Paper Example: Science, Technology and Progress

Over the years, science has evolved, bringing up technological advancements that are of help to humanity. Technology is crucial since it has led to improved life through improved healthcare, education, and lifestyle. However, this same science has led to the downfall of man. Some inventions that man unravels are harmful to the same man. For instance, due to the world's increased demand for food, the genetically modified organism has raided the market, eroding conventional foods. Genetically modified foods are known to be carcinogenic, a factor that has seen many get cancer. Artificial intelligence is also on the rise, robots, slow but sure are replacing man in some essential roles such as healthcare, a thing that has no feelings and should not be trusted, with the life of a person. Due to curiosity, scientists have made harmful inventions that are destroying the world. This paper discusses the role that science has played in the lives of the characters in five science fiction works, done by different authors, that is, Cyborgia, by Susan Slaviero, I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, Elegy by Nick Payne, and Kindred by Octavia Butler.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, is a story about robotics that has explored what life is like living with robots. In their effort to make human beings, scientists invent sophisticated robots. The robots' father designed them with a 'positronic brain' to make them, a blend of man and robot, whereby programmed them with three rules that must not fail if the robots are to function normally. The Three Laws state," A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law"(Anderson et al., 477-493). In cases the robots disobeyed these laws, it would be catastrophic, blood would be shed as these robots are very sophisticated machinery, and live amongst people. The brain that the 'father' of the robots gives the robotic enables them to have feelings such as a normal human being. In his book, Asimov uses human names and pronouns to refer to the robots, for instance, a robot by the name NS-2 gets the name Nestor, RB, Robbie, and QT-1, Cutie as a way of making them even more human. Also, the characters in the story have come to take robots for people because of the robots' ability to sense and not as machines. Gloria, a character in the story, lives with Robbie, whom she has grown fond of and called him, her friend. When Calvin takes Robbie away, Gloria laments that Robbie was not a machine, but her friend, she further tells Calvin that Robbie was just as human as he is. Another human being who anthropomorphizes the robots is Donovan, who has a robot by the name, of Speedy. Donovan only understands the robot from the human point of view, as seen when he uses human attributes to describe Speedy. The robot, Speedy, conflicts with the three laws, he loses balance and staggers off, and is caught up in a loop, as he teeters some familiar rhymes from the songs he has had, in the process(Anderson et al., 477-493). Donovan then calls the robot' drunk' which is a human attribute. In yet another instance, the robots are seen to be exploiting leadership skills just as people. Dave, the robot controls six robots of a lower rank. The robots' emotional capabilities come out when Herbie, lies to Calvin. Calvin wants to know if Milton Ashe loved him as he did, he asks Robot Herbie, but he lies to him that indeed Milton Ashe loved him, to avoid hurting Calvin. When Calvin gets to realize that the robot had lied to him, he calls it, a "liar."

Kindred, is a story by Octavia Butler, that explores the suffering of the blacks in the hands of the white man ads slaves, by use of Dana, as the main vessel to convey this message(Robertson et al., 362-381). Dana is married to Kevin, who is white. As they are unpacking in their new apartment, Dana passes out only to find herself in Maryland in the 1880s. At this point, Dana finds herself in a river where there is a white boy, almost drowning, called Rufus. She goes for his rescue, but the boy's mother screams that Dana was killing their son, the father to the boy punishes for trying to kill their son. Diana gets dizzy and finds herself in their apartment back to 1976. When Dana gets dizzy for the second time, she finds herself in 1815 with Rufus in the scene, and this time around, Rufus has torched his bedroom as a way of expressing his anger, given that his father had made him angry by selling a horse he loved. Dana helps out the boy by extinguishing the fire, then goes off to see a black family in the neighborhood that comprised of a free woman married to a slave husband. On arriving, Dana watches in horror as the slave husband is dragged out of his house by a gang of white men, who beat him mercilessly. Dana offers help to the free woman's mother, then collapses again and finds herself in the present time, at her apartment. When Dana travels through her conscious still, she is with her husband, this time around, Rufus has fallen from a tree and Nigel, a black boy is in the scene, in a plantation. Dana stays on the farm and helps educate Rufus to read and write, however, when Dana attempts to teach Nigel, the black boy. Weylin takes a whip and beats her up. Dana time travels back to her apartment without her husband, Kevin. The next time, Rufus rapes the free woman, Alice, and the slave husband is beating up the boy and almost killing Rufus when Dana begs him not to. (Robertson et al., 362-381) Dana takes Rufus home and advises Alice and Isaac to run away. However, they are afterwards caught and beaten. Alice is eaten by dogs and made a slave for allowing her husband to escape. Dana is whipped when she tries to escape from the plantation. Rufus forces Dana to work on their farm when he accuses her of having killed his father, given that she could not save Rufus's father from dying. Alice commits suicide because of Rufus's deceit. Kelvin accuses Dana of cheating on her with Rufus. In the end, Rufus tries to rape Dana, and she struggles to travel, but Rufus holds on her hand firmly, not letting her go, she slips away; however but her hand is severed.

Cyborgia is a collection of poems by Susan Slaviero which talk about the technological advancement that has created cyborgs. Through rhymes, Susan writes a science fiction that is lyrical but yet very authentic. She addresses issues such as machinery, artificially intelligent, implants, and computerized births. Susan goes further to modify traditional female beauties such as mermaids and the heroines in fairy tales with a marvelous imagination. In his poem, "Spontaneous Visual Impressions From an Ocular Implant, "She talks about mechanical birds that have enormous wings and reddish smoke and a woman whose hands are blue. Here, the poet describes the world that science has modified, to the extent that everything is out of touch with the normal world. The man in this poem has golden arms, unlike a normal person, and this man walks to the moon without the help of any rocket but snake-like things that are around his legs and hands.in a different poem, she talks about guns, and however, the game has to have a gun for it to be successful. She goes further to Explore the computer viruses as a new war that exists in this new world. In this new world that Susan describes, women give birth by the help of a computerized system, and there is no human being to help the woman. The catastrophe that happens here is that instead of the machine delivering the woman of her baby, it takes out the whole of her womb. As much as the machines are useful, the writer here tries to warn that such technologies can be harmful to the people. In her poem, Triptych with Female cyborg," the female cyborgs are described as having machinelike features. Jezebel is described to be having just a cup and hammers, and she has heels of a kitten with an ovary stuck underneath. Her fingernails are nothing that we know, and she is just a framework of spirals and lines. Everything invented. Another feature, the Keloid Formation, has a plant between her teeth that is red, which is meant to stimulate the color of the tree. She also has sleep stimulators and cannot sleep without them. The cyborgs that are talked about in the poems of Susan are lacking in emotions and natural beauty, a fact that makes them just dull machines and nothing more. Elegy, by Nick Payne, is about the manipulation of the brain (Farnell, 1-180). The play depicts technological advancements that have been made possible through science, identity, and love, from the scientific point of view. The play starts as Lorna is discharged from the hospital, where she had brain surgery that has made her unable to recognize her spouse, with whom they have been living together for twenty years. Later, it is revealed to the audience that the woman suffered from a condition called neural prosthesis that causes amnesia. In this play, Nick tries to explore the dangers of scientific discoveries since errors occur. The play also has been to bring into perspective the experiments indicate that blocking memories of a person is possible but can be dangerous at the same time, as this brings suffering to Lorna.

Scientific progress is valuable to man as it has helped change the lives of people for the better. However, when inventions contradict the law of nature, they are no longer useful to humankind. Science is only good when it brings positive progress. Their time travel of Dana cost her harm, the robots kill their inventor, and Lorna and her partner suffer because of scientific inventions.

Works Cited

Anderson, Susan Leigh. "Asimov's "three laws of Robotics" and machine metaethics." Ai & Society 22.4 (2008): 477-493link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00146-007-0094-5/. Accessed 17th April 2020

Farnell, Ian. "Science, science fiction, and Nick Payne's Elegy: a conceptual third way." Studies in Theatre and Performance (2019): 1-18.www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14682761.2019.1608125/. Accessed 17th April 2020

Robertson, Benjamin. "Some Matching Strangeness": Biology, Politics, and the Embrace of History in Octavia Butler's" Kindred." Science Fiction Studies (2010): 362-381.www.jstor.org/stable/25746439/. Accessed 17th April 2020