Manchine

One of the most postmodern aspects of cyberpunk sci-fi is the realignment of the man vs. machine binary. In older forms of sci-fi a major theme was the fear of humanity being overrun by their own technology, namely robots. In postmodern sci-fi, such as cyberpunk, this dichotomy is thrown out as there begins to be a blurring of humanity and technology. The rise of the cyborg, whether it’s a man with a robot hand like Luke Skywalker or a machine with skin like the Terminator, creates this blurring between humans and machines which makes the former binary between them obsolete and inapplicable to the themes of cyberpunk and other postmodernist sci-fi.

In Lia Hotchkiss’ article Still in the Game: Cybertransformations of the “New Flesh” in David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ, she addresses concerns over human/technology interface, a new concern of postmodernist sci-fi. Hotchkiss points out that this technology “on the one hand, offers release from physical limitation but, on the other, may come at the price of increasing corporate control of people’s lives and consumption by, not just of, that very technology” (18-19). I am interested in this idea that human technology interface not only changes how we consume technology, but that the technology also consumes us.

A few examples of this consumption by technology as a result of our consumption of technology include eXistenZ, The Matrix, and Gamer. David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ features game pods that are not played via controller but instead they plug right into ports on the players’ backs. These game pods use energy from the people who are plugged into and playing it to power themselves. So while people are playing eXistenZ, consuming this technology, the game pods are sucking the energy out of the users, consuming them right back. There is a similar consumption of humans by technology in the Wachowski brothers’ The Matrix, released the same year as eXistenZ. In this film the robots have constructed an elaborate VR if you will, to occupy the minds of humanity while they are really harvesting energy from our bodies in reality. Again we are consuming technology, the elaborate VR is reality to virtually all of humanity, it is in turn using our energy to power itself and keep us subdued. The 2009 film Gamer shows people getting neurological injections of some microscopic technology that goes into your brain, copies your neurons, replicates itself, then eliminates all of the organic neurons it has just copied leaving only the techno neurons. This procedure allows them to play or be played in either of the two games that have seemingly taken over the world. The replication of, then elimination of organic material in our brains again illustrates consumption by technology that we are consuming.

The fear of technology as an other has been transformed into a fear of our interface with technology. This new fear is the product of our designing technology to be as human as possible in order to function well as part of us. This means, however, that the technology will function like us, it will consume in much the same way that we consume. The new sci-fi fear is not of technology enslaving humanity, but of technology taking over from within.