Tech Anxiety: Artificial Intelligence and Ontological Awakening in Four Science Fiction Novels

251 Pages·2013·1.9 MB·English

by  Christopher A. Sims

TECH ANXIETY
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T A
ECH NXIETY
Artificial Intelligence and
Ontological Awakening in
Four Science Fiction Novels
Christopher A. Sims
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London
ISBN 978-0-7864-6648-1
softcover : acid free paper
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© 2013 Christopher A. Sims. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
Cover image © 2013 Stockbyte
Manufactured in the United States of America
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Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
To my beautiful wife JoAn
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the support of my family,
friends, peers, and the editors at Science Fiction Studies.
I would first like to thank my wife JoAn, for constantly supporting me
through this difficult process, for giving me love, feedback, and for her endless
patience. I would like to thank my beautiful daughter Violet, who motivates and
inspires me. I would like to thank my parents, Mary Carol and Richard for their
love and support. Thanks to my brother Mark and the rest of our family, near
and far. I would also like to thank our dog Dinah for her unwavering support.
My thanks to my mentor and friend George Hartley, who introduced me
to Heidegger, patiently helped me out of my cave, and set me on the path of
thinking. I thank him for his time, patience, support, and criticism as my dis-
sertation director at Ohio University. I would also like to thank the other mem-
bers of my dissertation committee Joseph McLaughlin, Katarzyna Marciniak,
and Robert Briscoe for their time, counsel, guidance, and support. Their feedback
and ideas helped me to keep an open mind throughout the project and attend
to (at least some of) what was missing. I would like to thank Josie Bloomfield,
who was my master’s essay director at Ohio University. Her kindness and patience
helped me shape the article that would lead to my first publication in Science
Fiction Studiesand is the germ for this project. I would also like to thank Valorie
Worthy, who helped me achieve my dream of graduate studies in English.
I would like to thank Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr. and the other editors at
Science Fiction Studies, who were wonderfully supportive and took the time to
offer me suggestions on how to strengthen my article. I would like to thank the
peer reviewers of my manuscript for their meaningful advice. This work is much
stronger because of their feedback, suggestions, and support.
Finally, I would like to thank the faculty, staff, and students I worked with
over the last eight years at Ohio University. The professors I had as a graduate
student, my fellow graduate students, and the students I worked with as an
instructor all helped inspire me to keep thinking and to keep w riting.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1. Heideggerian Technology Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2. HAL as Human Savior in Arthur C. Clarke’s
2001: A Space Odyssey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
3. The Dangers of Individualism and the Human
Relationship to Technology in Philip K. Dick’s
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
4. AIs, Hatred of the Body, Cyborgs and Salvation
in William Gibson’s Neuromancer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
5. David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas: Cloned AIs as the
Leaders of an Ontological Insurrection . . . . . . . . . . . 178
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
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Introduction
As a child, I remember watching James Cameron’s Terminator 2 for the
first time and being amazed at the technical marvels of the cinema. Of par-
ticular interest, however, was the premise that machines, once gaining “intel-
ligence” and sentience, immediately turn on their “masters” in an effort to
eliminate or enslave the human race. It did not strike me as odd that this
reversal of a master/slave dialectic (or perhaps, hierarchy of power) indeed
happens, but it was curious how naturally viewers like myself accepted this
mechanical takeover as a matter of course. What is it about the fear of this
eventuality that is so believable? When did American subjects living in a tech-
nologically steeped society of the late twentieth-century begin to subscribe
to the notion that when an artificial intelligence, robot, android, or machine
becomes “self-aware,” the only possible end-road is the downfall of the human
race? But, behind the fear of autonomous machines, the film also suggests
that we might save ourselves from out of control technology with a properly
subjugated automaton. Terminator 2 presents our technology anxiety about
sentient machines and proposes that a solution to technological problems is
more technology. This solution turns out to be an older model Terminator,
the villain of the first film, no less! Thinking about the technological tension
of the film planted a seed in my mind that I carried with me as a young adult.
Have subjects of a technology-saturated society always felt afraid of the dan-
gers of technology but also confident in technological remedies to such dan-
gers? What about nuclear Armageddon, or bio-engineered weapons unleashed
(accidentally?) on civilians, for example? These dangers seem a steep risk to
take, unless we are banking on time-travel as an escape hatch. Bill Joy reminds
us: “This is the first moment in the history of our planet when any species,
by its own voluntary actions, has become a danger to itself—as well as to vast
numbers of others” (Joy 9). And these more dramatic, SF themes say nothing
of the immediate and insidious concerns about global warming, resource
exhaustion, and over-population, to name a few. Given the anxieties many
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