This past week the Chanel fashion show for the Spring/Summer 2017 collection opened with “purist black and white — on robots” (Foley). Karl Lagerfeld inspired by computer wires and digital graphics, decided to construct the beautiful Chanel collection around technology. “It’s something of our time,” he said, as well as calling the inclusion of delicate lingerie pieces as “Intimate Technology” (Foley). Besides developing alluring masterpieces, Karl Lagerfeld is not only making a statement in the fashion world, but a statement of our current society. The truth is, we are becoming one with technology, there is no really longer a definite line between cyborgs and humans anymore. Our lives have become immersed in the use of technology to be able to complete our everyday tasks. By reading Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? readers learn of how humans are becoming like a real android, a cyborg.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a science fiction book that touches some deep interesting subjects alongside a plot that revolves around a bounty hunter, Rick, who’s job is to eliminate, or “retire”, androids who have come to Earth. These androids are viewed as criminals, who have killed humans in order to scape Mars. “This is necessary. Remember: they killed humans in order to get away.” (62), is what one of the bounty hunters, Phil Resch, tells Rick, because this is when the star of the novel, starts to question his actions.
Rick is starting to have issues differentiating androids from humans. The problem with Rick is not that he is not skilled enough to retire the “andys”, the problem is that, he has lost sight of the fine line that divided them so easily. We can see this when Rick is almost sure his bounty hunter mate is an android. “I’ve got to tell him, he said to himself. It’s unethical and cruel not to. Mr. Resch, you’re an android, he thought to himself” (57). The reader can without an effort see how he started to feel empathetic towards androids, he felt uneasy to bring such a fatal news to him.
We see Rick struggle again with killing another android, Luba Luft because of the unconsciously increasing empathy towards the robots. She is described in the reading as an incredible singer who performs at the War Memorial Opera House. Rick cannot bring himself to retire her right away after capturing her. Instead, Rick does something nice for Luba, he buys her a book she was looking at. “It’s very nice of you,” Luba said as they entered the elevator. “There’s something very strange and touching about humans. An android would never have done that” (60). It was an honest action triggered by real human empathy indeed. After Resch helps him retire her, he then feels some kind of guilt, uneasiness and has trouble with his conscious. “I don’t get it; how can a talent like that be a liability to our society?” (62). The reader can see that he continues to question himself, his morality as a person. Is he really doing the right thing? He brings himself together and tries to stick to his duties. Later, he falls into the carnal desires of a typical human, and sleeps with a rather beautiful android, Rachael Rosen. This is another action that confuses the reader, because it is an act that we naturally believe is only meant to be experienced between humans.
His continued cognitive dissonance makes the reader inquire “where is the line? What makes us really different?” Rick is only able to move on from here and eliminate all of the remaining escaped droids because Racheal reveals the secret behind the evil master plan of the Rosen Association, who are trying to take over the humans on Earth. At last, the reader thinks, there is the line, androids were malicious and they should be eliminated. But in the very end of the story, Rick finds an electric toad. Him and his wife, Iran, still decides to take care of it, regardless of it not being a real animal. The reader, evidently, is confused again, because Dick just made a point of how real, natural, or robotic something is, it does not really matter at the end.
Dick’s point here is to show that, we are not machines, but that we are definitely immersed in technology. Rick’s wife does not throw away the electric toad, she decides to take care of it. Rick feels empathy for Luba Luft and Racheal Rosen, he does not see how they could be more than beautiful women who are talented or very attractive. He feels uncomfortable for disappointing Resch with the apparent truth that he is not human, which will not only bring him dismay, but will mean that Rick will have to end his “life”. Dick presents all of these great examples of how one way or another, we allow ourselves to choose to live with technology and we are naturally, unconsciously or consciously okay with that.
Dick not only shows us how connected we are with technology with only Rick’s interactions with the andys, but he gives us more hints that are a little bit more alarming too. Buster Friendly and His Friendly Friends are the stars of the only tv channel available, basically all over the galaxy. They have talk shows to essentially entertain the humans every single day at every hour. “I was sitting here one afternoon,” Iran said, “and naturally I had tamed on Buster Friendly and His Friendly Friends and he was talking about a big news item he’s about to break”(3). Buster Friendly and His Friendly Friends are cyborgs, but who stops to think about that? Technology, like Iran said, was “naturally” part of their daily lives, and nobody second guessed it. Except maybe John Isidore, who portrays the fool of the novel called a “chickenhead”. “How did Buster Friendly find the time to tape both his aud and vid shows? Isidore wondered” (33). But Isidore just wondered, and he as the rest of the population, continued to listen to the show and believed whatever Buster Friendly and His Friendly Friends were saying. They truly believed Buster Friendly was “the most important human being alive” (32). This goes to show how androids were so connected with humans. No wonder Rick was having a hard time being able to differentiate them.
One of the oddest ways Dick gets the reader about this ordinary unconscious connection with technology, is by talking about the mood organ. The mood organ is a machine that humans use to tune in their moods, feelings and desires so that they can properly function throughout the day. Like, we would think a cyborg would, wouldn’t it? We think of robots as machines that should be programmed by humans, not the other way around. “At his console he hesitated between dialing for a thalamic suppressant (which would abolish his mood of rage) or a thalamic stimulant (which would make him irked enough to win the argument)”(3). The reader struggles to distinguish at the beginning of the reading if Rick and Iran are actually humans because of said mood organ. As the reading continues, and as I have described earlier, the line between who is human and who is a android gets finer and finer.
Why would Dick include in his book a mood organ? Maybe because he is trying to highlight that we in deed use such “mood organs” everyday to function, just like Iran and Rick do. “Will you go to bed now? If I set the mood organ to a 670 setting?” (110). The author gave it to us in the most simple way of how it actually happens in our daily lives, yet in this perspective, we struggle to make sense out of it, because these actions sound odd and unnatural. Still, people today can easily grab a pill to be able to sleep at night if they are suffering from too much stress or insomnia. They can grab their phones, synced to their car’s computer, play an upbeat song to get away from depressed and sad feelings. People can go to a bar and get alcoholic drinks to forget about their day, or take an energetic drink to make it through a long day. That is, a mood organ in our current society. At some extent, we are letting ourselves be programed by technology, just like a cyborg.
People can argue that we are not like cyborgs, that we might have become too needy with technology but we are always able to “disconnect” our lives from it. But can we really? Author Donna Haraway argues this on her extensive paper “A Cyborg Manifesto”. During her prose, she is able to make anyone realize how combined our lives actually are with technology. “The frame for my sketch is set by the extent and importance of rearrangements in worldwide social relations tied to scene and technology.” She is talking about how she created a list of commonalities of our daily lives that are no longer constituted 100% naturally, so we can see how much we are connected with technology. She includes things like: heat, hygiene, noise, population control, stress management, reproduction, among others. If we are taking a shower, we need a plumbing system installed in our homes, which runs thanks to electricity. If someone is struggling with stress, their psychiatrist might prescribed them a pill, which was manufactured in a laboratory with the use of computers and other technological tools. “There is no fundamental, ontological separation in our formal knowledge of machine and organism, of technical and organic. Our sense of connection to our tools is heightened”(313). Haraway’s point is, we need technology because we are able to function with technology, just like Iran and Rick with their mood organ. Today, our everyday starts and end with technology, there is not really a way around it anymore.
Another proof of how we are becoming like cyborgs, or like droids from the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is with the advances in technology targeted to help people with disabilities. “[P]erhaps paraplegics and other severely handicapped people can have the most intense experiences of complex hybridization with other communication devices. (313) Machines can be prosthetic devices, intimate components, friendly selves” (314). Haraway is trying to say that technology has come so far that now, we can literally install an arm robot in our bodies. People with prosthetic devices are the most pure and obvious notion of how that fine line between human and androids is diminishing as time goes by. Notice how she uses the words “intimate” and “friendly”, she does not sees it as a hostile takeover of humanity like Philip Dick, but more like something we should live with peacefully.
It is important to address that, even though Dick shows us on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? that our lives have become connected with technology, he still insists on one common skill androids did not share with humans: empathy. Regardless of their human-like appearance and artificial intelligence, androids did not demonstrate real empathy. Disick clearly states it at the beginning of the reading, “Empathy, evidently, existed only within the human community, whereas intelligence to some degree could be found throughout every phylum and order including the arachnids. Because, ultimately, the emphatic gift blurred the boundaries between hunter and victim, between the successful and the defeated” (11). This is why Rick had so much trouble retiring the androids, his empathy had indeed blurred the line between who is human and who is android, who is deserving of living and who is deserving of dying, who, in fact, is actually different. This is true, as a matter of fact. Studies support that we can feel empathy “for people who live very different lives than you – so long as you begin identifying with them on a basic human level” (Surugue). Rick is feeling empathy for something he cannot truly understand, a robot that looks like a human but does not live like one, and that is the true beauty and power of being a human.
I believe what the author Philip Dick is trying to show us with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is that we have to be more attentive of how far and quickly technology is being immersed in our lives. Buster Friendly and his Friendly Friends were not being “friendly” towards humans. The droids on the book were killers without remorse or feelings. They were all plotting to take over Earth, silently, camouflaging themselves among the humans, engaging in their lives, so they could in fact, blur the lines. Iran and Rick believed they were dependable on their mood organ, even though they could experience feelings and moods without it. Technology is not something that can be categorized as good or bad, is a tool like a hammer, that can be used and should be used wisely. We cannot let media brainwash us into believing unreliable opinions and facts, or make us take actions in ways we should not. In today’s world we can be compared to cyborgs, from being attached to our phones to have literally attached a machine to us, but we will never stop being humans because we have something a robot will never be able to have: empathy.
References:
Dick, P. K. (1968). Do androids dream of electric sheep. New York: Random House Publishing Group.
Foley, B. (2016). Chanel RTW Spring 2017. WWD. Retrieved from http://wwd.com/runway/spring-ready-to-wear-2017/paris/chanel/review/
Haraway, D. “A Cyborg Manifiesto”. The Cybercultures Reader. Bell, D. and Kennedy, B. M. Routledge, 2001.
Surugue, L. (2016). Reading books and watching films makes you kinder in real life. International Business Times. Retrieved from http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/reading-books-watching-films-makes-you-kinder-real-life-1571434