Technology: Emotion and Reason

Technology: Emotion and Reason

Indeed, a common view of ICT has its roots in early science fiction which posited the machine as an impersonal and unemotional "being". As this genre of literature "reflects scientific thought, a fiction of things-to-come based on things-at-hand" (Appel 1), it is perhaps no surprise that popular culture retains this view that movements in technology are instruments in domination. Technology is still seen as "other": it can watch us, keep track of us, turn on us or threaten us. Studying western culture in the mid 1980s Sherry Turkle (1984) contends that "discussion about computers becomes charged with feelings about what is special about people: their creativity, their sensuality, their pain, their pleasure" (271). I would argue that this is still a valid observation, despite both technological advances and the increased comfort that many have with those advances. Clearly, while the invention of various technologies within science fiction is rooted in real advances in science and technology, they work within the fiction itself (and in turn, are accepted within popular culture), because of our ideas about the future of such technologies. Thus,

ideas that begin their life in the world of science and move out [are] popularised and simplified, often only half understood, but they can have a profound effect on how people think. This diffusion has a special importance in the case of the computer. The computer is a "thinking machine". Ideas about computation come to influence our ideas about mind. So, above all, what "moves out" is the notion of mind as program, carried beyond academy not only by the spoken and written word, but because it is embedded in an actual physical object: the computer (Turkle 21).

As we've seen, this view is echoed in the socialist feminism of Donna Haraway (1985) in her seminal work A Manifesto for Cyborgs, where she argues that "by the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism, in short, we are cyborgs. The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics" (50). Haraway sees advances in technology as both a social and political arena to interrogate identities, and as such she is both optimistic and sceptical.

There has always been, and perhaps will forever be, a uncomfortable emotional attachment with humans that the machine (ie. ICT, e-learning, etc) can never escape. Technophobia and scepticism will perhaps always prevent technology from full integration into the education (or any other cultural) system. Frustration and fear can go hand in hand with ICT (to varying degrees) precisely because machines can only communicate in so far as you know how to use them to communicate or in so far as you use them for communication. So how does this work or how is this integrated when science becomes science fiction? What precisely about science are we afraid of? And does this change?

In Race and Gender: the role of analogy and science, Nancy Leys Stepan writes:

Metaphor occupies a central place in literary theory, but the role of metaphors, and of the analogies they mediate, in scientific theory is still debated. One reason for the controversy over metaphor, analogy and models in science is the intellectually privileged status that science has traditionally enjoyed as the repository or non-metaphorical, empirical, politically neutral, universal knowledge (38).

I wonder, what do we think of this? What happens if we apply this thinking to science fiction which, as a genre, challenges these notions of 'science/reason' and 'science/politically neutral' by employing metaphors that are decidely political and emotional?

In The Stepford Wives we have seen that as Joanna's comfort levels decrease in the plastic community of Stepford women, her husband and the men's club he belongs to find it necessary to increase the plans to replace her with a 'reasonable' model of herself (ie. to murder her and employ a cyborg clone of Joanna to effectively become Joanna-- as wife, mother, women-in-community). Joanna's emotional state is regimentaly observed as are her activities and thought processes, including her renewed interest in 'the women's liberation movement' that is such a provoking cause for concern. The new Joanna, the cyborg, will not be emotional, indeed she/it will be wholly incapable of emotion precisely because technology can not duplicate this complex human trait. Moreover, this is precisely the desired effect: the men of Stepford want to rid themselves of their emotional (and for the film this is analogous with 'thinking') partners. These themes are highly political today but perhaps most especially when we consider the cultural climate of the 70s for women and for men.

In Blade Runner the theme of emotion also figures prominently, but there is also the comodification of emotion as the TYRELL Corp. is in the business of making cyborgs who can 'feel' and are made 'self aware' through memory implants. Moreover, emotional politics come into play in terms of language from the first instance of the film when the voice over tells us:

"Early in the 21st Century, THE TYRELL CORPORATION advanced robot evolution into the NEXUS phase - a being virtually identical to a human - known as a Replicant. The NEXUS 6 Replicants were superior in strength and agility, and at least equal in intelligence, to the genetic engineers who created them. Replicants were used Off-World as slave labor, in the hazardous exploration and colonization of other planets. After a bloody mutiny by a NEXUS 6 combat team in an Off-World colony, Replicants were declared illegal on earth - under penalty of death. Special police squads - BLADE RUNNER UNITS - had orders to shoot to kill, upon detection, any trespassing Replicant This was not called execution. It was called retirement".

Because of their lack of emotion or feeling it is morally acceptable and emotionally comfortable for humans to kill replicants. Interestingly, the language that we choose to use for this act is significant. Consider this in real life: soliders are 'killed in the line of duty', terrorists 'murder innocent victims'. Replicants are 'retired'. If we return to the claims at the beginning of this commentary then, does science still hold an "intellectually privileged status [ … ] as the repository or non-metaphorical, empirical, politically neutral, universal knowledge"?

We will continue to explore emotion and technology in this section of the Course, questioning science's relationship with both reason and emotion.