Technology Is a Major Factor in Our Lives - Essay Example

?Running Head: Technology and Society Technology and Society Introduction Technology has always been a major factor in our lives, whether we realize it or not. For one thing, this reflection paper would obviously not have been possible without the use of technology – not only because of the obvious matter of this having been done on a computer, but also because the information on this paper came from the internet. Such is no doubt a far cry from how things were 20 years ago, when one would quite literally need to start over from scratch upon making a small mistake – as opposed to today in which a few keystrokes can rectify things quite easily. In fact, even now designers and developers are looking for ways in which to surpass their already remarkable breakthroughs and achievements. Where once ‘robots’ simply meant ‘robotic arms exhibited in the science lab’, today they have evolved into full-on automatons. Where once cellphones were extremely huge, bulky and cumbersome, they can now fit anywhere and be carried anywhere one goes. Music players that were once the size of a small filing cabinet can now be easily held in one hand. Truly, our fascination for technology has allowed us to create great things, and this will no doubt continue to be the case for years to come. This fascination also shows in various areas of pop culture. Works such as Ghost in the Shell or the long-running Gundam franchise are both examples of the lengths to which we envision or predict that technology will evolve, while others such as the .hack franchise portray how technology has very much become hardwired into our lives. This particular paper aims to review two such works – the novel Halting State and the first Terminator movie – due to their relevance especially in today’s day and age. In their own ways, both pieces of work do a great job of capturing both the beautiful and sinister sides of technology: on one hand, it can be used to create, give life and maintain order. But on the other hand, technology can also easily be used to destroy, take life away, and foster chaos. Halting State – Analysis This novel, written by Charles Stross, uses the virtual world as a backdrop, and envisions a virtual world just as vulnerable to crime as the real one – not to mention virtual server networks over mobile phones. While nowhere near the status of such smash hits such as the Harry Potter series, for example, this novel has still managed to gain more than a modest degree of success for itself – enough to be nominated for both the Hugo and Locus awards (Worlds Without End, 2008). The story begins on a relatively mundane note – a faux job offer email sent to Nigel MacDonald for a stint as a home-based programmer for Hayek Associates LLC. At the same time, within the MMORPG known as Avalon Four, a cybercrime has taken place. Specifically, a small band of orcs together with a dragon had been found to have stolen thousands of euros’ worth of prestige items from the game’s central bank. And while this could easily have been written off as a mere in-game offense, it is soon discovered to be much worse when Hayek stocks and cryptographic keys are found to have been compromised in the process. From then on, the story introduces us to three more central characters: Sue, a police officer (herald); Elaine, an investigator (mentor); and Jack Reed, a programmer who happens to be a hardcore gamer. While each of their story lines at first run parallel to each other, they eventually intertwine as these three characters team up to unravel a conspiracy. Eventually, Jack and Nigel are revealed to be one and the same – Nigel MacDonald being the pseudonymous identity. However, soon enough, an even more earth-shattering revelation is revealed – that the entire European network backbone has been hacked into by Chinese hackers. This is the climax at which all pretenses of things being a game are dropped, and also where Jack and Elaine begin to fall in love. Together, the couple make use of Spooks as a sock puppet in order to uncover who the mole within Hayek Associates is, but find out that even the situation as they know it is not as the seem – Hayek Associates being a front for the government, and the mole actually leaking the cryptographic keys to the Chinese. And eventually, even this is revealed to be just a setup by Marcus Hackman, who has orchestrated the whole turn of events in order to gain a total of 26 million euros. The protagonists promptly expose him, but do not get off unscathed; Jack takes two gunshots, though he ultimately survives. The characters themselves are mostly okay but, as expected, the primary protagonist and antagonist are the ones that are best-written and get the most screen time. As expected, Jack/Nigel is an individual with a perfectly innocuous-sounding name (or names), but whose ordinary exterior belies a much more complex character – and, overall, seems to be a combination of the trickster and hero archetypes. Both the names Jack Reed and Nigel MacDonald can and probably do often occur in reality. For such a person to have a passion for MMORPGs is slightly less probable, but no more impossible. However, for that person to be an expert hacker on top of being a hardcore gamer stretches willing suspension of disbelief to the limit – but perhaps it is this that forms much of the novel’s appeal. Hackman is remarkable not only for his rather… uncreative yet meaningful name (Hackman), but also how he lives up to it – given how he earns more than 26 million euros through his illegal activities, one would think he more than earned his name by the end. But contrary to the protagonist, the decidedly unsubtle nature of Hackman’s name matches perfectly with his equally inscrutable methods, and could quite easily put him under the heading of ‘trickster’ – a villainous version to contrast against Jack. For instance, that he would steal millions from his own money is mind-boggling, since he could very well resort to legitimate means to gain all that money – albeit over a longer time frame. His status as the hero’s evil counterpart could even designate him as the ‘shadow’. In his own book, Cline (2005) attests that, given time, virtual reality will completely change how we live our lives, and may even become as real as the actual reality in which we live. Given how a fortune’s worth of real money was stolen in the context of an MMORPG, this is exactly what happens in Halting State. One wonders whether such a feat would not have been equally doable in the real world; given Hackman’s vast pool of resources, he could easily have put together a team of highly trained individuals to do it. Instead, he chooses to commit the heist in the context of an MMO. Even in real life, there are those who quit their jobs and abandon their education just to play games all day, as cases in Asian countries such as China and the Philippines show. There are those who spend thousands of real currency on virtual goods, and even those who actually kill other players over rare items or in-game feuds (Santo, 2009). There has even been at least one case where a (female) gamer offered to have sex with players in exchange for rare items and other favors – and in some of these instances, they had significant others who did not mind. Thus, unsurprisingly, even seemingly innocent hobbies such as online gaming may cause the degradation of morals in our society if left unchecked. And to a lesser extent, overaddiction to videogames may wreak havoc on one’s social life as well. For instance, as the existence of the so-called WoW widow(er)s – married men and women whose spouses each suffer from a severe case of videogame addiction, specifically World of Warcraft – attests (Benedetti, 2007), one’s actions and activities in the virtual world can and often do have consequences in the real world. People have fallen in love online, only to come away with broken hearts as they discover their partner to – putting in mildly – not be exactly who they had in mind. For instance, the cute elf chick one designates as his online girlfriend may in fact turn out to be a poser, a high school-aged young man who chooses to cross-play precisely because of the attention female characters get. The cool, capable and popular veteran one meets in the game world may in fact be a recluse who shuts himself in his room all day. The lonely teenaged boy looking for love in an MMORPG may find that the undead sorceress he hangs around with online is a much bigger issue than previously thought. Needless to say, not everything is as it seems when on the internet, and thus those who go online on a regular basis would do well to take everything with a grain of salt. All in all, the novel is an excellent example of what happens when an MMORPG becomes treated as serious business, and is taken too far. The exciting and suspenseful story coupled with the interesting premise is something that should not be overlooked – even and especially by dedicated gamers. Terminator – Analysis This movie, meanwhile, was directed and written by James Cameron in 1984, and most famously starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton, Cameron’s then-wife. After it experienced unexpected and unprecedented critical and commercial success, it was further expanded into a trilogy, before being adapted into a TV series and finally being retooled in a fourth film. While all entries in the franchise involve the titular Terminators – emotionless, merciless, nigh-invulnerable, human-seeming cyborgs bent on either killing or protecting John and Sarah Connor – being sent back in time, the first featured only an evil Terminator. The plot itself seems relatively simple at first: a murderous cyborg and a freedom fighter travel back in time, from the year 2029 to the year 1984, with opposing objectives. Whereas the freedom fighter – Kyle Reese – seeks to protect a woman named Sarah Connor, the cyborg – the titular Terminator – has been programmed with orders to kill her. It is at a nightclub that Kyle and Sarah meet, narrowly escaping an attempt on the latter’s life courtesy of the Terminator (who had already disposed of two other, unlucky women also named Sarah Connor). While on the run, Kyle takes time to explain the situation to Sarah: that he is from 45 years into the future, where a malfunctioning AI network has launched a nuclear holocaust on the entire human race. Standing between humanity and utter annihilation is John, Sarah’s as-yet unborn son, who is in fact destined to lead the resistance to victory. In desperation, Skynet sends a Terminator back in time to kill Sarah, thereby averting John’s birth and erasing the future in which the resistance triumphs. And in turn, the resistance responds by sending their own operative back – Kyle Reese himself. However, their moment of peace is short-lived as the Terminator chooses that moment to unceremoniously drop in and make another attempt on their lives, causing Sarah and Kyle to drive as far away as they possibly can – and in the process, get arrested by the police, which leads to Kyle being labeled as insane and delusional. And as the Terminator attacks yet again, the two escape to a nearby motel where, after John reveals his romantic feelings for Sarah (he fell in love with her through a photograph given to him by John from the future), the two make love. It is here that the Terminator is ultimately destroyed by being crushed under a hydraulic press, but at the high cost of Kyle’s life. The final scene of the movie has Sarah traveling through Mexico, recording audio tapes for John to listen to when he gets older. Near the very end, a Mexican boy takes a picture of Sarah – the same picture that eventually ends up in Kyle’s possession in the future. All in all, given how one of the oft-quoted lines from the franchise is that ‘there is no fate but what we make’, it is highly ironic that John Connor is conceived and born through the events of a stable time loop – implying that fate is predetermined. And if John’s birth is predetermined, so too is the fall of Skynet a foregone conclusion. The characters in this film are surprisingly complex, with the obvious exception of the Terminator – and the complexity of the characters is most likely why the film experienced such levels of success. For instance, at first glance, Kyle Reese appears to be the typical action hero: overly macho, brave, courageous, and gets to score with women. However, that he and Sarah end up hooking up happens not only to boost his credentials as an action hero, it is in fact used as a plot device – in effect, John Connor caused his own birth, creating a stable time loop. And given how his role is to guide Sarah, the heroine – not to mention his death by the end of the first movie – he is more of a mentor figure than the main hero. Sarah Connor, meanwhile, is an undeniably interesting example of a heroine. In Terminator she seems at first like an ordinary adult female, forced into extraordinary circumstances by the arrival of the killer robot from the future and the dashing mercenary offering to help her escape. However by the time the sequel rolls around, she is much tougher, and much more capable – and much less mentally stable. While much of her personal issues can be attributed to her experiences from the last film, these still do not completely make her the ideal mother for the future leader of the resistance – or, indeed, an ideal mother in any way, shape or form. Unfortunately, her character was instead seen by feminists as a celebration of ‘girl power’ and female independence – which, according to both James Cameron and Linda Hamilton, the actress who portrayed her, is not how Sarah is supposed to be perceived at all. In fact, the second movie shows her becoming almost as ruthless as the Terminators she has dedicated her life to stopping. This culminates in her decision as to whether or not to kill the man responsible for the creation of Skynet in the first place in order to prevent Skynet from existing at all – at which point, of course, she realizes that she has become no different from the Terminators themselves. This being the case, the Terminator can then be considered as the ‘shadow’, for embodying traits Sarah herself possesses but is unaware of. And of course, the titular Terminator himself is known for being an implacable, mechanical, nigh-invulnerable monster. As said in the first film, it can neither be swayed nor reasoned with, nor will it ever stop until the target is dead. However, the Terminators that appear in other installments of the franchise are surprisingly more complex and more, for lack of a better word, human. For instance, the one in the 2 could arguably be called an even better parent to John than Sarah herself, while Cameron from The Sarah Connor Chronicles can be strongly implied to have fallen in love with John after the events of the series. From this, it can be said that one of the key points of the movie is that anyone – anything – with sentience can develop decidedly human traits such as compassion and respect for human life, and even those based on artificial intelligence are no exception. This is best summed up in 2 by the reprogrammed T-800 who, before being lowered into the molten steel (given his inability to self-terminate), tells a young John Connor this surprisingly tearjerking line: ‘I know now why you cry, but it is something I could never do’. If a machine could have had a soul, the Terminator would have earned his right there and then. Another message to be had from the movie is that while the future is unknown, and may in fact be scary and frightening at times, that is no excuse not to meet it head-on. In fact, it is precisely because the future is unknown that we must face it head-on, because only the ignorant fear the unknown – and get nowhere because of it. For instance, had Sarah frozen up in fear upon first encountering the Terminator, that would have been the end of it – just as it would have been the end had she and John given up in 3, upon learning that they only delayed and not averted Judgment Day. But even if that was indeed the case, their subsequent actions managed to change their fate. It can thus be said here that strong men don’t need to read the future or know what it holds; instead, they make their own future. This message is seen even more clearly in the Terminators themselves – killer robots from the future that could not be stopped by anything the heroes threw at them, at least until they themselves had a Terminator on their side. Given the seeming futility of struggling against the Terminators, it may be questioned as to why Sarah and Kyle refused to give up and instead continued fighting. It seemed utterly pointless to try stopping what could not be stopped, so what good was there in trying? The answer, of course, is that they were fighting for something – cliche as it may seem. When one has a dream, cause or otherwise anything he deems worth fighting for, there is no obstacle that can stand in his way. The reason Sarah and Kyle fought the Terminator in the as hard as they did lay not only in Sarah’s then unborn son, but also in the love they shared at that moment. When fighting for something dear to him, a man will face any and all obstacles just to defend that cause he so holds dear. Similarities and Differences Realism of Technology Involved In their own ways, the novel Halting State and the film Terminator both dealt with the darker side of technology – how it could be abused, misused, or otherwise harnessed to bring about death and destruction. Other similarities and differences exist, such as in the realism of the technology involved, the themes explored, and message. First, Halting State’s premise – that of an MMORPG serving to supplant the real world in some aspects – is not very surprising, nor is it that far-off, given how gold farmers on games such as WoW are able to operate and even profit (Scott, 2007). Aside from this, players can also sell in-game items and even character accounts in exchange for real-life currency, something rather unsurprisingly outlawed by Blizzard. The reason for this is that the modus operandi employed by such gold farmers involves obtaining the player’s account details, which they can then use to hack the account and leave it bare (WoW Europe, 2008). Thus, a player only hoping to get rich in-game may come out of a deal with a gold farmer with even less than he had coming in – lending some truth to the saying that cheaters never prosper. Even now, trading real money for virtual items has been legitimized to an extent. One of the best examples can be seen in Ragnarok Online, or more specifically in those countries which have a free-to-play server – such as iRO Valkyrie, as well as pRO Valkyrie and pRO Valhalla. In both cases, one no longer needs to pay to log on his character, but is instead encouraged to spend money in order to buy rare and powerful items for his characters and to enable them to advance more easily. While this is definitely a step towards the scenario depicted in Halting State’s world, only time will tell if such a scenario does indeed come to pass. Even now, though, Castranova (2007) tells us how MMORPGs are serving as the gateway intended to make us more open to the idea of gradually transitioning from life in the real world to life in the virtual world. On the other hand, the premise of Terminator, while seemingly fantastical, is fast becoming reality. As stated on National Geographic’s official website (Lovgren, 2007), countries such as Japan and Korea have begun creating surprisingly human and lifelike robots such as EveR-1 (‘Eve’ from the Biblical Eve; ‘R’ from the word ‘robot’) whose array of speech recognition and vocal synthesis systems mimic human voices, and whose facial musculature gives it the ability of emulating facial expressions. Given such recent breakthroughs, these robots are inching closer and closer to matching the definition of the word ‘android’ as defined by Dinello (2005); that is, it is said to be a robot or synthetic being designed specifically to be indistinguishable from regular humans. Female androids in particular, also called gynoids (Melzer, 2006), are said to be the result of society’s desire to create the perfect woman – and work especially well to reinforce essentialist ideas of femininity (Grebowicz et al, 2007). Other, rather more cynical writers have attributed the gynoid phenomenon to the supposedly unending need for men to satisfy their own sexual desire. Whatever the case, scientists are working slowly but surely to make such a scenario reality. In fact, South Korean scientists in particular have the lofty ambition of making sure that, by 2020, every household will own a robot (Lovgren, 2006). All in all, while the technology featured in both works is seemingly fantastical and out of this world, the recent advances in technology make the scenarios they depict much more likely to become reality. One can only hope that the scientists responsible for developing such technology are able to make it so that it cannot easily be abused – and, in the case of the latter, that they are also capable of accurately recreating the human conscience. Otherwise, the nightmare scenario of killer robots a la Terminator may well become a reality. Themes On the whole, both works dealt with the good and bad sides associated with the use of technology; that technology by itself was double-edged and could go both ways, and that ultimately, it is up to the individual to decide to what end he uses it. However, the specifics, or as to how these works sought to get this point across differed greatly. These differences shall thus be the focus of this section. For one, Halting State takes the question of what would happen if life were more like an MMORPG, or otherwise what it would be like if everything can be done on the internet, and utterly deconstructs it and shows why and how that would be a bad thing. As shown from how it took the protagonists an insane amount of skill, patience and effort to catch Hackman, it is considerably harder to track a criminal through the internet – not only because Hackman, true to his name, is a master hacker, but also for the simple reason that the internet affords total anonymity to people going online. And true enough, even with current technology, it is more than possible to do all kinds of damage from behind one’s computer. One can spread damaging information about others online, and at a much faster rate than could otherwise be done. Online copies of such damaging information are also much harder to erase, making the damage that much harder to undo – for instance, the sex scandals that abound on the internet are and will always be nigh-impossible to completely erase, regardless of the best efforts put forth by the government or other parties. Websites such as 4chan and Something Awful exist to remind us that there is no shortage of people who have nothing to do, and would gladly cause others misery and grief (hence the term ‘griefer’) just to obtain their much-needed amusement. Thefts can also be conducted through the internet, whether ranging from something as seemingly (relatively) harmless as hacking one’s account in an MMORPG, to more severe examples such as hacking and then completely draining one’s Paypal. Needless to say, that everything can be done on the internet is not a purely good thing; just like anything else, there is a dark side to it. On the other hand, Terminator shows what happens when artificial intelligence is not tempered with artificial morality in order to reign in its actions. As shown in the first movie, the titular Terminator had killed two other women who just happened to share their name with the protagonist, in addition to the countless other civilians it killed throughout the film – which should give one an idea when robotic killing machines are created, but without the sense of morality that guides the actions of human soldiers. Counterexamples are also given in the same franchise, such as in 2 where a reprogrammed T-800 successfully disables and disarms an entire squad of innocent, if misguided, police troopers – without inflicting a single casualty. It should also be noted that, in Chronicles, John does his best to rein in Cameron’s more murderous tendencies unless there is no other choice. The existence of both instances of technology being used for good and evil in the Terminator franchise also make yet another of its messages perfectly clear: if robots are capable of learning right and wrong, it is because we humans are capable of teaching it to them. Conclusion As depicted in the novel and film reviewed above, technology is simultaneously a wonderful and a terrible thing. The same internet connection that is used to research for information on the web can easily be used to cause all manner of mischief, from surfing pornography to spreading false and libelous information and even to committing theft. Robots can be programmed to kill just as easily as they can be made to protect, and even otherwise-benign systems such as traffic lights can be circumvented in such a way that maximum chaos and panic will ensue. Truly, both works were marvelously entertaining and made for absolutely awesome ways to pass the time. Even the average person would no doubt find some entertainment value in them, and sci-fi enthusiasts would quite literally knock themselves out trying to thoroughly enjoy them. After their entertainment value, though, what should be considered next is their educational value: while the lessons to be learned from fictional works such as these may be fantastical and therefore seemingly inapplicable to our own lives at first, it is the ones that appear to be the most outrageous that often hold the most truth to them. And before long, the lessons taught by these works of art may hold true not only in our fantasy, but in our reality as well. Because if recent breakthroughs in technology are anything to go by, the day may not be far away that we walk hand in hand and side by side with the robots we once thought existed only in our imaginations. References 2008 Awards and Nominees 2008, Worlds without end [Online] Available at: http://www.worldswithoutend.com/books_year_index.asp?year=2008 Benedetti, W 2007, Game widows grieve ‘lost’ spouses. MSNBC. [Online] Available at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20397322/ Castranova, E 2007, Exodus to the virtual world: How online fun is changing reality. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Cline, MS 2005, Power, madness, & immortality: The future of virtual reality. [Online] Available at: Virtualreality.universityvillagepress.com. Dinello, D 2005, Technophobia!: Science fiction visions of posthuman technology. University of Texas Press. p. 109. Grebowicz, M., Duchamp, L.T., Griffith, N. and Bisson, T. (2007). SciFi in the mind's eye: reading science through science fiction. Open Court. Lovgren, S. (2006) A Robot in Every Home by 2020, South Korea Says. National Geographic News. [Online] Available at: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/09/060906-robots.html Lovgren, S 2007, Robot code of ethics to prevent android abuse, protect humans. National Geographic News. [Online] Available at: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/070316-robot-ethics.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/070316-robot-ethics.html Melzer, P 2006, Alien constructions: science fiction and feminist thought, University of Texas Press. p. 202. Santo, M 2008, MMORPG clan rivalry leads to real-life murder. hot hardware [Online] Available at: http://hothardware.com/News/MMORPG-Clan-Rivalry-Leads-to-RealLife-Murder/ Read More