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Manacle-Forged Minds: Two Images of the Computer in Science-Fiction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

John B. Ower
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Extract

An important aspect of science-fiction is the creation of an imaginative setting by extrapolation from the present frontiers of science and technology. Such projections may be used not only to explore the ramifications which a particular development possesses in itself, but also to examine its significance for its creators. Through its projective analyses, science-fiction possesses a unique capacity to contend with an era in which the geometric accumulation of scientific knowledge is, at an accelerating pace of technological application, sweeping us into an unknown and possibly dangerous future.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 22 , Issue 85 , March 1974 , pp. 47 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © 1974 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1 See Alvin Toffler, Future Shock, London, 1970.

2 H. M. McLuhan, Understanding Media, New York, 1964, p. 19.

3 Quotations from these two works are uniform with Harlan Ellison, " I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" in Robert Silverberg (ed.), The Mirror of Infi nity, San Francisco, 1970, pp. 269-284; and Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey, New York, 1968. The page references in parentheses after quotations refer to these editions.

4 This is especially so as Clarke's novel differs in some respect from the Stanley Kubrick film.

5 Clarke makes the same point regarding the "AE-35" unit which controls the movement of the Discovery's antenna. See Clarke, op. cit., p. 130. The operative factor here is Murphy's First Law of experimental science: If anything can go wrong, it will.

6 2001: a Space Odyssey was obviously created with the English tradition of apocalyptic epic in mind. Like Milton's Paradise Lost, 2001: a Space Odyssey embraces not only the whole of the "spatial cosmos, but also the entire movement of Salvation History from Creation to Apocalypse. The novel begins with a creation story in the episode in which the monolith transforms the minds of man's primitive ancestors. The Fall, which Clarke reinterprets in terms of a conflict between man's ethological and rational natures, takes place when Moon-Watcher slays One-Ear. The Fall is reflected in the ambiguous use to which man puts technology, a problem which reaches crisis proportions by the end of the Twentieth Century. However, the discovery of the second monolith begins the process of man's redemptive self-transcendence, which culminates in the parousia with which 2001: a Space Odyssey ends.

7 For a critical analysis of Ellison's story, see Willis E. McNelly's "Foreword" in The Mirror of Infinity, pp. 265-268.

8 Exodus, III: 13-14.

9 Ellison's use of food is surely significant in this context. Just as food nurtures the body, so the imagination nourishes the spirit.

10 For a succinct description of Freud's ideas in this connection, see Calvin S. Hall, A Primer of Freudian Psychology, New York, n.d., pp. 102-109.

11 See Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation, New York, 1969, pp. 212-228.