Going beyond Binary Disposition of 0/1: Rethinking the Question of Technology (2009)

Technology has been a major driving force in human history in the modern era and will continue to be the most important factor in shaping its future. Artificial tools have helped people survive in unfavorable environments. The evolutionary development of modern technology has enabled humans to control and transform the natural environment to meet their needs and realize their will as well as to adapt and accommodate themselves to it. Therefore, technology, as the power to shape the given environment to our desire and will, can be understood as a powerful means of materializing the ideal world. While technology has been beneficial to human progress, it has also been seen to possess intrinsic evil power. Implied in the advance of technology, then, is the potential for disastrous outcome. This pessimistic, negative view has played a great part in creating the dark image of technology in most literary works since the Industrial Revolution. In many such texts, technology is described as having an irresistible power to determine the course of events (Marx, xii). The objective reality of the powerful development of technology has been one-sidedly criticized instead of being accepted for what it is. The result is that technology has often been depicted as an embodiment of evil. Is technology destined to bring about nothing but evil? Or, on the contrary, is it a sure key to the gate of our dreams? Technology can be understood as both appropriate way to maximize human potential power and a perilous risk to confine and reduce the limitless human potentiality into a restricted narrow scope. The supposition that technology can be viewed from these opposing perspectives at the same time is the starting point of this essay. Obviously, what is important here is not a simple binary opposition of two extremes but a complex reality of technology neither to be given up nor to be heavily depended upon. In this respect, Thomas Pynchon is worth special attention because his works are solidly organized upon scientific and technological ideas and rules and provide insider's perspectives on the intertwined complexity of technology in human life. In his works technology is neither harshly criticized nor excessively admired; technology is not one-sidedly viewed from a distance but directly dealt with. His works focus on technology to the extent that they cannot be fully appreciated without modern scientific and technological understanding. Pychon is not alone in observing the ambivalent status of technology. This essay discusses Pynchon's works, in particular The Crying of Lot 4, as well as science-fiction narratives like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Terminator 2, to explore the question of technology. Relationships between man and machine in science-fiction narratives are both dynamic and complex. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? humans become inhuman and androids become more human than humans, and the boundaries between man and machine begin to dissolve. This complex relationship between man and machine is also evident in the successful Hollywood science-fiction movie, Terminator 2. Pynchon's technological themes seem to have made a particularly significant influence on this movie. In fact, Cyberdyne, the center of the action in the plot of Terminator 2, may be regarded as the technologically advanced version of Yoyodyne, which is one of significant settings in three of Pynchon's major works, V, The Crying of Lot 49, and Gravity's Rainbow. It will be observed, however, that the tense relationship between man and machine is finally dissolved into the self-insistence of humans in the last stage of Terminator 2. In relation to the anthropocentric perspectives in the science-fiction narrative like Terminator 2, Donna Harraway's cyborg discourses are significant as her argument suggests the possibility of the cyborg as a new subject or new social reality and not just as instrumental object. …