Technophobia
Encyclopedia
Technophobia is the fear or dislike of advanced technology
or complex devices, especially computers.(1) tech·no·pho·bi·a (těk'nə-fō'bē-ə) n. Fear of or aversion to technology, especially computers and high technology. -Related forms: tech'no·phobe' n., tech'no·pho'bic (-fō'bĭk) adj."— (American Heritage Dictionary)
(2) "tech·no·pho·bi·a ˌtɛknəˈfoʊbiə - Show Spelled Pronunciation [tek-nuh-foh-bee-uh] –noun abnormal fear of or anxiety about the effects of advanced technology. [Origin: 1960–65; techno- + -phobia] —Related forms: tech·no·phobe, noun —(Dictionary.com unabridged (v1.1) based on the Random House unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.)}} The term is generally used in the sense of an irrational fear, but others contend fears are justified. It is the opposite of technophilia
. First receiving widespread notice during the Industrial Revolution
, technophobia has been observed to affect various societies and communities throughout the world. This has caused some groups to take stances against some modern technological developments in order to preserve their ideologies. In some of these cases, the new technologies conflict with established beliefs, such as the personal values of simplicity and modest lifestyles. A number of examples of technophobic ideas can be found in multiple forms of art, ranging from literary works such as Frankenstein
to films like Metropolis
and Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs
. Many of these works portray the darker side of technology as seen by the technophobic. As technologies become increasingly complex and difficult to understand, people are more likely to harbor anxieties relating to their use of modern technologies.
had 58% high-level technophobes, India
had 82%, and Mexico
had 53%.
A published report in 2000 stated that roughly 85 to 90 percent of new employees at an organization may be uncomfortable with new technology, and are technophobic to some degree.
made the demolition of machines a capital offense. This action, however, did not stop the tide of violence. The Luddites, a group of anti-technology workers, united under the name “Ludd” in March 1811, removing key components from knitting frames, raiding houses for supplies, and petitioning for trade rights while threatening greater violence. Poor harvests and food riots lent aid to their cause by creating a restless and agitated population for them to draw supporters from.
The 19th century was also the beginning of modern science, with the work of Louis Pasteur
, Charles Darwin
, Gregor Mendel
, Michael Faraday
, Henri Becquerel
, and Marie Curie
, and inventors such as Nikola Tesla
, Thomas Edison
and Alexander Graham Bell
. The world was changing rapidly, too rapidly for many, who feared the changes taking place and longed for a simpler time. The Romantic movement exemplified these feelings. Romantics tended to believe in imagination over reason, the “organic” over the mechanical, and a longing for a simpler, more pastoral
times. Poets like William Wordsworth
and William Blake
believed that the technological changes that were taking place as a part of the industrial revolution were polluting their cherished view of nature as being perfect and pure.
After World War II
, a fear of technology continued to grow, catalyzed by the bombings of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. With nuclear proliferation
and the Cold War
, people began to wonder what would become of the world now that humanity had the power to destroy it. In the post-WWII era, environmentalism
also took off as a movement. The first international air pollution conference was held in 1955, and in the 1960s, investigations into the lead content of gasoline sparked outrage among environmentalists. In the 1980s, the depletion of the ozone layer and the threat of global warming began to be taken more seriously.
of British artisans in the 19th century who organized in opposition to technological advances in the textile industry. These advances replaced many skilled textile artisans with comparatively unskilled machine operators.
's Frankenstein
. It has been a staple of science fiction
ever since, exemplified by movies like Fritz Lang's "Metropolis"
, which offer an example of how technophobia can occur, and Charlie Chaplin
's "Modern Times"
, in which people are reduced to nothing but cogs in the machinery, a product of new industrial techniques like the assembly line
. This persisted through the 1950s, with the fears of nuclear weapon
s and radiation
leading to giant insects of monster movie
s, as well as cautionary tale
s like "The Day the Earth Stood Still
", and into the 1960s, with the likes of The Hulk
. It was joined by fears of superintelligent machines, and rebellion against them, which was a recurring theme of Star Trek
, from the original series to "ST:TNG"
to "Voyager"
in the 1990s.
Also in the 1960s, the film Omega Man (loosely based on the Richard Matheson
novel I am Legend) showed a world scarred by biological warfare
and only a handful of humans and a cult of mutants remain alive. Charlton Heston's
character is a scientist who is being targeted by the mutants who wish to destroy all science and machinery due to their technophobic beliefs. Technophobia is also thematic in Walter M. Miller's novel A Canticle for Leibowitz
, where nuclear war produces an attempt to stamp out science itself as held to be responsible.
In the 1970s, "The Forbin Project"
and "Demon Seed
" also offered samples of domination by computers. Also in the 1970s, Rich Buckler
created Deathlok, a cyborg
revivified by a madman as a slave killing machine, a dark twist on Frankenstein.
Technophobia achieved commercial success in the 1980s with the movie The Terminator
, in which a computer becomes self-aware, and decides to kill all humans. Blade Runner
shows us how human replicas were able to live on Earth, portraying technology gone wrong in "replicants" unhappy with their man-made limitations which demand they be "modified". "Star Trek: Voyager" introduced another twist, when "surplus" EMHs, such sophisticated expert system
s as to be almost indistinguishable from human, being effectively reduced to slavery
, while other
similar systems were turned into sentient prey
.
More recently there have been movies like I, Robot
, The Matrix Trilogy, WALL-E
, and the Terminator sequels. Shows such as Doctor Who
- most specifically in the episode Robots of Death - have also tackled the issue of technophobia, with a character in Robots of Death displaying a great fear of robots due to their lack of body language, described by the Fourth Doctor
as giving them the appearance of 'dead men walking
'. Series consultant Kit Pedler
also used this fear as a basis for the inspiration of classic Doctor Who monsters the Cybermen, with the creatures being inspired by his own fear of artificial limbs becoming so common that it would become impossible to know when someone had stopped being a man and become simply a machine. Virtuosity
speaks of a virtual serial killer who manages to escape to the real world. He goes on a rampage before he is inevitably stopped. This is a true technophobic movie in that its main plot is about technology gone wrong. It introduces a killer who blatantly destroys people.
In the Dune
series, Butlerian Jihad
is a war between humanity and malevolent artificial intelligence, led by Omnius who explicitly desires extinction of the human race.
In the Pixar
film WALL-E humans are shown to have evolved into obese, docile, and lazy people as a result of robots now be able to do everything for them.
Godfrey Reggio's Qatsi trilogy
also deals heavily with issues of technophobia. The idea of keeping the "thinkers" and "workers" separate shows us that even the people who embraced technology feared the potential of it in some way.
In the PC game Wing Commander: Privateer
, a fanatical quasi-religious group, called the Retros, wishes to overthrow all forms of technology, even if doing so, they themselves have to use it in order to fulfill their goal. They play a central role in the Righteous Fire expansion game, where a new mysterious leader leads the group in an attempt to destroy all non-adherents of their religion.
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
or complex devices, especially computers.(1) tech·no·pho·bi·a (těk'nə-fō'bē-ə) n. Fear of or aversion to technology, especially computers and high technology. -Related forms: tech'no·phobe' n., tech'no·pho'bic (-fō'bĭk) adj."— (American Heritage Dictionary)
(2) "tech·no·pho·bi·a ˌtɛknəˈfoʊbiə - Show Spelled Pronunciation [tek-nuh-foh-bee-uh] –noun abnormal fear of or anxiety about the effects of advanced technology. [Origin: 1960–65; techno- + -phobia] —Related forms: tech·no·phobe, noun —(Dictionary.com unabridged (v1.1) based on the Random House unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.)}} The term is generally used in the sense of an irrational fear, but others contend fears are justified. It is the opposite of technophilia
Technophilia
Technophilia refers generally to a strong enthusiasm for technology, especially new technologies such as personal computers, the Internet, mobile phones and home cinema...
. First receiving widespread notice during the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
, technophobia has been observed to affect various societies and communities throughout the world. This has caused some groups to take stances against some modern technological developments in order to preserve their ideologies. In some of these cases, the new technologies conflict with established beliefs, such as the personal values of simplicity and modest lifestyles. A number of examples of technophobic ideas can be found in multiple forms of art, ranging from literary works such as Frankenstein
Frankenstein
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...
to films like Metropolis
Metropolis (film)
Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist film in the science-fiction genre directed by Fritz Lang. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and makes use of this context to explore the social crisis between workers and...
and Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (film)
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is a 2009 American computer-animated family comedy film, produced by Sony Pictures Animation, distributed by Columbia Pictures, and released on September 18, 2009. The film is loosely based on the children's book of the same name by Judi and Ron Barrett.The film...
. Many of these works portray the darker side of technology as seen by the technophobic. As technologies become increasingly complex and difficult to understand, people are more likely to harbor anxieties relating to their use of modern technologies.
Prevalence
A study published in the journal Computers in human behavior was conducted between 1992 and 1994 surveying first-year college students across various countries. The overall percentage of the 3,392 students who responded with high-level technophobic fears was 29%. In comparison, JapanJapan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
had 58% high-level technophobes, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
had 82%, and Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
had 53%.
A published report in 2000 stated that roughly 85 to 90 percent of new employees at an organization may be uncomfortable with new technology, and are technophobic to some degree.
History
Technophobia began to gain national and international attention as a movement with the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. With the development of new machines able to do the work of skilled craftsmen using unskilled, underpaid women and children, those who worked a trade began to fear for their livelihoods. In 1675, a group of weavers destroyed machines that replaced their jobs. By 1727, the destruction had become so prevalent ParliamentParliament
A parliament is a legislature, especially in those countries whose system of government is based on the Westminster system modeled after that of the United Kingdom. The name is derived from the French , the action of parler : a parlement is a discussion. The term came to mean a meeting at which...
made the demolition of machines a capital offense. This action, however, did not stop the tide of violence. The Luddites, a group of anti-technology workers, united under the name “Ludd” in March 1811, removing key components from knitting frames, raiding houses for supplies, and petitioning for trade rights while threatening greater violence. Poor harvests and food riots lent aid to their cause by creating a restless and agitated population for them to draw supporters from.
The 19th century was also the beginning of modern science, with the work of Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur was a French chemist and microbiologist born in Dole. He is remembered for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and preventions of diseases. His discoveries reduced mortality from puerperal fever, and he created the first vaccine for rabies and anthrax. His experiments...
, Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
, Gregor Mendel
Gregor Mendel
Gregor Johann Mendel was an Austrian scientist and Augustinian friar who gained posthumous fame as the founder of the new science of genetics. Mendel demonstrated that the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants follows particular patterns, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance...
, Michael Faraday
Michael Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS was an English chemist and physicist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry....
, Henri Becquerel
Henri Becquerel
Antoine Henri Becquerel was a French physicist, Nobel laureate, and the discoverer of radioactivity along with Marie Curie and Pierre Curie, for which all three won the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics.-Early life:...
, and Marie Curie
Marie Curie
Marie Skłodowska-Curie was a physicist and chemist famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first person honored with two Nobel Prizes—in physics and chemistry...
, and inventors such as Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, mechanical engineer, and electrical engineer...
, Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...
and Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell was an eminent scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with inventing the first practical telephone....
. The world was changing rapidly, too rapidly for many, who feared the changes taking place and longed for a simpler time. The Romantic movement exemplified these feelings. Romantics tended to believe in imagination over reason, the “organic” over the mechanical, and a longing for a simpler, more pastoral
Pastoral
The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...
times. Poets like William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
and William Blake
William Blake
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
believed that the technological changes that were taking place as a part of the industrial revolution were polluting their cherished view of nature as being perfect and pure.
After World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, a fear of technology continued to grow, catalyzed by the bombings of Hiroshima
Hiroshima
is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshu, the largest island of Japan. It became best known as the first city in history to be destroyed by a nuclear weapon when the United States Army Air Forces dropped an atomic bomb on it at 8:15 A.M...
and Nagasaki. With nuclear proliferation
Nuclear proliferation
Nuclear proliferation is a term now used to describe the spread of nuclear weapons, fissile material, and weapons-applicable nuclear technology and information, to nations which are not recognized as "Nuclear Weapon States" by the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, also known as the...
and the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, people began to wonder what would become of the world now that humanity had the power to destroy it. In the post-WWII era, environmentalism
Environmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
also took off as a movement. The first international air pollution conference was held in 1955, and in the 1960s, investigations into the lead content of gasoline sparked outrage among environmentalists. In the 1980s, the depletion of the ozone layer and the threat of global warming began to be taken more seriously.
Technophobic groups
Several societal groups may be considered technophobic, most recognizable are the Luddites. Many technophobic groups revolt against modern technology because of their beliefs that these technologies are threatening to their ways of life and livelihoods. The Luddites were a social movementSocial movement
Social movements are a type of group action. They are large informal groupings of individuals or organizations focused on specific political or social issues, in other words, on carrying out, resisting or undoing a social change....
of British artisans in the 19th century who organized in opposition to technological advances in the textile industry. These advances replaced many skilled textile artisans with comparatively unskilled machine operators.
Technophobia in arts
An early example of technophobia in fiction and popular culture is Mary ShelleyMary Shelley
Mary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...
's Frankenstein
Frankenstein
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...
. It has been a staple of science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
ever since, exemplified by movies like Fritz Lang's "Metropolis"
Metropolis (film)
Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist film in the science-fiction genre directed by Fritz Lang. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and makes use of this context to explore the social crisis between workers and...
, which offer an example of how technophobia can occur, and Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
's "Modern Times"
Modern Times (film)
Modern Times is a 1936 comedy film by Charlie Chaplin that has his iconic Little Tramp character struggling to survive in the modern, industrialized world. The film is a comment on the desperate employment and fiscal conditions many people faced during the Great Depression, conditions created, in...
, in which people are reduced to nothing but cogs in the machinery, a product of new industrial techniques like the assembly line
Assembly line
An assembly line is a manufacturing process in which parts are added to a product in a sequential manner using optimally planned logistics to create a finished product much faster than with handcrafting-type methods...
. This persisted through the 1950s, with the fears of nuclear weapon
Nuclear weapon
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission bomb test released the same amount...
s and radiation
Radiation
In physics, radiation is a process in which energetic particles or energetic waves travel through a medium or space. There are two distinct types of radiation; ionizing and non-ionizing...
leading to giant insects of monster movie
Monster movie
Monster movie is a name commonly given to movies, which centre on the struggle between human beings and one or more monsters...
s, as well as cautionary tale
Cautionary tale
A cautionary tale is a tale told in folklore, to warn its hearer of a danger. There are three essential parts to a cautionary tale, though they can be introduced in a large variety of ways. First, a taboo or prohibition is stated: some act, location, or thing is said to be dangerous. Then, the...
s like "The Day the Earth Stood Still
The Day the Earth Stood Still
The Day the Earth Stood Still is a 1951 American science fiction film directed by Robert Wise and written by Edmund H. North based on the short story "Farewell to the Master" by Harry Bates. The film stars Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Sam Jaffe, and Hugh Marlowe...
", and into the 1960s, with the likes of The Hulk
Hulk (comics)
The Hulk is a fictional character, a superhero in the . Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the character first appeared in The Incredible Hulk #1 ....
. It was joined by fears of superintelligent machines, and rebellion against them, which was a recurring theme of Star Trek
Star Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...
, from the original series to "ST:TNG"
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: The Next Generation is an American science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry as part of the Star Trek franchise. Roddenberry, Rick Berman, and Michael Piller served as executive producers at different times throughout the production...
to "Voyager"
Star Trek: Voyager
Star Trek: Voyager is a science fiction television series set in the Star Trek universe. Set in the 24th century from the year 2371 through 2378, the series follows the adventures of the Starfleet vessel USS Voyager, which becomes stranded in the Delta Quadrant 70,000 light-years from Earth while...
in the 1990s.
Also in the 1960s, the film Omega Man (loosely based on the Richard Matheson
Richard Matheson
Richard Burton Matheson is an American author and screenwriter, primarily in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres. He is perhaps best known as the author of What Dreams May Come, Bid Time Return, A Stir of Echoes, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and I Am Legend, all of which have been...
novel I am Legend) showed a world scarred by biological warfare
Biological warfare
Biological warfare is the use of biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, and fungi with intent to kill or incapacitate humans, animals or plants as an act of war...
and only a handful of humans and a cult of mutants remain alive. Charlton Heston's
Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston was an American actor of film, theatre and television. Heston is known for heroic roles in films such as The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, El Cid, and Planet of the Apes...
character is a scientist who is being targeted by the mutants who wish to destroy all science and machinery due to their technophobic beliefs. Technophobia is also thematic in Walter M. Miller's novel A Canticle for Leibowitz
A Canticle for Leibowitz
A Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American writer Walter M. Miller, Jr., first published in 1960. Set in a Roman Catholic monastery in the desert of the southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the story spans thousands of years as...
, where nuclear war produces an attempt to stamp out science itself as held to be responsible.
In the 1970s, "The Forbin Project"
Colossus: The Forbin Project
Colossus: The Forbin Project is an American science fiction thriller film. It is based upon the 1966 novel Colossus, by Dennis Feltham Jones, about a massive American defense computer, named Colossus, becoming sentient and deciding to assume control of the world.-Plot:Dr. Charles A...
and "Demon Seed
Demon Seed
Demon Seed is a 1977 American science fiction–horror film starring Julie Christie and directed by Donald Cammell. The film was based on the novel of the same name by Dean Koontz, and concerns the imprisonment and forced impregnation of a woman by an artificially-intelligent...
" also offered samples of domination by computers. Also in the 1970s, Rich Buckler
Rich Buckler
Rich Buckler is an American comic book artist and penciller, best known for his work on Marvel Comics' The Fantastic Four in the mid-1970s and, with writer Doug Moench, co-creating the character Deathlok in Astonishing Tales #25...
created Deathlok, a cyborg
Cyborg
A cyborg is a being with both biological and artificial parts. The term was coined in 1960 when Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline used it in an article about the advantages of self-regulating human-machine systems in outer space. D. S...
revivified by a madman as a slave killing machine, a dark twist on Frankenstein.
Technophobia achieved commercial success in the 1980s with the movie The Terminator
The Terminator
The Terminator is a 1984 science fiction action film directed by James Cameron, co-written by Cameron and William Wisher Jr., and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn, and Linda Hamilton. The film was produced by Hemdale Film Corporation and distributed by Orion Pictures, and filmed in Los...
, in which a computer becomes self-aware, and decides to kill all humans. Blade Runner
Blade Runner
Blade Runner is a 1982 American science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is loosely based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K...
shows us how human replicas were able to live on Earth, portraying technology gone wrong in "replicants" unhappy with their man-made limitations which demand they be "modified". "Star Trek: Voyager" introduced another twist, when "surplus" EMHs, such sophisticated expert system
Expert system
In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system that emulates the decision-making ability of a human expert. Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning about knowledge, like an expert, and not by following the procedure of a developer as is the case in...
s as to be almost indistinguishable from human, being effectively reduced to slavery
Author, Author (Star Trek: Voyager)
"Author, Author" is an episode of the TV series Star Trek: Voyager, the twentieth episode of the seventh season.-Plot:A new method of communications allows Voyager to contact home for 11 minutes each day with live sound and pictures as opposed to the previous sound and data only...
, while other
Flesh and Blood (Star Trek: Voyager)
"Flesh and Blood" is a two part episode from the seventh season of Star Trek: Voyager. The first half of the episode has a 4.4/5 and the second half of the episode has a 4.3/5 on the official Star Trek website...
similar systems were turned into sentient prey
Hirogen
The Hirogen are a fictional race in the Star Trek universe, a long-running plot device in the Star Trek: Voyager television series, appearing nine times in Seasons 4-7....
.
More recently there have been movies like I, Robot
I, Robot (film)
I, Robot is a 2004 science-fiction action film directed by Alex Proyas. The screenplay was written by Jeff Vintar, Akiva Goldsman and Hillary Seitz, and is very loosely based on Isaac Asimov's short-story collection of the same name. Will Smith stars in the lead role of the film as Detective Del...
, The Matrix Trilogy, WALL-E
WALL-E
WALL-E, promoted with an interpunct as WALL•E, is a 2008 American computer-animated science fiction film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and directed by Andrew Stanton. The story follows a robot named WALL-E, who is designed to clean up a waste-covered Earth far in the future...
, and the Terminator sequels. Shows such as Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
- most specifically in the episode Robots of Death - have also tackled the issue of technophobia, with a character in Robots of Death displaying a great fear of robots due to their lack of body language, described by the Fourth Doctor
Fourth Doctor
The Fourth Doctor is the fourth incarnation of the protagonist of the long-running BBC British television science-fiction series Doctor Who....
as giving them the appearance of 'dead men walking
Uncanny Valley
The uncanny valley is a hypothesis in the field of robotics and 3D computer animation, which holds that when human replicas look and act almost, but not perfectly, like actual human beings, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers...
'. Series consultant Kit Pedler
Kit Pedler
Dr Christopher Magnus Howard "Kit" Pedler was a British medical scientist, science fiction author and writer on science in general....
also used this fear as a basis for the inspiration of classic Doctor Who monsters the Cybermen, with the creatures being inspired by his own fear of artificial limbs becoming so common that it would become impossible to know when someone had stopped being a man and become simply a machine. Virtuosity
Virtuosity
Virtuosity is a 1995 techno-thriller film directed by Brett Leonard. The movie tells the story of a virtual villain's successful attempt to escape into the "real world". SID 6.7, the villain program portrayed by Russell Crowe, is eventually transplanted into an android body and escapes...
speaks of a virtual serial killer who manages to escape to the real world. He goes on a rampage before he is inevitably stopped. This is a true technophobic movie in that its main plot is about technology gone wrong. It introduces a killer who blatantly destroys people.
In the Dune
Dune (franchise)
Dune is a science fiction franchise which originated with the 1965 novel Dune by Frank Herbert. Considered by many to be the greatest science fiction novel of all time, Dune is frequently cited as the best-selling science fiction novel in history...
series, Butlerian Jihad
Butlerian Jihad
The Butlerian Jihad is an event in the back-story of Frank Herbert's fictional Dune universe. Occurring over 10,000 years before the events chronicled in his 1965 novel Dune, this jihad leads to the outlawing of certain technologies, primarily "thinking machines", a collective term for computers...
is a war between humanity and malevolent artificial intelligence, led by Omnius who explicitly desires extinction of the human race.
In the Pixar
Pixar
Pixar Animation Studios, pronounced , is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio has earned 26 Academy Awards, seven Golden Globes, and three Grammy Awards, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Its films have made over $6.3 billion worldwide...
film WALL-E humans are shown to have evolved into obese, docile, and lazy people as a result of robots now be able to do everything for them.
Godfrey Reggio's Qatsi trilogy
Qatsi trilogy
The Qatsi trilogy is the informal name given to a series of three films produced by Godfrey Reggio and scored by Philip Glass:* Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of balance * Powaqqatsi: Life in transformation * Naqoyqatsi: Life as war...
also deals heavily with issues of technophobia. The idea of keeping the "thinkers" and "workers" separate shows us that even the people who embraced technology feared the potential of it in some way.
In the PC game Wing Commander: Privateer
Wing Commander: Privateer
Wing Commander: Privateer is an adventure space flight simulation computer game released by Origin Systems in 1993. Privateer and its storyline is part of the Wing Commander series...
, a fanatical quasi-religious group, called the Retros, wishes to overthrow all forms of technology, even if doing so, they themselves have to use it in order to fulfill their goal. They play a central role in the Righteous Fire expansion game, where a new mysterious leader leads the group in an attempt to destroy all non-adherents of their religion.
See also
- Neo-LuddismNeo-luddismNeo-Luddism is a personal world view opposing any modern technology. Its name is based on the historical legacy of the British Luddites which were active between 1811 and 1816...
- ChemophobiaChemophobiaChemophobia literally means "fear of chemicals", but the term may be used in various ways. It is most often used to describe the assumption that "chemicals" are bad and harmful, while "natural" things Chemophobia literally means "fear of chemicals", but the term may be used in various ways. It is...
- DystopiaDystopiaA dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
- "Darwin among the MachinesDarwin Among the Machines"Darwin among the Machines" appeared as the heading of an article published in The Press newspaper on 13 June 1863 in Christchurch, New Zealand...
", ErewhonErewhonErewhon: or, Over the Range is a novel by Samuel Butler, published anonymously in 1872. The title is also the name of a country, supposedly discovered by the protagonist. In the novel, it is not revealed in which part of the world Erewhon is, but it is clear that it is a fictional country...
, and Samuel ButlerSamuel Butler (novelist)Samuel Butler was an iconoclastic Victorian author who published a variety of works. Two of his most famous pieces are the Utopian satire Erewhon and a semi-autobiographical novel published posthumously, The Way of All Flesh... - Minimalism in Philosophy
- List of phobias
- NIMBYNIMBYNIMBY or Nimby is an acronym for the phrase "not in my back yard". The term is used pejoratively to describe opposition by residents to a proposal for a new development close to them. Opposing residents themselves are sometimes called Nimbies...
- TechnophiliaTechnophiliaTechnophilia refers generally to a strong enthusiasm for technology, especially new technologies such as personal computers, the Internet, mobile phones and home cinema...
- TechnostressTechnostressTechnostress is the negative psychological link between people and the introduction of new technologies. Whereas ergonomics is the study of how humans react and physically fit with machines in their environment, technostress is, in many ways, the resistance of change that accompanies newly...
- The Uncanny Valley