A major difference between the human use of technology and that of other animals is that humans have an ongoing dialogue about what technology is as a result they can make modifications and sophistications on previously existing forms of technology within their own lifetime, which, though possible for other species, is unusual. Many animals also have, in various forms, the technology of language. Beavers collect wood to build dams, birds gather twigs to form nests, bees construct hives, and non-human primates can wield sticks and basic human tools. Many other species manipulate existing material in the environment to gain an advantage. But technology at the most basic level is not exclusive to humanity. When considered as an intellectual drive for kinds of adaptation that will preserve, extend, or improve human life, technology becomes inseparable from the idea of what it means to be a human. 2 From this perspective technology might be considered as an evolutionary adaptation that humans have acquired and used to gain dominance over the other forms of life or aspects of nature (rivers, weather, raw materials, etc.) on the overarching ecosystem we call Earth. The word “advantage” in this context suggests an evolutionary framework, in which all forms of life are struggling with one another (or at the more congenial level, using each other) in order to increase their own chances of survival. Technology can imply abstract structures such as language and mathematics, as well both are efforts to organize and systemize the human experience of reality, and both become instruments that give humans an advantage. 1 I intend to argue in this essay that the novel instead registers its protest against the dehumanizing effects of individualism and demonstrates how technology can be used as a means to reclaim the essence of humanity.īut what is technology? Most would agree that, on one level, technology is the adaptation of available material or knowledge into an instrument or process that provides humans with an advantage over their environment. Kevin McNamara, in his essay “ Blade Runner’s Post-Individual Worldspace,” writes that the novel “registers its protest against the dehumanizing effects of bureaucracies and technology”(422). The essay will also investigate the novel’s representation of human psychology confronted with the near extinction of its species and the stratification of the human population across the colony planets. In this essay I am interested in analyzing the way in which technology is described in the novel and what the relationship is between humans and technology. The novel examines the psychology of bounty hunter Rick Deckard as he “retires” escaped androids. Bounty hunters are employed by the remaining police agencies to protect the small but determined communities of humans who refuse to emigrate and those who are prevented from emigrating because the degenerative effects of living in a radioactive environment have drastically lowered their IQs. Rarely, an android slave will kill its master and flee Mars for haven on Earth. The novel explores the moral implications of enslaving a human-like biological machine, but more centrally uses the invention of a humanoid replica to critique and define the essence of humanity whatever qualities distinguish humans from androids become the essential aspects of humanity. The androids are extremely sophisticated and are nearly indistinguishable from human beings. As incentive, emigrants are given free android servants to accompany them on their voyage and serve them on Mars. World War Terminus has devastated the population of Earth and left it nearly uninhabitable, forcing survivors to emigrate to Mars or one of the other unnamed colony planets. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is set on post-apocalyptic Earth in the Bay Area of California. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (16)Įverywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology whether we passionately affirm or deny it.-Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology” (4) Law each emigrant automatically received possession of an android subtype of his choice, and, by 2019, the variety of subtypes passed all understanding, in the manner of American automobiles of the 1960s.-Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Sims The Dangers of Individualism and the Human Relationship to Technology in Philip K.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |