Monthly Archives: January 2015

Technology: Servitude and slavery, humanising and dehumanising.

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One of the most terrible facets of eighteenth and nineteenth slavery in the Americas was the constant and continual campaign to dehumanise slaves. Frederick Douglass in his book The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, describes the horrifying, dehumanising actions taken by slave holders. The text served as a great tool for emancipation and highlighted both the effects on slave and slave holder alike of such savage treatment of another human.

When looking at cinema’s take on technology (cyborgs, robots, and dystopian futures), we are usually presented with technology that is humanised in some way. Servile technology that rebels (Bladerunner, Westworld), technology taking on human characteristics (2001, A Space Odyssey, I, Robot), and technology that enslaves (The Matrix, Terminator). What are the roots of our relation to technology and human characteristics?

 

Marvel’s Iron Man vs. Tetsuo, the Iron Man

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Reading Vincent Miller’s article The Body and Information Technology I was reminded of the Japanese Anime film, Akira… Which then led me to Tetsuo, the Iron Man:

A 1989 Japanese live-action film which really highlights the fears mentioned in Miller’s article when we examine cyborgs and the blurred lines between human and machine.

How does Tetsuo differ from Tony Stark? Is it Stark’s ability to walk away from the Iron Man suit? Is it the reminder that Stark’s cyborg origins were to maintain shrapnel from entering his heart and killing him? Tony Stark defends the human and maintains his presence in the human world. Tetsuo on the other hand looks to ‘infect’ and ‘rust’ the whole world in typical dystopian, cyberpunk fashion.