Critical Annotated Webliography (By James Pang)

Frankenstein, as a kind of monster, first appeared in the novel written by Mary Shelley. It was created by human but it loss controlled. Until now, people like to use the term “Frankenstein” to discuss the nowadays technology. It also implicit that recent technology can be lost control if recent technologies are developed so fast. It becomes a topic to be discussed recent. And there has five online information to illustrate that why the Frankenstein was always haunts in the discussions of recent technologies.

Janusz started to discusses the Frankenstein in history. She explained it had divided the creation into two sources in the universe. One comes from the God and another come from the human. In Greek, the human creativity as a part of human’s end. There is no difference between arts, fine arts and not the fine arts. All the things created by human can be called technology, or called “techne” in Greek. The furniture, sculpture or weapons show the human creation power. However, the creation power shows an awesome. Human are responsible to find solutions to solve the problems brought up by the recent technology.

She also mentioned a scientist, Dr. Frankenstein who did a lot of experiment on creating a new species. But, Janusz emphasizes genre can be cloned and life can be recreated by people nowadays. It is hard to imagine that in the future, half of the human or animals are cloned. It might be resembled what Mary Shelley said in her novel, a Frankenstein. Furthermore, lots of questions will arise between human and the cloned things. For example, should we love these creations? Or can we understand those creations. These questions are a challenge to confront in recent technology. What should we do, as she said, is human should be responsible for their creations.


Different with the Sharon Janusz, Don Ihde discusses the relationship between technology and society in our daily life.

Ihde started to list out how the technology involved in our daily life, then talked about how the technology being used in those situations. When he discussing the technology, he thought it is important to find out the relationship between society and the technology. In the debating of the relationship, he analyses different aspect of the social determinists and technology determinist position. The social determinists argue that technology is a result of the changes and the technology determinist said the development of the technologies set out the future directions for the society. When he going to discuss the technology autonomous, he carrying out the Frankenstein myth. He gave the example of a series of dystopian books appeared in the 1960s and 70s to argue that the emergence of technology will out of human’s control and runaway. But, whatever the technology gave human a stable life or, as the science fiction said, it will raise a lot of problems to interpret our life, human live with the technology is an inevitable global force.

There are two writers, Gregory Benford and Elisabeth Malartre, analysis the Frankenstein from the history of technology.
In the book, “Beyond Human”, Gregory Benford and Elisabeth Malartre started to talk about technology from the old tradition, the development of the technology. In order to survive, human advanced their technology, from stone to spear, human used different tool to survive in changing environment. And most recent, human used the electronic devices. Cars and airplane are most common we can see in our daily life. A good example is the internet, which can let people connect over the world and built up a community. Human often transfer information by using the computer and though the internet. From those examples, it is no doubt to say technology is in a important position in human’s daily life.

Also, the emergence of the different form of technology, android, cyborg, bionic people and robot, lets human to look back and redefine themselves. Benford and Malartre also use the Hollywood movies as its example to explain robots are suspect. And it lets people to think that Mary Shelley’s novel “Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus” will be appear in our future. And what’s more is that the appeared of Frankenstein will destroy our life. These creations will put us in a dark, looming shadow.

In the book “Science Fictions, Scenarios and Values”, Spinks had discussed the Frankenstein from Mary Shelley’s book. Spinks thought the appearance of the Frankenstein is coming out from people’s expectation of realism and sentiment. As this reason, people used the technology to develop a monster. Frankenstein represents a tension of science and emotion, realism and sentiment and wonder and duty. Spinks thinks that it is kind of equation. On one side, technology is dangers to social order and culture values. And in other side, however, the society and values can make the technology efficient. He thinks that the technology can not develop itself but by society desire and people achievement.

On the other hand, McCauley have a different idea with above writer. In the article, McCauley started to discuss the robot technology with the Hollywood movies. Some people in the world feared of some human-made technology, especially the technology steps into the God’s domain, replace the God as the creator. He used the term “Frankenstein Complex” to describe this phenomenon. In order to keep people believed that the robots are safety, Isaac Asimov had established The Law of Robotics. It lessons the robots that keep human in safe as its first principle. McCauley also listed out some movies such as Terminator, I Robot and A.I.: Artificial Intelligent to illustrate the fear of the public toward the machine.

Although some people recognized the “Frankenstein Complex” will happen in the future and they also scared the robots will arise an evolution and further subjugates the humankind, McCauley hold a different opinion. He gave three reasons to object the argument. First, he thought a mass number of robots is need to evoke an evolution and, however there are only few machines have a higher intelligent level. They are unique and will closely watch by human. Second, to have a robot evolution, a fast productive rate is needed. However, McCauley sited a statistic information compared the birth rate of babies and machine. A higher birth rate is left the machine production behind. Also, a robot needs more knowledge to copy a new itself. It is impossible that human give power to a robot of its self-coping. Third, he cited an car example to explain robots should be tested many times before it comes out. It reduces the chances that a robot to have an evolution. To sum up, McCauley thought more and more robots will produce in future and human should aware the robot’s power and capability.

In conclusion, different people have different ideas on the Frankenstein. Whatever people started to discuss the technology from the history of science fiction, or from the history of the technology, they admit that Frankenstein could be appeared in recent technology. And some of them thought it appear because of people’s desire. It is important that people should control or over focusing on the recent technologies. Otherwise, human can bear of the consequence of the out of controlled of the technology.


Reference:

(1) S. Janusz. ”Technology: Embracing of the Monsters”. 5th March,2009 <http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet/article/viewArticle/377/597>

(2) C.W. Spinks. “Science Fiction, Scenarios, and Values. 4th March, 2009.
<http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/31/d8/ce.pdf>

(3) D. Ihde. “Technology and the lifeworld The garden to earth.” 4th March 2009.
<http://books.google.com/books?hl=zh-TW&lr=lang_en&id=qGx-_VpaJKUC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=frankenstein+in++%22technology%22&ots=uVCnzbsLjJ&sig=v58G0IdLm81E44yez1n572GkMJE#PPP1,M1>

(4) G. Benford, E. Malartre. “Beyond Human” 4th March 2009
<http://books.google.com/books?hl=zh-TW&lr=lang_en&id=dKb8rOwxggQC&oi=fnd&pg=PA7&dq=frankenstein+%22recent+technology%22&ots=oIxTlQ4NJZ&sig=dXkhDGAmJxAuSsQS_u4LNH8CIgA#PPP1,M1>

(5) L McCauley “Countering the Frankenstein Complex”. 4th March 2009.
<http://www-robotics.usc.edu/~tapus/AAAISpringSymposium2007/submissions/aaai_ss_07_id06.pdf>