CONCLUSION

The cover of the April 2000 issue of Wired, a slick magazine of American techno-elites, portrays a crumpled piece of a page clearly torn out from some future dictionary with the headword “Human,” with an entry indicating that the word refers to an obsolete concept. Even though Wired is renowned for its inventive graphic design, this particular image leaves a singularly strong impression, even more so in combination with the cover story it ushers in – Bill Joy’s “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us.” In it, Joy unfolds a harrowing yet dispassionate vision of our world, in which “the most powerful 21st-century technologies – robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech – are threatening to make humans an endangered species” (Joy 238). 

Normally, one would expect such a harsh wake-up call from the circles distrustful of modern technologies, but Bill Joy is no technophobe or a stranger to technology. For many years he has been an active member of the American scientific and technological community: he was a co-founder and Chief Scientist of Sun Microsystems, a leading computer industry manufacturer, a co-chair of the presidential commission on the future of information technology research, and the co-author of Java and Jini computer programming languages. Despite all these involvements he does not appear to be insulated against what he perceives as a mortal threat to our existence on Earth. In “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us” Joy writes: 

“I think it is no exaggeration to say we are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation-states, on to a surprising and terrible empowerment of extreme individuals.” (Joy 242) 


In the context of this otherwise lucid article, the tone of his warning is particularly striking and brings to my mind the words of a character in Goonan’s Queen City Jazz: “nan is evil” (14). However, while the latter is a religious sectarian, strongly believing in the devilish character of nanotechnology, Joy has no such burden of ideology upon him. His main fear does not stem from the fact that new advanced technologies may find their way into the hands of those who will want to use them against others. Rather, Joy locates the hazard of the three technologies he discusses in the unique combination of their inherent character, which differs radically from earlier lethal technologies, and human ignorance of this character. The problem lies, he suggests, 

“in our attitude toward the new - in our bias toward instant familiarity and unquestioning acceptance. Accustomed to living with almost routine scientific breakthroughs, we have yet to come to terms with the fact that the most compelling 21st-century technologies – robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology – pose a different threat than the technologies that have come before. Specifically, robots, engineered organisms, and nanobots share a dangerous amplifying factor: They can self-replicate. A bomb is blown up only once – but one bot can become many, and quickly get out of control.” (Joy 240)  


It is a specter of uncontrolled technology that hangs over Joy’s article and casts long shadows on the society in which, in Arthur Kroker’s words, possessive technology has permeated human lifeworlds to such an extent that “the memory and rules of possession are forgotten and, indeed, are mistakenly taken up as the possibility of human agency” (14). However, while Kroker uses a consciously emphatic and metaphorical language, compatible with the character of the French thought he describes, Joy remains wholly clear and sober. His entire article is a considered and multi-faceted examination of the technologies in question. It should not be treated as a crusade against them, either. Joy embraces them and never suggests that research on them should be banned or restricted. He shows them to be crucial in the development of humanity and its culture, yet simultaneously he strongly argues for more control and vision in their handling. For him, the evil potential they encapsulate has almost mythical proportions: 

“[t]he new Pandora's boxes of genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics are almost open, yet we seem hardly to have noticed. Ideas can't be put back in a box; unlike uranium or plutonium, they don't need to be mined and refined, and they can be freely copied. Once they are out, they are out. Churchill remarked, in a famous left-handed compliment, that the American people and their leaders “invariably do the right thing, after they have examined every other alternative.” In this case, however, we must act more presciently, as to do the right thing only at last may be to lose the chance to do it at all.” (Joy 256) 


Admittedly, the article ends on a vaguely positive note: “[e]ach of us has our precious things, and as we care for them we locate the essence of our humanity. In the end, it is because of our great capacity for caring that I remain optimistic we will confront the dangerous issues now before us” (Joy 262). Yet the specter is not altogether exorcised. 

Joy’s argument also has several very disconcerting twists, major among them being a lengthy quotation from Ray Kurzweil’s The Age of Spiritual Machines, whose tone remains very congruous with Joy’s own arguments. 
“First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained. If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can't make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines' decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide. On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite – just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone's physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes “treatment” to cure his “problem.” Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or make them “sublimate” their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they will most certainly not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.” (Joy, 239) 


It is only after readers reach the end of this text, both in Joy’s article and in Kurzweil’s book, that they discover that the excerpt comes from Ted Kaczynski’s infamous “Unabomber Manifesto.” [The entire text of the Manifesto can be found at http://www.panix.com/~clays/Una/] Needless to say, Joy does not in the least endorse Kaczynski’s murderous activities, but the realization that so strikingly similar perceptions of the coexistence of humanity and technology can come from such diverse sources and viewpoints is a very troubling one. Even more troubling is the fact that such voices become more and more numerous and that they start to outweigh Baudrillard’s uncritically cold assessments of possessive technology. 

Naturally, Joy’s vision is not suspended in the void; it stands at the pinnacle of the 20th century’s ambiguous relationship with science and technology. At its beginning, in 1903, the late Victorian novelist George Gissing wrote: 

“I hate and fear “science” because of my conviction that for a long time to come if not forever, it will be remorseless enemy of mankind. I see it destroying all simplicity and gentleness of life, all beauty of the world; I see it restoring barbarism under the mask of  civilization; I see it darkening men’s minds and hardening their hearts.” (253)  


Such a Luddite approach was perhaps a major determinant of the dystopian tradition, but at the beginning of the 20th century such a posture is obsolete. Several decades later, Martin Heidegger’s diagnosis of technology was far less emotional and far more insightful: 

“[n]o one can foresee the radical changes to come. But technological advance will move faster and can never be stopped. In all areas of his existence, man will be encircled ever more tightly by the forces of technology. These forces, which everywhere and every minute claim, enchain, drag along, press and impose upon man under the form of some technological contrivance or other – these forces [. . .] have moved long since beyond his will and have outgrown his capacity for decision.” (52) 


Heidegger’s words underscore a major perspective that lies at the heart of late 20th-century SF. [Naturally, Heidegger wrote about early 20th-centoury technologies, also addressed by Walter Benjamin in his famous “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”; his diagnosis of contemporary electronic technologies might be significantly different.] Another perspective can be found in a number of works published in the 1960s, most notably in Henryk Skolimowski’s essay “The Structure of Thinking in Technology” (1966). In it, Skolimowski irrevocably divorces technology from science: “[i]n the twentieth century, and particularly in our day, technology has emancipated itself into a semiautonomous cognitive domain” (49). Frequently underestimated, his work is of crucial importance. The differentiation of science and technology is essential for the formulations expressed by Postman and others. However, while for Skolimowski technology was merely semiautonomous, for Neil Postman, the author of Technopoly discussed at the beginning of this dissertation, [Even after his premature death, Postman’s work remains one of the most incisive and frightening analyses of the ubiquitous impact of modern technologies on Western societies.] it looms large as a violently and fully autonomous force driven by its own logic of conquest and expansion. In a sense, Postman’s diagnosis arises at the meeting point of the trajectories charted by Heidegger and Skolimowski, the point where the unstoppable character of technological change is invested with its independence of not only of other spheres of culture but even its causal field of science. 

Consequently, the 1980s is the decade when the stage is finally set for the arrival of the image of possessive technology whose spirit permeates writings of such diverse analysts as Joy, Kaczynski, and Postman. Of course, there are differences in details between them. Joy is very careful to avoid any implication of free agency, instead pointing out a grave need for human responsibility in handling new technologies. On the other hand, Kaczynski, while no Luddite himself in any historical sense of the word, invests his argumentation with very Luddite-like emotion and perceptions. However, these writers share a consistent vision of the function and status of techne at the close of the 20th century.

Among all these voices, one found in postmodern science fictions is in many ways major. A collection of diverse articulations rather than a unified voice, this body of late 20th-century texts projects the image of the machine as a possessive and unbounded force. This force manifests itself in a number of ways: by erasing boundaries between itself and the biological domain; through the multi-directional invasion of human body and mind; in its ascent to self-awareness and subjectivity; and with movements towards the apocalyptic transformation of the old human paradigm. However fantastic all these symptoms may seem, they are all imaginative extrapolations of qualities inherent in technology as perceived by a number of philosophers and cultural critics. 

Closer inspection of these literary visions uncovers a particularly interesting attitude of their authors. Although the image of possessive technology which emerges from their texts is truly horrific, in no way can these writers be perceived as latter day technophobes. The authors of the texts discussed in this dissertation do not want to be seen as cheerless soothsayers of the future to come, but rather as dispassionate commentators of what they see happening in our world. William Gibson has formulated this distanced stance as follows: 

“[m]y feelings about technology are totally ambivalent – which seems to be to be the only way to relate to what’s happening today. When I write about technology, I write about how it has already affected our lives. [. . .] My aim isn’t to provide specific predictions or judgements so much as to find a suitable fictional context in which to examine the very mixed blessings of technology.” (McCaffery 140) 


It would not be an exaggeration to state that the majority, if not all, of the writers mentioned here share this attitude. From that perspective, late 20th-century science fictions position themselves as documentaries tapping the very pulse of contemporary life rather than escapist flights of fancy divorced from their authors’ actual lifeworlds. This seeming dissociation from moral commentary may have several explanations. One is, perhaps, the typically postmodern distancing and refusal to pass any authoritative judgements in the polyphony, if not cacophony, of voices our world has become. Furthermore, describing a trajectory of Gibson’s writings, Lance Olsen verbalizes a conviction which seems quite natural to many science fiction readers and authors, but which appears to have never been formulated more succinctly: “after all, science fiction tells us nothing about our future and everything about our present – our concerns, our interests, our obsessions, our fears” (Olsen 150). But if this is really so, then the paradigm of aggressive techne emerging from the texts by Gibson, Goonan and others becomes something more than a pervasive motif in letters. 

Postmodern science fiction appears thus to be a part of a larger, complex nexus of cultural images, conceptions, and ideologies. In this cluster some very unlikely alliances and connections are forged – science fiction seems to occupy there a very special position. It is no longer yet another expression of the harrowing perception of certain phenomena in the Western culture. Instead, it becomes an intermediary, a translator which delivers to many doorsteps an inkling of the frequently abstract and sophisticated ideas found in contemporary French philosophy, theories of media and communications, sociological accounts of the American society, feminist cyborg theory, neo-Luddite manifestos of murderous maniacs, and ubiquitous advertising. The looming specter of possessive technology constitutes at once an icon of the quintessentially postmodern literary genre, a perception of the lived reality of Western civilization, and a diagnosis of the cultural formation of late capitalism. 

True to Olsen’s observations, postmodern science fiction is prudent with judgements. During the last two decades of the 20th century it fully came of age and matured, becoming a worthy partner in the postmodern flux of ideas and motifs, but it also shed its erstwhile simplicity and transparency. The Wired cover implies that the torn page does not come from a human dictionary, but from one produced by who or what comes after Joy’s worst fears come true: “[g]iant brains that kn[o]w better[,] [i]ntelligent gases now confined to vacuum tubes[,] [c]reatures without DNA” (MB 357). At once estranging and familiar, SF narratives of the 1980s and 1990s discussed here similarly allow us to step out of the space provided and take a long hard look at the uneasy relationship of humanity and technology at the close of the second millennium. After all, if any literature is justified in pushing the envelope and legitimately asking us to suspend our disbelief, it is certainly one of the fantastic, at whose center nowadays stands science fiction. But unlike in the previous decades, when we read many postmodern science fictions, this suspension is called for less and less frequently for when we look at the page we instantly see ourselves and our world. 

For many, the vision of possessive technology found in postmodern science fiction, Postman’s Technopoly, Kaczynski’s manifesto, and Joy’s article may still remain a fiction. However, more people may also be aware of this unbounded force at work in the world today. In the appropriately Orwellian year of 1984 many of them opened a new paperback and read: “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”