LITR 4632 Literature of the Future

Sample Student final exams 2009

Faron Samford

7/8/09

Technological Evolution

            Imagining the future of the human race and trying to predict the direction it will take is inherent to being human.  The works that we’ve read over the course of the semester, as well as the future-vision presentations, have shown just how different the possibilities are going forward.  What seems to be clear through all of the works that have been covered this semester is the degree to which the evolution of humanity will be shaped by technology.  Technology has long been touted as the savior of the human race and through it we have been able to extend our lives with advances in medicine, computers, and mechanics.  The merger of the human body and technology is a common theme among these stories of the future and the effect this will have on the concept of humanity.

In stories like Mnemonic, technology has been so integrated into humans that Johnny has been turned into basically a portable thumb drive like many of us use to back up data. The data is downloaded into the chip stored in his brain without him having any knowledge of what the actual data is.  Johnny even refers to himself as a “meatball chock-full of implants.”  This integration of technology into the body is similar to the digital video-camera eyes that were given to Stone. While Johnny’s implanted devices are his occupational role in life, Stone’s are given to him to enhance his ability to do the job assigned to him.  Johnny eventually goes to live with the Lo Teks because, as he states, “I knew I was sick of being a bucket.”  Despite his making a living off of all of his technological enhancements, he still chooses to live with the lower technological group so he’ll feel more like a human than a machine.

As opposed to the implants and technological enhancements that Johnny has, Xera, the granddaughter from Drapes, was described as “a ghastly mix of human and roboid.” While most of her was a creation of robotics, she still had normal, human eyes.  She was robotic enough that she said that she was incapable of using the word “Gran” because she was not programmed for it.  As Laura Moran explains in her 2007 final:

“The reader is led to believe that all is not lost with the fabric of the past when Xera sputters the simple word “Gran” as Pearl’s possessions are hauled away. This narrative makes a good point in that no matter how far technology may advance the human race, humans still enjoy the touch and feel of fabrics and the flavors of food and drink.”

This is a common theme in many of the works.  Even though humans are becoming more and more like machines or robots, characteristics of humanity still emerge that give hope to a continuation of something resembling modern humans.

            Not all of the technological futures involve the mixture of technology into the body as with Mnemonic or Drapes, but go the other direction such as Onion which uses a complete jump from the real world and the human body into the computerized virtual world.  Again the humanity of people emerges stronger than the technology as the father is able to get through to his son that the real world is worth experiencing.  In a world where people are getting married and reproducing virtually, it is the extremely low-tech onion, and the effects that its touch, taste, and smell have on the human body that show the limitations of the ability for technology to replicate real life. In the future-vision presentation that we saw of the movie, The Matrix, humans have been absorbed into technology so much so that they don’t even realize that they are living in a virtual world and are simply being used to power the machines that are really in control.

            This conflict between technology and humanity is given an interesting twist of viewpoint in the story They’re Made Out of Meat. In this narrative, the fact that humans are made completely of meat, used as a placeholder here for completely organic tissue, is reason enough for them to be excluded from an attempt to document life in the universe as witnessed by extra-terrestrials.  In Machine, the acceptance of technology by humans is what causes the split in the human race. A very common old cliché is; “necessity is the mother of invention.” The reduction of need through technology has led to a diminishing of the intelligence and a general regression of the descendants of humans into two races of primal thinking people. 

            Humanity is very attached to technology and the advancements that it has given us.  The issue that seems to be addressed in many of these forward looking works is how to advance society and civilization without losing the core of what makes people human. The human experience is beyond anything that can be replicated by technology because, as put by the narrator in Onion, “I cannot describe this experience…it was, as I learned later, an experience like faith: something happening, something is there, but how can anyone prove its existence.”