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LITR 4632: Literature of the Future  |
Final Exam Essays 2013 Sample answers
for Essay 1:
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Adria Weger
5 July 2013
Get Plugged-In:
High and Low Tech Intermingle in Literature
We live in a high-tech society, or at least the highest-tech
in history to date. Almost every household possesses not only one but multiple
personal computers, laptops, or tablets. Smart phones replaced corded
telephones; Siri answers any question we ask. It’s only a matter of time before
our cars come equipped with artificial intelligence, like KITT from
Knight Rider. Even our language has
adapted to fit this high-tech world; Net-Lingo is part of our everyday
vocabulary. We Google something when we need to look up information, everything
must be Wi-Fi accessible, texting is becoming more common than verbal
conversation, Facebook has become a verb. Though constantly bombarded with the
latest technology, we still cling to primitive technology. Survivalists, people
who prepare for the end of the world, gain popularity wih shows like
Doomsday Preppers. The
zombie-apocalypse trend adds to this idea that one day technology will become
useless, or worse, turn against us like in the
Terminator series. It does not matter
how the world ends, just that they are prepared when it does.
However,
most of our lives are not so black and white. We use the internet to learn how
to grow a garden: Pinning layouts and tips on Pinterest, watching YouTube videos
for the proper tools and techniques, Google information on the types of seeds
and growing information. Then we gather our shovels, hoes, wood, and watering
cans, go to our back yards, in the dirt and sun of the natural world, and plant
a garden. This blend of high-tech and low-tech appears in literature as well.
Where high-tech is cold and appeals to hard science or virtual reality, low-tech
is warmer, nostalgic, and contains elements of actual reality. Some texts
contain high-tech more than others, and some use technology to different means,
but they all use some degree of high and low technology.
William Gibson, in texts like
Burning Chrome and
Hinterlands, demonstrates a mastery
of using the cold cyberpunk style to immerse the reader in the high-tech worlds
he creates. Gibson’s style throws the reader into the deep-end in a sink or swim
engagement with the text. While Gibson’s high-tech texts can become difficult to
follow, his use of metaphor helps the reader to relate to and accept the
bizarre. To describe the hacker character, Bobby in BC, Gibson compares him to a
cowboy and burglar “casing mankind’s extended electronic nervous system,
rustling data and credit in the crowded matrix” (11). In
Hinterlands, Gibson compares the
surrogates to intelligent houseflies, “wandering through an international
airport; some of us actually manage to blunder onto flights to London or Rio,
maybe even survive the trip and make it back” (7.2). Gibson also uses metaphor
to explain high-tech scenes with low-tech feelings, “the fake boat’s interior
was familiar and strange at the same time, like your own apartment when you
haven’t seen it for a week” (Hinterlands 4.3). Using these analogies, Gibson
guides the reader through this unfamiliar territory, helping the reader relate
to a strange new world.
While Gibson helps his reader along with these metaphors, he
focuses more on the world he created than relationships with the characters.
Part of his style of writing, the focus on the surroundings, details the
environment through an inverted millennialism style, mixing apocalyptic scenes
and beauty, “half the skylight was shadowed by a dome they’d never finished, and
the other half showed sky, black and blue with clouds” (BC 63). This mixing also
shows the blending of high-tech with low-tech, coolness of the half-finished
structure, and warmth of nature, and allows the reader to see the world rather
than experience it through the lens of the characters.
While Gibson may throw his readers into his world, allowing
his characters to interact with it, other writers focus on characters and
relationships, detailing the world through their experiences. Audrey Ferber’s
“Drapes and Folds” does this well. Ferber’s focus on the main character, Pearl,
allows the reader to piece together the history that created this world. Pearl’s
explanations of her rebelliousness and love for fabric also detail what makes
them scandalous, “the panel gave each wearer a voice previously unheard in
clothing” (132). In a world where individuality is contraband, Pearl’s ideals
show through her actions. Because the focus is on the characters, the technology
of this world becomes background, part of the story instead of the focus of the
story. Through her characters, Ferber introduces new technology: the wheelies
which replace Pearl’s feet (128); the Approved Nutritional Procedure that feeds
each household (128); and Pearl’s granddaughter, a “ghastly mix of human and
roboid” (129), but Pearl’s story is one of living in this world, not this world
and those who live in it. In this way, Ferber uses the technology of her world
to supplement rather than be the story.
Thomas Fox Averill’s “The Onion and I” also mixes high and
low tech with a focus on the characters. This story of virtual reality and the
other, or real, reality examines three types of people: the mother who dreams of
the future, the father who longs for the past, and the son who must find the
balance in between. To find that balance, the boy seeks to create the perfect
cyberonion; right now, a cyberonion is “not a real onion … a real onion makes
you cry” (15). Through working with his father exploring the properties of real
onions, the boy learns about the virtual world they live in. “The ultimate goal
of the Cyberworld programmers was to learn to mimic the randomness of the
genetic world” (17), but the programmers used the same code for onions as
carrots, potatoes and apples. The boy compares this process to coloring with
only six crayons (18), you can get a picture done, but it will be far from the
reality it depicts. In this way, Averill shows the limitations of the virtual
world through comparisons to the other world.
These stories have been mostly high-tech and use low-tech to
help the reader to relate to the world the author created. However, “House of
Bones” by Robert Silverberg is low-tech, even primitive, with elements of
high-tech to explain the setting and the characters. Taking place millions of
years ago in the Ice Age, “House of Bones” shows primitive man, “not savages,
far from it. But they aren’t even remotely like modern people” (88). The tribe
the narrator assimilates to uses mammoth bones to build houses, wear clothing
made of animal skins, and use fire instead of electricity, all very low-tech
aspects. While most of the story is very primitive, the narrator arrives in this
time through time-travel. He lists his skills as “electronics, computers, [and]
time-shift physics” (89). This gap between the low-tech and high-tech separates
the narrator from the people of this time. Because the narrator’s skills are so
far removed from the knowledge the tribe deems necessary, he wants to prove
himself by introducing new technology. He wants to teach the tribe to build
kayaks and bridges and how to make beer (92). In this way he can prove his
usefulness, prove that he is not the village idiot they think he is. By teaching
the tribe in his high-tech knowledge, the narrator can become a contributing
member of the tribe.
Silverberg also uses ideas to demonstrate the high-tech
amidst the low-tech of the setting. Though this tribe is considered primitive by
today’s standards, the narrator discovers they were actually very civilized. The
tribe has architecture. They didn’t just toss up a tent, but constructed
buildings from plans they’d drawn up. They speak two languages which show the
complexity of their thought. “They have history, they have music, they have
poetry, they have technology, they have art … they have religion. They have
laws” (95), all of these aspects allude to a civilized society, not b today’s
standards, but still more high-tech than low-tech. Where our society may be the
highest-tech in history, Silverberg shows a society that knows “[they’re] the
crown of creation” (95). This tribe is the most advanced for the time they live
in. By blending high-tech and low-tech in this story, Silverberg is able to
relate a society millions of years old to something recognizable today.
After looking at how these very different texts use high and
low technology to create or explain their worlds, we see how much art imitates
life. Like us, who use a mixture of high-tech and low-tech in our everyday
lives, these stories blend the two concepts to relate their fictional worlds to
their readers. They offer us a way to plug into these different realities and
accept a world so unlike our own.
