3.Frankenstein continues to occupy the popular imagination as a monstrous scientist. Analyze some of the ways in which Frankenstein haunts discussions of recent technologies.
Nik Yu
Nowadays, people are living surrounded by technology. We all are taking benefit of technology in everyday life, on the other hand, we still fear of the technology as we think one day it may lose control and become too powerful. Frankenstein is one of the earliest popular imaginations coming from the fear of the technology. In order to analyzing if this popular imagination still haunt discussions of recent technologies. I use search engines such as Google, particularly Google Scholar. I found many articles in regard to Frankenstein and Technology. From among them I choose the most related scholar articles about the discussion of recent technologies.
Frankenstein Complex
In Orlin Damyanov’s article, Technology and its dangerous effects on nature and human life as perceived in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and William Gibson's Neuromancer, [1] Orlin compared two fictions, Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley’s and Neuromancer, writer by William Gibson to show how the technology invention impact our society and our life. Firstly, Damyanoy analyzed how the history and the technology background of the story influence the plot itself in each fiction. Also Damyanoy pointed out that even two stories were from different history background, he still thought that sciences and technologies were the basic elements of the transformations in the structure of our world. “Would be the science and technology referred to in Shelley's Frankenstein or the powerful information and computer technologies implied in Gibson's Neuromancer, the underlying idea is the same - profound change and transformation in every aspect of human life is imminent, to such extent that life itself is being transformed.” (Damyanoy, 1996) Also he pointed out that the danger of the technology was our reliance on it and its equivocal inventions. “It is this unambiguous danger to our human community that is hidden in our reliance on technology and its equivocal inventions that these two works”. (Damyanoy, 1996) At the end of the articles, Damyanoy warned us to think about how technology influencing our life by asking us “science and technology are really going to improve the world, will new technologies really improve human communication, or inadvertently make it more difficult? Will our lives be better?” (Damyanoy, 1996)
Frankenstein Complex: The Education towards Technologies
In Shari Popen’s article, Thinking Through Technology: Frankenstein’s Problem, [2] the author mainly criticized if technologies influenced our society and our life in a good way or in a bad way. Analyzing her article, we could see that she thought the danger of using technology was we, human, the creator of the technology, paid little concern for what we created, like Frankenstein in the Mary Sheelley’s fiction. She thought as a creator of the technology, we also became an educator, we should have tried our best to include our technology in the dynamic and changing human community. As what she said in her article, “Mary Shelley’s gothic tale contains a modern parable about our ambiguous relationship to technological creation and power.” At the end of the articles, Popen pointed out that, Frankenstein actually called us to recognize the humanity in our own constructions. Also she thought “the real master in Frankenstein is neither Frankenstein nor the “Monster” but the logic or state of mind that permits these acts, that produces and reproduces them.”
In Alias Burns articles, Frankenstein of the future, [3] Burns’ view is actually similar to Popen’s, She pointed out that as a creator of the technology, we should take our responsibility to parent of these potentially dangerous “children”. As she thought technology maybe powerful enough to take control or destroy the society of the human begins, just like Frankenstein.
Frankenstein Complex :From Transhumanism to Morality
In Francis Fukuyama’s articles, The World’s Most Dangerous Ideas: Transhumanism, [4] Fukuyama thought transhumanism is one of the most dangerous ideas in the world. Fukuyama did not think that transhumanism would make us, smarter, less prone to violence’s and so on. Also he through this technology was quite dangerous to our society as the moral or intellectual threat they represent were not always easy to identify. He also pointed out that the human always looked for the better life so that sometimes we would ignore the moral cost, which is very dangerous for human begin. In the latter part of his articles, he questioned if some transhumanism’s advocates understand the ultimate human goods. He thought we were “miraculously complex products of a long evolutionary process, products whose whole is much more than the sum of our parts.” Therefore, he thought transhumanism is one of the most dangerous in our life as there were many uncertainties of this technology also it now had already threatened our moral standard.
Opposition of Frankenstein Complex
In Lee McCauley article, Countering the Frankenstein Complex, [5] McCauley mainly explained the concept of “ The Frankenstein Complex” and he used some Hollywood movies to showed that how people fear the uncertainty of using the technology. However, McCauley actually was quite positive towards the technological impact towards our society. In the first part of his article, he pointed out the science and the technology capture the imagination of the general, which engendered fear and skepticism. “At 50 years old, the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics capture the imagination of the general public while, at the same time, engendering a great deal of fear and skepticism.” (McCauley) Then he explained the phenomenon of Frankenstein Complex by some old fictions, such as Rossum’s Universal Robots, written by a Czech Author, Karel Capek. Also, he pointed out that Frankenstein’s could more acutely show the notion that technology produce something that could not control and explored. Beside, he also pointed our that Frankenstein complex is still alive and well in our society as many Hollywood movies, such as, Terminator (I, II, III), I. Robot, Artificial Intelligence, and so on, still present the love and hate between robots and human, also showed us the fear of uncertainty of using the technology. In the next part of the article, he used some academic to show that how the human being fear the technology, mainly focus on people thinking robots could replace us. At the end of the articles, McCauley gave three reasons to argue Frankenstein Complex. Firstly, he thought there are not many high intelligent level robot, which could evoke the evolution to against the human. Next, he showed that the birth rate of human being is much more higher than the machine. Also, he does not agree robots itself could reproduce at this moment as they are not powerful or knowledgeable enough. Last but not least, he thought should be test for many times before it came out so it could also reduced the possibility of the evolution robots. Finally McCauley thought the human race still could destroy itself, but sure not through technology.
To conclude, nowadays, we cannot doubt that we can live without technology and we know that the power of the technology would be stronger and stronger. However, we should try to get more understanding on what technology we are using and how it impacts our life in a good way and bad way.
References
Alisa Burns. "Frankenstein of the Future." . October. 2002. . 04 March. 2008
Francis Fukuyama. "The World's Most Dangerous Ideas." . 01 September. 2004. . 04 March. 2008
Lee McCauley . "Countering the Frankenstein Complex." . . University of Memphis . 04 March. 2008
Orlin Damyanov. "Technology and its dangerous effects on nature and human life as perceived in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and William Gibson's Neuromancer." . 1996. . 04 March. 2008
Shari Popen. "Thinking Through Technology: Frankenstein’s Problem." . 1998. North American Association for Community of Inquiry. 04 March. 2008
some nice statement showed in your blog. it gives me a number of ideas about the impact of technology. however, you can improve the linkage of paragraph.
ReplyDeleteI like the articles that you've chosen to be included, especially the articles by Damyanov and Lee, for these two articles provided a opposite point of view on the same issue and talked quite a lot about the Frankenstein figure. Also, I particularly like the Lee's one which also use some newer movies to demonstrate her ideas. However, I think you can give more detail about Burns' article and try to link more about Fukuyama's article.
ReplyDeleteAll in all, good job Nic.