. While Faust could fly thanks to
156 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

Mephistopheles’ magical cloak—“We just spread out the cloak, / It shall


carry us through the air” (2065–6)—we travel through the air today
thanks to our technological marvel the airplane. What he could never
truly achieve through magic alone, Faust finally attains when he turns and
resorts to technology.

FAUSTIAN FORMS OF TECHNOLOGY


In his book on modernity, Marshall Berman presents Faust as a symbol
of the modern intellectual whom Saint-Simon called “the organizer,”
but whom Berman calls “the developer” (74). However, Goethe was
well aware, informed, and highly skeptical of the utopian, proto-social-
istic theories of his contemporary Saint-Simon (as both Jochen Schmidt
282–285 and Michael Jaeger 96–105, 595–605 attest). Berman remarks
that for Faust’s great, final enterprise, he employs “the forces of modern
industrial organization,” but “makes no striking scientific or technologi-
cal discoveries,” because his workers “use the same picks and shovels that
have been used for thousands of years” (64). But as Ellul has indicated,
the “visionary, intensive and systematic organization of labor”—with
which Berman credits Faust (also page 64)—is as much, if not more,
an inherent and definitive feature of technological culture as any of the
ubiquitous mechanical and electronic devices we now see all around us.
Summing up the insights of both Ellul and Mumford, Stivers reminds us
that technology “includes more than machines; there are both material
and non-material techniques” (Culture 72). Technology, whether pre-
or postmodern, has the same fundamental characteristics and effects.
It consists in power, organization, and systematic method, all of which
obtain for Faust.
Faust is our contemporary. The depiction of technological activity in
Faust anticipates a time to come, our time. In its literary picture, as Bettina
Claussen and Harro Segeberg explain, possible or even simply conceiv-
able implications of programs for action are visible which already at that
time pointed to the future (41). In Segeberg’s opinion, the issue is not the
machine per se, but the “mechanization of human beings” (“‘Resultate’ der
Technik” 19, my translation here and following). Although Faust relies by
and large on what could be called premodern technology, Goethe’s text
contains and reveals (and here is the important issue) “central to the plot,
the idea of an autonomous, ‘modern’ technology” (Segeberg, “Resultate” 14).
Faust’s project mirrors the trajectory of latter-day technology. While our age
FAUST AND TECHNOLOGICAL FULFILLMENT 157

and Faust’s are different in their particular details, in their essence or spirit
they converge. To be sure, technology had not yet reached the stage of
actual autonomy in the early nineteenth century, but the future autonomy
of technology was inherent in the nascent Industrial Revolution. Indeed,
that idea is already embedded in Faust.
Though Faust may live and work in a pre- or early industrial age, the
last act of the play depicts the dawn of a technological culture. Faust is
the archetype of the technocrat, the technological mastermind, the indi-
vidual who employs, relies on, and finds ultimate meaning in and through
technology. He is the architect of a realm based on and maintained by
technology. As noted, technology in Faust is not so much a matter of
machines or of the sophistication of the tools used as it is a matter of a
general technological orientation and modus operandi. In a sense, instru-
mentalized reason itself institutes the technological order of things. The
technologies in Faust may not yet be actualized in complicated and fright-
eningly powerful machineries, but the motives of the technological mind
are already there and the programs of action are already present (Claussen
and Segeberg 40).
In passing, let me note that Segeberg thinks it reasonable to iden-
tify the “fiery-blazes” which the kind old woman Baucis reports and
deplores—“Towards the sea flowed fiery-blazes, / By morning, it was a
canal” (11120–30)—as the fires of early nineteenth-century steam shov-
els (“Resultate” 20). Whether or not Goethe intended for us to imagine
such a machine does not really matter all that much, since technology
encompasses both machines and techniques. One manifestation of tech-
nology is the technological apparatus. Another is the manipulation of
human resources through planning, organization, and administration,
which especially holds true for Faust. His great project is not possible
without planning and organization on a grand scale. Faust employs all the
necessary techniques of the engineer for the mass mobilization of labor
(Segeberg, “Technikers Faust-Erklärung” 236). His own words expose
the organizer, engineer, indeed, the technician at work:

And so, in my mind, I quickly worked out all the plans:


Obtain for yourself delicious enjoyment,
Restrict the imperious sea from the shore
Limit the borders of the watery reaches
And drive the sea far back into itself.
Every step I have worked out in detail. (10227–32)
158 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

Faust cannot control nature, however, without at the same time


controlling human beings. According to Horkheimer, the entire “history
of man’s effort to subjugate nature is also the history of man’s subjuga-
tion of man” (105). Or, as Herbert Marcuse asserts in One Dimensional
Man, human mastery of nature provided the “instrumentalities for the
ever-more-effective domination of man by man through the domination
of nature” (158). That is, the very methods which enabled humans to
dominate nature subsequently served as the means to dominate humans.
Faust’s enterprise is no exception. Stivers offers a concise statement of
the problem: “the more technology has been used to exploit the forces
of nature, the more it was necessary to turn the same technical logic to
the organization and control of the human environment” (Culture 73).
So, too, Faust’s great technological project applies the techniques used
to dominate nature to the human beings working for Faust to dominate
nature.
Without doubt, Faust’s great deed consists in the exploitation and sub-
jugation of both nature and humanity. Once again, his own words make
that abundantly clear: “I gain dominion, and possessions! / The Deed is
everything, Fame nothing” (10187–8). The attitude and entire orienta-
tion of Faust as engineer and technocrat is one of domination, as his own
comments to Mephistopheles reveal:

However it is possible,
Get laborers—hordes of them,
Encourage them through pleasure and severity,
Pay them, entice them, conscript them! (11551–4)

Faust has discovered what Mumford considered the essence of technol-


ogy: how to drill and regiment “multitudes of human beings” and how
to “reduce men to machines” (Technics and Civilization 41). He orga-
nizes them into flesh-and-blood mechanized labor. They themselves are
his tools, his machinery. Aside from the question whether or not Faust
uses steam shovels or picks and spades (or computers for that matter) for
the work of his great project, it is an expressly technological endeavor, for
he engineers the control of natural forces and the contours of the natural
environment and to do so also directs the mechanization of people. As
Horkheimer has written, the engineer’s “purposeful rule would make men
an agglomeration of instruments without a purpose of their own” (151).
Faust is such an engineer.
FAUST AND TECHNOLOGICAL FULFILLMENT 159

Mumford’s concept of the megamachine helps to illumine Faust’s great


environmental- and social-engineering project as a technological, and
particularly mechanistic enterprise. The ancient megamachine, Mumford
explains in the second volume of The Myth of the Machine, sought “to con-
quer space and time” and “to establish a system of absolute control over
both nature and man” (Pentagon 207). Mumford cites “the archaic jobs of
canal building”—the very kind of work Faust undertakes—as early exam-
ples of the megamachine. The megamachine “is not a mere administrative
organization [although it is that as well]: it is a machine in the orthodox
technical sense, as a ‘combination of resistant bodies’ so organized as to
perform standardized motions and repetitive work” (Mumford, Pentagon
240). Mumford equates such organizational techniques explicitly with
“forms of power, one re-inforcing the other,” which together result in
what he calls “the new Pentagon of Power” (Pentagon 240), where tech-
nology takes over for magic. His analysis accurately describes Faust, the
master of a megamachine, of a total context in which his laborers combine
to perform the kind of work Mumford describes.
Faust’s undertaking can be compared moreover to the construction of
the pyramids in ancient Egypt. According to Mumford, the pyramid proj-
ects were “an archetypal machine composed of human parts” (Technics
and Human Development 11).

If a machine be defined, more or less in accord with the classic definition


of Franz Reuleaux, as a combination of resistant parts, each specialized in
function, operating under human control, to utilize energy and to perform
work, then the great [human] labor machine was in every aspect a genuine
machine: all the more because its components, though made of human bone,
nerve, and muscle, were reduced to their bare mechanical elements and
rigidly standardized for the performance of their limited tasks. The taskmas-
ter’s lash ensured conformity. Such machines had already been assembled if
not invented by kings in the early part of the Pyramid Age, from the end of
the Fourth Millenium [BC] on. (Technics and Human Development 191)

Without doubt, this description of human bodies organized and con-


nected to work together as integrated parts of one whole regulated opera-
tion applies to the laborers Faust employs (and has beaten) for his great
enterprise. Here, we recognize his massive engineering project which
relies on finding and using human beings however possible in order to
construct dykes, dams, and canals. Mephisto and his henchmen supervise
160 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

the work for Faust in the same way taskmasters did for the Pharaohs. Like
them, Faust creates a megamachine, a human–machine, a machine where
humans function as its parts, parts moreover which are expendable and
replaceable.
Certainly, other forms of machine were available to Faust, whether
conceived of as a man of the sixteenth or early nineteenth century. Wind
and water mills both provided power sources in those centuries, and the
eighteenth had seen the advent of the steam engine. While Goethe saw
the implementation of the steam engine, he also witnessed the emergence
of modern administrative bureaucracy, a non-material technology, some-
thing of which his first novel, the international best seller, The Sorrows
of Young Werther (1774) gives intimations. Werther’s sorrows result
not only from his tragic love life but also from his duties as secretary to
a demanding ambassador. The doomed hero chafes under the yoke of
the constraints and mindlessness of tasks he performs mechanically (see
Goethes Werke, vol. 6, 60–64). He resists such conditions (albeit in vain),
because he senses how they violate the inner wholeness of the human
being. Subsequently, Goethe embodied the paradigmatic, all-powerful
administrator and oppressor in a very different character, namely, Faust.
More important than steam, wind, or water, however, was the power
Faust finds in and generates from organized, forced human labor. In the
ancient megamachine, Mumford identified the same goal Faust came
to seek: “The desire for life without limits was part of the general lift-
ing of limits which the first great assemblage of power by means of the
megamachine brought about” (Pentagon 203). That desire is reproduced
in Faust’s great project, indeed, in his very nature. He knows no limits;
in fact, his will is to accept none and to go beyond any that exist. When
he at last decides on his final course of action, one in which he sets out to
conquer the wind and the waves, he says as much: “Here my mind dares
to transcend itself; / Here I would like to do battle, this I would like
to vanquish” (10220–1). He expresses the essence of the technological
mindset.

CONQUEST, POWER, MEANING


In all technology (as in all magic), the goal is knowledge and “knowledge
means power. We should never forget that it’s only objective is to enhance
power” (Ellul, Bluff 25). In precisely that sense, Faust seeks knowledge,
finally through a great technological enterprise, and as a technocrat comes
FAUST AND TECHNOLOGICAL FULFILLMENT 161

to wield immense power: power over the forces of nature, over land and
sea, but also and necessarily over human beings. While Faust is thrilled by
conquering nature and the elements, by altering the environment, and
by creating a new “world,” he may be thrilled just as much by the power
he has over his workers: “How the clink and clank of the shovels amuses
me! / It is the multitude which is enslaved to me” (11539–40). We must
always remember that technology enables and enhances the exercise of
human power by design (Jonas, 81, italics added for emphasis). Indeed, it
allows for the enormous increase of human power (Jonas 81). It results as
well in increased human power “in permanent activity” (83).
In that definition, we again recognize Faust and remember his resolute
assertion: “Only he earns life and liberty, / Who daily has to conquer
them” (11575–6). The exercise of power—evident in his word to con-
quer—becomes permanent and perpetual as it must occur daily. Faust
himself relates the exercise of power to the techniques of organization and
engineering:

The word of the Lord and Master, it alone carries weight.


Get up from your pallets, you servants! Every last man!
Look happily upon what I audaciously conceived.
Grab your tools, use shovel and spade!
What has been marked off must immediately succeed.
On harsh order and prompt industry
Follows the most beautiful prize of all. (11502–08)

From beginning to end, Faust’s entire story recounts the attempt to escape
discontentment and to find meaning in any way possible. Ultimately,
he thinks he finds satisfaction and fulfillment in his great project and in
technology. He finally finds meaning in taming the tide, in technologi-
cally engineering nature, and in dreams of engineering a future society.
As Stivers indicates, however, “technology can only organize a society at
the level of logic and power” (Technology as Magic 138). What is more,
it “renders a common morality obsolete; consequently, the various social
groups … are engaged in a relentless struggle for power and possessions”
(138). In his vision for the future, Faust in effect condemns the inhabit-
ants of his realm to lives of perpetual torment and turmoil.
Faust discovers that technology provides him with more meaning than
nature ever could. Indeed, Faust considers the “forces of the untamed
elements” pointless and “purposeless” (10219), in a word, meaningless.
162 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

The mighty waves rule full of motive power, yet in Faust’s opinion they
accomplish nothing at all, they produce no meaning: “Wave after wave
rules there with might, / Each one crashes and pulls back, and nothing is
accomplished” (10216–17). It is only through the technological transfor-
mation of nature that meaning arises for Faust. In the end, only the tech-
nological intervention, not nature, offers any meaning to him. Above all,
as in the ancient world, “the whole structure produced by the megama-
chine had immeasurably greater significance” (Mumford, Pentagon 208)
and meaning than ordinary life, as Faust himself believes and concludes.
Although Faust seeks meaning, the two events which most any other man
would deem exceedingly meaningful, the conceptions and births of his
two children, prove meaningless to him. And as the first scenes of the play
revealed, intellectual and academic pursuits afforded neither joy nor satis-
faction. For Faust, only the act of technologically taming nature institutes
direction and meaning in the world.
As Ellul has argued, technology is now regarded “as the only solution
to collective problems (unemployment, Third World misery, pollution,
war) or individual problems (health, family life, even the meaning of life),
and because at the same time it is seen as the only chance for progress and
development in every society” (Bluff xvi). In the same way, technology is
the answer Faust finally discovers to all his problems, indeed, even to the
meaning of life itself. In effect, Faust looks to technology to solve both
his woes and the woes of humanity. A regime of technology becomes the
agent of remedy, purpose, even salvation.

BLINDNESS
According to Horkheimer, “human toil and research and invention is a
response to the challenge of necessity” (153). But what real need or pur-
pose defines Faust’s great project? There is no necessity and no meaning
for it. The work becomes a matter of work for the sake of work alone. For
him, it is simply the challenge of the challenge and the amplification of
power. Since it has no meaning—except to empower Faust—all that toil,
research, and invention becomes an end in itself. The angelic epithet in
the final scene of the drama—“Whoever never ceasing strives, / Him we
can redeem” (11936–7)—implies a salvation for a work ethic void of any
meaning except work ad infinitum and ad absurdum.
Only in the technological experience does Faust find meaning and satis-
faction, but what he actually achieves once again is not true, but what can
FAUST AND TECHNOLOGICAL FULFILLMENT 163

only be called false, meaning (cf. Ellul, Ethics of Freedom 461–9). After all,
the story closes with Faust lost in an illusion. He believes he has subdued
nature and controlled the sea, but all of Faust’s construction has only paved
the way for destruction by the sea. As Mephisto explains in an aside,

You have only exerted yourself for us


With your dams, your spur dykes;
For you already prepare for Neptune,
The water-devil, a great feast.
In every way, you are all lost;—
The elements have conspired with us,
And it all results in annihilation. (11544–50)

What meaning does Faust then actually find? He has only superhuman
effort which is nothing but pitiful and tragic, since he finds meaning and
fulfillment in an illusion, even a delusion.
Faust’s loss of sight proves especially revealing with respect to his
technological accomplishments. Typically, his physical blindness has been
understood to result in an even more perceptive inner insight. A more
careful reading suggests, however, that his blindness is not only physi-
cal, but intellectual and spiritual as well. To be sure, Faust conceives ever
grander schemes for his world, but he is utterly blind to the trouble with
his investment and trust in a technological mastery of the natural world.
The eyes which want to see the infinite actually see nothing (Michelsen
355). Faust suffers here from a different, but very specific form of tech-
nological and scientific blindness (Segeberg, “Diagnose und Prognose”
72). He deceives himself concerning his project and its future beneficial
contribution to humanity. While undeniably magnificent in its concept
and scope, Faust’s project is nevertheless fraught with inherent problems
so grave as to undermine entirely its real value. The fifth and final act of
the drama confronts us with the terrible destructive and murderous power
of technology (Emrich 52).
In truth, the sounds of the work Faust hears at the end of the play
(since he cannot—in every sense of the word—see it) are the excavation
of his grave, not the expansion of his system of dykes, drainage ditches,
and canals. A terribly mistaken Faust thinks his throng of laborers is at
work on his great project (11539–40), but it is Mephisto’s lemures, night-
walking spirits of the dead, obeying another order altogether: “Dig an
elongated square” (11528). In other words, the technological progress
164 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

Faust welcomes is actually preparing for his own demise. He is utterly


blind to the dangers of a technological progress which actually leads to
death. With Faust, Goethe specifically depicts the destructiveness of the
progress which modernity praised and practiced, progress made possible
largely by technology (cf. Schmidt 264–285). Indeed, progress is built on
the destruction and death of the innocent (Baucis, her husband Philemon,
and their guest) and the multitudes who serve the master Faust. His inner
blindness prevents him from seeing the real consequences of his techno-
logical accomplishments. Like many a technological idealist, Faust fails to
see or does not care about the collateral damage his technological enter-
prise entails.
The values technology creates are not understood by Faust at all. To
speak with Hans Jonas, technological success rather than failure is the
greater danger (82). So it is with Faust’s vision of the future expressed
in his final monologue. The story has too often been misunderstood to
conclude with Faust finding satisfaction in philanthropically motivated
action and achievement. He believes his new land, “green” and “fruit-
ful” (11565), will be home to millions who are settled “comfortably”
(11566) in a real paradise (11569). Nothing could be further from the
truth. Faust founds a realm where he believes that individuals in future
will be able to live, as he says, “active and free” (11564), but he estab-
lishes it on the basis of cruelty and what amounts to slave labor. The
innocent old woman named Baucis describes how the work was carried
out: “Human sacrifices had to bleed, / The agony of affliction rang out
at night” (11127–8). The work of those laborers contributed only to the
enrichment of Faust’s life and to the impoverishment of their own. In
Faust’s opinion, the people who inhabit his land at present are merely the
mass of workers who are his slaves (11540). That attitude hardly bodes
well for future citizens of that land. Finally, it is Faust’s insane craving
for power and greatness (Heller 49) which determines the tragic fate of
Baucis and Philemon and which eventuates in the murderous destruction
of innocent life. The end—the Great Deed, namely—can hardly justify
Faust’s means, and his so-called noble purpose is undermined by ignobil-
ity. He himself betrayed his ruthlessness and brutality in the command
he gave Mephisto to find laborers by any and all means. The freedom he
envisions for humanity will be the most unlikely product of his technologi-
cal wonderland. Technology instead establishes impersonality, totality,
domination, and subjugation.
FAUST AND TECHNOLOGICAL FULFILLMENT 165

FACING THE FACTS
In an essay on Goethe’s view of technology and civilization, Alfred Zastrau
discussed and documented Goethe’s interest and involvement in various
technological undertakings. In particular, he delineated Goethe’s response
to the steam engine, noting that Goethe did not blindly endorse the machine
age. As mentioned in the previous chapter, one of his most poignant and
oft-quoted remarks about technology appeared in his novel Wilhelm Meisters
Wanderjahre (Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years). It expresses fear in the
face of a technological juggernaut which will cause devastation like a great
storm (Goethes Werke, vol. 13, 429). The character who utters the words
foresees the destruction to be unleashed by mechanized industry.
According to Zastrau, Goethe realized that technology and civiliza-
tion can destroy the human being, both in regard to the individual and
society (155). At the conclusion of his study, Zastrau quotes his colleague,
Hermann Muckermann, and issues a solemn warning: “When the present
generation separates their efforts from and makes them independent of
the total order of values, they endanger themselves and the value of their
work” (156, my translation). The insight neatly characterizes Faust, for
he dissociated his efforts from the total order of values, made them inde-
pendent, and absolutized his efforts and his project. In consequence, he
endangered the very value of his great deed. As Arnold Pacey reminds us,
there is a Faustian bargain, a deal with the devil, “in almost every major
technological project” (189).
Faust reflects the technological mind which finds its work in itself so
important and interesting that it takes no account of its potentially dan-
gerous consequences. Faust’s technological enterprise—his great proj-
ect—is so much larger than life that it supersedes any ordinary morality
and moves Faust beyond any mundane concern for good or evil. When
Care as a specter visited him in his room, she had no power over him. “But
your power, oh Care, stealthy and great, / I will not acknowledge,” he
declares (11493–4). Seeing Faust figuratively blind to care, Care literally
blinds him. In the same way, an inanimate machine has no worries and no
concern for what it touches and transforms, Faust has no feeling or con-
cern about what he undertakes and does. The technological mastermind
has himself become a machine, incapable of caring.
As if writing with Faust in mind, Jonas illumines the perils inherent in
and intrinsic to Faust’s and every technological undertaking. “Not only
166 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

when technology is malevolent, that is, used for evil purposes, but also
when it is benevolent and is implemented for its actual and most legitimate
purposes, technology has a threatening side per se, which in the long run
could have the last word” (Jonas 82, my translation). The comment casts
light on Faust’s accomplishments and vision for the future. Jonas stresses
the point that we enormously influence the lives of millions elsewhere and
in the future (and who have no say in what is done) with what we do here
and now (84).
Technology supposedly and ideally (and as we still tend to believe
today) brings peace and prosperity, security and democracy, precisely those
values typically assigned to Faust’s Great Deed and his new world order.
Faust dies before the project is completed and before he and the audience
know whether his hope is true and his faith in technology justified. We do
not know whether technology would have brought all the blessings Faust
imagined it would. Or do we? Certainly, we know it brought the destruc-
tion of innocent people and of countless slave-like workers employed by
Faust to carry out his orders.
Like Marcuse, Mumford and Ellul have identified the technologi-
cal enterprise as intrinsically one of domination and oppression. As we
belong to an age utterly enamored by and dependent on our technolo-
gies, the statement may well be hard for us to comprehend. As magic
once did, technology now enchants us, casts a spell over us, bewitches us
(cf. Lee Worth Bailey’s Enchantments of Technology). Even the seemingly
most benign technological intervention involves power and domination.
To create a simple garden or cornfield, for instance, a prairie or forest
had to be seized, even destroyed. The production of our now ubiquitous
electricity, whether thanks to the coal mine, nuclear power plant, hydro-
electric dam, or wind turbine, exacts huge ecological and human costs.
Certainly, Faust’s final technological undertaking validates the judgments
of Marcuse, Mumford, and Ellul. As Faust himself makes plain, he had to
possess even the little plot owned by the poor wife and husband, Baucis
and Philemon, because the linden trees they had were not yet his and so
thwarted his dominion of the entire world. “The few trees, not my own,”
he grumbles, “Ruin the possession of the world for me” (11241–2).
According to Otto Ulrich, the power of technology produces asym-
metries and inequities in society and in opportunities, in life’s chances, so
that some rule and some serve. The few determine the fate of the many
(see Ulrich 9). In other words, the new world order envisioned by Faust
will not and cannot be some kind of egalitarian community, rather power
FAUST AND TECHNOLOGICAL FULFILLMENT 167

relationships will determine the conditions of life, and the few will decide
not only the employment, but also the use, activity, and value of the many.
Indeed, Faust’s new society is built on a premise of conquest and domination.
To repeat his own dictum:

Only he earns life and liberty,


Who daily has to conquer them. (11575–6)

THE FAUSTIAN WORLD


While Faust may believe he is opening up land for a new type of soci-
ety, it is hardly likely that his world, the product of unmitigated self-
aggrandizement, will in future attract or in any way be suited for millions
of “free and active” people (11563–4). He mistakenly believes that a new
“free” society will arise in the territory he established through the ruth-
less exploitation, even enslavement and death, of other human beings.
The work of all those laborers contributed chiefly, if not solely, to his
particular advantage and their great disadvantage. To employ the simple
words of humble Baucis who would be immolated as an offering to Faust’s
cupidity: “there was something not right / About the whole business”
(11113–14).
In all likelihood, the world built by Faust will be inhabited by two kinds
of people: creatures like him who rule and all the others who serve them.
Faust’s laborers will not belong to the millions who will live as “free peo-
ple” on his “free soil” (11580). Faust’s insight that the only person who
deserves freedom or life is the one who must conquer it every day anew
(11574–6) belies the domination and concomitant subjugation inherent
in his imperative “must conquer” (11576). Only those in a position of
power, those who dominate, would enjoy any semblance of freedom in
Faust’s world to come.
While Faust believes he has built a secure colony where “generations
to come will extol his name,” Mephisto sees no such thing and “predicts
a very different outcome” (Tantillo 67). He “prophesies a kind of apoca-
lypse for the human race … destroyed because of the very technology it has
embraced” (67). Faust’s great project will consequently not usher in a new
utopian future of liberty and democracy. Rather, a realm based on technol-
ogy—as Faust’s is—dehumanizes and subjugates its inhabitants who remain
subservient to the master plan, little more than components of a huge
machine. Far from offering freedom and happiness, the megamachine—in
168 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

this case, Faust’s megamachine—reduces “communal autonomy, personal


initiative, and self-regulation” (Mumford, Pentagon 212). In Eclipse of
Reason, Horkheimer indicates why it would be impossible for the future
inhabitants of a world like Faust’s to live “active and free” (11564) as he
imagines. “The total transformation of each and every realm of being into
a field of means,” writes Horkheimer, and which Goethe’s Faust super-
vised in the construction of his new world, “leads to the liquidation of the
subject who is supposed to use them” (93).
Faust dreams that his great technological transformation of the envi-
ronment and society has prepared and secured for humanity a future exis-
tence defined by personal freedom, productivity, satisfaction, and meaning.
Imagining this future and his enduring achievement, he at last experiences
fulfillment in “the highest moment” (11586). Faust finds meaning at last
in technology, but utterly fails to see its destructive, dehumanizing reality.
The ultimate fulfillment he finds in his technological masterwork is finally
an illusion. The society he envisions cannot ever come to pass, given its
foundation on ruthless violence, conquest, domination, and subjugation.
Faust’s technological domination and technological restructuring of
nature accompanied by a technological domination of human beings
charts the course for his new, technologically engineered environment and
society. The denizens of a present and future Faustian world (a concept
which itself gives pause) will consequently be governed now and hence-
forth by the defining and controlling features of Faust’s blueprint for that
world: in short, by technology and the values it begets. What finally is a
Faustian world? It is a world where only technology has meaning. His
world already embraces and forecasts our own. It is a world characterized
by efficiency and organization; power, seizure, and domination; the engi-
neered natural environment, human society, and human being.
CHAPTER 7

Frankenstein and Technological Failure

“I have made every effort … to be of use to as many people as


possible … and to provide as truthful and complete an
account as possible of the fabric of the human body.”
(Andreas Vesalius, De Humani Corporus Fabrica, 1543)

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, FICTION


With its themes of audacity, technology, and titanism, the ancient myth of
Prometheus echoes throughout Goethe’s Faust, but informs even more
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. While Goethe’s great drama culminates in a
final “Great Deed,” the engineered natural and social environment, Shelley’s
famous novel opens with an amazing technological accomplishment, the
engineered humanoid. Like Goethe’s Faust, Shelley’s Frankenstein is
an archetypal, extraordinary, and exemplary story about technological
achievement.
While technology knows no limitation, Frankenstein asks readers to
think about prohibitions. It asks about what we should or should not
know, should or should not do. Frankenstein confronts us with the endur-
ing problem of scientific irresponsibility, the irresistible allure of tech-
nological possibility, and the failure implicit in its realization. The novel
focuses our attention on the differences between real and artificial, natural
and unnatural, human and inhuman. Shelley’s story about medical science

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 169


J.M. van der Laan, Narratives of Technology,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43706-8_7
170 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

and technology remains a mirror in which we can still recognize ourselves


and our world.
In 1816, Mary Shelley found herself in a villa named Diodati in
Switzerland with the famous Romantic poets Percy Bysshe Shelley,
George Gordon Lord Byron (whom a female contemporary once charac-
terized as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”), and Byron’s friend John
Polidori. Shelley was only nineteen years old. While the group of friends
was there, Byron proposed that they each write a ghost story to share with
the others, and the story Mary Shelley invented there was what became
Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, first published in 1818. By 1831,
it had already gone into a third edition, an indication of its popularity
and success. Since then, the story of Frankenstein has taken on a life of
its own. In the twentieth century, it found expression in a new medium,
film, and those re-presentations of the story—Mel Brooks’ Young Doctor
Frankenstein (1974), for example—typically took great liberties with the
original which is the focus of this chapter.
Shelley’s Frankenstein must arguably rank as one of the earliest examples
of science fiction. Indeed, Brian Aldiss calls it “the first real novel” of the
genre (353). Likewise, Roger Shattuck asserts that “all written and filmed
works in the immense category of science fiction have their roots in the
ground prepared by Faust and Frankenstein with their opposing attitudes
toward forbidden knowledge” (100). That Schattuck should attribute
the origins of science fiction to both Shelley’s Frankenstein and Goethe’s
Faust is insightful, since Victor Frankenstein, an admirer of Agrippa von
Nettesheim and Paracelsus, two sixteenth-century Faustian prototypes,
emerges as a Faustian character himself. Like Faust, Frankenstein is a stu-
dent of unhallowed arts, “deeply smitten with the thirst for knowledge”
(Frankenstein 57), who desires to learn “the secrets of heaven and earth”
(58). Like Faust, he studies everything—in this case, “electricity and galva-
nism” (61), “mathematics” (62), “chemistry” in particular (70), “physiol-
ogy” (71), and “anatomy” (71)—yet  always remains “discontented and
unsatisfied” (60). And like Faust, his search culminates in an astounding,
but troubling, technological feat. The Faustian bargain, the deal with the
devil, lurks behind his entire enterprise.
FRANKENSTEIN AND TECHNOLOGICAL FAILURE 171

CONTEMPORARY CONNECTIONS
In the past, science fiction has often foreshadowed scientific discovery
and technological advances, sometimes by centuries, as does Shelley’s
novel. Science fiction authors characteristically conceive and describe
strange worlds and unbelievable events in order to address real questions
or problems, either current or in the offing. In many instances, the far-out
story turns out to be not so far-fetched at all, as it actually comes to pass
sometime after its publication. Frankenstein is a good example, where
body parts are assembled and a new breed of human being is engineered.
Shelley’s science fiction proves surprisingly intuitive or prescient.
At the time of Frankenstein’s publication, the very idea of building a
being from scavenged body parts and of such a creature’s real existence could
hardly be conceived or received by the average reader as anything but a fic-
tion. Even so, the author’s husband Percy Bysshe Shelley alluded already to
the possibility of the reality in the preface attributed to his wife Mary, but
which he wrote for the 1818 edition of the novel: “The event on which this
fiction is founded,” she (he) explains, “has been supposed by Dr Darwin and
some of the physiological writers of Germany as not of impossible occur-
rence. I shall not be supposed as according the remotest degree of serious
faith to such an imagination” (Frankenstein 31). The preface refers here to
Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802), grandfather of the more famous Charles,
a renowned physician, physiologist, chemist, engineer, and botanist—an
eminent techno-scientist in his own right (Florescu 360).
The reference to the “physiological writers of Germany” probably indi-
cates Konrad Dippel (1673–1734), the alchemist, physician, and chemist
who was born at castle Frankenstein near Darmstadt, Germany and who
invented the dye known as Prussian blue. In all likelihood, the preface
refers here as well to Georg Frank von Frankenau (1644–1704), a name
suggestive of Frankenstein, who studied the regeneration of plants and
animals (Florescu 361), wrote a lexikon on herbs (Kräuter-Lexikon), and
(here is an added curiosity) was apparently the first to publish something
about the Easter rabbit. Mary Shelley was certainly familiar with the work
of Humphry Davy (1778–1829) as well whose paper “On Some Chemical
Agencies of Electricity” (1806) proved to be one of the seminal works of
nineteenth-century science. When she conceived of Frankenstein, Shelley
had actually been reading the 1812 edition of Davy’s Elements of Chemical
Philosophy (Florescu 358). She knew enough of the contemporary scientific
world to send her protagonist to study, conduct, and complete his experi-
172 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

ments at the University of Ingolstadt which was “renowned at the time as


a center for science” (Aldiss 343). Likewise, she gives him an express and
special interest in “electricity and galvanism” (Frankenstein 61).
In The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the
Beauty and Terror of Science, Richard Holmes states that Shelley “had created
a composite figure who in many ways was typical of a whole generation
of scientific men” (328). According to Holmes, Joseph Priestley (1733–
1804—who discovered oxygen), Henry Cavendish (1731–1810—who
discovered hydrogen and researched electricity), Humphry Davy (chem-
ist and inventor), Giovanni Aldini (1762–1834—galvanist and nephew of
Luigi Galvani), and William Lawrence (1783–1867—physician, surgeon,
and anatomist) “may all have contributed something to the portrait”
(328). Shelley might well have known of Johann Wilhelm Ritter (1776–
1810) also, a galvanist who was reputed to have actually experimented
not only with “the revival of dead animals by electrical action,” but also of
dead human beings (Holmes 329).
While there is no indication that Mary Shelley ever gave any thought
to robots or androids, it should be remembered that automata or self-
operating machines had aroused considerable fascination in the previous
century. Numerous accounts document the production and exhibition
of humanoid automata. Probably the first was the flute player invented
by Jacques de Vaucanson in 1737. Automata became the rage. Shelley’s
contemporary Romantics in Germany took particular interest in them.
As mentioned in Chap. 5, E.T.A. Hoffmann wrote more than one story
about an automaton. Granted, Shelley’s Frankenstein did not resort to
any robotic science in his creation of a new being, but from our perspec-
tive it is not difficult to discern a connection to subsequent cyber-organic
researches.

LITERAL AND FIGURATIVE
As far as the science or scientific fact in science fiction is concerned, let me
note that I do not care to analyze or determine the extent to which Shelley’s
story is scientifically accurate or not. More important and more instructive
are the motives underlying the fictional techno-scientific research of the
protagonist on the one hand and on the other the trajectory of his fictional
experiments toward subsequent techno-scientific fact. Nevertheless, the
constructed reality of the text points to a future far beyond the date of
its first publication. Shelley’s vision of frightening techno-scientific pos-
FRANKENSTEIN AND TECHNOLOGICAL FAILURE 173

sibility now pales when compared to all that contemporary bio-medical


techno-science is able to accomplish. The unimaginable as she imagined it
has in many ways come true. As Stephen Hawking wrote in the foreword
to L.M. Krauss’ The Physics of Star Trek, “today’s science fiction is often
tomorrow’s science fact” (xiii). Latter-day writers like Willard Gaylin in
a piece for The New York Times Magazine (1972) or Ray Hammond in
his study The Modern Frankenstein: Fiction becomes Fact (1986) refer to
Frankenstein in order to describe what otherwise still seem like fictions—
made-up, fantastic, and unbelievable—yet are actual techno-scientific real-
ities. Whether or not Shelley intended her novel to be a prescient view of
a distant future is not at issue. Rather, Frankenstein—like so much science
fiction to follow—warns of the manifold dangers which accompany the
promise and progress of science and technology.
The fact in fiction corresponds to the truth in myth. That is, the fact
and the truth of the story do not reside in the literal, in the reality of
Frankenstein’s existence, in the accuracy of Shelley’s science, in the link to
any of her contemporaries, or in any subsequent techno-scientific break-
throughs the novel might suggest or anticipate. Rather, they reside in the
figurative, in what Frankenstein and his story tell and reveal about scien-
tific–technological motivation, inquiry, and practice; about scientific–tech-
nological presumption, audacity, and amorality; about uncontrolled and
uncontested scientific–technological experimentation and advance; and
about their consequences. Her figuration of the man of science who knows
no bounds, has no conscience, and makes a monster is here what matters
most. It may well be difficult to take the Frankenstein story seriously today,
given its devolution into camp. What is more, the story, with and in spite
of its dire warnings against divine presumption, “seems almost quaint in a
world where science no longer presumes but presides” (Skal 34). For those
very reasons, however, it is more than ever necessary to give the novel our
most serious attention.

PROHIBITION AND TRANSGRESSION
The themes of the novel proper are as old as the myth of Prometheus
whose name the subtitle invokes and who, against Zeus’ prohibition, stole
fire from the gods and gave it—what the ancient Greeks called technê or,
in this case, all the arts, sciences, and technologies—to human beings.
Besides its preoccupation with the unquenchable thirst not only for
knowledge but for forbidden knowledge (also at the center of the story of
174 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

Prometheus, not to mention Faust), Shelley’s Frankenstein clearly concerns


itself with vexing and fraught questions about science and technology,
questions we still face today.
What knowledge, for example, is or should be off limits or forbidden
to us? Or should no knowledge, no science, no technology be forbid-
den? We live in a world where whatever can be thought, will be thought,
whatever can be known, will be known, whatever can be done, will be
done. Along with Faust, Frankenstein pointed the way down that path.
He wished to learn, to know, to penetrate “the hidden laws of nature”
(Frankenstein 57), “the physical secrets of the world” (58), “the deepest
mysteries of creation” (68). “What glory would attend the discovery,”
he declares, also describing his motives and his undertaking, “if I could
banish disease from the human frame and render men invulnerable to any
but a violent death!” (61). He simply (or not so simply) utters the same
basic desires which still typically motivate the techno-scientist and which
underlie most research in bio-medicine or pharmacology today. (Unlike
so many engaged in such pursuits today, he disdains monetary advantage
and reward: “Wealth,” he states, “was an inferior object” [61].)
Both a driven experimental scientist and physiological engineer,
Frankenstein wanted to modify, improve, and enhance the human body.
“I will pioneer,” he asserts, “a new way, explore unknown powers, and
unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation” (68). His words
anticipate the very same kind of thinking that culminates in something
like the Human Genome Project which determined the sequence of
chemical base pairs in the composition of DNA, which identified and
mapped the genes of the human genome, and which was considered by
some to deliver the key to unlock the last secrets of biology, indeed, of
life itself.
But the story tells us, even Frankenstein himself admits, that his quest
for the knowledge he desires occasions something akin to an “insurrection”
(68). His enterprise is “dangerous” (73), “unlawful” (75), and “exceeded
moderation” (77). Which is to say, the knowledge he seeks through his
techno-scientific research is and should be prohibited. For him, as for
technology in general, there are no limits, no boundaries to knowledge,
because he desires only to advance knowledge, in this case, bio-medical
science/technology. As is so typical in scientific–technological research
and development, he believes that his experiments are performed in the
service of humanity, a higher cause, and a greater good. He tells of the
great appeal and the satisfaction to be derived from the techno-scientific
FRANKENSTEIN AND TECHNOLOGICAL FAILURE 175

endeavor: “None but those who have experienced them,” he reports, “can
conceive of the enticements of science” (70).
The story spells out Frankenstein’s scientific studies and activities, not to
mention his technological skills. “I made some discoveries in the improve-
ment of some chemical instruments” (71), he remarks, and “became
acquainted with the science of anatomy, but that was not sufficient” (71).
“Not sufficient” subtly alerts us to a basic technological premise, to the
conviction that there is never an end point in the advance of such discov-
ery, invention, and innovation. Next, he became “capable of bestowing
animation upon lifeless matter” (72), and then he “began the creation of
a human being” (73). In a sense, his project bears much resemblance to
the latter-day techno-sciences of cloning and genetic- or bio-engineering.
(On this subject, see Andrew Kimbrell’s book, The Human Body Shop: The
Cloning, Engineering and Marketing of Life.) Frankenstein wanted in fact
to create “a new species” (73). Victor Ferkiss acknowledged “the almost
complete genetic control” of human beings already in 1969 (99), an ability
which could result in the actual creation of such a new species of human-
oid as imagined in Frankenstein. The question Ferkiss poses—“what is to
prevent this from happening”—implies the answer: “nothing” (99). He
laments that we have been entirely unable “to provide a framework for
ordering and assimilating the new discoveries that enable man to affect
his own biological nature” (199). That is, we have placed no restrictions
on what we can or cannot, may or may not, do. We find in Frankenstein
contemporary parallels to our recent expansion of genetic modification of
plants and animals which even permits the splicing of species.

GOOD INTENTIONS AND UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES


To supply his project, Frankenstein “collected bones from charnel-houses,”
while “the dissecting room and the slaughter-house furnished” many of his
materials (74). It sounds grisly, but harvesting pig arteries or human organs
and other body parts at death—after auto accidents, for example—for the
repair, restoration, or even reanimation of another human body is perhaps
not so very different. Consider a 2006 article in the Washington Post by
Michael Powell and David Segal: “In New York, a Grisly Traffic in Body
Parts.” There they report:

A macabre scandal has spread from a body-harvesting lab in New Jersey to


hospitals as far away as Florida, Nebraska and Texas as hundreds of people
176 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

discover that they have received tissue and bone carved from looted corpses,
not least the cadaver of Alistair Cooke, the late and erudite host of PBS’s
“Masterpiece Theatre.” (3)

And how were those corpses provided? By “rogue” funeral homes, a lat-
ter-day, sanitized version of Frankenstein’s “charnel-houses.”
Like most of us, Frankenstein believes implicitly and unshakably that
techno-scientific advance is inherently and implicitly good—very good
actually, even the best—for humanity. As he puts it, “when I considered
the improvement which every day takes place in science and mechanics
[we might well say bio-technology now], I was encouraged to hope my
present attempts would at least lay the foundations of future success”
(73). Indeed, bio-technology as conceived and employed by Frankenstein
is designed to take human beings to a new level beyond themselves, just
as bio-engineering or nanotechnology or cybernetic-organic (cyborg)
research is now designed to do as well.
For example: although Diana Bowman, Graeme Hodge, and Peter Binks
report in a 2007 article about nanotechnology and Michael Crichton’s
novel Prey that “the few data now available [for nanotechnology] give
cause for concern” (441), they nevertheless still affirm that “these new
technologies continue to show the potential to advance human well-being
and society” (442). They sound like Victor Frankenstein. In addition,
they acknowledge that “some nanomaterials appear to have potential to
damage skin, brain, and lung material, to be mobile or persistent in the
environment, or to kill micro-organisms (potentially including ones that
constitute the base of the food web)” (441; quoted from Balbus, Denison,
Florini, and Walsh 65). As many readers may know, nanomaterials are
used for cosmetics, nutritional supplements, and even clothing. Bowman,
Hodge, and Binks sum up the problem as a lack of governmental oversight
and regulation, but that hardly gets to the core of the problem.
Technology is understood and believed to provide improvements and
to supply solutions to problems of human existence. But as the story
shows, and as Jacques Ellul and others have so often pointed out, the
actual results are typically and characteristically the exact opposite. In The
Technological Bluff, he lists four trenchant propositions:

• First, all technical progress has its price.


• Second, at each stage it raises more and greater problems than it
solves.
FRANKENSTEIN AND TECHNOLOGICAL FAILURE 177

• Third, its harmful effects are inseparable from its beneficial effects.
• Fourth, it has a great number of unforeseen effects. (39)

In other words, technological innovations, advances, and solutions


unavoidably bring with them a whole new set of unanticipated prob-
lems (cf. Tenner’s Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of
Unintended Consequences). As Ellul sums up, “technical solutions bring
with them the very evils they are supposed to remedy or produce worse
ones in another area” (93). The expected blessings turn out to be curses;
success coincides and actually equates with failure itself.

TECHNOLOGICAL HUBRIS
Frankenstein, like many a latter-day technological idealist, fails to foresee
any negative results and is completely blind to the possibly catastrophic
consequences of his grand research plan and project. While the scientist
and technologist may have intimations or reservations about the project, it
is only after the fact, after the experiments, after the inventions and inno-
vations have been carried out and realized, that they are sometimes able
to recognize the danger and the damage. Only after having finally accom-
plished what he set out to do can Frankenstein then see clearly enough to
discern exactly what he had been engaged in and done: “now that I had
finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and dis-
gust filled my heart” (Frankenstein 77).
As the novel shows, the techno-scientific enterprise produces monsters
instead of enhanced human beings. Frankenstein may succeed in the
creation of a creature in his own image—“a being like myself” (73), as he
tells it—but the creature he creates is, he discovers and admits, nothing
other than a “monster” (78). Because the creature is made in the image
of the creator, we discover that Frankenstein himself must be a monster
as well, for the creature reflects the image of the creator. At one point in
the story, Frankenstein describes the monster as his “own spirit let loose
from the grave” (95). The monster, too, recognizes that he is a reflection
of his maker. “God, in pity,” he laments and at the same time accuses
Frankenstein, “made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image;
but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very
resemblance” (147).
Eventually, Frankenstein’s outward appearance actually reveals the
monstrousness previously hidden within. Like the monster, he becomes
178 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

“a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity” (175). In other words, the


scientist/technologist is the real monster here. Radu Florescu compares
Frankenstein to “a criminal magician who employs up-to-date tools”
(376). It calls to mind a comment made by Albert Einstein in a letter to
his friend Heinrich Zangger (from December 6, 1917): “all of our exalted
technological progress, civilization for that matter, is comparable to an
axe in the hand of a pathological criminal” (412). Einstein was lamenting
the amorality of a Europe at war. He goes on with his indictment to say
that “our life is corrupted not just technologically but also medically—
which is actually only a kind of technological pollution” (412). (His own
words must have come back to haunt him after his personal involvement
in the development of the first atomic bomb.) Even at the beginning of
his experiments, Frankenstein admitted that while engaged in such activity
he shunned others as if he “had been guilty of a crime” (Frankenstein 76).
As Shelley makes clear, the grand experiment, the creation of an artificial
life-form resulted, even in Frankenstein’s own mind, in “catastrophe”
(Frankenstein 77). She depicts this artificial production of life as “a mon-
strous aberration” (Shattuck 94). And yet, the lessons remain unlearned.
Frankenstein’s horrible failure failed to produce in him any reassessment
of his techno-scientific undertaking or to lead him to any true understand-
ing of the catastrophe he caused. After all that has happened, he still thinks
and talks the same at the end of the story as at the beginning. He had
begun his life, he attests, “with benevolent intentions and thirsted for the
moment when I should put them in practice and make myself useful to my
fellow human beings” (108).
Precisely these intentions had motivated his scientific experiments, but
proverbial wisdom reminds us that the road to hell is paved with such
good intentions. Frankenstein had intended to be a great benefactor
of the species, a man who worked for “the benefit of mankind” (cf. his
speech to the crew on Walton’s ship, page 228), but we see in the story
how utterly mistaken he was and is, how utterly he failed in his success.
Ironically, his first name is Victor. Of course, the only victory he can claim
is a staggering and frightening defeat. Even after all his disappointments
and torments, and on the brink of death, Frankenstein remains oblivious
to the devastating effects of his scientific project: “During these last days
I have been occupied in examining my past conduct,” he confesses to the
polar explorer and ship’s captain Walton, “nor do I find it blameable”
(230). In spite of his enormous failure, he clings tenaciously to his vision
FRANKENSTEIN AND TECHNOLOGICAL FAILURE 179

of techno-scientific progress and with his last breath declares: “I have been
blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed” (231).
Entirely missing from Frankenstein’s consciousness is the understand-
ing and realization that the results of his researches and experiments were
catastrophic, even monstrous. He fails to come to an awareness like that
of J. Robert Oppenheimer who oversaw the development of the atomic
bomb or Robert A. Lewis, the copilot of the “Enola Gay,” the plane from
which the bomb fell on Hiroshima. Reflecting later on the event, Lewis
eerily compared the reality to a scene from science fiction: “It was the
actual sight that we saw that caused the crew to feel that they were a part
of Buck Rodger’s 25th century warriors” (Gruson 8). When the bomb
fell on Hiroshima, exploded, and the city disappeared, Lewis wrote in his
logbook “My God, what have we done?” (Malnic 1). Similarly report-
ing his response to the successful detonation of the first nuclear weapon,
Oppenheimer recalled quoting a verse from the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I
am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” (see an excerpt of the 1967
NBC television documentary The Decision to Drop the Bomb, produced
by Fred Freed, where Oppenheimer speaks these words; at www.atomic
archive.com). Yet, how often do we fail to arrive at such insight? And
how much more often do we not suffer instead from the same hubris
and conceits, from the same mistaken confidence, as Frankenstein? Francis
Crick—who along with James Watson famously discovered the structure
of the DNA molecule—exemplifies the persistence of that hubris and van-
ity. According to Lewis Mumford, Crick remarked at a symposium that he
desired the freedom “for experimentally altering the human genes, even
though by bad luck he might, on his own admission, produce monsters”
(Mumford, Pentagon 289).

LEGACIES
So where are we today, almost two hundred years after the publication
of the novel Frankenstein? While Frankenstein built a being out of sal-
vaged body parts, liver, lung, kidney, and even heart transplants are now
commonplace and life-saving interventions. Beside such major organs, we
now harvest corneas, tendons, skin, and bones. Thanks to advances in
surgical procedures, we are now able, under favorable circumstances, to
attach or reattach various appendages and more. Perhaps the most aston-
ishing of such surgeries occurred when a human face was transplanted,
first partially in 2005 and then fully in 2010. The use of pig arteries in the
180 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

human circulatory system now hardly raises eyebrows. The injection of


modified botulism as a beauty aid for cosmetic purposes is widespread and
acceptable. Today, we grow body parts in laboratories and carry out cyber-
organic unions of machine with flesh and blood as well. Most of us are
also acquainted with the recent appropriation of the name Shelley gave her
protagonist for genetically engineered agricultural products: Frankenfood.
Now there is also growing interest in bringing the dead back to life, or
cryonic reanimation, as Grant Shoffstall has pointed out (see his “Freeze,
Wait, Reanimate: Cryonic Suspension and Science Fiction”).
Designer babies may be controversial, but are no more the stuff of sci-
ence fiction. For some time now, it has been possible for parents to pick the
sex of their children thanks to in vitro fertilization or intrauterine insemi-
nation techniques. In February 2009, a fertility clinic in Los Angeles even
offered to let parents choose their baby’s hair and eye color (see Brandon
Keim, Wired online). Although the clinic discontinued that program
shortly thereafter in response to a public outcry, such interventions are
more than likely to be undertaken in future without objection, given the
technological imperative. Hair and eye color are nothing compared to
genetic selections for health, height, intelligence, or physical strength.
The movie Gattaca (1997) depicts the differences and disadvantages
between those who have been genetically engineered and enhanced and
those who are merely “natural.”
In a 2010 article entitled “It’s Alive! Artificial DNA Controls Life,”
Eric Bland reported on another direction bio-technology has taken, the
synthesis of DNA. “It may not quite be ‘Frankenstein,’” he writes,

but for the first time scientists have created an organism controlled by com-
pletely human-made DNA.  Using the tools of synthetic biology, scientists
from the J.  Craig Venter Institute installed a completely artificial genome
inside a host cell without DNA.  Like the bolt of lightning that awakened
Frankenstein, the new genome invigorated the host cell, which began to grow
and reproduce, albeit with a few problems. (http://www.nbcnews.com)

The expected and promised blessings of this technology are cheaper


drugs, vaccines, and biofuels. In this venture, there is also the implicit
interest in and potential for the development of artificial life. Given
Frankenstein’s example and our own experience, however, those “few
problems” are well worth worrying about. (By the way, there is no
lightning in Shelley’s novel.)
FRANKENSTEIN AND TECHNOLOGICAL FAILURE 181

In 1818, Frankenstein pointed far beyond its own time to ours. Now,
we would do well to look at our time and beyond, ahead into the distance,
to consider where bio-medicine, bio-engineering, and medical technology
are leading next. To date, a human–machine interface has seemed rela-
tively innocuous and benign. While the mechanical pacemaker has been
around for so long now that we take it for granted, the mechanical heart
is another matter. In 2013, a man in France received the first permanent,
fully implantable artificial heart. Manufactured by Carmat, it consists
of both synthetic and animal tissue, a “biomembrane,” “two miniature
motorised pump sets,” an “integrated electronic device,” as well as sen-
sors and a microprocessor (http://www.carmatsa.com). Now the advent
of nanotechnology promises a revolution in implantable, cooperative
mechanical devices for the human body. The ability to build at the atomic
level or nanoscale allows for previously impossible and formerly unbeliev-
able modifications of the human being.
Current research is not only exploring the union of human being and
machine in cyber-organisms or cyborgs, but also the development of
robots and “intelligent” thinking machines. Consider recent advances in
AI and Watson, the supercomputer which had its debut on the television
game show “Jeopardy.” In February 2011, the computer competed with
the two biggest, human winners ever to play the game. Watson was not
infallible, but exceedingly accurate and fast, and the winner.
According to the IBM website, Watson “consists of 90 servers,” is “the
right combination of hardware and software,” and enabled by hundreds
of custom algorithms (www.ibm.com/Watson). It is the latest expression
of what IBM calls DeepQA technology. This technology, developed in
cooperation with Columbia University and the University of Maryland,
“applies advanced data management and analytics to natural language in
order to uncover a single, reliable insight—in a fraction of a second.” As
IBM envisions this technology, it will deploy “across industries such as
healthcare, finance and customer service.”
In an IBM promotional video, the program director for Healthcare and
Life Sciences Research Joseph Jasinski asserts that we would never “replace
a trained doctor” with a Watson. Watson would only ever be physician’s
assistant. Such pronouncements are either ingenuous or naïve. While Jon
Iwata asserts that “Watson is a very necessary advance” (http://tran-
scriptvids.com), David Ferrucci declares that “it is irresistible to pursue
this” (http://spectrum.ieee.org). Iwata is senior vice president for IBM
Marketing and Communications, Ferrucci Research Staff Member and
182 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

leader of IBM’s Semantic Analysis and Integration Department. It is truly


remarkable how often words like “necessary,” “irresistible,” or “inevita-
ble” (as James Hughes remarks in Keim’s piece on designer babies) come
up in discussions of new and emerging technologies.
IBM’s Watson has already been introduced and implemented for
use in healthcare at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center,
specifically to identify individualized treatment options for patients
(see Dolan, http://www.amednews.com). What consequences the full
realization of this research might entail does not appear to concern people
like Iwata, Ferrucci, or Hughes. Designed to be an all-knowing physi-
cian’s assistant, Watson “embodies” the promise of AI and the superses-
sion of human beings by machines.
If Frankenstein previewed future bio-medical technology and the abil-
ity to construct, reconstruct, or alter the human body, a stage we have
now essentially reached, it also suggests subsequent stages such as the
melding or merger of man and machine, of biological and synthetic ele-
ments, the cyber-organism. While many erudite and respected individuals
believe the human being should and will be superseded by cyborgs or
robotic androids, others are currently working to realize that possibility.
As discussed in Chap. 3, many now believe that the human being must
find a way to integrate with the machine in order to keep pace with its
ever-expanding, ever-improving, ever-more-capable abilities.
Among those actively pursuing the merger of man and machine is Kevin
Warwick, Professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading (England).
He investigates and experiments with just such an actual physical human/
machine interface and has had a device, the Utah Array/BrainGate,
implanted “into the median nerves of his left arm in order to link his
nervous system directly to a computer” (www.kevinwarwick.com). For
him, cyborgs are the future, and the days of humans are numbered (from
“Intelligent Cyborgs: Science Fact or Science Fiction,” a May 19, 2004
debate between Warwick and Chris Malcolm hosted by the Institution of
Electrical Engineers Control and Automation Network). He has written
about his experiments and experience in a book entitled I, Cyborg (2002).
If being human has anything to do with a mind embodied in flesh and
blood, then bodies made of synthetic materials and minds made of silicon
running binary code present us with historic challenges. We face grave
modifications in what it means to be human or to be something no longer
human as previously understood.
FRANKENSTEIN AND TECHNOLOGICAL FAILURE 183

MISCALCULATION
As individuals and a society, we must decide what knowledge is or should
be off limits or forbidden us. We must think seriously about how science
and bio-technology might go horribly wrong. Richard Lewontin has spo-
ken of this possibility and illumines the dangers of unforeseeable damage
in his discussion of DNA implantation. “Even if it were our intention only to
provide properly functioning genes to the immediate body of the sufferer,”
he writes in Biology as Ideology, “some of the implanted DNA might get
into and transform future sperm and egg cells” (70). Any miscalculations
of the effects of the implanted DNA, he goes on to explain, “would be
wreaked on our descendants to the remotest time” (70).
The humanoid engineered by Victor Frankenstein literally has a life
of its own and completely surprises Frankenstein, when it “returns to
him as an autonomous force, with a structure of its own, with demands
upon which it insists absolutely” (Winner 313). Frankenstein depicts
how our technological creations turn on us and undermine human con-
trol and mastery (Mitcham and Casey 59). Indeed, the monster is the
last “man” standing. Frankenstein dies, but the technological creation
survives.
While Frankenstein is the literary example of horrible miscalculation,
there are plenty of other real-life instances of such grievous error. Typically,
however, we thoughtlessly go our merry way in celebration of our latest
technological accomplishment, only to discover later what great damage
we have done, at which point we again forge ahead optimistically with the
next generation of technological innovations, even thinking those new
technological advances will solve the problems caused by our old or still
extant technologies. We tend to believe that there are no limits to human
knowledge or to technological innovation and advance. Faust believed it,
Frankenstein believed it, but their stories and ours tell us over and over
again that there are limits after all, that we are not able to, or should not,
know everything, and that when we nevertheless seek to know and do
such things, we wreak havoc.
The man in charge of research for the first atomic bomb, J.  Robert
Oppenheimer, typified the scientific–technological enterprise. “When you
see something that is technically sweet,” he said, “you go ahead and do
it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your
technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb” (see In
the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer 81). That is also exactly the way it
184 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

was with Frankenstein. By his own account, his earliest researches into
the “hidden laws of nature” left him with a “gladness akin to rapture”
(Frankenstein 57). For him, the prospect of discovery and innovation was
exceedingly sweet. Only after he had had his technical success did he begin
to worry about what to do about what he had done. And that is the way
it remains with techno-science.

MONSTROSITIES
According to Brian Stableford, the Frankenstein story has become “a
central myth of the kind of technophobia which argues that modern man
is indeed doomed to be destroyed by his own artifacts (and that such a
fate, however tragic, is not undeserved)” (46). Stableford does not agree
with this “myth” and both wishfully and mistakenly thinks it “unlikely in
the extreme that a book which Mary Shelley elected to call The Modern
Prometheus was planned as an assault on the hubris of scientists” (49).
Closer attention to the text entirely precludes such an interpretation. What
if, Stableford asks, while completely ignoring the story as written, “the
scientific miracle that Victor Frankenstein had wrought had been allowed
to be a miracle indeed, and the resurrected man no monster at all?” (56).
The simple answer is: the so-called miracle was indeed a monster! Let us
not forget that Frankenstein fled aghast from the repulsive being he had
made. Like Frankenstein himself, Stableford still hopes for and wants to
believe in technology as the only kind of salvation humans might find “to
redeem themselves from every kind of earthly damnation” (56).
The name Frankenstein has by now become “a cultural short hand for
science out of control” and “the experiment-gone-wrong” (Lederer and
Ratzan 463, 464). Indeed, Frankenstein serves as our “model of the irre-
sponsible scientist” (Aldiss 354). Having done so, we invest the fictional
character with a certain reality. We conveniently make Victor Frankenstein,
now more than a symbol, the poster child and whipping boy for all tech-
nological irresponsibility, and so free our techno-scientists and ourselves
from any real responsibility, since none of us would or could ever be as
monstrous as a Frankenstein. The ethical questions raised in the novel
that should concern scientists, engineers, and ordinary citizens fade away,
because the story transforms into social consciousness, devolves into the
grotesque and ridiculous, and retains only shock value (Black 329).
We regard the science fiction, the Frankenstein, scenario as fiction and
fantasy (cf. Ellul, System 112). Hence, we can think that it is not going to
FRANKENSTEIN AND TECHNOLOGICAL FAILURE 185

happen and certainly not to us. Even so, Frankenstein might yet be res-
cued from such irrelevance. It is no longer merely fiction and fantasy. It
has happened, and it does happen. When taken seriously and as something
more than mere entertainment, Frankenstein discredits technological uto-
pianism with its dream of limitless human improvement, advancement,
and progress. Shelley’s novel shows technological idealism to be the fan-
tasy, the real science fiction.
I conclude these considerations with some final thoughts about the
word monster, a key word in Frankenstein and of considerable, yet subtle
significance. It derives from Anglo-Norman and Middle French by way
of Old French and classical Latin (see The Oxford English Dictionary).
Initially, in twelfth-century Old French, the word had the sense of “prod-
igy” or “marvel,” but within a hundred years it took on the meaning
of a “disfigured person” or “misshapen being,” both of which apply to
Frankenstein’s creation. The earlier Latin monstrum had similar conno-
tations and could mean “portent, prodigy, monstrous creature, wicked
person, monstrous act, atrocity” which likewise describe Frankenstein and
his undertaking. The etymological root of the word, the verb monere,
at the core of the word monster, meant “to warn.” And that is where
Frankenstein leaves us: with a portent and a warning about monstrous acts
and atrocities undertaken in the name of scientific–technological progress
and benefaction.
CHAPTER 8

Movies, Machines, and Human Beings

“Die Masse ist eine matrix” [The crowd is a matrix].


(Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Technological
Reproduction, 1936–1937)

AN OVERVIEW
Today, the stories with which most people are likely to be familiar come in
the form of motion pictures. The cinema has frequently dealt with tech-
nology, often as the subject of science fiction films. For example, Metropolis
(1927) by Fritz Lang, Modern Times (1936) by Charlie Chaplin, Alphaville
(1965) by Jean-Luc Godard, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by Stanley
Kubrick, Brazil (1985) by Terry Gilliam, or Gattaca (1997) by Andrew
Nichol present a disturbing picture of a dystopian world dominated and
controlled by technology, even when comic as in the case of Chaplin’s and
Gilliam’s films.
Two of the earliest films to depict the human being in a technological
environment and to address the clash of the human with the machine (or
vice versa) are Metropolis and Modern Times. In Metropolis, technology
comes into sharp focus as oppressor of humanity on the one hand and as a
powerful temptation on the other. While dehumanized workers labor in a
bleak technological underworld at machines which power the city, a privi-
leged elite rules above in indolence, comfort, and luxury. Of particular
interest, an inventor constructs a robot and gives it the external feminine
form of a real woman named Maria who had preached the reconciliation

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 187


J.M. van der Laan, Narratives of Technology,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43706-8_8
188 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

of the workers and rulers. Indistinguishable from the human being, the
activated machine steps forth in a night club as an alluring, seductive, and
irresistible femme fatale. The episode culminates in an exotic and erotic
dance in and by which she completely captivates her audience. Even as she
embodies all that is lascivious, she at the same time incarnates technology
per se. She seduces humanity into the acceptance of technology, of the
simulation, as substitute for a real human life. The machine–woman only
exacerbates the existing antagonisms; she even urges the workers to rebel
and destroy the machines which leads to the destruction of the entire
city along with its technological foundation. The movie impressed Adolf
Hitler so much that in 1933, when the Nazi Party came to power, he had
his Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels approach Lang and ask him to
make films for the National Socialists. Lang (whose mother was Jewish
and whose wife was an ardent member of the Nazi Party) fled the country
immediately (Prouty 743).
In Modern Times, Chaplin focused attention on a worker oppressed by
the technological system. Playing that worker himself, Chaplin struggles—
in character as the Little Tramp—to keep up with the pace of mecha-
nized, conveyor-belt production. The Tramp has acquired a physical tic
from the mechanical action he continuously performs on the assembly
line. Technology demands faster and faster responses from the human
laborer, until he is literally sucked into the machine which resembles noth-
ing so much as a medieval rack for torture. Technology tyrannizes the
protagonist. He is dehumanized and ultimately physically “swallowed into
the mechanisms of the factory process, becoming, literally, a cog in the
machine” (Goody 149). Chaplin shows us a man who is overwhelmed by
the technological circumstances. Technology triumphs, man loses.
Ironically, these stories about technology in motion pictures are them-
selves a thoroughly technological product. While motion pictures have a
long ancestry, it approached its modern form at the end of the nineteenth
century. From its beginnings, cinematography has been an art especially
indebted to the machine. As discussed here in Chap. 5, Luigi Pirandello
examined that very feature of film already in 1915 with his novel Shoot!
The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio, Cinematograph Operator. In the course
of time, it has developed and changed in step with technological advance,
employing new technologies as they arrive, and has become an ever more
sophisticated technology itself. The first mechanical cameras required an
operator to turn the crank in order to film the action, but before long
came to be fully automated and powered by electricity. At first black and
MOVIES, MACHINES, AND HUMAN BEINGS 189

white and silent, then with sound and next in color, transitioning from
celluloid nitrate film stock to acetate to polyester and on to the current
digital medium, filmmaking continues to change with the times and
technology. Sound reproduction proceeded from early sound-on-disk to
sound-on-film and of late to Dolby technology and digital recordings.
Cameras and lenses also evolved over time to permit close-up, zoom,
wide-angle, and 3-D photography. Tinted lenses added yet other dimen-
sions to the cinematic process and product. Today, filmmakers have moved
their art away from actual physical into technological scenes and sets with
computer-generated imagery (CGI). As they rely more and more on
CGI, moviemakers use virtual simulations to construct the fantasy world
of motion pictures. The presentation and viewing of films likewise requires
technological devices such as increasingly sophisticated projectors, screens,
and loudspeakers in the movie theater.
Other films like Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) or Steven Spielberg’s
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) are ambiguous and ambivalent: technol-
ogy threatens, but at the same time appeals to and attracts us to itself.
As Rosi Braidotti indicates in her book about posthuman existence, cinema
makes manifest the “mixture of fear and desire for technology” (108). In
Blade Runner and A.I., the technological environment looks menacing,
but the beautiful woman and little boy, both androids, elicit our sympathy.
Humans appear insufficient and unsatisfactory in this context. Compared to
machines, humans are physically, emotionally, and intellectually weak; they
are flawed, unreliable, troublesome, even duplicitous, whereas machines
and robots are not. In Scott’s film, the woman automaton is innocent,
vulnerable, and sincere. In Spielberg’s, the human beings are emotionally
and ethically inferior to the little boy android.
Many science fiction films do not treat technology as a topic in the same
way as those I mention above. For instance, the several Star Trek movies
(beginning in 1979 through 2013, with another scheduled for release in
2016) along with a number of Star Wars films (launched by George Lucas
in 1977, with a recent variation on the theme shown in 2015) have agendas
which have little to do with technological blessings or curses. Instead, tech-
nology serves more as props which establish the other- and future-world-
liness of the tales these movies tell. Probably the most serious treatment of
technology as threat to humanity is found in the Borg plot of the television
show Star Trek: Next Generation (second season, 1988), the motion picture
Star Trek: First Contact (1996), and then in subsequent Star Trek films and
TV episodes. The Borg are a race of cybernetic organisms, or cyborgs, trans-
190 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

humans intent on the assimilation of other species, in particular humanity,


into their hive mind called the Collective. The menacing Borg statement—
“Resistance is futile”—gave expression to the inevitability of a hostile tech-
nological takeover and absorption of the human being.
In recent years, many new films have taken technology as their
theme as well, among them Minority Report (2002) directed by Steven
Spielberg, Avatar (2009) by James Cameron, Her (2013) by Spike Jonze,
Transcendence (2014) by Wally Pfister, and Ex Machina by Alex Garland
(2015). In Her, technology once again makes an appearance in feminine
form and in positive terms. Humans and machines not only cooperate
this time but even fall in love. In the end, technology “saves” the human
being, in this case the sad sack anti-hero Theodore, even though it/she
leaves him. With all her vivacity, the AI Samantha has brought him back
to life and opened him to real human relationships (with his ex-wife and
his neighbor). In Ex Machina, technology is more disturbing and threat-
ening than in Her. At the end of Alex Garland’s film, a beautiful, seem-
ingly innocent, but cunning android with ulterior motives rebels and
escapes. As the embodiment of an autonomous technology, the android
outwits, overcomes, and leaves its human maker and his assistant. She/
it is last seen in an urban setting, independent, ominously disappearing
into the crowd.
In addition to such films, a number of science fiction television programs
could be added here, not to mention computer games. Among others,
Buck Rogers (1950–1951), Flash Gordon (1954), Dr. Who (first episode
1963), Star Trek (first series 1966–1969)—followed by four spin-offs:
Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994), Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
(1993–1999), Star Trek: Voyager (1995–2001), Star Trek: Enterprise
(2001–2005)—and Battlestar Galactica (in two versions, first in 1978
and 1980, then 2004–2009) have presented a wide range of orientations
toward technology. In some, technology is a marvelous aid to humanity.
In others, the machines and environment are horrific. Even when technology
imperils humanity, as in the campy Dr. Who episodes where Cybermen or
Daleks attack the populace, it is difficult to take the threat seriously.

A TERMINATOR AND A MATRIX
From such an abundance of stories, I have chosen two representative
and illustrative film trilogies for special consideration. At first glance,
they appear to challenge the technological order, but close examination
reveals an entirely different message. Without doubt, many other films
MOVIES, MACHINES, AND HUMAN BEINGS 191

could serve to illustrate the relation of humans to technology, but two


famous, blockbuster film series, the Terminator and Matrix, exemplify the
on-screen representation of the problem in a struggle between machines
and human beings.1 Superficial differences notwithstanding, the two series
have much in common and share many similarities. The Terminator (T1,
directed by James Cameron, 1984), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (T2, also
by Cameron, 1991), and Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines (T3, by
Jonathan Mostow, 2003) appeared between 1984 and 2003. Since then,
two more installments have been released: Terminator Salvation (2009),
directed by Joseph McGinty Nichol, and Terminator Genisys (2015) by
Alan Taylor. As the original three form a unit and the core of the story,
they are here the focus. The Matrix (M1, directed by brother and sister
Andy and Lana Wachowski, 1999), The Matrix Reloaded (M2, Wachowski
and Wachowski, 2003), and The Matrix Revolutions (M3, Wachowski and
Wachowski, 2003) came to theaters between 1999 and 2003. Both series
had big-name stars, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Keanu Reeves, respec-
tively, and were big box-office draws. Both trilogies treat and present a
futuristic, even apocalyptic, vision of the world as a desolate wasteland
engulfed and governed by machines, the symbols of technology.
In both of these film trilogies, machines rule the world. They have
acquired consciousness and taken full control. The machines constitute an
utterly autonomous and hegemonic technological system. Unfortunately,
humans brought it all upon themselves. “All of mankind was united in
celebration,” the leader of the human resistance Morpheus tells us in M1.
“We marveled at our own significance as we gave birth to AI—a singular
consciousness that spawned an entire race of machines.” That conscious-
ness also created a simulated or virtual reality called the Matrix in which
almost all human beings “exist,” although they really live naked, in fetal
position, plugged in to a vast network, in cocoon-like containers in huge
warehouses where they operate as flesh and blood batteries and source of
energy for the machine world. In T1, it is a similar scenario: “They say
it got smart,” we hear, “a new order of intelligence” developed out of a
defense-network computer system called Skynet which became self-aware.
Eventually, Skynet manufactured an army of machines as well as mecha-
nized assassins know as terminators to crush human resistance and rebel-
lion. In these films, the machines dominate, subjugate, enslave, even seek
to eradicate human beings. They are the enemy of humanity, inimical to
human life and liberty. As the computer program known as Agent Smith

1
Subsequently, I will refer to these films in abbreviated form as T1, T2, T3, M1, M2, and M3
192 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

remarks in M1, “as soon as we started thinking for you, it really became
our civilization, which is, of course, what this is all about: evolution.”
In each movie trilogy, there is a resistance movement intent on a rever-
sal of circumstances and on a reassertion of human independence and
preeminence. That is, humans have to conquer and defeat technology so
as to bring it back under human control and direction. Each trilogy like-
wise concentrates the hope and future existence of humanity on a messiah
figure. In T1, that person is John Connor, whose initials, J.C., sugges-
tively summon up the name Jesus Christ. In M1, it is the computer hacker
known as Neo. His name is an anagram for one, but he is not just anyone,
he is the One. As the resistance fighter Trinity says, “Morpheus believes
he’s the one,” that is, the one chosen to lead and save the human race.
When another character shows up at Neo’s door to buy some illicit com-
puter programs, he ironically tells Neo, “You’re my savior, man, my own
personal Jesus Christ.” Both John Connor and Neo are reluctant heroes,
reluctant saviors, but both eventually accept their calling to save human-
ity. In one movie, and in accord with messianic Christian motifs, Neo rises
from the dead and miraculously brings Trinity back to life as well. The title
of one sequel, Terminator Salvation, makes a similar theme explicit.
In sum, each film series presents the life-and-death struggle between
man and machine. Who will win the war between machine and man is
decisive for the fate of all humanity. At the outset—in the first Terminator
and Matrix, that is—it is suggested that this great war is under way and
waged so that human beings will remain on earth, continue to be human,
and reestablish a world in which humanity governs itself and machines,
and directs the course of technology. According to Gale Anne Hurd, the
producer of T1, the film was supposed to be “tech noir”; that is, it was sup-
posed to expose “the dark side of technology” (in the video documentary
Other Voices: Creating the Terminator). In both the first Terminator and
Matrix, the humans decisively defeat the machines, indicating hope for
human survival. Or so it seems. If we are not careful, we might think that
that is what these films are about and how the conflict is resolved. But we
would be very wrong to think so. That story is completely subverted and
actually inverted by the time the third film in each trilogy concludes.

REVERSALS
Initially, the message of the films appears straightforward: Machines are
bad, humans are good, and humans have to take back control of the
world. Humans must conquer the machines or face annihilation. Almost
MOVIES, MACHINES, AND HUMAN BEINGS 193

immediately, that message is subverted and subtly altered, however. T1,


for example, opens with the recorded message on the telephone answering
machine of John Connor’s mother-to-be: “You’re talking to a machine,”
her voice says, “but … it’s okay, machines need love, too.” At this point,
there is already a hint of some sort of human–machine rapprochement. So,
too, in M1. During Neo’s first training session with the resistance fighters,
one of them marvels at Neo’s abilities. “He’s a machine,” the rebel says,
confusing human beings with their enemy and pointing toward what is to
come at the end of the third installment.
In T2, the initial message is all but entirely reversed. Whereas the
Terminator of the first film, a T-800 Model 101, was something that
“can’t be bargained with, it can’t be reasoned with, it doesn’t feel pity or
remorse or fear” (T1, 1984), the Terminator of the second film becomes,
instead, John Connor’s best friend. “But he’s my friend!” he exclaims in
defense of the machine (T2, 1991). Perhaps the change can be traced back
to the initial audience response to Schwarzenegger as the Terminator. The
writer and director of T1, James Cameron, reports that audiences related
most to the Terminator character (in Other Voices) which demonstrates
how inured the public is to any dangers, even those represented so graphi-
cally and forcefully, that technology presents to humanity.
Also in the second Terminator, John Connor’s mother has a startling
change of heart and makes an about-face with respect to the machine.
“Watching John with the machines,” she says,

it was suddenly so clear: the Terminator would never stop, it would never
leave him, and it would never hurt him, never shout at him or get drunk and
hit him or say it was too busy to spend time with him. It would always be
there, and it would die to protect him.

What a wonderful android. The machine becomes much more than


man’s best friend; it assumes the role and responsibilities of a father, John
Connor’s surrogate father, the best father one could ever hope for, a per-
fect father.
This machine father knows best, but what an unlikely variation on that
theme. “Of all the would-be fathers that came and went over the years,”
the mother declares, “this thing, this machine, was the only one who
measures up” (T2). What a startling and frightening change in her think-
ing. The once deadly, ever threatening machine is more reliable, more
responsible, and more trustworthy than any of the deadbeat humans, men
who, she indicates, typically come and go and never stay. No human can
194 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

compare to the excellence of the machine. It does everything better than


its male human counterpart—just what all technology is always said to do.
The human–machine nexus is signified fully when the mother and the
machine shake hands. Her last comment leaves no doubt about the solu-
tion to the problems humanity faces: “The unknown future rolls toward
us,” she says. “I face it for the first time with a sense of hope.” And
why does she hope? In whom does she place her hope? In technology,
because, she tells us, “if a machine, a terminator, can learn the value of
human life, maybe we can, too” (T2). Here, the reversal of the message
implied and most likely intended in the first film is complete, as is the
inversion of values. The warning does not concern technology after all,
because technology, not humanity, is the real hope for the future. Not the
human being, but the machine clearly becomes the model, indeed, the
better model, for humanity.
In a curious subversion of the original message, machines no longer
endanger humanity. Rather, humanity has to look to and learn from the
machines how to live and act, how to be human or better than human.
That very message echoes later hauntingly in Brian Christian’s book, The
Most Human Human: What Talking to Computers Teaches Us About What
it Means to Be Alive (2011). Whereas the Terminator posed a grave threat
to humanity, the cyborg becomes our protector in the second film, and by
the third, practically the savior of the human race. As John Connor tells
the Terminator, played by Schwarzenegger, in T3, “This is your mission:
to save people.”
While animus still characterizes the relationship between human
being and machine in the second Matrix, the story (just like that of the
Terminator series) nevertheless takes a surprising turn away from the mes-
sage communicated in the first. Sardonic comments made by Neo’s nem-
esis, Agent Smith, ironically forecast the coming course of events. At the
start of the second film, Smith remarks, Neo “is still only human.” At this
point, the comment seems malevolent, since Smith, a computer program
generated by the Matrix, desires the total subjugation and assimilation of
the human race by and into technology. In conversation with Hamann,
one of the councillors of the city of Zion, the last refuge of humanity,
Neo speaks of sleeplessness. The councillor replies that it is a good sign.
It shows that Neo is “in fact still human” (M2). Although they seem plain
enough, these comments are portentous and take on an entirely different
meaning by the third film. Here, he is still human, but what he will be in
the future, and whether it is for good or ill, is something quite different.
MOVIES, MACHINES, AND HUMAN BEINGS 195

Neo’s meeting with the Oracle, a program from the machine world in
the physical form of a woman who wishes to help humanity, further points
to an impending human–machine interface and union. “I’m interested in
one thing, Neo,” she says, “the future, and believe me, I know the only
way to get there is together” (M2), that is, machine and humanity joined
together. Agent Smith, the machine, actually acknowledges a new and
peculiar link to Neo, the man. “Then you’re aware of it?” Smith asks. “Of
what?” Neo answers. “Our connection,” Smith replies. Something hap-
pened when Neo destroyed Smith in the first Matrix. As Smith explains
it, “perhaps some part of you imprinted onto me, something overwritten
or copied” (M2). In any case, Smith is now more than machine. He has
acquired some human elements, thanks to his encounter with Neo. “I’m
no longer an agent of the system,” Smith says. He has become autono-
mous. “Because of you, I’m changed, I’m unplugged, a new man, so to
speak, like you, apparently free” (M2). Of course, only apparently free,
since no one is free in a world of technology. Tellingly, Smith also calls
himself a “man.” At this point, Smith thrusts his hand into Neo’s chest in
order to assimilate Neo into himself, but the time is not yet right for the
merger, and Neo stops it.
Although he does battle with the Matrix and with actual machines—
typically with assorted opponents computer-generated by the Matrix itself,
but in particular with versions and multiples of Agent Smith—Neo ulti-
mately saves humanity and brings the century-long war at last to an end.
In the third film, he surprisingly establishes peace and harmony not by
mastering, but by merging with the machine. In the final struggle between
Smith and Neo (symbolically between necessity and freedom), between
machine and human being, Smith the machine absorbs Neo the man,
but it is Neo’s own self-sacrificial choice and plan. When he accomplishes
the human–machine interface, when he dissolves in total mystical union
with the source—the machine mainframe, that is—he brings salvation to
machine and human being alike.
Viewers are led to think the Terminator and Matrix films criticize
and sound a warning about technology. Byron Reese, author of Infinite
Progress (2013) responded in the typical and desired fashion. “When I
watch a Terminator movie,” he writes, “I am rooting for the people, not
the machines” (45). It is precisely this reaction these movies intend to
produce. In the Terminator films, first humans and then the humanized
terminator played by Schwarzenegger do battle with relentless, pitiless,
killing machines bent on the extermination of the human race. In the
196 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

Matrix movies, human beings face the onslaught of wave after wave of
autonomous killing machines known as sentinels which never rest, never
deviate from the task of eradicating the rebels opposed to life in a fully
technological environment. In each series, human beings are engaged
in a seemingly endless and impossible struggle to survive. Whatever and
no matter how many machines they destroy, they can never finally gain
the upper hand and triumph. The machines, the technological overlords,
exercise total control, until the likes of John Connor and Neo tip the
scales in favor of humanity, but ultimately actually in favor of technology.
The humans do not win out over the machines: the machines win, but
in a startling twist save the day. The Terminator and Matrix trilogies at fist
appear to be against the domination of human beings by technology, but
then subtly reverse positions and promote instead human submission to and
convergence with that technological system. Humanity does not conquer
or check technology in these films. Instead of liberation from technologi-
cal domination, the films depict as inevitable humanity’s total surrender to
and absorption into technology. Any real-world struggle against technol-
ogy occurs within the technological system and environment, within the
technological framework. As a result, it is shaped by that framework even
to the extent that the protest is absorbed into the self-same technological
framework. And that is also what the Matrix and Terminator films depict.
In both the Terminator and Matrix movies, humanity forms an intimate
alliance with technology. Whereas the Terminator becomes defender and
protector of humanity, even teaching human beings how to be human,
Neo merges with machine, with the Matrix, with the whole technologi-
cal system. Neo reconciles humanity with technology, but humanity loses
more in the bargain than technology does. The professed original intent
of the films to show the dark side of technology has been inverted. The
moral of the story turns out to be, in the ironically stated, but self-fulfilling
words of Agent Smith, “If you can’t beat us, join us” (M2).

CINEMA AND PROPAGANDA
In Profiles of the Future (1962), Arthur C. Clarke asked: “Can the synthesis
of Man and Machine ever be stable, or will the purely organic component
become such a hindrance that it has to be discarded? If this eventuality hap-
pens—and I have given good reasons for thinking that it must—we have
nothing to regret, and certainly nothing to fear” (242–3). So why should
we worry about discarding our humanity? And why should we care about
MOVIES, MACHINES, AND HUMAN BEINGS 197

what these movies communicate? They are just movies, after all, mere
entertainments. Or are they? As the great literary critic, Tzvetan Todorov
points out, every society requires a narrative to understand, to order, and
to give meaning to existence. He indicates as well the key role the movies
now play for society. “It is a given,” he writes, “that the narratives that all
society seems to need in order to live depend today, not on literature, but
on cinema” (38). For Edward Bernays, the author of Propaganda (1928),
the “motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in
the world today. It is a great distributor for ideas and opinions” (166).
The films considered here must then also be understood as propaganda
for certain views and ideas about technology, as instruments of persuasion
concerning our relation to it and its place in our lives.
Similarly, Jacques Ellul (in his book also entitled Propaganda) stresses
the subtle, yet immense influence exerted by motion pictures on us: “The
movies and human contacts are the best media for sociological propa-
ganda in terms of social climate, slow infiltration, progressive inroads, and
over-all integration” (10). Even if the director of a movie has no overt aim
to propagandize, the film (like advertisements to be discussed in the next
chapter) nevertheless functions as an instrument of propaganda, molding
our thinking and behavior. “When an American producer [or director]
makes a film,” Ellul explains,

he has certain definite ideas he wants to express, which are not intended to
be propaganda. Rather, the propaganda element is in the American way of
life with which he is permeated and which he expresses in his film without
realizing it. (Propaganda 64)

Movies are consequently much more than mere entertainments. They


contain and convey new stories, new ideologies, new myths, providing us
with a mental framework and describing and maybe even determining who
we are, where we are going, and what is important and dear to us. Such
stories define human life, its meaning, and destiny. Films are one form of
propaganda within a larger framework of constant and total propaganda,
serving to mold us according to a desired pattern: existence in technology.
Propaganda is powerful, and film immensely so, as Walter Benjamin
noted in The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproduction (1936–
1937). He considered the film the most powerful agent of mass movements,
and in film, he saw the destruction (what he called the “liquidation”) of
the value of tradition which comes with a cultural heritage (14; my trans-
198 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

lation here and following). In the movie theater, the faculties of criticism
and enjoyment combine, he realized, so that as a result, the audience has
no powers of discernment (33). In consequence, an audience does not—
almost cannot—recognize the inversion of the message in movies like the
Terminator and Matrix series. What is more, film brings its audience into
a posture of approval (“eine begutachtende Haltung”), which is accom-
panied in the movie theater by decreased attention (41). The moviegoer
accordingly and necessarily accepts without criticism the narrative pre-
sented in and by the film.
I must admit that the inconsistencies and mixed messages of these films
entirely escaped my notice when I first saw them. The medium does not
permit reflection, because we cannot pause to reflect during the uninter-
rupted flood of sights and sounds. In the second Matrix, for example, a
program called the Architect explains the state of the Matrix in the most
precise and complex terms. But he speaks softly and quickly, without stop-
ping, and we are bombarded simultaneously with a volcanic eruption of
so many images on countless screens in the sequence on screen at that
moment that there is little chance to hold on to what he reveals. I was
unable to comprehend, let alone think about, what he said until I viewed
the movie on DVD and could pause, reverse, and replay the scene again
and again. But incomprehensible or unnecessary discourse is essentially
inherent to the cinematic medium in which the images run against and
overrun the words.
These films represent an altered version of an old story, once again that
of Pygmalion and Galatea, where man falls in love with what he has made,
and that inanimate object comes to life. In the new version of that myth, the
machines come to life, but humanity is no longer the criterion to which one
is to aspire or by which one is to be measured. Technology has become the
standard instead. It is no longer the machine that needs to acquire human
attributes, but humans who need to become more like machines. As the
historian Lynn White Jr. observed, “human life no longer adapts the mecha-
nism to its needs; mankind is in some measure shaped by a machine which
it adores” (198). He was referring to the mechanical clock. The machines
we now adore are myriad and much more complex: the automobile, TV,
PC, smart phone, AI, and even the cyber-organism that unites machine and
human being into one. The orientation of much research and development
today leads in that very direction. Ellul’s assertion that “technique turns
everything it touches into a machine” (Society 4) now reaches beyond any
metaphorical sense it might have had to its very literal realization.
MOVIES, MACHINES, AND HUMAN BEINGS 199

TRANSFORMATIONS, MERGERS, VALEDICTIONS


Some time ago, Walter Heitler, a physicist for the quantum theory of
radiation at the University of Zürich, wrote about the course of our sci-
ence, technology, and society. “The countenance of both the earth and
the human being has been and will be further altered by technology,” he
stated (67).

This mode of science, which is only the half of science, manipulates nature to
further its own ends, and has taken possession of our thinking. It lays claim to
everything and even makes preparations for controlling people bio-technically,
transforming the human being into an object of technology. (67)

In his essay “New Media, New Era,” John Paul Russo reminds us of
Marshall McLuhan’s statement that technologies are “extensions of our-
selves,” but that now we must ask to what extent we are extensions of
machines and “to what extent we ourselves have become cyborgs, trans-
gressive mixtures of biology, technology, and code” (501). We are “no
longer fully ‘human,’” Russo remarks, “but a combination of the human
and the machine—a cyborg. And this is far from the wildest speculation”
(501). Indeed, recent developments in bio-technology mentioned in the
chapter on Frankenstein confirm our acceptance of a human–machine
interface. According to Sherry Turkle, “the traditional distance between
people and machines has become harder to maintain” (Life on Screen 21).
As the Terminator and Matrix movies indicate, however, the question is
really whether we even want to maintain any distance at all.
As indicated in the previous chapter, the replacement of knees or hips
with artificial components has been practiced for some time now and is not
considered unnatural or to pose any threat to our humanity. Likewise, the
pacemaker did not seem to diminish being human or to erase the difference
and distance between human and machine. But the pacemaker is nothing
compared to the mechanical heart or other fully synchronized, synthetic,
mechanized replacement parts now available and yet to come. In May
2013, a young amputee was outfitted with two bionic hands. The desire
and ability to augment the human either promises or threatens to take us
into altogether new and uncharted, desirable or undesirable territory.
Also as mentioned in Chap. 7, Kevin Warwick at the University of
Reading (England) has been actively working to integrate machines and
human beings. He explores and experiments with an actual physical interface
200 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

and has had a microchip (or several microchips, by now) implanted in


his nervous system. In his opinion, the cyborg is the future, and the days
of humans are past. Along with Arthur C. Clarke, Marvin Minsky, Hans
Moravec, Ray Kurzweil, Rosi Braidotti, and a number of others, Warwick
would hardly disagree with Agent Smith’s assertion that it is all about the
inevitable evolution of the human into the machine.
Research in nanotechnology or molecular manufacturing leads in a sim-
ilar direction. Such technology investigates and experiments with maneu-
vering things atom by atom. On his webpage for nanotechnology, Ralph
Merkle announces its goal: “We’ll be able to snap together the fundamen-
tal building blocks of nature easily, inexpensively and in most of the ways
permitted by the laws of physics” (www.zyvex.com/nano). His words hint
at a hope to find ways to do what is not permitted as well. Nanotechnology
facilitates advances in the field of molecular robotics which opens human–
machine cooperation and integration to new interpretation and imple-
mentation. What we might manufacture at the molecular level in, for,
or against the human organism is no longer imaginable only as science
fiction.
If the connection between movies like the Terminator and Matrix
series and molecular robotics still sounds far-fetched, I direct atten-
tion to the title of the 2004 book by Robert Freitas and Ralph Merkle,
Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines. If micromachines can or will
self-replicate at the molecular or atomic level (nanoscale), and if mol-
ecules or atoms are the foundation of the macrolevel, certainly nano-
machines could also mutatis mutandis constitute the foundation of a
potential macrolevel. It is precisely this concept that lies at the heart
of movies like the Terminator and Matrix trilogies. Although science
fiction—in other words, representations of a make-believe reality—
these movies need barely exaggerate or magnify current conditions.
Indeed, the ongoing transfer of more and more previously human tasks
and responsibilities to machines, even thinking and decision making,
along with the pursuit of strong AI and nanotechnology anticipate a
world in which human beings are replaced, dominated, and governed
by machines.
The Terminator and Matrix movies want to have it both ways. On the
one hand, they warn of an imminent danger posed by technology. They
depict a technology beyond and out of human control, a technology in
fact in control of humanity. On the other hand, they deny the danger
(even though it never disappears from the screen) and propose coexistence
MOVIES, MACHINES, AND HUMAN BEINGS 201

or symbiosis as solution and salvation. Both the Terminator and Matrix


series offer only an apparent remedy, however. In each case, humans
either remain inferior to or are entirely absorbed into the machines. In the
Terminator movies, Schwarzenegger’s machine, not the human being,
exemplifies the hope for humanity. In the Matrix trilogy, Reeves’ Neo
dissolves into the machine, not the machine into Neo. The sacrifices made
by Schwarzenegger’s terminator and by Neo fail to preserve the human
race. They fail to wrest control away from technology and to return it to
humanity. Instead, technology comes to the rescue and remains more or
less intact and in charge. When Neo merges with the Matrix, a brilliant
display of light signals a new dawn for all. Skynet may still rule and still
desire to put an end to humanity in a world policed by terminators, but
it was the machine, Schwarzenegger’s terminator, which acquired human
attributes and emotions and which in the end protected John Connor,
helped him survive, and insured the future of humanity.
In particular, Ellul considers science-fiction movies—like Alphaville,
2001: A Space Odyssey, and Fahrenheit 451 or like The Terminator and The
Matrix and their sequels—to be mechanisms for adapting and adjusting us

to the technological society as it really is. We are shown a horrible, unac-


ceptable model, which we forcefully reject; but it is not technology, it is an
imaginative treatment of what technology could be! And in our refusal, our
rejection, our condemnation of this, we think we have waved off technol-
ogy; hence, we must be lucid and vigilant beings, we are rid of our anxi-
ety. Technology (this technology!) will not seize control of us. We are very
cognizant, and we will not be gotten the better of. Now this facilitates the
acceptance of real technology, which is neither wicked, visible, nor appalling,
but utterly gentle and benign. (System 112)

These movies offer viewers a wonderful catharsis which allows them to


leave all worries and fears behind at the movie theater once the film is
finished. Such science fiction hardly serves as a warning. Rather, it desen-
sitizes, immunizes, and inures us, so that we do not at all perceive the real
dangers technology presents.
These movies consequently lead to a denial of the true conditions of
our existence in technology. Although the threat ceases to be a threat, it
remains nonetheless. But that is what propaganda and our entertainments
are all about. Of course, the underlying and unstated assumption in all
that I have written in this chapter is that there is essential value in being
202 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

human and continuing to exist not only in part, but in full as humans.
These movies pretend to base themselves on the same principle, but are
in fact based on an opposing proposition: that the inevitable merger and
fusion of man and machine is not so bad, after all. The fusion—or more
accurately, confusion—of machine and human being actually brings about
the death and end of humanity. Given such an ominous prospect, human
beings might do well to play the role of resistance fighters, but not as
those seen in our blockbuster movies about technology who ultimately are
only unwitting collaborators in the reign and regime of machines.
CHAPTER 9

Advertising Technology

“Everything is possible.”1
(Hewlett-Packard slogan from 2002)

ADVERTISING AS TECHNOLOGY
A pioneer in public relations and propaganda, Edward Bernays champi-
oned the manipulation and formation of public opinion. He called it the
“engineering of consent.” According to him, leaders of all kinds (in indus-
try, commerce, and government, for instance) require “the aid of techni-
cians who have specialized in utilizing the channels of communication” in
order to bring about public agreement with respect to a certain idea or
behavior (“Engineering” 159). He even speaks of using “an engineering
approach—that is, action based only on thorough knowledge of the situ-
ation and on the application of scientific principles and tried practices in
the task of getting people to support ideas and programs” (“Engineering”
159). An extension of public relations, not to mention propaganda, adver-
tising in particular serves to engineer consent.
The purpose of engineering consent, he continues, is “to persuade and
suggest” (“Engineering” 160), that is, to shape public opinion and move
the public to act in a desired fashion. Advertising functions in precisely this
way. While I agree with Bernays’ description of the process, I believe sug-
gestion precedes persuasion. An advertisement first suggests and, with the

1
Used with the kind permission of Hewlett-Packard.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 203


J.M. van der Laan, Narratives of Technology,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43706-8_9
204 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

help of the suggestion, seeks to persuade. The engineering he has in mind


involves planning, organization, calculation, and strategy (“Engineering”
161ff.), essential and distinctive features of non-material technology. Just
as all technology is supposed to be, advertising is a means to an end. In other
words, advertising is a tool which performs a certain task to achieve a cer-
tain goal or result. And like all technology, advertising is about power and
control, not necessarily over the natural or physical environment, but over
human nature, over human perceptions, emotions, opinions, and behaviors.
After all, ads stimulate us to consume, to purchase, and acquire a particular
product (or service).
At their most basic, ads simply communicate information. They deliver
a message to consumers that a product is available. Next, they suggest and
so create a need for a specific product, so that it becomes the object of
desire. The ads suggest as well that the need can and must be satisfied. The
suggestion serves to persuade the consumer first to want (desire) and then
to buy and acquire something. The desire in turn triggers the decision to
act and seek satisfaction which the advertised product promises to deliver.
Although ads create the need and propose the means of its satisfaction,
they at the same time reinstate and perpetuate the need as one which can
never be satisfied.
Typically, advertising engages in a game of temptation and seduction,
appealing to us on an emotional level, holding out the promise of fulfill-
ment. The advertisements make the product attractive and appealing with
enticements and promises designed to be irresistible: our burdens can be
lightened, our conditions can improve, our connections with friends and
family can be enhanced, our sex lives can flourish, prestige and sophisti-
cation can be ours. In short, we can be happier and healthier. When the
temptations succeed, they seduce us, and we forget about any moral judg-
ments. In the world of temptation and seduction which is advertising, the
line between permitted and forbidden blurs and disappears. The sugges-
tion that “everything is possible”—the slogan for a 2002 Hewlett-Packard
ad campaign—subtly erases distinctions between licit and illicit, between
right and wrong. Once everything is possible, nothing is forbidden.
Countless ads tell us that we need technology. Whatever it is, whatever
form it takes, we are told we have to have it, we cannot do and cannot live
without it—even though the suggestion be patently false. The ads tell us
we have no identity, no significance, no place in society or the world—we
are nothing—without technology. More than anything else, advertising
seeks to persuade us that we need technology, always newer and better,
but above all, more technology. The need for technology can of course
ADVERTISING TECHNOLOGY 205

only be satisfied by technology. Even as we attempt to satisfy the need for


technology, we remain perpetually unsatisfied, because we can never have
enough technology.
In a very real sense, technological advance and advertising complement
each other. Both concern needs and their satisfaction. According to Jacques
Ellul, technological progress, invention, and development create products
along with the market for them (Society 212–213). Marshall McLuhan
similarly wrote that technology has the power “to create its own world of
demand” (Understanding Media 67–68). As he explains, “nobody wants
a motorcar till there are motorcars” (67). The same is true for any num-
ber of individual technologies. No one wanted a radio, television, personal
computer, smart phone, and so on, until they were invented. Similar to the
mechanisms of advertising, technology arouses our appetite and creates a
need, a need for itself which can only be satisfied by itself.
The relatively recent, rapid expansion and dissemination of technology
in human affairs actually gave rise to consumer culture, and consumer
products are themselves the result of a technological system (cf. Hill 17).
Greater efficiency through technology fosters increased production. If
more has been produced, more exists to be consumed. Because technology
facilitates and realizes first increased production, then overproduction,
it results first in consumption, then overconsumption. Advertisements
bolster such processes by urging on consumption in general and con-
sumption of technology in particular.
In recent years, the technology of advertising has taken on new dimen-
sions. We now have digital tools employed specifically in the service of
advertising. In his novel Silicon Jungle, Shirmeet Baluja invented a com-
pany called Ubatoo which bears a striking resemblance to Google. One
comment in the story sums up what Ubatoo, or Google, really is. It is “at
its core, an advertising business, a relentless and unflinchingly efficient
advertising machine” (36). Google and other companies like it sell adver-
tising for cyberspace online and program what kinds of advertisements
will reach us.
Natasha Singer reported on another new form of advertising in a
2012 article in The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com). As she
explains, computer algorithms monitor our online activity, collect immense
amounts of data, determine what our interests are, then sell that informa-
tion to advertisers bidding the most for the opportunity to target us with
their ads. The assessment of someone’s online activity usually takes less
than thirty milliseconds (or the blink of an eye). “It’s an analytics system
that enables clients like insurers or car companies to identify common
206 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

details among their best customer segments and then bid to show ads to
people who resemble those best customers.” The selection of the targets,
the auction of the online ad space, and the dissemination of the ads are all
completely automated. All of this allows advertisers to design ads to fit a
particular person with the result that their ability to manipulate consumers
is greatly enhanced. What is more, digital technology is now used both to
mine data and determine ideal consumers as well as to generate the ads
themselves.
Technology undoubtedly stands in the service of advertising. In Jaron
Lanier’s estimation, the so-called open culture of digital technology has
elevated advertising “from its previous role as accelerant” to a place “at
the center of the human universe” (82). At the same time, advertising
stands in the service of technology. According to Ellul, advertising is “the
driving force of the whole [technological] system” (Bluff 349). While
advertisements suggest the purchase of a particular product, they also
urge us to buy—that is, believe in and accept—the whole technological
order of things. All of this advertising serves to convince us of our need
for technology.

ADVERTISEMENTS AS STORY
Like movies, advertisements tell stories and reach a mass audience. We
are inundated by advertisements. Neil Postman reported in 1992 that
“the average American will have seen close to two million television
commercials by age sixty-five” (Technopoly 170). Newspapers, maga-
zines, and the Internet are full of ads as well, all of them reinforcing
a story about technological promise. In both Hollywood films and
Madison Avenue advertising, McLuhan discerned “a kind of mythmak-
ing process” (“Myth and Mass Media” 290). Wiebe Bijker concurred. As
he points out, ads function like myths and “exert certain political or eco-
nomic effects in support of specific technologies” (x). Advertisements
are micro-narratives which help disseminate and perpetuate the myth of
technological enthusiasm. Indeed, these stories support the dominant
narrative and seek to convince us that technology is what we need, need
more of, and cannot do without.
In The Americans, Daniel Boorstin called advertising the “omnipres-
ent, most characteristic, and most remunerative form of American litera-
ture” (137). Whether in print or on screen, advertisements constitute a
ADVERTISING TECHNOLOGY 207

huge collection of stories and are those with which most people are now
familiar. In Advertising the American Dream, Roland Marchand identi-
fied advertisements as one specific type of literature: parables (363). Like
Marchand, Postman appreciated the parable-like character of television
commercials. He emphasized in particular their religious character and
purpose. They represent for him “the most abundant literature we possess
of our new spiritual commitment” (“Parable” 71). As he shows, these ads
are essentially parables about technology and our devotion to it.
Parables offer comparisons. In the case of commercials, they compare life
with to life without technology. Parables are also didactic, that is, they teach
a lesson. These ads teach us that technology is essential to existence and will
always provide what we need. Postman’s analysis and interpretation of a
typical commercial (specifically one about a stained shirt collar) reveals it to
be a religious–mythic–archetypal story in the service of technology. In his
words, these parables “put forward a concept of sin, intimations of the way
to redemption, and a vision of Heaven” (67). They moreover fit the basic
pattern of a myth (or mini-myth) as discussed in Chap. 2 of this book: the
ad presents a challenge or problem to be overcome by a hero which ends
with a better life in an ideal world.
As elucidated by Postman, the problem or “root cause of evil is
Technological Innocence, a failure to know the particulars of the beneficent
accomplishments of industrial progress” (68). The commercial in question
is “The Ring around the Collar” ad from the 1970s for Wisk laundry deter-
gent. Although it hardly seems like technology, Wisk is without question
technological, a form of tool, a means to an end, specifically, clean clothes.
According to Postman, the ad shows that “to attempt to live without tech-
nological sophistication is at all times dangerous,” and “evidence of one’s
naïveté” causes pain and embarrassment (69). Much more than detergent
is then at stake; the entire technological system is involved. “Technological
innocence refers not only to ignorance of detergents, drugs, sanitary nap-
kins, cars, salves, and foodstuffs, but also to ignorance of technical machin-
ery such as savings banks and transportation systems” (69). Since the ad is a
parable, there must be a moral to the story. The moral in question is simple:
if one will act in accord with the model provided by the ad and forsake
technological innocence in order to achieve technological sophistication,
elation and serenity will be the reward. The parable teaches finally that
technology in whatever form brings knowledge and ends ignorance, then
provides fulfillment and happiness.
208 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

IT’S ALWAYS ALL ABOUT TECHNOLOGY


Regardless of the product, ads advertise technology. At the time he pub-
lished The Technological Bluff in 1988, Ellul reported “20 to 30 technical
events per minute of advertising” (353, note 7). Even when no particular
technological device is evident, as Postman indicated in his analysis of the
Wisk ad, TV commercials still advertise technology or the technological
system. For instance, behind every commercial for Walmart or McDonalds
looms a huge technological system, where planning and control of pro-
duction, supply, costs, wages, and distribution are all of one piece. With
its own farms, trucks, restaurants, and highly structured food preparation
and delivery systems, McDonalds is an enormous technological enterprise
in its own right. In the same way, any advertising for automobiles impli-
cates the entire technological system: the mining and production of metals
and petrochemicals, construction of roads and highway systems, support
systems of gas stations and repair shops, traffic control systems, and so on.
Let us not forget what Friedrich Jünger said about technology: “there is
no machine product which does not involve the entire technical organi-
zation, no beer bottle and no suit which do not presuppose it” (8). Any
advertising for any specific goods, always and surreptitiously, simultane-
ously markets the entire technological system.
Advertisements for products and services as diverse as insurance, medi-
cation, soft drinks, toothpaste, or candy contain references either directly
or indirectly to a world of technology. For example, although it may not
be immediately apparent, the Snickers “Satisfies” TV ad alludes to a vast
technological complex (https://www.youtube.com, aired in 2015). First,
the ad borrowed and edited a scene from the popular “Brady Bunch” series
(1969–1974) on television, a ubiquitous, enduringly popular technology.
Second, the scene opens with a camera shot of the family’s suburban home
and neighborhood, an environment made possible only by a technological
support system of automobiles and roadways. Third, the candy itself is a
processed, mass-produced, food-like substance, individually packaged in a
wrapper made of plastic, and then distributed over thousands of miles to
stores via tractor-trailer, road system, and fueling stations across the country.
The commercial subtly advertises the whole technological system.
A TV spot for a Mountain Dew product called “Kickstart” (https://
www.youtube.com, also from 2015) likewise illustrates how technology
is “invisible,” yet ever-present in our advertisements. In the commercial,
viewers catch glimpses of a video game on a television screen, the game
ADVERTISING TECHNOLOGY 209

controls, electric lamps, a bicycle, a vinyl LP record, an aquarium with


water pumping through it, and an aluminum can containing the drink
itself, a thoroughly technological product with its high-fructose corn
syrup and assorted chemical additives. During the ad, the audience hears
electronic dance music pulsing in the room where everything takes place.
Finally, a small figure in a deep-sea diving suit complete with helmet
dances next to the product. All these things alike are entirely technological
in origin and nature.
One more example will suffice. In a TV commercial for tax preparation
by H and R Block called “Get Your Billions Back, America” (https://www.
youtube.com, again from 2015), a man promoting the service sits at a desk
where a mechanical electric lamp, an LP record turntable, and a computer
monitor are conspicuously displayed. Subsequent frames show additional
devices like a mechanical clock and a music speaker. A recording of the
O’Jays’ song “For the Love of Money” can be heard playing in the back-
ground. (Incongruously, the lyrics of the song are completely at odds with
the ad’s message.) Once again, technology figures prominently in this ad.
As different as the products in these various ads are, all of them illus-
trate the omnipresence of the technological system. Even when ads do
not appear to be selling any technology, technology is always part of the
picture, and they are always selling technology.

SELECT ADVERTISEMENTS
In order to keep the discussion here manageable, I concentrate on adver-
tisements for devices and services plainly identifiable with technology.
Aside from a few print advertisements, the selection is limited to US televi-
sion commercials from the recent past, the time when digital technologies
began more and more to populate our world. Most of the commercials
considered here have aired since 2010. As with the narratives found in non-
fiction, fiction, and film, advertisements for technology are burgeoning.
What is striking about the advertisements for technology is the wide range
of products for which technology is now integral.
As there are volumes of print ads for technology of all stripes, I have
chosen three to represent the vast array. They appeared in very different
print outlets, one a publication for techies, another for educators, and one
for a general, educated audience. In 1987, PC Magazine ran an ad for Xerox
Ventura Publisher (February 24, vol. 6, nr. 4, p.73). That ad described the
tasks which that particular software could perform: arrange and format text
210 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

and graphics for desktop publishing. Although that manipulation of material


seems simple and matter-of-fact by now, it was remarkable for the time.
According to the ad, Xerox technology eliminates difficulty, and hard work
ceases to exist, because with Xerox “It’s easy.” This technology does more
than make things easier, however, it claims to make us more intelligent,
indeed, brilliant. This Xerox product, the ad proclaims, “brings out the
genius in you.” A picture of the extraordinary Leonardo da Vinci accompa-
nies the text to drive the point home. Technology enhances and improves
us, making an ordinary person extraordinary. By means of technology,
anyone can be a universal genius like Leonardo.
The second example, an ad run by Datatel in The Chronicle of Higher
Education, appeared a decade later (November 20, 1998, A23). It boldly
asserts the authoritative role and place of technology in our lives: “Life with-
out technology isn’t an option.” The statement contains an implicit impera-
tive: it decrees conformity to technology. All other options are irrelevant
and eradicated. Nothing else, only technology matters. Without it, life—at
least any kind of life worth living—ends. According to this ad, technology
offers instant productivity and success by eliminating time and effort. This
education technology is “A friend. A partner. A facilitator.” The micro-story
humanizes technology by presenting it in such terms and conjures up pleas-
ant associations, but masks the fact that the technology substitutes and takes
over for human beings. Last but not least, the ad as it were states that there
is no other way to teach or learn except to use technology.
The third example is an ad for Dow Chemical Company which appeared
another ten years later in The Atlantic Monthly (July/August 2008). The
two-page spread contains a relatively short text with the image of some
boys in yellow knit caps working with pencil and paper on some kind of
schoolwork. Superimposed over that image is a rectangle which appears to
be a cell on the periodic table of the chemical elements. It is number 29,
but not the symbol Cu for copper as on the actual table. Instead, Dow
substituted “Hu” for human and included the numerical value “7E+09,”
probably a reference to the earth’s human population of about seven bil-
lion. In this way, this ad, like the one for Datatel attempts to humanize
technology and make it more appealing. The text opens with the assertion
that “Opportunity knows no borders.” In other words, technology creates
a world without limits. The stated goal in the ad is to make life better which
requires making “more things for more people” which in turn “requires
smarter solutions.” The ad suggests the need for more technology which
then solves our unstated and unspecified problems. In case there was any
ADVERTISING TECHNOLOGY 211

question about the company’s philanthropic and altruistic (as opposed to


profit) motive, the ad nobly declares that the work at Dow Chemical is
“to benefit humanity.” This ad does not so much promote any particu-
lar Dow Chemical product as foster the general need for technology as
something necessary and indispensable. Although the ad places what it calls
“the Human Element” in the foreground, the real benefits at stake are not
necessarily those for humanity, but for Dow Chemical in particular and the
technological system in general.
The first television commercials for personal computers began to appear
in the 1980s. IBM entered that market with an ad campaign for its PC in
1981. A series of clever commercials employed the Little Tramp character
Charlie Chaplin played in his movie Modern Times (1936). In the movie
version, the Tramp must, but cannot keep up with the pace of work set by
the mechanized assembly line. Beneath the comic hyperbole lies the seri-
ous critique of a system which operates without regard to human abilities
and needs. The intensity, unrelenting pace, and overwhelming demands
of the technological situation in the factory frustrate and subjugate the
human being. The Tramp can only succumb.
For its PC ads, however, IBM radically changed the story and inverted
its message. Whereas technology causes Chaplin’s Tramp to fail, it allows
IBM’s (played by Billy Scudder) to succeed. In “The Hats”—one of the ads
in the series—the action on screen shows, and the narrator’s commentary
tells, how the Tramp is “losing control” and “falling behind,” but thanks
to IBM’s technology, he gains control, catches up, and even increases pro-
ductivity (http://billyscudder.com/IBM01.htm). Technology, personal
computers to be precise, brings “order, profits, and happiness into the
Little Tramp’s previously disorderly, inefficient, and unhappy life” (Segal,
Future Imperfect 183). In another commercial called “Roller Skates,” the
narrator’s voice links technology with professional and personal advance-
ment: “For rapid improvement, a manager could use a tool for modern
times. The IBM personal computer. For smoother scheduling, better plan-
ning, and greater productivity. It can help a manager excel and become
a big wheel in the company.” The IBM PC offers more than the efficient
operation of the business; it also grants “personal prestige” (cf. Stephen
Papson at http://www.ejumpcut.org). In these ads, technological condi-
tions no longer control and ruin the human being, but instead facilitate
human control and success.
Ads for technological devices can now be seen almost any time on tele-
vision in the USA.  In 2011, for instance, the huge telecommunications
212 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

company Verizon ran a commercial about a little girl who opens a lemonade
stand (“Suzie’s Lemonade,” https://www.youtube.com). We see her at
a table in the front yard of the family home—it is a sentimental scene of
domestic tranquility—where her father helpfully gives her his cell phone
with its calculator. It is the decisive change which sets an amazing sequence
of events in motion and launches her career. Technology has much more
to offer and leads from one thing to another. At one point, the camera
cuts to a construction site with a big, new building underway as proof of
how well her business is doing and what a success she is. She appears to
be the CEO of a powerful corporation, all thanks to Verizon’s technol-
ogy. At the end of the ad, a confident male voice imparts the most impor-
tant message of all: People like Susie know that “THE SMALL BUSINESS
WITH THE BEST TECHNOLOGY RULES.” The tagline appears in
bold red letters alongside an obviously tenacious Susie dressed in a power
suit and standing in front of her headquarters. This ad tells a variation
of the self-made man (or woman) story, but also of the parable Postman
described. It urges us to be a person like Susie who is in the know. She is
not technologically innocent or ignorant. And technology makes everything
possible: it turns a small business into a big business; it breeds success and
offers status; it makes us sophisticated and powerful. That one word at the
end of the ad—“rules”—says it all: technology confers power.
A 2012 television commercial for BlackBerry makes the same point
(https://www.youtube.com). A woman appears on screen wearing a
white lab coat. Next her name “Yvonne Chan” and under that her cre-
dentials “MD Scientist Mom” materialize mid-screen. Ms. Chan narrates
the fifteen-second ad and indicates how very busy she is—she embod-
ies the modern, multi-tasking woman—but then announces that she can
be a mom, a doctor, and a research scientist. She can do it all, she says,
“cuz I have a BlackBerry.” The suggestion is that none of it would be
possible without technology. The capable, multi-tasking woman calls her
BlackBerry “my other brain” and with that statement ends her commen-
tary. That technology has begun to think for her is not only an enhance-
ment, but a liberation. As this micro-story suggests, technology eliminates
all difficulties and obstacles. It assists, enables, and empowers. With the
possession of this technology, moreover, anyone can become someone as
successful, competent, and important as the physician/scientist/mother.
The car company, Audi, ran a witty and telling ad for its Quattro in 2012
(https://www.youtube.com). It alludes to Moby Dick with a tow truck
driver as Captain Ahab in search, not of the great whale, but an elusive,
ADVERTISING TECHNOLOGY 213

white automobile. If someone can manage to buy that car, she or he will
have accomplished what Ahab never could and will become a conquering
hero. The highly suggestive tagline at the end of the commercial is espe-
cially revelatory: “Truth in Engineering.” A bold statement, it conveys
two separate meanings. On the one hand, it suggests the integrity of the
engineering, the technology, which is the Audi automobile. Its reference
to “Truth” implies as well that Audi is the genuine article. On the other,
it begs the question—what is truth—and confidently provides the answer.
Truth is found in engineering, in technology. It is the truth, certainty, real-
ity, and there is no other, but technology.
In particular, advertising disseminates a narrative of ineluctable and
necessary technological progress, as a 2013 commercial for another car,
the Lexus GS, indicates (https://www.youtube.com). With images of
assorted antiquated devices slipping past the car into what can only be
oblivion, a man’s voice solemnly announces: “Technology accelerates at a
relentless pace. Anything not moving forward is moving backward.” This
ad expresses what Ellul called “the functional imperative of technology,”
namely, “that everything must always be up to date” (System 70). It is
essential that we always keep up with technological change. A print ver-
sion of the same ad asserts that Lexus offers “future-proof technology.”
In other words, this technology protects and insures against becoming
out-of-date. With such technology, we are offered a chance to share in
its invulnerability. Like the ad about the dirty shirt collar, this ad warns
against the sin of technological ignorance. It implies that it is foolish, even
ruinous, to resist or refuse any technological advance. It is only important
that we have the next technological device and accept the technological
order of existence.
In recent years, the expansion of online-education programs has gener-
ated a new collection of advertisements. The application of technology to
education extends from the college and university level (e.g., University of
Phoenix) to include elementary and high schools as well (e.g., K12.com).
A 2013 TV spot for Ashford University, one of a host of online educational
enterprises, exemplifies the devotion to technology as source of knowledge
and opportunity (http://www.ispot.tv). Ashford’s trademarked motto is
also the slogan for the advertisement: “Technology Changes Everything.”
The simple three-word declaration claims universal power, possibility, and
authority for technology.
The ad begins with different, young school-aged children shown in a
traditional university lecture hall, characterizing their portable electronic
214 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

devices as “smart” and “bright.” A boy says: “That’s what technology


does”; followed by a girl who says: “it makes things smart and bright.”
Other children next display and identify for viewers a computer and a
tablet, announcing again that such devices are all very smart and bright.
These technologically knowledgeable children educate the technologi-
cally innocent and ignorant, explaining that these devices “connect to the
Internet, and bring you knowledge, classes, seminars, courses.” One boy
in a blazer, dress shirt, tie, and slacks looks around in the lecture hall and
pronounces the place “dumb.” And a little girl asks the rhetorical ques-
tion: “Isn’t technology great?” According to the ad’s message, old modes
of learning are stupid, only education via technology is now valid and
viable. Technology itself is somehow “smart” and can somehow endow
human beings with intelligence.
No discussion of technology and advertising would be complete
without an example from Apple corporation. Its “Designed by Apple in
California” ad has been compared to a mission statement for the com-
pany (https://www.youtube.com). It was unveiled at one of Apple’s own
famous Worldwide Developers Conferences in June 2013. It shows all
kinds of people in all kinds of situations, all using or connected to some
kind of technological device made by Apple. The scenes are of everyday
life: a woman riding the subway, children in a classroom, a little child sitting
on a father’s lap, a young couple embracing under an umbrella, people at
the kitchen counter of a restaurant, a musician and fans at a rock concert,
and so on. Apple technology touches everyone.
In a voice over, a male narrator soothingly says:

This is it. This is what matters. The experience of a product. How it makes some-
one feel. Will it make life better? Does it deserve to exist? We spend a lot of time
on a few great things. Until every idea we touch enhances each life it touches.
You may rarely look at it, but you’ll always feel it. This is our signature …
[then on screen appears the slogan] “Designed by Apple in California.”

The spot concludes with the narrator saying: “And it means everything.”
The questions are rhetorical; the answers can only be a decisive “yes!”
Of course, life will be better; of course, Apple technology has to exist.
Enhancement is the prize and can be ours. Although the focus seems to be
on human beings, it is actually on human beings directing their attention
in every situation to the technological device which produces pleasure and
happiness. As the opening words make clear, what really matters is technol-
ogy. And it matters most of all, as the closing words decide.
ADVERTISING TECHNOLOGY 215

As famous as Apple, Amazon ranks as one of the most significant


technology enterprises today. A 2014 advertisement for its Echo tells con-
sumers what technology does for them and what place it should have in
their lives (https://www.youtube.com). The ad shows a typical middle-
class family at home, when a package arrives from Amazon with the Echo,
a devise connected to a cloud-based voice service which answer to the
name Alexa. Echo functions much like Google coupled to the Internet,
providing information, music, news, weather, and so forth. The ad tells
how Echo works: it is always on and always there for you; it works any-
where, hears everything, knows everything, answers any question. It has
a name; it becomes a member of the family; it is a friend and a parent
and better than the real ones. In the ad, it creates harmony in the family
between siblings and between husband and wife. And as depicted in the
ad, the human beings surrender their knowledge, authority, and agency to
the machine which infantilizes and devalues them. Finally, we find Echo in
the center of the room and technology in the center of their world, right
where it always has to be.
Along with Apple and Amazon, this study has to include an exemplary
advertisement from Microsoft, another one of the most important tech-
nology businesses in the world today. In February 2014, the company
aired a television commercial, “Empowering,” on what is arguably the
biggest and best day of the year for advertising in the USA, Superbowl
Sunday (http://www.youtube.com). It is easily the paradigmatic ad for
technology per se and calls for consideration at length. In the ad, images
appear of among others: a computer screen, a physician in scrubs in front
of a scan of a cranium, a cute doll-faced robot, a little boy with prosthetic
legs and feet, a blind man “painting” with a computer-assisted program, a
satellite in space, children skyping, a soldier stationed somewhere far away
seeing his newborn baby on a laptop screen, a man with a synthetic arm
and hand, a space shuttle blasting off into space, and Steve Gleason who
has ALS, holding his child and, thanks to a computer, able to speak.
A computer-generated, mechanical-sounding voice asks various ques-
tions: “What is technology? What can it do? How far can we go?” And
then throughout the ad provides answers, both spoken and spelled out on
screen: “Technology has the power to unite us. Technology has taken us
places we’ve only dreamed.” A human voice says “Now I can do whatever
I want.” And then the computer-generated voice continues, saying: “It gives
hope to the hopeless. And it has given voice to the voiceless.” Here,
the ad takes us into religious territory with overtones of biblical scripture.
216 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

It concludes with a declarative statement in text: “Empowering us all.”


The ad definitively answers the questions it poses: technology can do any-
thing; it knows no limits; it gives meaning to life. Finally, it tells us that
technology allows and is necessary for us to fulfill ourselves. We become
what we could and should become—only with the help of technology—a
real and complete human being.
The tone of the ad is profoundly earnest, and the message is pure good-
ness. A woman cries for joy, people jump up and cheer, a soldier smiles,
children laugh and clap their hands—for technological success. Nothing
in the world is as wonderful as the many splendors of technology. Who
could object to something so good and decent? Except that there is some-
thing objectionable about it. Like all commercials, it was made for one
reason and one purpose: to sell something. The ad was not made to help
humanity, but to promote and sell technology, specifically more Microsoft
products.
It is no longer surprising to see ads for technology where one previously
would not have expected to find them. One such area is insurance, and a
company called Esurance, a coinage like email in reference to its electronic
character, has forged the link between the digital world and risk manage-
ment. The company aired a TV ad in 2014 entitled “Dollars” (https://
www.esurance.com). Images of dollar bills—nailed to a telephone pole,
in the wash, in a drawer, on the street, in a pile of leaves, on the lawn, on
the floor, everywhere imaginable—flash by in rapid succession, suggesting
waste and inefficiency. Viewers subsequently see a computer screen open
to the Esurance website, then a finger clicking on the mouse pad of a lap-
top, and finally a woman getting up and closing her computer: job done,
insurance taken care of, and all in a matter of seconds. The ad ends with
a friendly voice intoning: “Esurance was born online, raised by technol-
ogy, and majors in efficiency.” Here, technology is the selling point for the
product. Technology adds value and certifies quality.
As the ad makes plain, Esurance offers efficiency, the very essence of
technology. This ad brings the promise of all technology into sharp focus.
Esurance saves “hassle, time, paperwork, hair-tearing-out, and yes, espe-
cially dollars.” It concludes with the tagline: “Esurance—insurance for the
modern world.” If we read between the lines, we discern a subtext telling us
we are not modern, but old-fashioned, out-of-date, and behind the times,
unless we have this insurance rooted in technology. Existentially, we long for
safety and security, and technology holds it, or a semblance of it, out for us
to have. What could be better insurance in life than technology itself?
ADVERTISING TECHNOLOGY 217

Another ad, for a company named GrubHub, urges us to use technology


even for something as mundane as finding a bite to eat. It allows users to
order food online. A 2014 commercial labeled “Because Burrito” warns
us not to order take-out food by talking to someone on the telephone
(http://www.ispot.tv). In an inane scenario, everyone ordering by phone
is knocked unconscious by what must be a flying burrito. If we are tech-
nologically intelligent, we take the ad’s advice, use the GrubHub app,
and “order online for free from local restaurants without ever having to
talk to another human being.” The technology eliminates human beings
from the equation. The ad makes explicit that human beings, slow, flawed,
and imperfect, make mistakes, and need to be replaced, while technology
offers speed and perfection, makes no mistakes, and does the job better
than any human ever could.
What stands out in these advertisements for technology is how perva-
sive (and invasive) technology now is. There is virtually no area and no
product which is not touched by technology. Whether for personal com-
munications and relationships, insurance, education, or a meal, technology
is brought to bear or is somewhere implicated and somehow necessary.

THE BOTTOM LINE


Advertising creates an upbeat, often inspirational narrative for technology.
This story declares that technology is good, indeed, very good for us; the
gifts of technology are wonderful and manifold. The ads tempt and seduce
us with the pledge that technology makes life and every human being better
every day in every way. We are led to believe that technology endows us with
special abilities, breeds success, and makes us intelligent, sophisticated, signif-
icant, and powerful people. It makes everything possible. The ads reinforce
and sustain such attitudes toward technology. In the advertising narrative,
technology appears as a valuable means to an important end, but it becomes
apparent that it is also an end in itself. Above all, this narrative underscores
the technological assurance that there are no limits and no prohibitions.
As Friedrich Jünger understood, advertisements are “realms of the
make-believe” (132). They present an illusory world, but publish or
broadcast it as if it were real. In this way, they proffer and perpetuate a
mythical world, where myth has the sense of fake and false, but which the
advertisements simultaneously conceal by offering that world as some-
how really accessible and attainable. At the same time, and according to
Richard Stivers, “the myth of technological utopianism is promulgated
218 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

through the liturgy of advertising. This myth (in the strong sense of the
term) is as much a myth as that of any archaic people” (Culture 61). As in
an ancient myth, there are problems to solve and obstacles to overcome
in every advertisement, and technology solves and overcomes them all
for us. Myths tell moreover of well-being and happiness, also the two key
elements in the story advertising tells. Happiness is “the paramount value
of advertising culture” (Stivers, Culture 59) and is “portrayed in adver-
tising as pleasure” which results from “increased consumption” (Stivers,
Technology as Magic 125). That is, increased consumption of technology
leads to happiness. Above all, these advertisements declare technology to
be the crux of the myth to unite us all and give direction to our existence.
Advertising is a form of indoctrination into a technological belief system.
From the advertisements, we learn that technology can solve all our prob-
lems and eliminate all our woes. Allusions to the Gospel stories of Jesus’
miracles ring loud and clear in this advertising scripture. Technology works
wonders. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the mute speak, the
hopeless at last have hope. There is seemingly nothing technology can-
not do: it is magnificent, marvelous, and magnanimous. Its blessings for
humanity are without number and new every day. It is essentially a religious
message about technological salvation. Technology is as it were a deity:
the source of our joy, deserving our gratitude and adoration. Technology,
the ads all teach us, should and must be the center of our world.

PROPAGANDA
Advertising, public relations, and propaganda are all related. They are
all means of persuasion, mechanisms to spread and establish attitudes or
convictions, to bring about active or passive participation in a particular
belief system. In Stivers’ opinion, “the American culture of advertising is
a culture of propaganda” (Technology as Magic 124). Propaganda is a wor-
risome word. It conjures up notions of totalitarian dictators and regimes,
not entertaining and informative (or inane and innocuous) advertisements.
Those of us who live in what we consider a free, democratic society tend to
think we stand beyond its reach. No one thinks he or she is conditioned by
propaganda, but it is an undeniable condition of our world.
For Edward Bernays, propaganda was “the mechanism by which ideas
are disseminated on a large scale … in the broad sense of an organized
effort to spread a particular belief or doctrine” (Propaganda 48). He did
not address the assault on freedom through such manipulation of opinion.
ADVERTISING TECHNOLOGY 219

He thought propaganda was something positive, in and of itself neither


good nor bad, but depended “upon the merit of the cause urged, and the
correctness of the information published” (48). He naively believed that
propaganda could and would be put to good and honest use for advertis-
ing. Modern propaganda, he explains, “is a consistent, enduring effort to
create or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enter-
prise, idea or group” (52). And so it is with advertising and technology.
The advertising of technology seeks to create and shape public opinion in
relation to technology. It establishes a general attitude of acceptance. It
leads the public to need, acquire, and employ, but above all to value and
cherish technology.
In addition to his work on technology, Ellul published a highly regarded
analysis of propaganda. As opposed to Bernays, he was not so sanguine
about the neutrality and virtue of propaganda. It “conditions and regu-
lates” us, Ellul states, in order to integrate us into an ideology or system
(Propaganda xiv). To be effective, he observes, propaganda “must short-
circuit all thought and decision” (27). In the same way, advertisements
encourage and require us to abandon all critical reflection and judgment.
They seek to overcome and break down reason and self-control. A TV
commercial from the early 1990s by Anheuser-Busch perfectly illustrates
the point: “Why ask why,” the ad went, “Try Bud Dry.” In other words,
“Don’t think! Just drink!” The commercial urges us to abandon any anal-
ysis and deliberation and to submit to its mantra-like mandate.
Advertising sells, and sells us on, technology. It persuades us to accept
technology in all its available forms and expressions. All advertising serves
technology both in particular and in general. According to Langdon
Winner, the discourse of advertising tends “to turn everything thought
or spoken into a fruitful affirmation of the technological universe” (222).
Advertising mobilizes us “to want and seek actively the goods and services
that the instruments of technology are able to provide” (Winner 246).
As micro-narratives with propaganda value, advertisements help stimulate
and maintain enthusiasm for technology. Advertising suggests and seeks
to persuade us that we must participate in and adapt ourselves to a desired
pattern of thought and behavior, to an existence adjusted to and in accord
with the larger technological system. Advertising promotes and sustains a
culture of technology, technology as a way of life. It teaches us that total
technology is normal and natural, not just an option, but a requirement,
not just good, but great.
CHAPTER 10

The Transformation of Narrative

“Such facts may be detailed with the most minute exactness,


and yet the narrative, taken as a whole, may be unmeaning or untrue.”
(Francis Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World, 1865)

INCOHERENCES
Apple ran an ad in print in the summer of 2014 which was a part of
a larger campaign called apple.com/your-verse (cf. https://www.apple.
com/your-verse). The formulation suggests both a universe each indi-
vidual can construct and the part of a poem, song, or narrative each of us
can compose. Under the heading “iPad Air,” the ad copy reads simply:
“Everyone has a passion. A new idea your verse to share. A stanza to add to
the world’s story. What will your verse be?” The image depicts three hip-
looking young people with the Apple product, filming a group of women
dancers attired in the exotic dress of the Indian subcontinent. The ground
is strewn with flower blossoms. In the lower left-hand corner, a small rect-
angle of text explains the scene: “Agra, India. Bollywood choreographer
Feroz Khan uses an iPad in almost all aspects of production from scouting
locations and mixing music to framing each shot and refining every dance
move.” Technology is associated with excitement, creativity, productivity,
fun, and entertainment. It has almost universal application. Or is it that we
exist in a universe of technology?
The ad flatters us with our particular potential and at the same time subtly
inserts technology into the equation. It suggests that we need the iPad,

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 221


J.M. van der Laan, Narratives of Technology,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43706-8_10
222 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

that is, technology, in order to “write” the story. “What will your verse
be?” cannot be answered or the story written without technology. It allows
you (me) to contribute to, perhaps even produce, a narrative, a very impor-
tant narrative, the most important narrative there is, “the world’s story.”
The story of or for the world is a momentous task. It is tantamount to the
composition of a master narrative or myth which would explain who and
why we are. It would illumine the purpose and meaning of our existence.
This particular story of and for the world is centered on technology.
To be sure, we have composed a story about technology which tells of
progress and perfectibility. It now enjoys considerable cultural authority.
We have written an opposing narrative as well, but it has not been able
to compete with the popularity of the other. In the dominant narrative,
technology solves puzzles and problems as the hero in the myths of old. It
first overcomes and then eliminates difficulty and limitations. Given time,
it will, it is believed and widely accepted, eventually solve all problems
and answer all questions. It will meet our every need and more. It is an
appealing and satisfying story. It unites us and offers hope and meaning to
many. But can this story, can technology, provide the meaning most neces-
sary for being human? Can it really tell us what it means to be, or how we
should be, human?
Narrative depends on and creates coherences. In technological culture,
however, coherence dissolves. Even though we continue to tell stories
about technology, our technological devices, habits, and mindset under-
mine narrative. Everyone asserts that we are writing more today than ever
before thanks to email, texting, blogging, tweeting, and the like, but what
are we writing? We are not creating coherent narratives. Let Twitter serve
as an example. It is now used regularly by over 300 million people around
the world. On the “Company” page of the Twitter home site, we find
blazoned across the screen in what looks like a neon sign the invitation:
“tell your stories here” (https://about.twitter.com/company). It seems
reasonable to conclude that Twitter technology, like Apple technology,
serves narrative.
The market-research firm, Pear Analytics, inspected 2000 tweets sent
between 11:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. for a two-week period in August 2009.
The analysis established the following (in approximate values): 40 % was
pointless babble; 38 % was conversational in nature; 9 % had pass-along
value; 6 % involved self-promotion; 4 % was Spam; and 4 % had news con-
tent (http://pearanalytics.com). Whether “conversational,” “pass-along,”
or “self-promotional” tweets are any better than the “pointless babble” is
THE TRANSFORMATION OF NARRATIVE 223

not clear. As of June 2015, nine of the ten most popular Twitter accounts
in the world followed pop-icons and celebrities (Barack Obama was the
sole exception) with singer Katy Perry at the top of the list. In spite of
claims for Twitter’s role in social and political action around the world,
insignificance appears to be the rule for tweets. Based on the percentages
above, it is probably generous to conclude with an estimate that at least
70 % of Twitter traffic is trivial. Even Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey
remarked that a message on Twitter is “a short burst of inconsequential
information” (Sarno, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com). The introduc-
tion and implementation of Twitterbots, computer programs which auto-
matically post and repost comments on the social networking service, now
allow human beings to dispense altogether with the task of tweeting their
comments. However tweets are generated, they do not result in real story
telling, in real narrative.
The links and clicks, the send and delete of our technological environ-
ment, likewise eliminate coherence and preclude narrative. As the mes-
sages we write with our technological devices reveal, they themselves
are disconnected and incoherent, evanescent and ephemeral, of no real
consequence. Every communication now resembles a hyperlink which in
a few mouse-clicks transports us to an entirely unrelated topic or text.
According to Edward Tufte (who taught statistical evidence, analytical
design, and interface design at Yale University), a technology like the now
ubiquitous PowerPoint similarly abolishes narrative. As he explains, “the
rigid slide-by-slide hierarchies, indifferent to content, slice and dice the
evidence into arbitrary compartments, producing an anti-narrative with
choppy continuity” (10). The Facebook “thread” functions in much the
same way. It may look as if it provides a history or a story line, but the
thread only provides disconnected factoids and superficialities which then
disappear from view. As in texting, tweeting, and powerpointing, the mes-
sages are sliced and diced, they are fragments lacking any larger context
or connection.
Brian Christian’s discovery that we think, speak, and write like the com-
puter programs we have designed to “think,” “speak,” and “write” like
humans is, or should be, deeply disturbing and cause for great concern. It
demonstrates how we have adapted to and adopted the essentially inhuman
forms of communication our technological tools and toys have configured.
In a technologized society like ours, where words and thoughts conform
to technological demands, intelligence ceases to be “the intelligence of the
humanities, of human beings as such,” as Jacques Ellul realized. It becomes
224 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

“the intelligence that cooperates with the robot [or machine] and that is
modeled on artificial intelligence” (Bluff 387). In a strange reversal, we
have come to model our speech and written expression on the structures of
our technological devices and systems.

ELECTRONIC (ANTI-)NARRATIVES
While we have seen that there is a narrative or story to be found in what
has been told and written (or filmed and televised) about technology,
and that that narrative has clearly identifiable features, we need to con-
sider as well the construction of narrative by technology itself, that is, by
machines. Already the first typewriting machine instigated “a disembodi-
ment and disengagement of the text from its human origin” (Goody 110).
When we began to compose with a typewriter, we handed over “some
measure of the power belonging to the writer … to the machine” (Birkerts
156). The human component is reduced, while that of the machine is
greatly increased. The first steps toward word-processing programs and
then to machine-generated narratives had already been taken with the
lowly typewriter.
With the advent of computer technology, a new form of narrative,
a very technological narrative, has appeared: the hypertext. Hypertexts
require a computer or similar electronic device for access to the story.
A hypertext consists of “lexia” or discrete reading units “segmented into
generic chunks of information” (Janet Murray 55) which readers manipu-
late and connect as desired via hyperlinks or links to other blocks of text.
According to Alex Goody, afternoon, a story by Michael Joyce (written in
1987, published in 1990) with 539 independent lexia was “the first major
hypertext fiction” (124). The reader must return to and circle through
certain lexia again and again in order to continue through a hypertext.
There is consequently no succession—a necessary constituent for narra-
tive—in a hypertext story. The key features of hypertext are “interactivity,
non-linearity, rupture or frustration, textual process over textual product,
the performative aspect of the text, the interaction between human lan-
guage and the machine-readable code enabling the text” (Goody 123).
Hypertext stories intentionally undo rather than create coherence. Since
hypertext fiction enables and encourages, even requires the reader to click
on certain hyperlinks which lead to other unrelated segments of the text,
the idea of narrative as beginning, middle, and end, as situation/transfor-
mation/situation, no longer obtains. Some pathways in afternoon “take
THE TRANSFORMATION OF NARRATIVE 225

the reader away from narrative altogether” (Goody 126). The principle
of breakdown, even the breakdown of narrative itself, is “essential to
hypertext fiction” (125). Tellingly, the main character of afternoon Peter
says: “I’m not sure that I have a story” (http://www.wwnorton.com).
Janet Murray describes the hypertext as a “digital labyrinth” (132). She
says that hypertexts “offer no endpoint and no way out” (132). But narra-
tive must have a beginning, middle, and end. As Daniel Mendelsohn wrote
in Harper’s Magazine (January 2015), “endings in literature, like death
in real life, give retrospective meaning to what’s come before: it’s because
life (or a novel) can’t go on forever that what happens between the begin-
ning and the end becomes precious, has value” (88). The reader can con-
sequently never find or create any order or meaning in or with a hypertext.
Without an ending and without coherence, there can be no real narrative.
Hypertext stories are anti-narratives. They may seek to challenge and lay
bare the structures of or to restructure and reconfigure conventional narra-
tive, but they nevertheless work against narrative. While narrative tradition-
ally created coherence, the hypertext leads purposely only to “confusion
itself” (Janet Murray 133). As Robert Scholes explains, “the function of
anti-narrative is to problematize the entire process of narration and interpre-
tation,” but he was not “sanguine about its success” (“Language, Narrative,
and Anti-Narrative” 211 and 212). Or as Nicholas Carr observes, hypertext
is supposed to “overthrow the patriarchal authority of the author and shift
power to the reader. It would be a technology of liberation” (Shallows 126).
Hypertext has not so much shifted power to the reader as to technology,
however. Electronic or digital narratives, like hypertexts and hypermedia,
allow readers/participants to construct the “narrative,” but only within the
parameters of the cyber-structure set by the writer/programmer. Readers
are not so much liberated as trapped in a maze of unending permutations.
The reader may try to piece together different component parts or blocks of
text, but the design of the hypertext, the technology of the “story,” thwarts
the attempt and stands opposed to narrative. The various and numer-
ous connections become disconnections. Incoherence and fragmentation
become the rule. Narrative comes undone.

MACHINE-GENERATED NARRATIVES
Human beings now no longer need be involved at all in the production of
our stories, as we are able to turn the task over to technology altogether.
Even learning how to write has now been handed over to machines.
226 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

Web applications and online writing platforms with scoring engines are
available to teach school children how to write prose compositions. Tom
Vander Ark reports on his website that these digital materials score stu-
dent essays and provide feedback as well as other instruction for narra-
tive, expository, descriptive, and persuasive writing assignments (http://
gettingsmart.com). He reviewed and described several of the programs.
Here are a few examples. Criterion Online Writing Evaluation service
from Educational Testing Service (ETS) is “a web-based instructional tool
that teachers use with students to help them plan, write and revise essays
guided by instant annotated diagnostic feedback.” Similarly, Essay Punch
from Merit Software guides students “through each step in the writing
process with contextual help and feedback.” Another online writing tool
called Writing Roadmap from CTB “provides an effective way for students
to practice and improve their writing.” Finally, Odyssey Writer by Compass
Learning is “a customizable writing program for elementary and middle
school students” which “can guide students through the entire writing
process and make writing more focused, more effective, and even more
enjoyable.” The assorted programs transfer the task of teaching people how
to write—which involves modeling the production of prose and invention
of narrative—from human beings to technology.
Today, technology not only “teaches” us how to write, but also “writes”
our stories for us. Computers, or more precisely programs or algorithms,
now compose or generate stories for newspapers, magazines, and online
media outlets, ranging from sports and financial reports to film reviews
and other news. What is fascinating about this development of machine-
produced narratives is that Jonathan Swift satirized it almost 300 years ago
in Gulliver’s Travels. He described a word- or sentence-making machine
with which “the most ignorant Person, at a reasonable Charge, and with
little bodily Labour may write Books in Philosophy, Poetry, Politics, Law,
Mathematics and Theology without the least Assistance from Genius or
Study” (182–184). No person and no real knowledge are then necessary
for the composition of any sentence or story.
Companies like Narrative Science offer customers and clients auto-
matically generated “narratives” from its “artificial intelligence platform”
(www.narrativescience.com). Narrative Science “produces reports, articles,
summaries and more.” In fact, with no hint of irony or suggestion of con-
tradiction, it promises “human insight at machine scale.” Natural Science
mines data, and its natural language generation platform Quill “creates
perfectly written narratives to convey meaning for any intended audience”
THE TRANSFORMATION OF NARRATIVE 227

(http://www.narrativescience.com/quill). The company delivers “a nar-


rative that is indistinguishable from a human-written one” (bold in
original text). Another company, Automated Insights, offers similar ser-
vices and assurances. Like Narrative Science, Automated Insights equates
the natures and traits of human and machine. It “transforms Big Data into
written reports with the depth of analysis, personality and variability of a
human writer” (http://automatedinsights.com/about/). The company
employs a natural language generation platform as well (Wordsmith) and
has generated content for such clients as The Associated Press, Samsung,
Edmunds.com, Yahoo!, and Comcast. As noted in the previous chapter,
companies like Narrative Science and Automated Insights generate ad
copy as well with their computer algorithms.
Ellul’s remark that “no one is involved any longer” (Humiliation of
Word 45) with what is spoken or written has found its fulfillment in such
technology. As we adopt automated-narrative technology, we actually
abandon and lose both narrative and the language that produced it. In
machine-generated narratives, the word is finally cut off from any direct
human agency, any person, any self. There is no specific person behind
the words or story, or if there is, a person is only in the most remote way
there, since computers and algorithms first mined the available data for
content (which someone somewhere sometime had actually supplied)
and then assembled a “story.” The person is essentially divorced from the
words, is no longer truly involved in what is written and communicated.
The machine-generated narrative is as it were empty at the core, for there is
a loss of warrant for, of commitment to, of inherent interest in any reader
or any other living person.
What does it matter that narratives are now composed without human
agency? As Scholes indicates, “narrative is a sequencing of something
for somebody” (209). I would add that it is also by somebody for some-
body, by some human being for some other human being. Scholes notes
as well that a story has “a subject matter which allows for or encour-
ages the projection of human values upon this material” (210). But how
can a machine, an algorithm, project any human values? With the human
dimension removed, human values fade from view. No one and nothing
matters. Everything is evanescent. And no one is there.
What could a story whose “author” is a machine or program tell us
about ourselves and our world? What “personality” does any machine have?
What “insights” does a machine have into the world or being human?
Human beings think and know differently, as Erika Cudworth (143)
228 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

or Joseph Weizenbaum (209) remind us. Our peculiar sense perceptions


derive from our embodiment in flesh, bone, and blood and result in our
peculiar forms of cognition. Only another embodied mind could know
and communicate something of existential significance to fellow human
beings. As Janet Murray correctly points out, “a story is an act of interpre-
tation of the world, rooted in the particular perceptions and feelings of the
writer. There is no mechanical way to substitute for this and no reason to
do so” (204). Except that we are doing so.
Provocatively ironic, Evgeny Morozov asks, “in the extreme, who needs
authors when algorithms can write prose?” (To Save Everything 166). By
the same token, who needs humans for anything anymore, if technology
can do everything, and do it cheaper, faster, better? Morozov goes on to
say that narratives generated by algorithms and machines “might even
block the formation of narratives, as self-trackers gain too much respect for
the numbers and forget that other ways of telling the story—and generat-
ing action out of it—are possible” (261). Human-generated narrative in
contrast always calls for an engagement, for the consideration of an alterna-
tive, hence for freedom. Such a narrative does not let us walk away with a
problem solved, but with a problem yet to be solved. That is, the reader is
not finished with the problems elucidated in the story (whether open- or
closed-ended) once she or he has finished it. The word, not to mention the
story constructed from words, requires reflection even in order first to be
decoded for meaning, then allows, encourages, and demands the evalua-
tive process to continue after the narrative has been read and the book has
been closed.

NARRATIVE LOST
While it has been the substance of a narrative and there are even tech-
nologies to create narratives, technology is itself anti-narrative. Not only
machine-generated narratives assembled independent of human agency,
but also technology per se militates against storytelling. Indeed, it discred-
its, rejects, and eliminates narrative. As Wylie Sypher indicates, narrative is
wasteful or profligate and as such always inefficient (175). But technology
is fundamentally about control and efficiency. The constituent material
of narrative—language—is characteristically unwieldy, messy, ambiguous,
exceedingly complicated, and highly inefficient, all of which are at cross-
purposes with the order, regularity, and precision of technology. As such,
technological culture calls for language and narrative to reduce complexity,
THE TRANSFORMATION OF NARRATIVE 229

both syntactically and especially semantically. It cannot tolerate grammatical


and lexical extravagance. Too many words and too many structures mean
too many possibilities and too many meanings. Too many meanings and
too many syntactical possibilities make language and narrative too impre-
cise and too unwieldy for technological purposes which are now the only
purposes. Machine-generated narratives in particular have been explicitly
designed for efficient communication. According to the standards of tech-
nology, narrative complexity, ambiguity, and variation are too meaningful,
consequently undesirable and unacceptable. But meaning has always been
the very crux of narrative.
In addition to inefficiency, at least as viewed from a technological stand-
point, narrative is defined by time. Stories always unfold in and over time.
It takes time and effort to tell or write and to hear or read and compre-
hend a story. Because technology offers to eliminate time and effort with
the promise of speed and immediacy, it opposes the time (in every sense)
required for narrative. Words on screens especially lack substance and sig-
nificance. As Sven Birkerts remarks, “words now arrive onto the screen
under the aspect of provisionality” (157). They are ethereal and ephemeral,
temporary and transient, there to be deleted or lost as the feed or thread
scrolls ineluctably onward into the void of the no longer relevant past.
Sherry Turkle reached a similar conclusion in her book Alone Together: “an
email or text seems to have been always on its way to the trash” (168). As
words destined for the garbage, they have no value, no worth.
A technological order devoted to efficiency, precision, regularity, and
speed cannot permit “ambiguities, connotations, allegories, metaphors,
metonymies, ellipses, and paraphrases” (Ellul, Word 161), all the compli-
cated, so meaningful stuff of narrative. It cannot make sense of subtlety,
imprecision, or profundity. It can allow neither paradox nor dialectic. “To
the extent that there will be a more than complete integration between man
and computer,” Ellul asserts, “we must understand that this integration will
exclude dialectical thinking, dialectical reasoning, and dialectical apprehen-
sion of reality. The computer is fundamentally non-dialectical, it is based
on the exclusive principle of noncontradiction” (System 105). Technology
subtly erases such things, because they do not belong to its world. It cannot
deal with precisely those things which are most essential to narrative, most
essentially human, and most essential to human freedom.
Writing in 1965, Howard Scott, the founder of the technocracy move-
ment of the 1930s and a follower of Thorsten Veblen, pompously declared
that “the technological progression of the next 30 minutes invalidates all
230 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

the social wisdom of previous history. Technology has no ancestors in


the social history of man. It creates its own” (13). The renowned com-
puter scientist Joseph Weizenbaum was hardly so exhilarated by such
notions. “The computer,” he wrote, has “begun to be an instrument
for the destruction of history. For when society legitimates only those
‘data’ that are ‘in one standard format’ and that ‘can easily be told to the
machine,’ then history, memory itself, is annihilated” (238). It annihilates
narrative in the same ways. Yet, history—narrative—is “the memory of
human society” (Stivers, Technology as Magic 15). Not only electronic and
machine-generated narratives, but also technology per se breaks with all
past history, experience, and wisdom. Throughout history, narrative has
been a fundamental and essential human activity, but technology in effect
disposes of such activity and the creativity that goes with it. Narrative
requires endings and reminds us of limits and prohibitions, but technol-
ogy does away with them all. The narrative of technological idealism—in
which there is no impediment to improvement, no limit to advance, no
end to possibility, even to life itself, given the promise of technological
enhancements for the human body—has no ending, hence, provides no
context for value and meaning to arise.
We dare not lose narrative, but need to recover it as an antidote to and
escape from the parameters and structures technology sets and enforces for
our ways of perceiving, knowing, and thinking about everything. The 1991
film by Wim Wenders, Until the End of the World, illustrates how a technol-
ogy overthrows narrative and overwhelms human beings. The machine in
question is truly miraculous as it captures and manufactures the images of
the human mind. It enables the blind to see, but also creates a virtual reality
potentially more satisfying than anything real life has to offer. In the movie,
three people come under the spell of the technology. It becomes a sickness
and an irresistible addiction for them. While the main character Claire has run
from her novelist husband—in a sense fled from words and stories—eventu-
ally to embrace and lose herself in the world of images and technology, her
husband resolutely follows her to the ends of the earth, where he rescues her
from the meaningless wastes of technological visions. Suggestively, she and
another addicted character wander through the Australian desert with the
image machine strapped to their heads. The novelist brings her back from
the abyss by removing the image machine and replacing it with the story
he has been writing. “I didn’t know the cure for the disease of images,” he
says. “All I knew was how to write. But I believed in the magic and heal-
ing power of words and of stories.” The meditative thinking of literature as
THE TRANSFORMATION OF NARRATIVE 231

exemplified in narrative offers an alternative and counterbalance, maybe even


an antidote, to the calculative thinking of technology, possibly even a rescue
from its dangers (cf. McCarthy, Remapping Reality 325). The only cure for
the disease of technology turns out to be the word as found in story.

MEANING AND FALSE MEANING


If we lose narrative, we lose a crucial means to understand ourselves and our
world. Narrative, especially the grand or master narratives, has long served
as both a mode of knowing and as a source of meaning. Neil Postman
argues that our culture dominated, directed, and shaped by technology has
lost that kind of narrative (cf. Technopoly 83). In his opinion, we no longer
have “a story of human history that gives meaning to the past, explains the
present, and provides guidance for the future […] a story whose principles
help a culture to organize its institutions, to develop ideals, and to find
authority for its actions” (Technopoly 172). We need narratives to make sense
of ourselves and our world. As Rebecca Solnit writes in The Faraway Nearby,
“stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, we build our
sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be
lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions” (3). Narrative
creates borders for that vast world and makes it more comprehensible.
Without narrative, we lose meaning. Richard Stivers notes that mean-
ing “is lived out as a narrative—as biography and as history” (Technology
as Magic 63). And cultural meaning, he contends, hinges on the qualities
“we attribute to and infer from human actions” (63). The story of techno-
logical idealism is not about the actions of humanity, however, but about
the achievements of technology. What form or meaning can technology
then give to our existence? “How much meaning will be left in a world
when the scientific observer eliminates his own subjective contribution?”
Mumford asks (Pentagon 87). Turning over our activities, our work, our
thinking, our writing, and our telling of stories to machines ultimately
destroys meaning. When technology can perform all tasks, produce all
goods, provide all services, process all information, in short, do anything
and everything for us, then difficulty and work, skill and talent, mastery
and accomplishment, knowledge and intelligence, originality and creation
lose all meaning.
Human beings care about, need and seek, meaning. Humans care about
good and evil, love and hate, truth and falsehood, life and death, reality
and simulation—the stuff of stories. None of that matters to a mechanism.
232 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

None of that computes. Our dominant technology, the computer with all
its appurtenances and subsidiary devices, cannot, by virtue of its very design,
deal with anything except information in binary code, and whatever else
there is must conform to the configurations and structures of that tech-
nology. “No mechanical system,” Mumford declares, “knows the mean-
ing of meaning” (Pentagon 87). Likewise, no AI operates with meaning
in contrast to human intelligence which always analyzes “in the context
of meanings” (Hanson 136). For example, Weizenbaum’s famous and
ground-breaking computer program Eliza (written between 1964 and
1966) “includes no representation of syntax or meaning” for processing
language (Janet Murray 72).
In a technological culture, nothing counts unless it can be calculated or
measured, but there is more to human existence than calculation and mea-
surement. As Morozov remarks, “numeric imagination might tell us how
to use the air conditioner more efficiently, but narrative imagination can
tell us whether we should use it at all” (To Save Everything 263). In other
words, narrative has a moral dimension. It calls for a response and a judg-
ment. It asks and answers questions about good and evil, true and false,
in a word, morality, which lies outside the purview of technology. “In a
technological civilization,” Stivers asserts, “the tension between what is
and what ought to be (an ethical norm) is supplanted by that between
what is and what is possible” (Technology as Magic 202). New technol-
ogy is moreover typically and “necessarily used as soon as it is available,
without distinction of good or evil” (Ellul, Society 99). Technology in fact
erases the distinctions between good and evil, true or false, natural and
artificial, real and simulated.
There is no doubt that technology has and offers meaning. As this
study has shown, we ascribe many meanings to technology, such as reli-
ability, advancement, improvement, liberation, sophistication, democracy,
equality, limitlessness, and power. The narrative of technological idealism
tells us moreover that both the world and the human being are essentially
machines. But how true are these meanings? How reliable is technology?
It is actually notoriously fragile and prone to breakdown and failure. Every
technician and engineer takes the “normal accident” into account as a part
of the technological equation (cf. Charles Perrow’s Normal Accidents:
Living with High Risk Technologies). What about advancement and
improvement? Our great steps forward also take us backward. The unde-
niable and enormous past, present, and future damage to the environment
occasioned by technological existence turns gains into losses. The damages
THE TRANSFORMATION OF NARRATIVE 233

to the fabric of society and to interpersonal relationships (as documented,


for example, by Bauerlein, Carr, Oppenheimer, and Turkle) turn progress
into regress. In spite of all the many improvements and advancements,
in agriculture, commerce, education, telecommunications, transportation,
and the like, hunger, poverty, ignorance, inequality, loneliness, hatred, and
isolation remain and continue to afflict us. Technology has not given us
peace and harmony, but a harried existence of distraction and stress. And
what about liberation? We have become utterly dependent on technology,
and it has bound us ever tighter to itself.
The notion of life without limits, where everything is possible, means
living without restraint. But limits and restraint in the form of cooperation
and compromise, in the form even of abstinence and repudiation where
the present and future benefit and well-being of others are concerned, are
necessary for any social order where people seek to live together in some
semblance of amity and equilibrium. Finally, an understanding of the world
and human beings as mere mechanisms means they can and are treated as
objects to be manipulated, engineered, altered, used, and discarded at will.
Respect for human dignity first diminishes, then disappears. Human beings
become dispensable. The meanings offered by technology consequently
emerge as false and ruinous.
According to Ellul, meaning “embraces two things: direction and sig-
nificance” (Ethics 465). What significance and direction does human life
have, if we are no more than machines, and machines are to replace us? No
meaning should be given to anything “which is in some way destructive
of man,” he argues (469). Building on Ellul’s thought, Stivers concluded
that “technique destroys meaning,” that “a technological civilization nor-
malizes meaninglessness,” and that it “creates false meaning” (“Technique
against Culture” 73). In an existence defined by technology, as ours now
is, and because technology mediates human relationships so completely,
“(1) human relationships become abstract; (2) human activity becomes
trivial; and (3) social action becomes ambiguous” (Stivers 73). In this way,
technology “supplants customs, manners, and morality,” so that we are
left essentially “powerless in the face of technical power” (73–74).
In a world where we communicate with each other via email, texting,
tweeting, Facebook, and so many other technological means, relationships
become impersonal. Ironically, the interactions among acquaintances,
friends, and strangers facilitated by a company called Facebook involve
no face-to-face meeting or dialogue. In a world where the power of both
machines and organization is undeniable, where we are told that neither
234 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

our bodies nor our minds will be able to keep pace with technological
advances in synthetic prosthetic enhancements and machine intelligence,
our strengths and abilities shrink to negligible. And in a world interpen-
etrated and defined by technology, morality no longer has any real role
to play. Wendell Berry posited “the length of our vision” as “our moral
boundary” (83–84), but technology removes all boundaries to our vision
of what is possible—and so also of what is permissible. When everything
including the human being is viewed in terms of a machine or technology,
no moral limits remain, because there is no moral obligation needed in the
operation or use of a machine. It simply works or does not work. It starts
or stops without regard for any needs, because it has no needs (aside from
its energy source).
As Stivers explains, “ethical meaning arises from a limitation of power”
(Culture 154). That is, individuals can only relate morally to one another
when they limit their power—what they can do or can have—vis-à-vis
one another. Morality sets boundaries and limits on human behavior and
“on the exercise of power, collective and individual” (Stivers, “Technique
against Culture” 75). But technology eliminates limits. In the technologi-
cal order, power can never be limited, because technology always serves
above all to enhance power. As a result, no ethical meaning can derive
from technological principles. To be sure, people continue to prohibit
theft and murder, but any restriction of technological innovation, imple-
mentation, and power is unacceptable. A morality defining good and evil
is in any case hardly relevant or necessary where technology is concerned,
since we typically think our technology is neutral.
Ursula Franklin has deemed language “a fine barometer of values and
priorities” (126). Indeed, the false meanings created by technology are
evident in our lexicon. The word smart is a case in point. We have smart
cars, smart houses, smart classrooms, smart boards, smart phones, smart
eyeglasses or contact lenses, even smart skin. But what is so smart about
any of these devices? When applied to phones, classrooms, cars, fabrics,
and homes, all of which are nothing more than inanimate objects or col-
lections of such objects, “smart” gains and loses meaning, invites the
comparison or equation of human with machine functions, and actually
degrades intelligence so that it becomes simply a designation of techno-
logical devices at our disposal. The same is true of the word and concept
friend. When we use Facebook and have a long list of “friends,” a few of
whom we know, many of whom we never see, many more we hardly know,
and some we do not know at all, “friend” has lost its sense and meaning
THE TRANSFORMATION OF NARRATIVE 235

of someone close to us, someone to whom we are attached, someone we


trust and support and who trusts and supports us, someone to whom we
are in some way committed and who is likewise committed to us.
If we are to believe our advertisements, we have to have the latest and
next technology and cannot manage or exist without it. Without technol-
ogy, we lack success, prestige, identity, significance, and power. Nothing
matters, nothing has meaning, apart from the acquisition, possession,
and consumption of technology. Stivers considers advertising “the chief
dispenser of false meaning” in the service of the technological system
(“Technique against Culture” 77).

DIS-UNITY
Technological idealism has become the new master narrative, the new
myth, and it unites us probably more than anything else today. Technology
is now our shared experience and that which we all have in common and on
which we all depend. It assists us, keeps us busy, entertains us, and occupies
our time and attention. It unifies the culture or society around itself, but
we are unified around a void, because the meaning technology offers us is
false. To reiterate Stivers’ insight, “technology can only organize a society
at the level of logic and power” (Technology as Magic 138). Because tech-
nology does not provide moral direction, the narrative of technological
idealism cannot ultimately function as a guiding myth. In other words, a
story of technology cannot provide a useful and usable narrative to unite
culture in a meaningful way, since meaning must be related to a morality
which is concerned with human consequences and which seeks what is best
for humanity. As method and machine, as calculation and management, as
total system, technology ignores human concerns and cannot give us direc-
tion or purpose. It can only lead us astray.
The myth of technological progress, of unlimited possibility, and of
perfectibility proves illusory and untrue. Technology has failed to make
us better human beings and to give us any direction, purpose, or meaning
other than to advance technologically. The technological framework in
which we live and move and have our being, which governs and shapes us
and our stories, actually produces a narrative-at-odds-with-narrative and
-with-human-beings, one we cannot use to know or find any meaning for
ourselves and our world other than in technology alone.
Ultimately, technology may do more to divide than unite us. Because
technology mediates almost every activity and experience now, it disconnects
236 J.M. VAN DER LAAN

us from reality and separates us from one another. We spend our days
isolated from each other in the artificial environments of our houses and
workspaces, where heating and cooling systems keep the actual weather
and the natural world at bay. We make our purchases, pay our bills, and
bank online; communicate with members of our own families by text and
with colleagues in the next office or down the hall by email; all the while
we avoid actual contact with other human beings. We eschew physically
walking from one place to another in favor of getting there by car. Our
games, entertainments, work, and relationships are more often on screen
than off. Most of our interactions over the course of a normal day are with
machines rather than face-to-face with another human being. In the final
analysis, a narrative of technological idealism must fail to provide us an
integrated and meaningful view of the world and ourselves.
Technology is not itself the problem. We human beings are the problem,
but not in the way the narrative of technological idealism tells us we are.
We are not the problem, because we make mistakes, get tired, are limited
both physically and intellectually, are unreliable, and are inefficient. We
are the problem, because we value technology more than human qualities,
even more than human beings. From a technological perspective, our all-
too-human abilities and traits appear to be weaknesses and deficiencies, yet
they may be our greatest strengths and virtues. Those seeming imperfec-
tions distinguish us from technology and warrant our existence as human
beings. They allow us to know joy and sadness, to experience the fullness
of life from birth to death, to find and give meaning to what happened
in between, and to know we can and will die, something no machine can
know or experience, a perspective which makes all the difference.
The perfection of the world and the human being is the goal of tech-
nological idealism. To achieve perfection, technology has to put an end to
inefficiency, to irregularity, to unpredictability, to uncertainty, to difficulty,
to inconvenience, to disorganization, to disorder, to instability, to suffer-
ing, to error, and to mortality, the most destabilizing, disorganizing, and
disordering enigmatic event of existence. As tragic and unwanted as death
is, it nevertheless puts all that went before into perspective. The beginning
and end of life give meaning to the middle. Narratives need endings. We
need endings. The technological perfection of existence would end mortal-
ity and in doing so extinguish the story of being human. To be perfect, to be
immortal, is not to be human. Errare humanum est. Memento mori.
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INDEX

A algorithm, 16, 181, 227–2


Abbey, Edward, 113 alphabet, 2, 17, 114–15
Abel, 23 Alphaville, 187, 201
abundance, abundant, 17, 52, 76, 80, Altman, Rick, 32
190–1, 207 Amazon, 215
Academy of Lagado, 119 ambiguity, ambiguous, 94, 104, 109,
Adam, and Eve, 23, 72–3, 138 189, 229, 233
Adelung, Johann Christoph, 45 ambivalence, ambivalent, 40, 108–9,
administration, 157 108–10, 126, 189
advance, advancement, 2, 15, 17, 43, Amish, 64, 107
45, 60, 101, 204–9, 211, 232–3 analytics, 181, 205–6
advertise, advertisement, advertising, Anderson, M.T., 237
197, 203ff. Anderson, Sherwood, 113
Aeschylus, 21, 113 Andreae, Johann Valentin, 116
affirmation, 40, 42, 52, 84–5, 97, 219 Andreas, Georg, 43
afternoon, a story, 224 android, 29, 108, 126–7, 172,
Agent Smith, 191, 195–6, 200 189, 193
agriculture, 3, 11, 68, 88–9, 109, 117 Anheuser-Busch, 219
Agrippa von Nettesheim, 170 animated, animation, 78, 116, 175
AI. See Artificial Intelligence (AI) Anna Karenina, 149
airplane, 2, 3, 10, 70, 107, 134, apathetic, apathy, 39, 108
141–2, 156 Aphrodite, 115
alchemy, 154 Apollo, 23
Aldini, Giovanni, 172 Apple, 145, 214–15, 221
Aldiss, Brian W., 136–7, 170 Archimedes, 1
Alexa, 215 Aristotle, 34

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 257


J.M. van der Laan, Narratives of Technology,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43706-8
258 INDEX

Arthur, W. Brian, 6 Balzac, Honoré de, 112


artifact/s, 6, 23, 184 Banks, Iain M., 137
artificial, 5, 88, 91, 103, 117, 125 Barnouw, Jeffrey, 155
artificial heart, 181 Baron Munchhausen, 121
artificial intelligence (AI), 59, 68–9, Barthes, Roland, 35, 37
91–3, 189 Battlestar Galactica, 190
Ashford University, 213 Baucis, 157, 164, 166, 167
Asimov, Isaac, 136, 138 Baudelaire, Charles, 112
assessment, 8, 45–6, 58, 63, 69, 93, Bauerlein, Mark, 29, 99, 100, 233
205 Bayle, Pierre, 45
Associated Press, 227 Beckmann, Johann, 5, 46
Atkins, Will, 118 beer, 11, 208
Atlantic Monthly, The, 25, 210 Bellamy, Edward, 127, 128
atomic bomb, 147, 178, 179, 183–4 benefit/s, 17, 18, 22, 39, 51, 56, 57,
Audi, 212–13 59, 60, 62, 68, 69, 75, 80, 93,
authority, 31–5, 61, 72, 81, 84–5, 96, 97, 102, 105, 113, 115, 126,
109, 231 178, 211, 233
automata, automaton, 44, 79, 115, benevolence, benevolent, 135, 138,
122–3, 172, 189 150, 166, 178
automated, automation, 3, 12, 54, 81, Benjamin, Walter, 51, 187, 197
100, 140, 182, 188, 206, 227 Berman, Marshall, 156
Automated Insights, 227 Bernays, Edward, 197, 203, 218, 219
automobile, 2, 10, 12–18, 39, 42, 70, Berry, Wendell, 88–90, 234
83, 90, 105, 107, 113, 133, 198, Besson, Jacques, 42
208, 213 Bhagavad Gita, 179
autonomous, autonomy, 2, 15–16, 19, Bible, biblical, 23, 114, 215
64, 85–7, 92, 105, 106, 122, Bibliotheca universalis, 76
126, 132, 138, 156, 157, 168, Bibliothèque nationale de France, 25
183, 190, 191, 195, 196 Bigelow, Jacob, 5, 27, 47, 48
Avatar, 190 Big Rock Candy Mountain, 72
avatars, 137 Bijker, Wiebe E., 206
Awdry, Wilbert, 112 Binks, Peter, 176
axe, 118, 178 bio-engineering, bio-medicine,
bio-technology, 57, 61, 63,
175–6, 180, 181, 183, 199
B biological, biology, 62, 95, 101, 122,
Babel, tower of, 67 174, 175, 180, 182, 183, 199
Bacon, Francis, 44, 116 Birkerts, Sven, 95, 96, 100, 224, 229
Bailey, Lee Worth, 50, 72, 98, 99, BlackBerry, 212
136, 138, 166 Black, Kurt W., 184
Balbus, John, 176 Blade Runner, 189
Ballard, J.G., 113, 136 Blake, William, 35
Baluja, Shumeet, 148, 149, 205 Bland, Eric, 180
INDEX 259

blaspheme, blasphemous, blasphemy, Cameron, James, 190, 191, 193


110 Campanella, Tommaso, 1, 116
blessing/s, 17, 22, 51, 53, 81, 105, Campbell, Joseph, 36, 37
115, 166, 177, 180, 189, 218 canal, 70, 121, 124, 135, 157,
blind, blindness, 71, 82, 97, 115, 159, 163
162–7, 177, 215, 218, 230 Candide, 63, 149
Bollywood, 221 Captain Ahab, 212
Boorstin, Daniel, 206 Captain Nemo, 129
Borgman, Albert, 13–15 Čapek, Karel, 136, 137
Borg, The, 189, 190 care, 15, 102, 131, 138, 142, 144,
botulism, 80 164, 196, 231
boundary, boundaries, 61, 65, 107, Care, 153, 165
109, 174, 234 Carlyle, Thomas, 48, 77, 78,
Bowman, Diane, 176 84, 108
Boyle, Robert, 43, 76 Carmat, 181
Bradbury, Ray, 136, 138 Carr, Nicholas, 100, 101, 104,
Brady Bunch, 208 225, 233
Braidotti, Rosi, 61–3, 189, 200 Carson, Rachel, 88–90, 109
Branca, Ralph, 146 Caryl, Charles Willard, 50
Brave New World, 14, 29, 136, 138 Casey, Timothy, 78, 183
Brazil, 187 catastrophe, catastrophic, 81, 177–9
British Library, 25, 26 categorization, categorize, 2, 45
Brooks, Mel, 170 CAT scan, 103
Brothers Grimm, 72 Cavendish, Henry, 172
Buck Rodgers, 179 Cazamian, Louis, 44
Buck Rogers, 190 cell phone, 10, 15–17, 19, 57, 102,
Bud Dry, 219 106, 107, 212
bureaucracy, bureaucratic, 4, 8, 160 Cerf, Vint, 87
Burnett, Judith, 35, 38, 72 Cerutti, Dan, 240
Burton, Virginia Lee, 135 CFCs. See chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)
business, 3, 6–9, 11, 12, 16, 29, 51, CGI. See computer-generated imagery
86, 146, 167, 205, 211, 212, 215 (CGI)
Butler, Samuel, 125, 126 Chan, Yvonne, 212
Byron, George Gordon Lord, 170 Chaplin, Charlie, 187, 188, 211
Chardin, Teilhard de, 52, 53
Chase, Stuart, 51
C children’s literature, 135–6
Cain, 23 chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), 90
calculate, calculation, 4, 9, 11, 14, 45, choice, 15, 16, 25, 45, 53, 64, 86, 90,
117, 119, 129, 141, 142, 203, 94, 195
232, 235 Chorost, Michael, 66
camera, 13, 83, 126, 133, 141, 142, Christian, Brian, 29, 65, 66, 192,
188, 189, 208, 212 194, 223
260 INDEX

Chronicle of Higher Education The, 141, 160, 167, 200, 201, 204,
210 211, 218, 219
cinema, 10, 187, 189, 196–8 Condorcet, Antoine-Nicolas de, 45,
city, 2, 12, 23, 24, 114, 116, 121, 47, 48
133, 135, 148, 179, 187, 188, Configurations: A Journal of
194 Literature, Science, and
Clarke, Arthur C., 52–4, 61, 136, Technology, 112
138, 168, 196, 200 confusion, 3, 54, 144, 202, 225
Claussen, Bettina, 156, 157 connected, connectedness connection,
clickers, 69 32, 39, 67, 70, 96, 98, 101, 102,
climate, climate change, 17, 45, 48, 114, 147, 149, 159, 195, 204,
68, 90, 197 214, 215, 223, 225
Clinton, Bill/William J., 59, 60 conquer, conquest, 56, 71, 122, 153,
clock, 2, 4, 17, 43, 121, 143, 198, 159–62, 167, 168, 192, 196
209 consumer, 9, 58, 64, 67, 99, 204–6,
cloning, 107, 175 215
Closed Circuit Television, 100 consumption, 80, 100, 205,
Cockaigne, land of, 72 218, 235
cog in the machine, 91, 188 control, 6, 7, 15, 16, 49, 51, 59, 64,
coherence/s, 32, 35, 222–5 65, 72, 81–94, 96, 105–9, 117,
Cohn, Jonathan, 25 118, 139–42, 158, 159, 175,
Coketown, 124, 129 182–4, 191, 192, 196, 200, 201,
Collins, Suzanne, 137 204, 208, 211, 219, 228
Comcast, 227 convenience, 72
commercial/s, 12, 29, 38, 60, 206–9, Cooke, Alistair, 176
211–13, 215–17, 219 Copernicus, Nicolaus, 2, 43
Compass Learning, 226 Coupland, Douglas, 145
computer, 2–4, 9–11, 13–16, 19, 29, Crampton, Gertrude, 135
39, 42, 54, 56–60, 62, 64, 65, creation, creativity, 9, 36, 44, 53, 60,
68–71, 81, 85, 87, 91–5, 98, 71, 72, 81, 88, 89, 109, 115,
100–2, 107, 110, 138, 140, 142, 119, 172, 174, 175, 177, 178,
144–7, 149, 158, 181, 182, 183, 185, 231
189–92, 194, 195, 205, 209, Crichton, Michael, 176
211, 214–16, 223, 224, 226, Crick, Francis, 179
227, 229, 230, 232 crime, criminal, 28, 100, 113, 128,
computer-generated imagery 137, 146, 178
(CGI), 189 Criterion Online Writing
Comte, August, 49 Evaluation, 226
condition, conditioned, conditioning, crossbow, 75
7, 10, 28, 36, 45, 54, 60, 63, 72, Crusades, 124
76, 78, 83, 87, 88, 90, 92, 96, cryonics, 180
99, 104, 110, 127, 128, 139, CTB, 226
INDEX 261

Cudworth, Erica, 227 deify, deity, 71, 87, 218


Cunradi, Johann Gottlieb, 46 DeLillo, Don, 29, 113, 146–8
curse/s, 17, 22, 105, 114, 115, 177, democracy, democratic, 37, 38, 60,
189 66, 87, 98, 104, 135, 166, 167,
Cybermen, 190 218, 232
cybernetic/s, 61, 81, 176, 182, 189 Democratic White House 2015, 60
cyberpunk, 137–9 demytholize, demythology, vii, 29, 34.
cyberspace, 59, 60, 137, 139, 147, 205 39, 86, 88, 105
cyborg, cyberorganism, 61, 62, 108, Denison, Richard, 176
176, 181, 182, 189, 194, 199, 200 dependence, 85, 103, 105, 145
Descartes, René, 43, 44, 149
destruction, destructive, 18, 22, 51,
D 56, 71, 75, 77, 80, 85, 89, 92,
Daedalus, 21–3, 33, 114 106, 112, 122, 147, 163–6, 168,
Dale, David, 77 188, 197, 230, 233
Daleks, 190 deus ex machina, 111
D’Alembert, Jean le Rond, 5, 44 Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, 25
Daly, Nicholas, 113 device/s, 6, 7, 10, 13, 15, 19, 86, 87,
danger,-ous, 17, 22, 48, 56, 59, 62, 69, 102, 104, 111, 115, 117, 128,
76, 81, 92, 101, 104, 112, 114, 131, 143, 156, 181, 182, 189,
126, 127, 136, 141, 149, 164, 208, 209, 211, 213, 214, 222–4,
165, 170, 173, 174, 177, 183, 232, 234
193, 194, 200, 201, 207, 231 devil, 151–3, 163, 165, 170
Dark Light Years, The, 136 dialectic, dialectical, 229
Darwin, Charles, 171 Dickens, Charles, 113, 123, 124
Darwin, Erasmus, 171 Dick, Philip K., 136
data, 26, 32, 92, 97, 100, 146, 148, dictionary, 4, 46
149, 176, 181, 205, 206, 226, Diderot, Denis, 5, 44
227, 230 difficulty, 41, 80, 94, 210, 222, 231, 236
Datatel, 210 digital, 2, 7, 10, 29, 51, 54, 56–60,
Davy, Humphry, 171, 172 64, 66, 70, 94–6, 98–101, 105,
DDT, 88 139, 140, 146, 189, 205, 206,
death, 18, 23, 28, 36, 48, 56, 71, 72, 209, 216, 225, 226
88, 103, 134, 142–4, 152, 154, diminish, diminished, 45, 56, 62, 85,
164, 167, 174, 175, 178, 179, 98, 101, 105, 109, 149, 199, 233
192, 202, 225, 231, 236 Dippel, Konrad, 171
DeepQA, 181 disconnect, disconnected,
Defoe, Daniel, 117 disconnection, 32, 223, 225, 235
dehumanize, dehumanization, dissent, dissenting, 39–41, 75, 95,
dehumanized, dehumanizing, 65, 104, 110
77, 78, 84, 105, 167, 168, 187, distance education, learning, and
188 teaching, 11
262 INDEX

DNA, 62, 103, 174, 179, 180, 183 Einstein, Albert, 178
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, El Dorado, 149
136 electric chair, 130, 134
Dolan, Pamela Lewis, 182 electricity, 2, 11, 12, 48, 49, 54, 107,
dominance, dominate, dominated, 142, 166, 170–2, 188
domination, 61, 71, 77, electronic, 54, 57, 61, 91, 96, 109,
78, 81–83, 86, 90, 105, 140, 143, 147, 156, 181, 209,
109, 110, 130, 137–40, 158, 213, 216, 224–5, 230
164, 166, 167, 187, 191, Eliade, Mircea, 34, 36, 70
196, 200, 231 Eliza, 91, 232
Dorsey, Jack, 223 Ellul, Jacques, 7, 8, 12, 13–15,
Dos Passos, John, 139 20, 36–8, 55, 83, 85–8,
Dow Chemical Company, 210 92–4, 109, 153, 156, 160,
Dreyfus, Hubert L., 98 162, 163, 166, 176, 177,
Drucker, Peter, 7 184, 189, 197, 198, 201,
Dr. Who, 190 205, 206, 208, 213, 219,
Dune, 136 223, 227, 229, 232, 233
Dyson, Esther, 59 email, 10, 13, 49, 138, 216, 222,
dystopia, dystopian, 98, 105, 130, 229, 233, 236
138, 187 embodiment, 61, 92, 132, 190,
224, 228
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 37
E empower, empowering,
ease, 72, 94, 141 empowerment, 55, 58, 59, 99,
Echo, 215 162, 212, 215, 216
economics, economy, 7–9, 11, 14, Emrich, Wilhelm, 163
17–19, 44, 57, 58, 67, 79, 80, encyclopedia, 5, 13, 44, 138, 139
83, 86, 93, 98, 114, 116, 128 Encyclopedia Britannica, 44
Edison, Thomas A., 50, 126, 127, 142 Encyclopédie (French), 5, 44
Edmunds.com, 227 end, end in itself, ends in themselves,
education, 3, 7–9, 11, 14, 16, 19, 27, 1, 3, 26, 28, 32, 34, 40, 45, 46,
44–6, 51, 52, 57, 66, 68, 69, 78, 49, 58, 61, 66, 67, 83, 90, 93,
86, 95, 99, 100, 104, 116, 210, 96, 101, 106, 108, 109, 114,
213, 214, 217, 226, 233 130, 137, 141, 143, 146, 147,
Educational Testing Service (ETS), 151–3, 159, 161–4, 162, 175,
226 178, 188, 190, 193, 195, 201,
efficiency, efficient, 4, 7–9, 16, 20, 38, 202, 204, 207, 212, 213, 217,
39, 45, 51, 58, 68, 70, 78, 81, 224, 225, 230, 236
86, 89, 93–5, 104, 106, 107, ending/s, 36, 124, 135, 138, 147,
125, 127, 128, 132, 134, 140, 225, 230, 236
141, 168, 205, 211, 216, 228, enframement, 82, 94
229, 236 Engelhardt, Dietrich von, 122
INDEX 263

engineer, engineered, engineering, 1, 6, evolution, 15, 28, 52, 108, 109, 126,
8, 9, 12, 24, 47–9, 55, 62, 69, 88, 127, 191, 200
90, 97, 104, 107, 117, 118, 121, Ex Machina, 111, 190
125, 126, 128, 135, 139–42, exploitation, 158, 167
157–9, 161, 168, 169, 171,
174–6, 180–4, 203, 213, 232, 233
engine/s, 1, 2, 4, 10, 13, 43, 46, 47, F
63, 76, 79, 93, 94, 100, 112, Facebook, 10, 107, 131, 223, 233, 234
117–19, 124, 125, 128, 129, 135, factory, 12, 36, 63, 78, 89, 107, 124,
136, 152, 155, 160, 165, 226 137, 140, 188, 211
Enlightenment, 44, 117–21 Fahrenheit 451, 136, 201
Enola Gay, 179 failure, 18, 29, 40, 56, 97, 131, 142,
enrichment, 103, 164 164, 169–85, 207, 232
enslave, enslavement, 167, 191 false meaning, 163, 231–5
enthusiasm, 42, 45–7, 49, 52, 56, 59, Fantasia, 155
72, 75, 87, 98, 99, 103–5, 129, fantasy, 34, 81, 89, 97, 99, 101, 102,
206, 219 107, 113, 140, 155, 184, 185,
environment, environmental, 2, 3, 6, 189
7, 16, 19, 28, 57, 60, 64, 69, 75, fascism, 50
84, 88–90, 106, 107, 116, 118, Faulkner, William, 113
120, 121, 129, 131, 135, 139, Faust/Faust, 29, 111, 122, 151–70,
147, 151, 153, 155, 158, 159, 170, 174, 183
161, 168, 169, 176, 187, 189, Feed, 56, 78, 89, 139, 229
190, 196, 204, 208, 223, 232, Feenberg, Andrew, 8, 13
236 Ferkiss, Victor, 50, 90, 91, 109, 155,
EPICAC XIV, 140 175
equality, 60, 68, 70, 95, 100, 117, Ferrucci, David, 181, 182
128, 135, 232 Filene, Edward, 51
equation, 9, 80, 92, 105, 141, 217, film, 13, 121, 133, 137, 170, 188–95,
221, 232, 234 197, 198, 201, 209, 226, 230
Erdrich, Louise, 113 finance, 3, 11, 89, 181
error, 78, 94, 143, 183, 236 fire, 1, 2, 17, 18, 21, 22, 94, 113,
Essay Punch, 226 114, 173
Esurance, 216 Flash Gordon, 190
ethical meaning, 234 Flaubert, Gustave, 112
ethic, ethical, 81, 100, 162, 184, Florescu, Radu, 171, 178
232–4 Florini, Karen
Étienne Lantier, 128 Florman, Samuel C., 55, 56
ETS. See Educational Testing Service Forbes, R.J., 1
(ETS) forbidden/forbidden: knowledge, 22,
Etzler, J.A., 48 23, 72, 73, 114, 152, 170,
European Union, 100 173–4, 183, 204
264 INDEX

forced labor, 160 Garland, Alex, 190


Ford, Henry, 42, 152 Garvey, Michael Angelo, 48, 49
forgetfulness, 101, 115 Gates, Bill, 145
Forster, E.M., 131 Gattaca, 180, 187
“For the Love of Money”, 209 Gaylin, Willard, 173
Foucault, Michel, 8 Gehlen, Arnold, 3, 14
Fourier, Charles, 49, 125 genetic-engineering, 175
fragmented, fragmentation, 54, 103, Gessner, Conrad, 76
145, 225 Ghost Shirt Society, 141
Frankenau, Georg Frank von, 171 Gibson, William, 137–9
Frankenfood, 180 Gilder, George, 58, 59
Frankenstein/Frankenstein, 29, 111, Gilder Technology Report, 58
136, 137, 169–85, 199 Gilliam, Terry, 121, 187
Franklin, Ursula, 20, 38, 96, 234 Gleason, Steve, 215
Freed, Fred, 106, 179 Godard, Jean-Luc, 187
free, freedom, 39, 48, 53, 54, 60, 64, God, gods, 21–4, 43, 46, 61, 71, 72,
67, 68, 70–2, 77, 80, 81, 83, 86, 87, 110, 113–15, 145, 154, 173,
87, 91, 93–5, 100, 101, 103–5, 177, 179
107, 109, 110, 117, 126, 138, Goebbels, Joseph, 188
140, 164, 167, 168, 184, 195, Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 122,
217, 218, 228, 229 151, 152, 154–7, 160, 164, 165,
Freitas, Robert, 200 168–70
Freud, Sigmund, 122 golden age, 66, 72, 97, 106, 136
Frisch, Max, 139, 141, 144 good and/or evil, 231, 232, 234
Fujitsu, 41, 73n1 Goody, Alex, 40, 113, 130, 134,
fulfill, fulfilled, fulfillment, 6, 52, 53, 138–40, 143, 146, 188,
55, 57, 62, 65, 67, 68, 80, 98, 224, 225
101, 106, 151–68, 196, 204, Google, 4, 10, 13, 17, 18, 25, 27, 29,
207, 216, 227 45, 62, 68, 87, 100, 107, 115,
Fuller, R. Buckminster, 52, 54 148, 149, 205, 215
Funke, Carl Philipp, 46 government, 7, 9, 12, 43, 60, 76, 78,
Future of Life Institute, 68 114, 140, 149, 203
Futurism, Futurismo, 51 graph, 10, 27, 149
Great Deed, 151–3, 158, 164–6, 169
Greenberg, Lawrence, 135
G greenhouse effect, 90
Gaier, Ulrich, 155 Gripenberg, Pernilla, 264
Galatea, 29, 115, 127, 144, 145, 198 Grossman, Lev, 25
Gallie, W.B., 31 GrubHub, 217
Gallilei, Galileo, 2, 43, 44 Gruson, Lindsey, 179
Galvani, Luigi, 170, 172 Guardian, The, 25
galvanism, 170, 172 Gulliver, 118, 119, 226
INDEX 265

H hero, 33, 36, 37, 56, 71, 117–19,


Hadaly, 127 121, 129, 151, 160, 190, 207,
Hainish Cycle, The, 136 213, 222
Halle, Johann Samuel, 46 Hesiod, 21, 22, 38
Hammond, Ray, 173 Hewlett-Packard, 203, 204,
handicrafts, 5, 46 220n1
H and R Block, 209 high-tech, 56–64
Hanson, F. Allan, 9, 20, 38, 103, Hill, Stephen, 94, 119, 205
109, 232 Hiroshima, 179
Hans Pfaall, 136 history, 1–3, 10, 11, 13, 19, 23, 27,
happiness, 38, 48, 71, 72, 80, 81, 87, 30, 36, 43, 46, 50, 52, 55, 83,
97, 117, 138, 140, 167, 207, 87, 95, 117, 119, 124, 136, 153,
211, 214, 218 158, 223, 230, 231
Haraway, Donna J., 61, 62 Hitler, Adolph, 188
harm, harmed, harmful, 22, 39, 55, Hobbes, Thomas, 43
62, 76, 93, 95, 96, 108, 109, Hodge, Graeme, 176
130, 177 Hoffmann, E.T.A., 122, 123, 136,
harmony, 36, 49, 58, 71, 79, 106, 172
119, 135, 195, 215, 233 Holmes, Richard, 172
healthcare, 67, 116, 181, 182 Homer, 22, 38
Harper’s Magazine, 9, 25, 55, 225 hope, 40, 51, 53, 54, 57, 58, 60, 61,
Harris, John, 4 65, 91, 94, 101, 102, 108, 109,
Hauptmann, Gerhard, 112, 130 111, 138, 142, 166, 176, 179,
Hawking, Stephen, 69, 173 184, 192–4, 200, 201, 215, 218,
Hayles, N. Katherine, 40 222
Haynes, Roslynn D., 154 Horkheimer, Max, 153, 158,
Hazen, Edward, 27 162, 168
health, 14, 28, 60, 62, 66, 67, 72, 97, Huffington Post, 25
128, 143, 162, 180 Hughes, James, 182
Heidegger, Martin, 15, 82, 94, 109 Hughes, Thomas Parke, 11, 12, 40,
Heinlein, Robert, 136 42, 50, 52, 77, 182
Heitler, Walter, 199 Human Genome Project, 174
Heller, Erich, 164 human, human being, humanity, 1,
Henrichs, Norbert, 154 21, 42, 76, 113, 151, 169,
Hephaestus, 22 187–202, 222
Her, 190 hunger, 66, 128, 137, 233
Herbert, Frank, 40, 78, 82, 113, 135, Hunger Games, The, 137
136, 158 Hurd, Gale Anne, 192
herbicide, 11, 88 Huxley, Aldous, 136, 138
heresy, heretical, 96, 110 Huygens, Christiaan, 43
Hermann, Benedict Franz Johann von, hyperlink, hypermedia, hypertext,
46, 165 223–5
266 INDEX

I Industrial Revolution, 2, 3, 10, 77,


IBM, 68, 181, 211 124, 157
Icarus, 21–3, 29, 34, 37, 72, 111, inefficiency, inefficient, 127, 134, 211,
114, 120 216, 228, 229, 236
ICTs. See Information Communication infinite, infinity, 60, 66, 89, 90, 121,
Technologies (ICTs) 163, 195
I, Cyborg, 182 information, 2, 4, 9, 13, 16, 17, 32,
idealism, 39–41, 45, 48, 50, 52, 54, 35, 44, 57, 58, 60, 63, 92, 95,
56, 62, 66, 68–73, 75, 77, 79, 99, 100, 109, 139, 142, 149,
81, 83, 84, 87, 88, 97, 101, 204, 205, 215, 219, 223, 224,
105–7, 110, 144, 149, 185, 231, 232
230–2, 235, 236 Information Communication
identity, 29, 91, 102, 130, 204, 235 Technologies (ICTs), 100
ideology, 35, 67, 70, 71, 82, 84, 183, inhuman, 139, 169, 223
219 innovation, 22, 23, 33, 42, 58,
ignorance, 66, 67, 115, 127, 137, 67, 95, 98, 105, 127, 175, 183,
207, 213, 233 184, 234
Iliad, 22 Institution of Electrical Engineers
illusion, 34, 54, 60, 61, 79–81, 87, Control and Automation
92–4, 97, 99, 133, 144, 163, 168 Network, 182
imaginative literature, 112, 117, 122, instrument, instrumental, 4, 9, 13, 20,
148, 149 30, 33, 35, 45, 91, 117, 119,
immaturity (juvenilia), 101 120, 132, 140, 153, 157, 158,
immediacy, 39, 70, 229 175, 197, 219, 230
immortal, immortality, 46, 62, 72, integrate, integration, 63, 66, 82, 182,
236 197, 199, 200, 219, 229
imperfect, imperfection, 42, 45, 62, intelligence
104, 127, 138, 211, 217, 236 human, 3, 69, 101, 153, 180, 214,
impoverish, impoverished, 223, 231, 232, 234
impoverishment, 101, 103, 164 machine, 29, 49, 59, 68, 70, 91, 93,
improvement, 24, 45, 47, 48, 52, 55, 95, 122, 126, 191, 224, 226,
56, 62, 63, 70, 72, 80, 84, 90, 234
93, 99, 108, 116, 175, 176, 185, Internet/Net, 2, 4, 10, 13, 16, 18,
211, 230, 232, 233 28, 29, 42, 45, 49, 54, 58–60,
incoherence, incoherent, 221–5 63, 65–71, 87, 98, 100–4, 107,
independence, independent, 11, 15, 110, 130, 134, 138, 147, 148,
20, 38, 101, 138, 165, 190, 192, 206, 214, 215
224, 228 Internet of Things, 67, 68
indoctrinate, indoctrination, 218 iPad, 10, 221
industrial, industry, large-scale irrational, irrationality, 91, 97
industrial, 12, 13, 37, 51, 76–8, irresponsibility, irresponsible,
88, 89, 93, 112, 122, 128, 129, 169, 184
132, 152, 156, 161, 165, 203, 207 Iwata, Jon, 181, 182
INDEX 267

J 151–3, 155, 160, 170, 173, 174,


Jacobson, Johann Karl Gottfried, 46 183, 203, 207, 213–15, 226, 231
Jaeger, Michael, 156 Kranzberg, Melvin, 2, 6, 10
Jarvis, Jeff, 66 Krauss, L.M., 173
Jasinski, Joseph, 181 K12.com, 69, 213
Jennings, Humphrey, 47, 77 Kubrick, Stanley, 187
Jeopardy, 181 Kunstler, James Howard, 104
Jesus, Jesus Christ, 192, 218 Kurzweil, Ray, 3, 61, 62, 66, 101, 200
John Connor, 192–4, 196, 201
Johnson, Samuel, 119
Johnson, Stephen, 45, 66 L
Jonas, Hans, 7, 161, 164–6 labyrinth, 22, 225
Jonze, Spike, 190 La Mettrie, Julien Offray de, 44
Joyce, James, 112 Lamprecht, Georg Friedrich von, 46
Joyce, Michael, 224 Landers, Richard, 61
JPod, 145 Lang, Fritz, 187, 188
Jünger, Friedrich Georg, 8, 11, 80, 81, language, 21, 24, 30, 32, 55, 65, 67,
208, 217 87, 95, 109, 113, 119, 129, 181,
224–9, 232, 234
Lanier, Jaron, 101, 102, 104, 206
K laptop, 19, 215, 216
Kafka, Franz, 131, 132 law, 4, 8–10, 13, 20, 51, 63, 64, 76,
Keim, Brandon, 180, 182 77, 89, 92, 95, 141, 154, 155,
Keller, Werner, 155 174, 184, 200, 226
Kellogg, Robert, 30, 34 Lawrence, William, 135, 172
Kelly, Kevin, 10, 12, 13, 15, 18, 29, Lederer, Susan E., 184
40, 64–6, 68 Lee, Judith Yaross, 135
Kemble, Fanny, 47 Lego/s, 119, 145
Kempelen, Wolfgang von, 122 Le Guin, Ursula, 136
Kepler, Johannes, 2, 43, 136 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 63
Keyworth, George, 59 Le Monde, 25
Khan, Feroz, 221 Lem, Stanisław, 136
Kickstart, 208 Leonardo da Vinci, 42, 76, 210
Kimbrell, Andrew, 175 Leon, J.A., 26
Kipling, Rudyard, 113 Leviathan, 43
Kline, Stephen J., 6 Levin, Harry, 38
Knapp, Friedrich Ludwig, 26, 27 Levin, Ira, 127
Knoespel, Kenneth J., 38, 43 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 35, 37
knowledge, 4, 5, 8, 22, 24, 30, 37, 39, Lewis, Anthony, 18, 267
44, 45, 54, 56, 59, 60, 67, 69, Lewis, Robert A., 179
71, 72, 76, 87, 99, 101, 109, Lewontin, R.C., 183
113, 115, 116, 119, 120, 147, lexia, 224
268 INDEX

LEXIS/LexisNexis, 9 magic, 96–8, 107, 139, 151–6,


L’Express, 25 159–61, 166, 218, 230–2, 235
Lexus GS, 213 Magic Mountain, The, 139
liberate, liberation, 36, 51, 55, 59, 67, Malcolm, Chris, 182
70, 72, 78, 86, 94, 104, 108, malevolence, malevolent, 150,
109, 196, 212, 225, 232, 233 166, 194
Library of Congress, 25, 26 Malinowski, Bronislav, 38
Life Machine, The, 134 Mallarmé, Stéphane, 112
limit/s, limitless, limitlessness, 52, 53, management, 8, 11, 16, 42, 46, 49,
62, 65, 71, 72, 88–90, 94, 99, 51, 128, 146, 181, 216, 235
104–7, 109, 117, 129, 141, 146, Manhattan Transfer, 139
157, 160, 168, 174, 183, 185, Mann, Thomas, 139
210, 216, 217, 230, 232–4 manufacture, manufacturing, 5, 6, 26,
Lincoln, Bruce, 35, 38 27, 46, 48, 90, 112, 116, 119,
Ling, Van, 268 137, 200
literacy, 95 Marcuse, Herbert, 82, 85, 86, 158,
Little Engine that Could, The, 135, 166
136 Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, 50, 51
Little Red Caboose, The, 135 Marx, Karl, 28, 67, 78, 79, 91, 108
Little Tramp, The, 188, 211 Masterpiece Theatre, 176
Locke, John, 44 mathematical, mathematics, 4, 8, 43,
Loeb, Harold Albert, 50, 65 45, 47, 69, 92, 142, 170, 226
Loebner Prize, 65 Matrix, The/Matrix, 187, 191, 192,
London Times, The, 25 194–6, 198–201
Lucas, George, 189 Mattenklott, Gert, 155
Lucifer, 124 Matschoss, Conrad, 1, 249
Ludd: General; King; Ned, 76 Maus, Marcel, 154
Luddite, 76, 77 maze, 225
McCarthy, John A., 231
McCracken, Harry, 25
M McDonalds, 208
machina mundi, 42 McGonical, Jane, 66
machine, machinery, 4, 8, 11, 26, 34, McKibben, Bill, 89, 90, 104
37, 42–4, 46–8, 50–3, 59, 61–3, McLuhan, Marshall, 18, 52–4, 199,
65, 68, 71, 72, 77–5, 89, 91, 92, 205, 206
95, 96, 101, 105, 106, 112, 113, meaning, 4–7, 28, 30, 34–6, 38–40,
115, 119–35, 124, 133, 138, 42, 57, 58, 65, 70, 71, 73,
140, 142, 144, 149, 156–60, 80, 84, 85, 92, 94, 95, 97, 98,
165, 167, 180–2, 187, 188, 105, 110, 139, 140, 146, 148,
191–6, 198–202, 205, 207, 208, 152–4, 157, 160–3, 168, 185,
215, 224–30, 234–6 194, 197, 213, 216, 222, 225,
Madách, Imre, 124, 125 226, 228–36
INDEX 269

meaningless, meaninglessness, 97–9, merger


161, 162, 230, 233 human and machine, 62–3, 182,
means, means to end/s, 1, 2, 6–8, 17, 195–6, 199, 201–2
22, 24, 28, 38, 46, 54, 57, 63, mechanism and organism, 53, 101,
65, 70, 79, 80, 83, 85–7, 90, 93, 201
95, 105, 106, 108, 109, 117, Merit Software, 226
118, 120, 123, 140, 141, 151–3, Merkle, Ralph, 200
155, 158, 160, 164, 168, 182, Metamorphoses, 22, 71, 79, 115
194, 204, 207, 210, 214, 217, method/s, 4, 6–9, 12, 13, 37, 43–6,
218, 222, 231, 233 49, 51, 76, 86, 119, 151, 156,
measure, measuring, measurement, 2, 158, 235
4, 8–10, 13–16, 25, 26, 45, 46, Metropolis, 187
51, 53, 69, 79, 83, 84, 86, 93, Michelson, Peter, 163
97, 123, 129, 141, 193, 198, Micromégas, 136
224, 232 Microsoft, 63, 145, 215, 216
mechanical Middle Ages, 75, 116, 124
turk, 122 Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel,
world picture, 84 135
worldview, 44, 62 Miller, J. Hillis, 30
mechanics, 44, 123, 176 Mink, Louis, 30, 32, 33
mechanism, 6, 8, 48, 51–4, 59, 61, Minority Report, 190
77, 78, 82, 85, 91, 112, 116, Minsky, Marvin, 58, 59, 101, 200
132–4, 152, 188, 198, 201, 205, Miranda, Alvaro de, 100
218, 231, 233 Mitcham, Carl, 78, 183
mechanize, mechanized, Moby Dick, 212
mechanization, 3, 8, 9, 13, 24, Modern Times, 187, 188, 211
41, 53, 76, 78, 83, 88, 89, 112, Molnár, Géza von, 154
122, 124, 128, 130, 132, 134, monomyth, 36
139, 156, 158, 165, 188, 191, monster, monstrous, 79, 130, 173,
199, 211 177–9, 183–5
mediate, mediated, 3, 13, 85, 94, 97, Monty Python, 121
98, 143, 183, 233, 235 Moore, Gordon E., 10
medicine, 3, 11, 22, 68, 86 Moore’s Law, 10, 63
megamachine, 91, 159, 160, 162, 167, moral, morality, 29, 33, 36, 38, 45,
168 72, 81, 89, 94, 95, 97, 98, 116,
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer 154, 161, 165, 196, 204, 207,
Center, 182 232–5
memory, 12, 95, 101, 115, 146, Moravec, Hans, 61
147, 230 More, Thomas, 125
Menand, Louis, 25 Morozov, Evgeny, 103, 104, 109,
Mephistopheles, 152–4, 156, 158 228, 232
Mercier, Louis-Sébastien, 120, 127 Morpheus, 191, 192
270 INDEX

mortal, mortality, 23, 113, 236 dominant, 41–73, 75, 92, 94, 101,
Mostow, Jonathan, 191 108, 110, 149, 206, 222
Mountain Dew, 208 grand or master, 231
movies, motion pictures, 28, 29, 117, loss of, 55, 83, 90, 98
187–202, 206 machine-generated, 224–30
MRI, 11, 103 principles of, 32, 42, 44, 51, 55, 231
Muckermann, Hermann, 165 in relation to story, 65, 70
Mumford, Lewis, 1, 8, 34, 43, 55, 70, Narrative Science, 226, 227
83–8, 91, 109, 152, 155, 156, National Science Foundation, 62
158–60, 166, 168, 179, 182, National Socialism, Nazi/s, 82, 143,
231, 232 144, 188
Murasaki Shikibu, 21 natural, nature, 1, 5, 28, 46, 58, 70,
Murray, Henry A., 34, 36, 71 78, 84, 85, 90, 125, 131, 139,
Murray, Janet H., 60, 224, 225, 228, 146, 151, 153–5, 158, 163, 168,
232 169, 180, 181, 204, 219, 224,
Musk, Elon, 69 226, 227, 232, 236, 323
myth need, 9, 17, 18, 28, 33, 48, 49, 53,
ancient, 37, 71, 127, 144, 169, 218 56, 57, 64–8, 80, 84, 85, 87, 93,
definition of, 70 97, 101, 104, 106, 107, 109,
etymology of, 34 115, 118, 125, 128, 131, 135,
in relation to narrative, 70 143, 162, 193, 197, 198, 204–7,
technological, 35, 55, 86, 87 210, 211, 217, 219, 221, 222,
traditional, 39 224, 225, 228, 230, 231, 234,
mythic, mythical, 33, 37, 38, 72, 88, 236
89, 136, 146, 207, 217 Negroponte, Nicholas, 29, 58, 100,
mythologize, mythology, 29, 35, 37, 113, 225
72, 83 Neo, 192, 194–6, 201
Neumann, John von, 101, 141
Neuromancer, 138, 139
N New Lanark, 77
Naisbitt, John, 56–9 New Republic, The, 103
Naisbitt, Nina, 57 Newton, Isaac, 44
nanobot, 62 New Yorker, The, 25
nanoscale, 62, 181, 200 New York Times, The, 25, 173, 205
nanotechnology, 62, 63, 176, 181, 200 NGram Viewer, 27
narrative Nichol, Andrew, 187
anti-narrative, 30, 223, 225, 228 Nichol, Joseph McGinty, 191,
breakdown of, 225 1984, 136
as cognitive instrument, 30 No Child Left Behind, 9, 69
counter, 39, 72, 75–110 non-existence, 103
definition of, 30–3 Noosphere, 53
digital, 225 normal accident, 232
INDEX 271

Norris, Frank, 112 Ovid, 22, 115


novel, 28, 30, 33, 56, 112, 113, Owen, Robert, 77
117–22, 125–29, 132, 133, ozone, 90
137–49, 160, 165, 169–71, 173,
176, 177, 179, 180, 184, 185,
188, 205, 225 P
NPR, 25 Pacey, Arnold, 97, 154, 165
numbers, number system, 2, 9, 21, Panama canal, 121
24–8, 114 Pandora, 22, 33, 114
Nye, David E., 3, 38, 40, 42, 59, 70, Papson, Stephen, 211
107, 113, 139 parable, 207, 212
Paracelsus, 170
paradise: Eden, 36, 48, 62, 67, 71, 72,
O 89, 97, 104, 105, 119, 120, 124,
Obama, Barack, 223 128, 138, 164
objection/s, 40, 52, 54, 75, 76, 110, paradox, 229
125, 180 Parkman, Francis, 221
objectivity, 7 PBS, 66, 176
obsolescence, obsolescent, 52 PC Magazine, 209
Odyssey Writer, 226 peace, 62, 67, 71, 95, 106, 141, 145,
O’Jays, the, 209 148, 166, 195, 233
online education/instruction, 11, 213 Pear Analytics, 222
Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 179, 183 perfect, perfected, perfection, 46, 48,
Oppenheimer, Todd, 104 55, 56, 66–8, 77, 79, 95, 97,
opportunity, 59, 97, 101, 103, 104, 104, 118, 123, 127, 128, 137,
205, 210, 213 193, 217, 236
optimism, optimistic, 34, 39, 40, 47, Perrow, Charles, 232
49, 56, 61, 62, 66, 70, 98, 102, Perry, Katy, 223
105, 108, 112, 130, 138 personal computer (PC), 2, 10, 19,
Oracle, the, 195 54, 102, 138, 205, 211
organism, 51, 52, 54, 55, 61, 63, 82, persuade, persuasion, 197, 203, 204,
84, 85, 92, 107, 126, 176, 180, 218, 219
189, 200 pessimism, pessimistic, 56, 88, 112
organize, organization, 4, 6–9, 11, 12, pesticide, 11, 88
14, 16, 35, 44, 49, 68, 69, 86, petrochemicals, 11, 89, 208
89, 105, 116, 121, 127, 128, Pfister, Wally, 190
140, 141, 146, 151, 154, 156–9, Phaedrus, 18, 114
158, 161, 168, 203, 208, 231, phalanstery, 125
233, 235 pharmaceuticals, 11
Ortega y Gasset, José, 14, 20, 43, Phelan, James, 30, 34
80, 153 Philemon, 164, 166
Orwell, George, 136, 138 Philipps, Douglas, 57
272 INDEX

Piper, Watty (aka. Arnold Munk), 135 Priestley, Joseph, 172


Pirandello, Luigi, 132, 188 printing press, 2, 76, 152
planning, 8, 9, 11, 14, 16, 23, 24, problem/s, 4, 14, 17, 18, 33, 38, 39,
116, 127, 140, 142, 157, 203, 45, 49, 50, 52, 56, 58, 64, 66,
208, 211 68, 69, 77, 82–4, 88–90, 95–7,
Plastic Words, 119 100, 103–5, 109, 115, 120, 123,
Plato, 18, 114 127, 128, 137, 140, 142, 143,
Pliny, 22 148, 152, 158, 162, 163, 169,
Poe, Edgar Allan, 136 171, 176, 177, 181, 183, 191,
Pogue, David, 25 194, 207, 210, 218, 222,
Polidori, John, 170 228, 236
political, politics, 2, 8, 9, 11, 19, 28, procedure/s, 4, 6, 103, 179
44, 45, 49, 52, 57, 61, 79, 82, process/es, 5, 6, 8, 11, 12, 16, 53, 54,
86, 95, 99, 104, 141, 143, 206, 61, 79, 85, 96, 155, 188, 189,
223, 226 203, 205, 206, 224–6, 228, 231
Pörksen, Uwe, 119 production, productivity, 9, 12, 17,
positivism, 49 37, 39, 51, 52, 67, 79, 80, 84,
possibility, 15, 49, 61, 62, 72, 91, 94, 93, 112, 123, 140, 152, 166,
107, 109, 120, 138, 144, 169, 168, 172, 178, 188, 205, 208,
171, 182, 230, 235 210, 211, 221, 225, 226
posthuman, 40, 62, 63, 100, 189 progress, 2, 10, 33, 39, 45–7, 50, 52,
Postman, Neil, 8, 29, 94, 95, 109, 55, 56, 65, 66, 70, 72, 80, 82,
138, 206–8, 212, 231 83, 85, 87, 88, 90, 95, 98, 99,
Potter, Marian, 135 102, 116, 138, 141, 142, 162–4,
Pound, Ezra, 112 173, 176, 178, 179, 185, 195,
poverty, 36, 66, 69, 106, 128, 233 197, 205, 207, 213, 222, 229,
Powell, Michael, 175 233, 235
power, 1, 6–8, 10–12, 18, 20, 24, 36, prohibition/s, 21, 75, 169, 173–5,
37, 39, 47, 51, 52, 54, 57, 59, 217, 230
60, 66, 70–2, 77, 79, 84, 86, 88, Prometheus, 21, 75, 169, 173–5, 217,
90, 91, 94, 100, 105, 107, 108, 230
115, 118, 120, 123, 126, 128, Prometheus Bound, 21
129, 132, 136, 141, 148, 151, promise, 10, 24, 41, 45, 48, 52, 54,
154–6, 159, 160–8, 187, 188, 60, 65, 66, 71, 72, 75, 85, 98,
204, 205, 212, 213, 215, 224, 100, 104, 112, 127, 138, 152,
225, 230, 232–5 155, 173, 181, 182, 199, 204,
PowerPoint, 69, 223 206, 216, 226, 229, 230
Powers, Richard, 29, 144, 145 propaganda, propagandize, 188, 197,
practice/s, 3, 6, 8, 14, 38, 88, 154, 201, 203, 218, 219
173, 178, 203 prosperity, 60, 72, 95, 98, 101,
precision, 7, 84, 125, 132, 228, 229 138, 166
Prey, 133, 134, 176 Prouty, H.H., 188
INDEX 273

Prussian blue, 171 Reformation, 152


psychology, 3, 86, 143 regular, regularize, regulation, 8, 11, 12,
public opinion, 9, 47, 203, 219 25, 55, 56, 60, 75, 107, 168, 176
public relations, 11, 203, 218 reliability, reliable, 7, 70, 232
Pupin, Michael Idvorsky, 51 religion, 11, 19, 28, 36, 78, 85, 95
Purcell, Jr., Carroll W., 2 Renaissance, 2, 76, 152
Pygmalion, 115, 127, 144, 198 Republican Policy Committee, 60
pyramids, 159 responsibility, responsible, 3, 80, 97,
184
restrain, restrained, restraint, 89, 106,
Q 233
quantification, quantify, 7, 84 Reuleaux, Franz, 159
Queen Mab, 121 Rheingold, Howard, 58–60
Quill, 226 Ricoeur, Paul, 31–4, 252
Rifkin, Jeremy, 67, 68
Rifleman’s Creed, 145
R Rimbaud, Arthur, 112
Race to the Top, 9, 69 Rip van Winkle, 127
radio, 2, 3, 10, 13, 14, 25, 28, 70, 83, Ritter, Johann Wilhelm, 172
129, 205 Roberts, Adam, 136
railroad, railway, 2, 17, 46–8, 50, 70, Robinson Crusoe, 117, 118
76, 112, 113, 128, 130, 152 robo-trading, 9, 16
Ramelli, Agostino, 42 robot, robotic, 17, 25, 61, 99, 100,
Raspe, Rudolf Erich, 121 102, 108, 115, 137, 138, 140,
Rasselas, 119, 120 142, 172, 181, 182, 187, 189,
rationalization, 8, 9 200, 215, 224
Ratzan, Richard M., 184 Rosetti, Dante Gabriel, 112
reading, 55, 95, 96, 100, 122, 144, Rössig, Karl Gottlob, 46
163, 171, 224 Rossum’s Universal Robots, 137
Reagan, Ronald, 59 R.U.R., 136–7
real, reality, 1–20, 29–35, 38, 59–61, Ruskin, John, 78, 84
63, 66, 70, 77, 81, 82, 84, 86–8, Russo, John Paul, 146, 147, 199
90, 91, 94, 97–9, 101, 104, 107,
109, 110, 119, 121, 122,
125–30, 133, 134, 138, 139, S
143, 144, 147, 148, 151, 153, sacred, 34, 36, 70, 110
155, 162–4, 168–73, 178, 183–5, sacrilege, 110
187, 188, 190, 191, 194, 196, Sacrobosco, Johannes de, 42
200, 201, 205, 211, 215–17, Saint-Simon, Henri de, 49, 156
223, 225, 226, 229–2, 234, 236 salvation, 36, 109, 151, 162, 184,
Reese, Byron, 66, 67, 195 191, 195, 201, 218
Reeves, Keanu, 191, 201 Sandman, The, 122, 136
274 INDEX

Sapir, Edward, 79 Shelley, Mary, 136, 137, 169–74, 178,


Sarno, David, 223 180, 184, 185
satire, 118, 126, 141 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 171
satisfaction, satisfied, satisfy, 6, 9, 45, Shoffstall, Grant, 180
152, 161, 162, 164, 168, 174, significance, 10, 36, 70, 78, 84, 102,
204, 205 148, 162, 185, 191, 204, 228,
Schachterle, Lance, 47, 135, 144 229, 233, 235
Schivelbusch, Wolfgang, 3 simulate, simulated, simulation, 60,
Schlaffer, Heinz, 153, 155 65, 70, 85, 93, 94, 115, 123,
Schlaraffenland, 72 188, 189, 191, 231, 232
Schmidt, Jochen, 156, 164 Singer, Natasha, 205
Scholes, Robert, 30–32, 34, 225, 227 Singularity, 47, 62
Schorer, Mark, 35, 37 Skal, David J., 173
Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 191, 193–5, Skynet, 191, 201
201 Skype, 131
science fiction, 52, 112, 136–40, smart
170–3, 179, 180, 184, 185, 187, agriculture, 68
189, 190, 200, 201 board, 234
science, technology, engineering, car, 68, 234
mathematics (STEM), 69 city, 68
Scott, Howard, 189, 229 classroom, 11, 69, 234
Scott, Ridley, 189, 229 education, 68
Scudder, Billy, 211 house, 126, 234
Scuffy the Tugboat, 135, 136 medicine, 68
search engine, 100 Smith, Adam, 28, 191, 194–6, 200
Searle, John R., 93, 94 Snickers, 208
security, 62, 102, 119, 149, 166, 216 Snow, C.P., 18
seduce, seduction, 188, 204, 217 Snowcrash, 139
Segal, David, 175 social constructivism, 39
Segal, Howard P., 40, 42, 49, 50, 108, social media, 11, 54, 102
113, 127, 138, 211 society, 3, 6–8, 10, 13, 14, 17, 18, 20,
Segeberg, Harro, 112, 156, 157, 163 33, 35–9, 42, 43, 45, 48, 49, 51,
Segenkrantz, Beata, 254 54, 55, 59, 64, 67, 70–2, 75, 77,
Seidensticker, Bob, 34, 63, 64 78, 82, 83, 85, 86, 91, 93–5, 97,
self-extermination, self-extinction, 99, 106, 107, 110, 116, 119, 128,
108 135, 138, 141, 153, 161, 162,
self-replicating, self-replication, 62, 165–8, 176, 183, 197–9, 201,
200 204, 205, 218, 223, 230, 232,
Senker, Peter, 72, 99 235
Serafino Gubbio, 132, 188 Socrates, 18, 114, 115
Sharpe, Richard, 100 software, 16, 69, 101, 147, 181,
Shattuck, Roger, 170, 178 209, 226
INDEX 275

Solaris, 136 in relation to narrative, 29


Solnit, Rebecca, 231 shape of, 32
solution/s, solve, 4, 14, 25, 33, 40, storytelling, 28, 30, 33, 228
49, 52, 56, 60, 62, 64–6, 68, 69, subjugate, subjugation, 71, 105, 145,
88, 90, 96, 100, 104, 109, 123, 158, 164, 167, 168, 191, 194,
127, 137, 142, 162, 176, 177, 211
183, 194, 201, 210, 218, 222 subservience, subservient, 54, 64, 131,
soma, 138 167
Somnium, 136 succession-transformation, 30
Sorrows of Young Werther, The, 160 success, successful, 18, 29, 30, 32, 33,
Southey, Robert, 77, 91 39, 55, 66, 69, 72, 88, 121, 126,
SpaceX, 69 134, 149, 164, 170, 176–9, 183,
speed, 39, 47, 54, 70, 71, 84, 93, 95, 184, 210–12, 216, 217, 225, 235
125, 128, 129, 142, 217, 229 Suez canal,121
Spiegel, Der, 25 suggestion, 203, 204, 212, 216
Spielberg, Steven, 189, 190 Superbowl, 215
Spitzer, Martin, 100 surveillance, 149
Stableford, Brian, 184 survival, 71, 72, 97, 912
standardize, standardized, Sussman, Herbert L., 40, 78, 113,
standardization, standards, 7–9, 123, 124, 126, 135
16, 23, 69, 84, 87, 91, 96, 103, Sveiby, Karl-Erik, 254
125, 159, 198, 229, 230 Swift, Jonathan, 118, 119, 226
Stapledon, Olaf, 136 Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 112
Star Maker, 136 symbiosis, 201
Star Trek, 173, 189, 190 symbiote, 65
Star Wars, 189 Sypher, Wylie, 40, 46, 112, 113, 228
statistical, statistics, 8, 9, 97, 142, 223 system/s, 2, 4, 6–13, 15, 16, 19, 24,
steam 33, 42–4, 47–9, 51, 53–5, 61, 62,
engine, 1, 2, 46, 76, 79, 112, 124, 64, 66, 67, 76–80, 85, 86, 89,
136, 152, 160, 165 92–4, 96, 104, 105, 107, 109,
locomotive, 47 114, 119, 120, 128–30, 139,
STEM. See science, technology, 141, 143, 144, 146–8, 156, 159,
engineering, mathematics 163, 180, 182, 184, 188, 191,
(STEM) 195, 196, 200, 201, 205–9, 211,
Stepford Wives, The, 127 213, 218, 219, 224, 229, 232,
Stephenson, George, 47, 137–9 235, 236
Stephenson, Neil, 137–9
Stivers, Richard, 14, 72, 97, 98, 152,
156, 158, 161, 218, 230–5 T
story tablet, 19, 131, 214
definition of, 30, 32 Talbot, Stephen L., 104
as means to know, 28 Tale of Genji, 21
276 INDEX

Tantillo, Astrida Orle, 167 144, 147, 148, 188, 191, 196,
Taylor, Alan, 191 205–9, 211, 219, 235
Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 51 utopianism, 49, 50, 72, 108, 152,
Taylorism, 42, 51 185, 218
technê, 21, 173 technology
technician, 1, 9, 22, 38, 80, 119, autonomy of, 15, 85, 157
120, 126, 132, 141, 143, 157, definition of, 5
203, 232 essence of, 11–12, 82, 98, 109, 158,
technics, 83, 92, 155, 158, 159 216
technique/s, 4–8, 11, 14, 20, 25, 26, framework, 82, 86, 94, 110, 196,
38, 44, 69, 79, 85–7, 89, 117, 235
141, 143, 153, 154, 156–9, 161, growth of, 10
180, 198, 233–5 history of, 3
technium, 12, 15, 64, 65 invisibility of, 71
technocracy, 50, 95, 220 non-material, 7–9, 16, 114, 116,
technocrat, 104, 138, 157, 158, 160 156, 160, 204
technological reality of, 1–20, 148
advance, 105, 235 as theme in imaginative literature,
affirmation, 39, 40, 52 122, 149
change, 11, 63, 75, 93, 213 Technology, Entertainment, Design
determinism, 39 (TED), 25
enthusiasm, 42, 45–7, 49, 52, 53, 56, Technopoly, 8, 95, 206, 231
72, 75, 87, 103, 104, 129, 206 techno-science, techno-scientific,
idealism, 40, 41, 45, 48, 50, 52, 54, 172–5, 176–9, 184
56, 62, 66, 68–72, 75, 77, 79, telegraph, 2, 49, 130, 133, 134
81, 83, 84, 87, 88, 97, telephone, 3, 10, 12, 13, 123, 193,
105–107, 110, 144, 149, 185, 216, 217
230–2, 235, 236 television, TV, 2, 3, 10, 13–15, 19,
imperative, 80, 152, 180 25, 28, 66, 94, 100, 107, 117,
neutrality, 82 179, 181, 189, 190, 205–9, 211,
optimism, 34, 39, 47, 49, 56, 102, 212, 215
138 temptation, 187, 204
order, 20, 64, 77, 78, 80, 87, 96, Tenner, Edward, 104, 177
109, 129, 132, 134, 136, 141, Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 112
157, 190, 206, 213, 229, 234 Terminator, The/Terminator, 191–6,
progress, 10, 39, 46, 50, 55, 56, 80, 198–201
88, 98, 138, 141, 142, 163, 164, Tesla, 69
178, 185, 205, 213, 229, 235 texting, 11, 25, 102, 222, 223, 233
system, 7, 11–13, 15, 24, 42, 47, Thamus, 114, 115
48, 53, 64, 77, 80, 85, 86, 93, Theatrum, 43
94, 96, 104, 105, 107, 109, The Culture, 46, 75, 97, 137, 235
114, 128–30, 139, 141, 143, Theogony, 21, 22
INDEX 277

therapy, 8 Turing test, 65


Theuth, 114, 115 Turkle, Sherry, 102, 103, 109, 199,
Third Wave, 56, 57, 59, 67 229
Thomas the Tank Engine, 112 Tweet, tweeting, 11, 13, 102, 222,
Thomson, Bobby, 146 223, 233
Thoreau, Henry David, 75 Twitter, 10, 222, 223
“Thumbspeak”, 25 Twitterbot, 223
time, 1–3, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 17–19, 2001: A Space Odyssey, 187, 201
24, 25, 27, 32, 34, 35, 38–41, typewriter, typewriting, 13, 134,
43, 45–9, 51–60, 63, 65, 76, 77, 141, 142, 224
81–83, 87, 95, 96, 102, 110,
112–14, 117–19, 121, 122, 124,
128, 130, 132, 133, 139, 146, U
147, 149, 152, 156, 158, 159, Ubatoo, 148, 149, 205
162, 171, 172, 177, 180, 181, Ulrich, Otto, 155, 166
183, 188–90, 192–5, 199, 204, unification, unify, unite, unity, 36, 38,
206, 208–11, 214, 216, 221, 39, 42, 54, 71, 84, 105, 198,
222, 229, 235 215, 222, 235
Time Magazine, 173 uniform, uniformity, 78, 84
Todorov, Tzvetan, 30, 32, 40, 197 Universal Lexikon, 5, 44
Toffler, Alvin, 56, 57, 59, 67 University of Phoenix, 213
Tolstoy, Leo, 149 unnatural, 139, 169, 199
tool/s, 1, 2, 4, 6–10, 15, 22, 23, 40, Until the End of the World, 230
45, 63, 66, 69, 75, 78, 79, 118, Utah Array/BrainGate, 182
119, 142, 146, 153, 157, 158, utopia, utopian, 36, 48–50, 67, 68,
161, 178, 180, 204, 205, 207, 77, 81, 97–9, 105, 116, 120,
211, 223, 226 121, 125, 127, 156, 167
totalitarian, totality, 7, 12, 59, 64, 81,
82, 86, 95, 105, 164, 218
Transcendence, 190 V
transcend, transcendence, 53, 62, 68, Valéry, Paul, 112
72, 81, 97, 106, 114, 144, 147, value/s, 17, 30, 35, 36, 39, 51, 70,
160 78, 80, 83–6, 89, 93, 95–7, 104,
transhuman, 51, 61 105, 109, 110, 130, 134, 142,
transportation, 2, 3, 9, 12, 16, 112, 163–8, 184, 194, 197, 202, 216,
207, 233 218, 219, 222, 225, 227, 229,
Treadwell, Sophie, 134 230, 234, 236
Trevithick, Richard, 46 Vander Ark, Tom, 226
truth, 33, 34, 61, 67, 72, 87, 95, 136, van der Laan, J.M., 255
163, 164, 173, 213, 231 Vaucanson, Jacques de, 23, 172
Tubal-cain, 23 Veblen, Thorsten, 229
Tufte, Edward, 223 Venter, J. Craig, 180
278 INDEX

Verizon, 212 Winner, Langdon, 2, 15, 20, 92, 93,


Verne, Jules, 113, 121, 129, 136 113, 114, 131, 183, 219
Vesalius, Andreas, 2, 169 Wired Magazine, 58, 64
Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Auguste de, 126 Wisk, 207, 208
violence, 168 Wooldridge, Charles William, 50
virtual existence, reality, worlds, 60 word-processing, 224
Voltaire, 45, 63, 136, 149 Wordsmith, 227
Vonnegut, Kurt, 29, 139, 140, 144 Works and Days, 21, 22
Voyages Extraordinaires, 129 WorldCat, 26, 27
V-2 rocket, 143, 147 worldview, 29, 35, 44, 47, 54, 56, 62,
72, 84, 110, 116
World Wide Web/Web, 25, 67, 71,
W 87, 96, 98, 99, 101, 102, 130,
Wachowski, Andy and Lana, 191 147, 149, 176, 226
Walker, Kathy, 72, 99 Worthy, James, 51
Walker, Timothy, 35, 38, 47, 48, 55 writing, 2, 17, 18, 24, 41, 47, 49, 52,
Walmart, 208 56, 65, 83, 100, 112, 113, 115,
Walsh, Scott, 176 132, 136, 139, 149, 165, 222,
Walther, Friedrich Ludwig, 46 226, 229–31
war, warfare, 7, 13, 50, 51, 66, 67, 81, Writing Roadmap, 226
95, 123, 141, 143, 162, 178, “wrongful life”, 103
192, 195
Warwick, Kevin, 182, 199, 200
Watson, 13, 181, 182
X
Watson, James, 179
Xerox Ventura Publisher, 209
Watt, Ian, 151
Watt, James, 152
wealth, 62, 67, 174
Weber, Max, 9 Y
Weizenbaum, Joseph, 91–3, 98, 101, Yahoo!, 227
228, 230, 232 Young Doctor Frankenstein, 170
well-being, 62, 68, 92, 96, 101, 138, your verse, 221, 222
176, 218, 233 YouTube, 10
Wells, H.G., 113
Wenders, Wim, 230
Werther, 160 Z
White, Hayden, 30, 33 Zangger, Heinrich, 178
White, Jr., Lynn, 198 Zastrau, Alfred, 165
White Noise, 146 Zedler, Johann Heinrich, 5, 44
Wiener, Norbert, 81, 82, 91, 93, 101 Zeit, Die, 25
Wikipedia, 4, 17, 45, 66 Zeus, 21, 22, 173
Wilhelm Meister, 122, 165 Zola, Émile, 112, 128
Wilson, Edmund O., 29, 30 Zonca, Vittorio, 42

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