Futures of the Human Subject: Technical Mediation, Foucault and Science Fiction 2022009655, 2022009656, 9780367762995, 9781032324227, 9781003166320

Table of contents :
Cover
Endorsements
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Copyright Permissions
Introduction
1 Technical Mediation, Subjectivity and Science Fiction
Early Philosophy of Technology and Utopia/Dystopia Syndrome
Empirical Turn
Posthuman Perspective
Philosophy of Technical Mediation—Key Concepts
Technical Mediation and Foucault
Modes of Human–Technology Interaction
Ethics of Technology
Science Fiction
2 The Circle: Embracing Social Media and Personal Transparency
Utopian Vision of ICTs as Subjectifying Discourse
Self-Conception, Social Self and the Internet as Archive
Subjectifying Power of the Algorithm
Pressure for Social Media Activity
Gamification and the Quantified Self
Surveillance and Personal Transparency
3 Rainbows End: New Vistas Through Displays in Contacts
New Life After Alzheimer’s
Materiality of Discourse
Wearing: The Physical Mode
Cognitive Enhancement
Personal Interaction and Multitasking
Belief Circles and Play
Cognitive Labour and Control
4 MaddAddam Trilogy: Alleviating Existential Fears
Life in the Compounds
Ethical Subjectification of God’s Gardeners
Makover Culture
Producing Patients
Becoming Crake
Conclusion
Works Cited
Index

Citation preview

“What can science fiction teach us about our constantly changing relationship with technology? At a time in which our views and assumptions are challenged by dazzling discoveries and inspiring innovations on a daily basis, this book combines literary criticism and philosophical insights to interpret the brave new world around us.” Detlef Wagenaar, Saxion University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands

Futures of the Human Subject

Futures of the Human Subject focuses on the representation of the effects of technology use on human subjectivity in several recent near-future science fiction novels. Sharing the idea that human subjects are constructed in the world in which they exist, this volume inscribes itself in the wider field of posthumanism which contests the liberal humanist notion of people as self-contained, autono­ mous agents. At the same time, it is the first substantial study of literary repre­ sentations of the human subject carried out within the conceptual framework of Foucault-inflected philosophy of technical mediation, which examines the nature of the relation between people and specific technologies as well as the way in which this relation affects human subjectivity. As such, the book may help readers to exercise more effective control over the way in which they are constituted as subjects in this technologically saturated world. Sławomir Kozioł is an assistant professor at the University of Rzeszów, Poland. His academic interests include science fiction, posthumanism, theories of the human subject, philosophy of technical mediation, social space and new-media art. He has published articles in Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Extrapolation, Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies, Papers on Language and Literature and Science Fiction Studies, among others.

Perspectives on the Non-Human in Literature and Culture Series Editor: Karen Raber, University of Mississippi, USA Literary and cultural criticism has ventured into a brave new world in recent decades: posthumanism, ecocriticism, critical animal studies, the new materi­ alisms, the new vitalism, and other related approaches have transformed the critical environment, reinvigorating our encounters with familiar texts, and inviting us to take note of new or neglected ones. A vast array of non-human creatures, things, and forces are now emerging as important agents in their own right. Inspired by human concern for an ailing planet, ecocriticism has grappled with the question of how important works of art can be to the preservation of something we have traditionally called “nature.” Yet literature’s capacity to take us on unexpected journeys through the networks of affiliation and affinity we share with the earth on which we dwell—and without which we die—and to confront us with the drama of our common struggle to survive and thrive has not diminished in the face of what Lyn White Jr. called “our ecological crisis.” From animals to androids, non-human creatures and objects populate critical analyses in increasingly complex ways, complicating our conception of the cosmos by dethroning the individual subject and dismantling the comfortable categories through which we have interpreted our existence. Until now, how­ ever, the elements that compose this wave of scholarship on non-human entities have had limited places to gather to be nurtured as a collective project. “Per­ spectives on the Non-Human in Literature and Culture” provides that local habitation. In this series, readers will find creatures of all descriptions, as well as every other form of biological life; they will also meet the non-biological, the microscopic, the ethereal, the intangible. It is our goal for the series to provide an encounter zone where all forms of human engagement with the non-human in all periods and national literatures can be explored, and where the discoveries that result can speak to one another, as well as to scholars and students. Entangled Fictions Nonhuman Animals in an Indian World Suvadip Sinha Futures of the Human Subject Technical Mediation, Foucault and Science Fiction Sławomir Kozioł Representing Post(Human) Enhancement Technologies in Twenty-First Century US Fiction Carmen Laguarta-Bueno For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Perspectives-on-the-Non-Human-in-Literature-and-Culture/book-series/PNHLC

Futures of the Human Subject Technical Mediation, Foucault and Science Fiction

Sławomir Kozioł

First published 2023 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Sławomir Kozioł The right of Sławomir Kozioł to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kozioł, Sławomir (Philologist), author.

Title: Futures of the human subject : technical mediation, Foucault and

science fiction / Sławomir Kozioł.

Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022009655 (print) | LCCN 2022009656 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780367762995 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032324227 (paperback) |

ISBN 9781003166320 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Science fiction--History and criticism. | Technology in

literature. | Human beings in literature. | LCGFT: Literary criticism.

Classification: LCC PN3433.6 .K69 2023 (print) | LCC PN3433.6 (ebook) |

DDC 813/.087620906--dc23/eng/20220518

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022009655

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022009656

ISBN: 978-0-367-76299-5 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-32422-7 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-16632-0 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003166320

Typeset in Sabon

by Taylor & Francis Books

For Ewa

Contents

Acknowledgements Copyright Permissions Introduction 1

Technical Mediation, Subjectivity and Science Fiction

xi

xii

1

11

Early Philosophy of Technology and Utopia/Dystopia

Syndrome 12

Empirical Turn 14

Posthuman Perspective 16

Philosophy of Technical Mediation—Key Concepts 18

Technical Mediation and Foucault 24

Modes of Human–Technology Interaction 27

Ethics of Technology 36

Science Fiction 39

2

The Circle: Embracing Social Media and Personal Transparency

70

Utopian Vision of ICTs as Subjectifying Discourse 71

Self-Conception, Social Self and the Internet as Archive 75

Subjectifying Power of the Algorithm 79

Pressure for Social Media Activity 83

Gamification and the Quantified Self 90

Surveillance and Personal Transparency 99

3

Rainbows End: New Vistas Through Displays in Contacts New Life After Alzheimer’s 117

Materiality of Discourse 119

Wearing: The Physical Mode 122

Cognitive Enhancement 125

116

x

Contents Personal Interaction and Multitasking 129

Belief Circles and Play 136

Cognitive Labour and Control 143

4

MaddAddam Trilogy: Alleviating Existential Fears

153

Life in the Compounds 155

Ethical Subjectification of God’s Gardeners 163

Makover Culture 169

Producing Patients 181

Becoming Crake 188

Conclusion

195

Works Cited Index

213

225

Acknowledgements

I am deeply indebted to Jennifer Abbott and Michelle Salyga, editors at Routledge, for taking on this project and for their help during various stages of this work. I would also like to express my gratitude to Anita Bhatt and Mitchell Manners, editorial assistants at the press, for their support in the long process of bringing the manuscript to print. For helpful advice on how to improve my manuscript, I am very grateful to the four external reviewers for Routledge—Asle H. Kiran, Detlef Wagenaar and the two readers who remained anonymous. I would like to add here that any mistakes or omissions are my own. For financial support, I would like to express my gratitude to the University of Rzeszów. Finally, I would like to thank my family—my parents and brothers—for their stimulating interest in my project. I owe my deepest gratitude, however, to my wife Ewa for her uplifting presence and support. I dedicate this book to her.

Copyright Permissions

Excerpts from BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley, Copyright © 1932 Mrs. Laura Huxley. Reprinted by permission of Vintage Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. All rights reserved. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is pro­ hibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Penguin Random House Canada Limited for permission. Excerpts from BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley. Copyright © 1932, 1946 by Aldous Huxley. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Excerpts from BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley. Copyright © 1932, 1946 by Aldous Huxley. Reprinted by permission of Georges Borch­ ardt, Inc., on behalf of the Aldous and Laura Huxley Trust. All rights reserved. Excerpts from BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley. © Mrs Laura Huxley, 1932, published by Vintage. Extract reproduced by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. An excerpt from “Burning Chrome” by William Gibson. Reprinted by permission of SLL/Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc. Copyright by William Gibson. Excerpts from THE CIRCLE by Dave Eggers, copyright © 2013 by Dave Eggers. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. THE CIRCLE by Dave Eggers. Copyright © 2013, Dave Eggers, used by permission of The Wylie Agency (UK) Limited. Excerpts from “Cosmetic Surgery and the Televisual Makeover: A Fou­ cauldian Feminist Reading” by Cressida J. Heyes, Feminist Media Studies, 2007, Taylor & Francis. Copyright © Cressida J. Heyes. Reprinted by per­ mission of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Ltd, http://www.tandfonline. com) Excerpts from FUTURELAND by Walter Mosley. Copyright © 2001 by Walter Mosley. Reprinted by permission of Walter Mosley and the Watkins/ Loomis Agency

Copyright Permissions

xiii

An excerpt from “The Machine Stops” by E. M. Forster. Copyright by E. M. Forster. Reprinted by permission of the Provost and Scholars of King’s College, Cambridge and the Society of Authors as the E.M. Forster Estate. Excerpts from MADDADDAM: A NOVEL by Margaret Atwood, copyright © 2013 by O.W. Toad Ltd. Used by permission of Nan A. Talese, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Copyright © O. W. Toad Ltd., 2013, MADDADDAM by Margaret Atwood, Reprinted by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Excerpts from MADDADDAM by Margaret Atwood, Copyright © 2013 O. W. Toad Ltd. Reprinted by permission of McClelland & Stewart, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. All rights reserved. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Penguin Random House Canada Limited for permission. An excerpt from NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR by George Orwell (Copy­ right © George Orwell, 1949). Reprinted by permission of Bill Hamilton as the Literary Executor of the Estate of the Late Sonia Brownell Orwell An excerpt from NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR by George Orwell. Copy­ right © 1949 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, renewed 1977 by Sonia Brownell Orwell. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Excerpts from ORYX AND CRAKE: A NOVEL by Margaret Atwood, copyright © 2003 by O.W. Toad, Ltd. Used by permission of Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Copyright © O. W. Toad Ltd., 2003, ORYX AND CRAKE by Margaret Atwood, Reprinted by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Excerpts from ORYX AND CRAKE by Margaret Atwood, Copyright © 2003 O.W. Toad Ltd. Reprinted by permission of McClelland & Stewart, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. All rights reserved. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Penguin Random House Canada Limited for permission. Excerpts from RAINBOWS END by Vernor Vinge. Copyright © 2006 by Vernor Vinge. Reprinted by kind permission of Vernor Vinge. Excerpts from RAINBOWS END by Vernor Vinge. Copyright © 2006 by Vernor Vinge. Reprinted by permission of Tom Doherty Associates. All rights reserved. Excerpts from “Screen New Deal: Under Cover of Mass Death, Andrew Cuomo Calls in the Billionaires to Build a High-Tech Dystopia” by Naomi Klein. Copyright Naomi Klein, 2020. First published in The Intercept. Excerpts from THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD: A NOVEL by Margaret Atwood, copyright © 2009 by O. W. Toad Ltd. Used by permission of Nan A. Talese, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

xiv

Copyright Permissions

Copyright © O. W. Toad Ltd., 2009, THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD by Margaret Atwood, Reprinted by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. / Atwood, Margaret. The Year of the Flood. Nan A. Talese, 2009. Excerpts from THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD by Margaret Atwood, Copyright © 2009 O.W. Toad Ltd. Reprinted by permission of McClelland & Stewart, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. All rights reserved. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Penguin Random House Canada Limited for permission. Fragments of Chapter 3 were published previously in 3 articles: “‘Those Clunky Things You Have to Carry Around’: Textual Materiality in Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 42, no. 3, 2015, pp. 458–82. “Too Much of a Good Thing: Displays in Contacts and ‘Engagement Disloyalty’ in Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge” Extrapolation, vol. 60, no.3, 2019, pp. 273–97; published by Liverpool University Press “Whose Archive? Questions of Access to Information and Memory in Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge.” Extrapolation, vol. 57, no.3, 2016, pp. 265–87; published by Liverpool University Press

Introduction

In 1895 H. G. Wells published The Time Machine, his first novel in the genre that he himself called scientific romance, and which has since become known as science fiction (sf). The main character of the novel, referred to as the Time Traveller, builds a time machine in which he travels to a distant future, separated by some 800,000 years from his time—the end of the 19th century—and, after his return, relates his adventures to a group of acquaintances. In this future he is welcomed by beautiful diminutive huma­ noid beings—the Eloi—who live in dilapidated, palace-like buildings, eat only fruit and obviously do not do anything resembling work. Soon the Traveller realizes that there is not much difference between the effeminate males and females—they are both frail and gentle—and speculates that these humanoids are evolutionary descendants of the people of his time, who have adapted to conditions created by a sophisticated civilization based on tech­ nological automation and lack of violence: “for the strength of a man and the softness of a woman, the institution of the family, and the differentiation of occupations are mere militant necessities of an age of physical force” (31– 2). Becoming aware that their mentality resembles that of a small child, he also attributes this development to advanced technology, which has removed from their world any necessity of coping with the adversities of life, and thus has dulled their intelligence. Lack of any visible machinery that would allow for this kind of life does not disprove his theory, for he notices that their clothes and sandals are obviously machine-made—he conjectures that this technology is so sophisticated that he is not able to recognize it. The Traveller also notices that the Eloi are not plagued by any diseases and that the whole natural world seems to exist exclusively for their benefit, which allows him to speculate about advances in medicine and biology: “The air was free from gnats, the earth from weeds or fungi; everywhere were fruits and sweet and delightful flowers; brilliant butterflies flew hither and thither. The ideal of preventive medicine was attained. Diseases had been stamped out” (34). Thinking about the wonders of technology and science that he witnesses, and the lack of intelligence and physical strength in the Eloi, the Traveller concludes that theirs is a civilization on a down­ ward slope: “For after the battle comes Quiet. Humanity had been strong, DOI: 10.4324/9781003166320-1

2

Introduction

energetic and intelligent, and had used all its abundant vitality to alter the conditions under which it lived. And now came the reaction of the altered conditions” (35). After a few days, however, he has to modify his theory as he notices the existence of another species of humanoid beings—the ape-like, repulsive Morlocks. He realizes that the Morlocks live deep underground, reaching the surface by means of long shafts which also serve as ventilation ducts. Hearing strange, engine-like sounds coming from the depths of the shafts, the Traveller speculates that the Morlocks are evolutionary descendants of the working class of his time, who operate machines which allow the Eloi to lead their work-free life. These gentle child-like humanoids are thus des­ cendants of old aristocracy, who, rather than from full automation of tech­ nology, still benefit from the work of others. The Morlocks apparently cannot stand daylight and thus come out of their underground dwellings only at night, which means that they, like the Eloi, had to adapt to condi­ tions in which they were forced to live in the past. What contradicts this theory of a still lingering class oppression, however, is the fact that the Eloi dread the Morlocks and thus the night is for them a time of fear. This fear is accommodated in the final, apparently correct, version of the Traveller’s theory about this future world. After he ventures down one of the shafts to one of the underground dwellings of the Mor­ locks, hoping to find there a clue concerning the whereabouts of his stolen Time Machine, he notices in the dim light of his match a table with a big lump of meat on it. It is only later that he realizes what this meat means—it is true that the Morlocks are descendants of the old working class who still maintain the machinery satisfying the needs of the Eloi, but rather than being the Morlocks’ lords, the Eloi are their prey: clearly, the old order was already in part reversed. The Nemesis of the delicate ones was creeping on apace. Ages ago, thousands of generations ago, man had thrust his brother man out of the ease and the sunshine. And now that brother was coming back—changed! (65) What is important here is that in modifying his theory about the relation­ ship between the Eloi and the Morlocks the Traveller does not change it completely: he simply realizes that developments that he was trying to recreate had gone further—and in an unexpected direction—than he origin­ ally believed them to have gone. What is more, he is apparently never wrong about the influence of the man-made environment on people, for he does not change his theory that the differences between the Eloi and the people of his own time must have been caused by the new conditions of life possible, to a large extent, thanks to technoscientific development. The Traveller is able to explain these differences by extrapolating from the trends existing in his own time. For example, thinking about the improvements in medicine, he

Introduction

3

reflects: “The science of our time has attacked but a little department of the field of human disease, but, even so, it spreads its operations very steadily and persistently” (33). Also, agriculture and animal breeding will develop further: “In the end, wisely and carefully we shall readjust the balance of animal and vegetable life to suit our human needs” (34). The subterranean Morlocks—descendants of the industrial working class—owe their evolution to technological development as well, although they are its side effect rather than objective. Pointing to his listeners the differences between the Eloi and the Morlocks, the Traveller argues that the condition of the latter is the result of the tendency—visible already in his own time—to move industrial production underground: this tendency had increased till industry had gradually lost its birth right in the sky. I mean that it had gone deeper and deeper into larger and ever larger underground factories, spending a still-increasing amount of its time therein, till, in the end—! (54–5) Workers who followed machines underground as their operators had to adapt to this environment without, however, losing any of their technical skills—Morlocks are also savvy technicians who maintain the machinery contributing to the Eloi’s daytime comforts. Thus it is a different relation­ ship with technology that is responsible for different evolutionary paths leading to the effeminate Eloi on the one hand and the ape-like Morlocks on the other: the former represent the fate of passive beneficiaries of technology who degenerate into indolent weaklings, whereas the latter represent the evolutionary fate of working-class operators whose vitality and energy should be more associated with the machines themselves than with the fruits of their functioning—at one point of his speculations the Traveller refers to the Morlocks as “mechanical servants” (64). The Traveller finally manages to escape from the world of the Eloi and the Morlocks into an even more distant future from which human beings are missing altogether. After the final jump into the most distant future, in which he interprets the frozen landscape as the final eclipse of life on earth, he returns to his time to tell his story, which is related by one of his acquaintances in the framing narrative of the novel. This narrator tells his readers that on the next day after his return from the future the Traveller set out on another time journey from which, however, he never returned. The Time Machine has been interpreted in a number of ways—as a social satire on class relations in Wells’s Britain, as a story of Darwinian evolution (or rather devolution), or as a work of prophetic vision. In his history of sf, however, Adam Roberts argues that the novel’s primary meaning lies somewhere else: Thinking of Wells as a philosopher, a quasi-scientist or a prophet, a point of view endorsed of course by Wells himself, can distract us from

4

Introduction his extraordinary abilities as a writer; and I want to argue, with a claim to primacy, that this book—before it is about class, Darwinism, degeneration or prophesy—is about narrative and genre. (202)

According to Roberts, the novel’s machine capable of travelling through time should be seen along with other similar devices, appearing in Wells’s less known fiction, which give his characters access to alien worlds—as such, the Time Machine should be seen as “science fiction itself. It is that thing that gives us fantastic, other-worldly visions” (202). In other words, “the Time Machine is a literary device” (203; emphasis in original). The Time Machine thus not only belongs to the genre of sf but also contains a figurative representation of this genre.1 Expressing a similar understanding of the novel, Wells’s biographer Michael Sherborne argues that in The Time Machine “Wells envisions a machine that can take us where previously only the speculative mind has gone, backwards and forwards through the invisible dimension of time, hunting for an authoritative perspective.” What is important, however, is that the authoritative perspective gained thanks to the Machine/genre allows the Traveller/author to focus primarily on the consequences of tech­ noscientific development, which, affecting deeply conditions of human life, changes human subjectivity in very significant ways. In fact, it was this specific focus which brought Wells to fiction writing. He started his career as an author of scientific textbooks and freelance journalism, achieving some success in these fields. Anxious about the precariousness of this kind of profession, however, he was looking for a more steady type of income and thus in the spring of 1894 visited the office of Harry Cust, the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, hoping for a book-reviewing position. It turned out that there were no vacancies of this kind, but Cust offered Wells an alternative— writing short stories that would be inspired by Wells’s knowledge of new science and technology. As Sherborne points out: Cust’s proposal was astute. Scientific progress had changed the world enormously during the lifetime of his readers. In the forty or so years since the Great Exhibition, railways, steamships and the telegraph had spread across the globe and been joined by new forms of transport such as bicycles, electric trams and trains and, more recently, prototype motor cycles and motor cars. Domestic developments, many still at a comparably early stage, included electric light, the telephone, the phonograph and the typewriter. Medicine was being revolutionized by anaesthetics, antiseptic surgery and vaccination, somewhat counterbalanced by the transformation of warfare by the machine gun. Significantly, the names behind the new technologies— Daimler, Pasteur, Edison, Bell—were less frequently British, as the initiative in research and development was passing to other nations, but every think­ ing person knew that their achievements would transform British life.

Introduction

5

The public were more than ready to buy into fantastic tales that had an apparent basis in up-to-date science, rather than in old-fashioned magic and the supernatural. Wells accepted the proposal and in the next two years wrote more than 30 short stories of this kind, but it was The Time Machine, his first longer fiction, which not only elevated him to literary stardom but also significantly contributed to the establishment of a new genre, nowadays known as sf. Just over a hundred years later a new surge of technoscientific progress is changing the lives of people not only in Britain but all over the world. Development of information and communication technologies (ICTs) over the last several decades has had a dramatic influence on personal and pro­ fessional lives of a vast number of people. Equally dynamic progress in genetics and biotechnology in general, although somewhat thwarted by ethical issues, promises even greater changes in human life because of bio­ technology’s potential both to significantly modify the functioning of the human organism and to change the non-human natural world. In fact, the process of increasing the saturation of human life with tech­ nology has been brought into sharp relief, and in some areas has dramati­ cally accelerated, after the outbreak, in early 2020, of the COVID-19 pandemic (which still remains unbeaten as I am writing these words more than a year later). Individuals, institutions, businesses and whole countries started to turn to technology in desperate attempts to mitigate the effects both of the pandemic itself and of necessary countermeasures against it, like social isolation and more or less complete lockdowns. Social media plat­ forms like Facebook gave users the most satisfying way of keeping in touch with friends and loved ones. While the hardest-hit countries were going into lockdown in the early stages of the pandemic, Facebook noted a 50-per-cent increase in overall messaging in these countries, whereas the use of Zoom, a relatively new platform for video-chatting, went up more than 300 per cent (Daniel Taylor). What is more, as lockdowns severely limited the possibility of travelling and visiting new places, people started to look for a chance to visit new places virtually. During the first month of the pandemic’s devel­ opment in Europe, Google searches for a “virtual tour” increased seven times (Begley Bloom). A number of sites and institutions—from the Louvre to Disney World—offered virtual tours of their premises, in this way bring­ ing the idea of sightseeing in the time of lockdown closer to reality. And online movie streaming platforms like Netflix turned out to be a blessing in the time of closure of cinemas. Socializing and entertainment, however, are not the only areas of human life in which technology has proved to be indispensable during the pandemic. Online services allowed people to deal with the demands of everyday life in a time when visiting shops, banks or institutions of public administration in person was severely limited or impossible. In the field of work and study, var­ ious companies and corporations, as well as schools and universities, switched

6

Introduction

to distance working and learning as the only available way to continue their activities. In this way, millions of jobs were saved, and vast teaching backlogs were avoided. In fact, the benefits of distance working may be fully appreciated after looking at the fate of those who were not able to switch to it—members of the poorest social groups, who in the US and former colonial powers often represent ethnic minorities. Depending on work demanding physical proxi­ mity and living in overcrowded dwellings and neighbourhoods, the poor were hit hardest by layoffs (Makortoff) and had the highest rate of infections and deaths (Evelyn). The overwhelming sense of frustration at this dis­ proportionate suffering among the poor in the US contributed significantly to the fierceness of the protests under the banner of “Black Lives Matter” after the death—recorded on a smartphone and broadcast on the internet— of George Floyd, a black man brutally suffocated by a white policeman during his arrest just several weeks after the outbreak of the pandemic in the country (Nakhaie and Nakhaie). Also, the significance of biotechnology in human life has increased during the pandemic. Since its outbreak, governments around the world have relied on testing for the virus infections, as it allows health institutions to take a proper course of action in the case of infected people, and it puts at ease (at least temporarily) millions of those individuals whose tests have been nega­ tive. The best way to deal with the pandemic (and similar ones that may appear in the future), however, is to create an effective vaccine or cure. As I am writing these words in the summer of 2021, vaccines developed in an extra short time by several pharmaceutical companies are being used all over the world, although their effectiveness in the case of new mutations of the virus that are already appearing is not certain. The search for a cure has been less successful, as at the present moment there is no medication that is highly effective, but research is being conducted in laboratories around the world. Thus, on the one hand, the pandemic has clearly indicated the beneficial potential of modern technology use. On the other hand, however, the COVID-19 outbreak has also given rise to darker views on the role of technology in human life. It has roused suspicions that the virus could have been created artificially in a laboratory, from which it later escaped due to security flaws. These suspicions relegate state-of-the-art biotechnology to the position of an existential threat to the human species—a proverbial box of matches in the hands of a child. There have also been suspicions of a more extreme variety, which see the virus as created and released on purpose, so that some agents could gain more power. The use of ICTs during the pandemic has given rise to considerable con­ cern as well. China, which pioneered the use of mobile phones and digital tracking in an effort to curb the pandemic, is perhaps the most conspicuous example with its colour code application categorizing citizens according to the risk they pose. Hailed as a very effective tool in the fight against the

Introduction

7

coronavirus, the application also created space for abuse of power. As Gaby Hinsliff points out, when “citizens with a green code (for low infection risk) can go out, while a yellow or red code (denoting contact with an infected person, or confirmed infections) means restrictions, how easy would it be to punish political dissidents by tampering with their codes to keep them under effective house arrest?”2 In Western democracies, governments have been teaming up with private companies to develop similar technologies, thus giving rise to anxiety about the use of private data for profit. As Andrew Roth et al. point out, mobile phone tracking applications employed to fight the virus “have been adopted by authoritarian states and democracies alike and have opened lucrative new markets for companies that extract, sell, and analyse private data.” An increase in surveillance and data harvesting during the pandemic does not have to be connected specifically with proximity-tracking applications, however. As I have already indicated, social distancing caused the migration of shopping to the internet, which means a significant increase in digital payments and another step toward a cashless society. Although some com­ mentators welcome the development,3 others fear that cashless pay systems may lead to increased surveillance and infringements of political liberty.4 Thus the pandemic has exposed very clearly not only the importance of technology use in modern life, but also its ambiguous character. What fur­ ther contributes to the complexity of the revealed image—and what Wells shows splendidly in The Time Machine—is that the consequences of human–technology interaction are not limited to the immediate situation in which technology users find themselves. In other words, the fact that some people have an easier or more enjoyable life thanks to technology or that some groups use technology for their own empowerment are not the only results of human–technology interaction, however important they are. Wells tells us in his novel something that might escape our attention when we observe technological developments around us: that changing the conditions of our existence, technology use may also significantly change us ourselves. To make his point clear Wells adopts a long, evolutionary perspective, which allows him to show drastic transformations undergone by people as a result of their interaction with technology. But changes to human sub­ jectivity resulting from this interaction may also appear within a far shorter distance and thus be subtler. Wells himself, in his later scientific romances— such as When the Sleeper Wakes (1899) or The War in the Air (1908)— which are set in nearer futures or in his own time, focused on the way in which technology use may affect human behaviour, mindset and values. Taking Wells and his visions of the future as a model we could ask our­ selves today what will be the deeper, subjectifying consequences of our growing dependence on technology, which the pandemic has shown so clearly and to which it has significantly contributed in some areas. What is important here as well is that Wells believed that also his non­ fiction could make people look closer at the role that science and technology

8

Introduction

play or may play in human life. Here, again, he was a pioneer, as he pro­ duced a great number of articles and several book-length essays focused, to a greater or lesser extent, on the potential role of technoscience in human life. And he was most persuasive when he kept the two, fiction and non­ fiction, firmly apart, which, unfortunately, was less and less frequent as his writing career developed. In fact, Wells himself was well aware that loading fiction too much with expounding theory was more often than not detri­ mental to the desired effect. In a review of a book published in the same year that The Time Machine saw daylight, Wells advised the book’s author: the sooner Mr Allen realizes that he cannot adopt an art-form and make it subservient to the purposes of the pamphleteer, the better for humanity and for his own reputation as a thinker and a man of let­ ters … the philosopher who masquerades as a novelist, violating the conditions of art that his gospel may win notoriety, discredits both himself and his message, and the result is neither philosophy nor fiction. (qtd. in Sherborne; ellipsis in original) Kept apart, however, philosophy—or theory in general—and fiction with explanatory ambitions may be seen as complementary. Fiction embeds the­ oretical speculation in an engrossing narrative that is charged emotionally as it shows explored phenomena in real-life (however futuristic) environments through the eyes of characters with whom readers can more or less easily identify themselves, whereas philosophy provides a theoretical framework that embraces every aspect of the explored phenomena, resulting in a more systematic exposition of thought than in fiction. The purpose of Futures of the Human Subject is to exploit this com­ plementary character of fiction and non-fiction in examination of technol­ ogy’s potential to affect human subjectivity. Since Wells’s time, this potential has become the subject of both myriad works of fiction and countless theo­ retical works, starting from psychology through neuroscience, anthropology, sociology, cultural studies and ending with the philosophy of technical mediation, which deals specifically with the problem of human–technology interaction. It is this philosophy that constitutes the broad conceptual fra­ mework within which I analyze the subjectifying effects of technology use as they are represented in several recent science fiction novels concerned with the near future. The philosophy of technical mediation—which is part of the wider field of philosophy of technology—sees technologies as media written into human existence. Associated primarily with Don Ihde’s postphenomenology and Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory, this philosophy has been—and still is—developed by a number of younger thinkers, including Peter-Paul Ver­ beek, Steven Dorrestijn and Asle H. Kiran. Focusing on specific technolo­ gies, the philosophy of technical mediation examines the way in which these technologies influence people’s experience of the world. Such examination is

Introduction

9

extended by some exponents of the philosophy with references to Michel Foucault’s theory of the human subject. These philosophers argue that Foucault’s investigation of the ways in which power contributes to the pro­ cesses of the constitution of human subjectivity, as well as his later studies of methods (based on a critical attitude to the surrounding reality) which people themselves may adopt to co-constitute their subjectivities within the existing relations of power, could be helpful in the understanding of the phenomenon of technical mediation and the ways in which users could—to some extent—control processes of their subjectification resulting from this mediation. As the philosophy of technical mediation is open to speculative reflection considering possible future scenarios of human–technology interaction, Futures of the Human Subject treats sf concerned with the near future as representing this kind of reflection. What is also important is that the phi­ losophy of technical mediation welcomes insights not only from other branches of philosophy but also from other disciplines, which include media studies, anthropology, behavioural sciences, sociology, psychology and cul­ tural studies. Following this model, this book also draws on multi­ disciplinary material which may be seen as fitting the general conceptual framework established by the philosophy of technical mediation and which may shed additional light on the processes of subjectification resulting from human–technology interaction represented in the analyzed novels. As such, Futures of the Human Subject represents an interdisciplinary approach to literary studies and inscribes itself in the larger area of the stu­ dies of the human subject carried out from the perspective of posthumanism which contests the liberal humanist notion of people as self-contained, autonomous agents. At the same time, the book is the first substantial study of literary representations of the human subject conducted within the con­ ceptual framework of the philosophy of technical mediation, which, argu­ ably, represents the most comprehensive theoretical approach to the question of subjectifying effects of technology use. In consequence, the book may also contribute to the readers’ awareness of the subjectifying potential of new and emerging technologies and thus may help them to gain Fou­ cauldian freedom—however always limited—from the power that these technologies might exercise over them. In the next chapter I provide theoretical and historical background for the analytical chapters that follow. I start this chapter with a short outline of the history of the philosophy of technology, before moving on to a detailed exposition of the philosophy of technical mediation and of the way in which it dovetails with Foucault’s theory of subjectivity. Then I move on to sf— assuming Roger Luckhurst’s definition of the genre as “a literature of techno­ logically saturated societies” (3)—as an example of future-oriented speculative reflection advocated by the philosophy of technical mediation, briefly discuss­ ing several important works from sf history which deal with technology’s potential to affect its users. This short discussion, in which I already avail

10

Introduction

myself of the conceptual apparatus developed by the philosophy of technical mediation, provides a literary context for my study, showing that sf as a genre has always been concerned with representations of the subjectifying effects of technology use. Only after providing this theoretical and historical background, I move on, in the final pages of Chapter 1, to justify the choice of works that are examined in the analytical chapters of this book—Dave Eggers’s The Circle (2013), Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End (2006) and Margaret Atwood’s Mad­ dAddam trilogy (2003–13).

Notes 1 I will return to the question of sf as a genre in the following chapter. 2 This kind of changing of the purpose of technology use would not be surprising in China, where “[r]egulations that can be largely apolitical on the surface can be political when the Communist Party of China … decides to use them for political purposes” (Samantha Hoffman qtd. in Kobie). 3 See, for example, Saigal. 4 See, for example, Scott.

1

Technical Mediation, Subjectivity and Science Fiction

In Technics and Time, Bernard Stiegler argues, following André Leroi-Gourhan, that technology is as old as humanity itself—in fact, the appearance of the former conditions the appearance of the latter. As Stiegler points out, - that Leroi-Gourhan in fact says that it is the tool, that is, tekhne, invents the human, not the human who invents the technical. Or again: the human invents himself in the technical by inventing the tool—by becoming exteriorized techno-logically. (141) Stiegler is thus talking about the “originary technicity” of humanity: it is not possible to talk—as Rousseau did—about the state of nature of humanity which is untouched by technology because technology is what defines the human. Stiegler adopts a broad definition of technology, which he understands “as a discourse on technics,” that is tekhne- (93). Arguing that it is difficult to delimit the field of technics, Stiegler includes in it, apart from skills like dancing, also language (94). Without questioning this approach to the con­ cept of technology, in this volume, however, I adopt a narrower definition of it, which is also, arguably, the most popular—technology as tools and machines. According to Val Dusek, this definition “lies behind much dis­ cussion of technology even when not made explicit” (31). Thus, for exam­ ple, in his book What Things Do, Peter-Paul Verbeek assumes this very meaning of the concept, specifying only in a footnote: “By the term ‘tech­ nology’ I follow current usage and generally mean to refer to the specifically modern, ‘science-based’ technological devices of the sort that began to emerge in the last century” (What Things Do 3). The reason why I choose this narrow meaning of the term “technology” is that it is usually assumed in the contemporary philosophy of technology (of which Verbeek is one of the most important exponents), and it is also implicit in much of sf criti­ cism—in his history of sf, Roger Luckhurst, for example, refers to “Mechan­ ism” as the older term for technology (3). This does not mean, however, that technology understood in this way is a phenomenon with clear borders—on the DOI: 10.4324/9781003166320-2

12

Technical Mediation and Subjectivity

contrary, it is always part of larger systems, and its conceptual boundaries are often quite blurry, extending, for example, towards linguistics in ICTs or towards natural world in biotechnologies. Analyzing the effects of technology use on the human subjectivity repre­ sented in sf which extrapolates from the present state of affairs, I will be, necessarily, focusing on the technology based on the most modern scientific knowledge. Hence, to be more specific, the focus of my analysis will be on what the philosopher Don Ihde calls “technoscience,” as he argues that advances in technology are inextricably combined with advances in science—experiments pushing science forward are possible thanks to the most advanced technology which, in turn, benefits from further advances in science (Postphenomenology and Technoscience 25–44).

Early Philosophy of Technology and Utopia/Dystopia Syndrome Modern science can be safely dated back to the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century (Parrinder), which, in turn, prompted a kind of technological development that was unprecedented in human history. The pioneering philosopher who reflected on the role of technology in human life was Roger Bacon, who first linked technoscientific development with the progress of humanity in general (although this progress was still religious in character), claiming “that through knowledge of nature and its technological applica­ tions, humans can achieve a purity of mind and behaviour that was lost after the Fall in the Garden of Eden” (Scharff and Dusek 5). A secular ver­ sion of the idea of progress through technoscience was developed by Kant in the 18th century, and then, in the following century, the idea that technolo­ gical reason should be applied in the domain of politics for the benefit of humanity—which later came to be known as technocratic government—was fully expounded in the writings of Henri de Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte (Scharff and Dusek 6). Similar technocratic utopianism based on the idea of the technological planning of human life was represented in the 20th century by Le Corbusier, the French modernist architect and thinker who believed that urban and architectural design should accommodate the latest techno­ logical developments so that humanity could fully benefit from the miracles of the technological progress. The utopian dimension of philosophical speculation on the significance of technology does not have to be limited, however, to the idea of the techno­ cratic planning of human of life. A contemporary manifestation of techno­ logical utopianism can be seen in the movement of transhumanism, which advocates using technology to transcend the biological limitations of the human organism in order to improve human life. As Tamar Sharon notices, advocates of the idea of human enhancement range from those who assume a liberal perspective and argue that it should be allowed if we want to be consistent and observe the values of liberal democracy to those who argue that such enhancement should be compulsory on ethical grounds, as we

Technical Mediation and Subjectivity

13

should be obliged to use the latest technological developments to improve the human organism—a result of haphazard evolution—once it is feasible to do so (24–8). Transhumanism is a clear sign that the utopian strain of thinking in the philosophical reflection on human–technology relations is still going strong at the beginning of the 21st century. The previous century, however, wit­ nessed events and developments that raised doubts in the minds of some philosophers about the beneficial effects of technological development. The use of technology—from mechanized slaughter in the trenches, to gas chambers and atomic bombs—in the two world wars, as well as the grow­ ing power of technocratic governments geared solely for mechanical effi­ ciency and the rise of concerns about the negative influence of technology on the environment, all undermined the conviction that technology is by defi­ nition a positive force. As a consequence of these developments, technology started to be seen by some philosophers in a distinctly dystopian light. This new disillusionment with the role of technology in human life was perhaps most strongly expressed by the representatives of the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, who saw technology in general as serving the needs of capitalist production. Seen from this perspective, people are enslaved by the very technology which gave them the mastery of nature. Vocal criticism of technology expressed from this position may be found in One-Dimensional Man by Herbert Marcuse, who argues that [t]he incessant dynamic of technical progress has become permeated with political content, and the Logos of technics has been made into the Logos of continued servitude. The liberating force of technology— the instrumentalization of things—turns into a fetter of liberation; the instrumentalization of man. (163) In other words, “the domination of nature has remained linked to the dom­ ination of man” (170). According to Marcuse, technology in its present form is responsible for the distortion of a genuinely human way of life, and to regain this genuine dimension of existence people should develop a different technical rationality, one that would enable them to relate to nature as a subject.1 Martin Heidegger expresses a similar view of the human–technology relationship, although his philosophy does not reflect Marxist ideas of domination but is concerned with a deeper, ontological level of human existence. In “The Question Concerning Technology,” Heidegger argues that our way of understanding the world is distorted because we treat everything as a “standing-reserve” to be exploited at will by technical means. This approach to the world also affects our understanding of our own existence, which is framed in technical-rational terms as a result, so Heidegger asks: “does not man himself belong even more originally than nature within the standing-reserve? The current talk about human resources,

14

Technical Mediation and Subjectivity

about the supply of patients for a clinic, gives evidence of this” (“Question” 18). Thus, as William Lovitt explains, “[a]ll that is and man himself are gripped in a structuring that exhibits a mere skeleton of their Being, of the way in which they intrinsically are. In all this, the essence of technology rules” (xxx). According to Heidegger, however, there is no way of escape from this situation, as there is no sphere outside of the rule of technology, which is a phenomenon “centrally determining all of Western history” (Lovitt xxix). Thus both Marcuse and Heidegger see technology as respon­ sible for the alienation of human beings, both from the world in which they live and from themselves. The pessimistic approach to technology’s influence on human life has also produced what Sharon calls bioconservatism, which can be seen as the direct opposite of transhumanism (Sharon 2). Bioconservatism is represented by, among others, Francis Fukuyama, who argues that genetic engineering used for human enhancement constitutes a great danger to what he calls “human nature.” According to Fukuyama, human beings and their social norms are the results of evolution and genetic meddling with “our complex, evolved natures” would be a threat to “human dignity” (Fukuyama 172). Writing about the extreme—positive and negative—positions in theore­ tical evaluations of the role of technology in human life, the philosopher Hans Achterhuis argues that they indicate the “utopia/dystopia syndrome” (qtd. in Dorrestijn, Design 66). In a book published in 1997 and translated into English as American Philosophy of Technology: The Empirical Turn, Achterhuis indicates a new attitude that appeared in the philosophy of technology in the last two decades of the 20th century. Instead of sweeping generalizations treating technology as a kind of uniform phenomenon, the new philosophers of technology, according to Achterhuis, started to analyze specific technologies at the empirical level: “Instead of treating technological artifacts as givens, they analyzed their concrete development and formation, a process in which many different actors become implicated. In place of describ­ ing technology as autonomous, they brought to light the many social forces that act upon it.” In this way these new, empirically-minded philosophers of technology indicated “the co-evolution of technology and society” (Achterhuis qtd. in Ihde, Postphenomenology and Technoscience 21–2). This more empiri­ cally-oriented philosophy of technology found its most influential initial expression in the works of two thinkers, Bruno Latour and Don Ihde.

Empirical Turn Bruno Latour, like Bernard Stiegler, argues that humans are technological beings by definition—referring to the work of palaeontologists, Latour argues that the human self appears to have developed within a nest or a niche already inhabited by abilities, by know-how and technological objects … If the tool is no more proper to humankind

Technical Mediation and Subjectivity

15

than laughter, it will become more and more difficult to trace the border between the empire of the human and the realm of technologies. (“Morality” 248) Latour himself developed an anthropological approach to studying the human–technology relationship, investigating various interactions between people and technologies in specific situations. As a result of his empirical studies, he proposed a theory—now called Actor-Network Theory (ANT)— according to which both people and objects are actors (or agents or actants) that influence each other in socio-technological networks. Thus, according to Latour, humans are not autonomous subjects radically separated from objects that they treat in an instrumental way—this view of the human– technology relationship, which Latour associates with the philosophy of modernity, is simply untenable (We). Instead, Latour explains social reality as a network of actors, both human and non-human, that interact in a variety of ways—thus, for example, “[i]n addition to ‘determining’ and ser­ ving as a ‘backdrop for human action,’ things might authorize, allow, afford, encourage, permit, suggest, influence, block, render possible, forbid, and so on” (Reassembling 72). Among his examples is the speed bump, which forces drivers to slow down, and the automated door groom, which forces the closure of the door (“Where” 234). In Latour’s view, priority in the interactions between human and non-human actors should be given to neither of them—what is important is that they act together in networks. In other words, they both can act as a mediator, which creates “the entities between which it plays the mediating role” (We 78). Thus, Latour proposes a “symmetrical” approach to interactions between humans and technologies, arguing that both are equally important and the distinction between the subject and the object is untenable (We 96). Almost simultaneously with ANT, a different strain of theoretical reflec­ tions concerned with the role of technology in human life appeared—post­ phenomenology, first developed by the philosopher Don Ihde. Ihde sees postphenomenology as a mixture of phenomenology and philosophical pragmatism. Phenomenology, according to a broad definition, analyzes the human experience of the world. It is subjectivist and essentialist, as it is supposed to lead to the uncovering of the “essences” of things by the sub­ ject focusing on her own experience. Pragmatism, on the other hand, is a way of reaching the truth on the basis of the interaction between humans and their environment—it is intersubjective and practical. Postphenomenology investigates in what way technology influences the relation between the subject and the object, that is, between humans and their world, but faithful to its pragmatic ancestry it examines technologies in their particularities: It is the step away from a high altitude or transcendental perspective and an appreciation of the multidimensionality of technologies as

16

Technical Mediation and Subjectivity material cultures within a lifeworld. And it is a step into the style of much “science studies,” which deals with case studies. (Postphenomenology and Technoscience 22; emphasis in original)

In other words, Ihde’s postphenomenology combines philosophical reflection with empirical investigations of human interactions with specific technolo­ gies. This turn to specific interactions allows Ihde to dismiss Heidegger’s reflections on what he claimed were the alienating effects of technology in general on human existence. Explaining Ihde’s attitude to Heidegger’s pes­ simistic philosophy of technology, Rosenberger and Verbeek conclude: “Technologies, to be short, are not opposed to human existence; they are its very medium” (13). Thus, both postphenomenology and ANT share the idea of the mediating role of technology, although, in both theories, the mediation is understood in a slightly different manner: “In the postphenomenological perspective, artifacts mediate human-world relations, while in actor-network theory they mediate relations between actants in networks” (Verbeek, What Things Do 168). The important dissimilarity between the two theories is that post­ phenomenologists—in contrast to Latour—acknowledge the difference between the subject and the object: “from their perspectives it is indeed meaningful to make a distinction between someone who experiences and something that is experienced, someone who acts and a world in which action takes place—regardless of how interwoven and mutually constituted they are” (What Things Do 166). Such an attitude to technology allows postphenomenologists to show that technologies are responsible for the creation of both specific “subjectivity” of the human being interacting with technology and specific “objectivity” of the experienced world—as Rosen­ berger and Verbeek notice: “subjectivity and objectivity are always the pro­ duct of relations, rather than their starting point” (20; emphasis in original).

Posthuman Perspective Arguing that interactions with technology contribute to the constitution of human subjectivity, postphenomenology rejects the model of the subject that goes back to the period of the Enlightenment, namely “the idea of the sub­ ject as a completely self-contained being that develops in the world as an expression of its own unique essence” (Mansfield 13), and instead it aligns itself with other contemporary theories of subjectivity which see the subject as “constructed, made within the world, not born into it already formed” (Mansfield 11). The difference between these understandings of human sub­ jectivity is often framed in terms of the opposition between the liberal humanist subject and the posthuman one. For example, both N. Katherine Hayles and Sherryl Vint, when discussing the idea of the liberal humanist subject, refer to the work of C. B. Macpherson, who sees possessive indivi­ dualism as the essential characteristic feature of this subject, as he is

Technical Mediation and Subjectivity

17

supposedly the sole proprietor of himself, owes nothing to society for his person and capacities, and is free from the influence of others (Hayles, How 3). Vint points out here the gender-specific language of Macpherson’s defi­ nition as indicative of its exclusive nature, for it does not include women, but also overlooks all those who were not masters of themselves—the working classes and colonial subjects (Bodies 12). According to Hayles and Vint, the liberal humanist conception of human subjectivity is no longer tenable and thus should be replaced by the model of the posthuman subject who consists of diverse components, constantly undergoes construction and reconstruction, and cannot be viewed as self-contained—as Hayles notices, quoting Macpherson: If “human essence is freedom from the wills of others,” the posthuman is “post” not because it is necessarily unfree but because there is no a priori way to identify a self-will that can be clearly distinguished from an other-will. (4) Peter-Paul Verbeek, one of the most influential philosophers to creatively develop Ihde’s posthphenomenology, also sees posthumanism as a necessary replacement for the humanist idea of the autonomous, self-contained sub­ ject. Verbeek agrees with Peter Sloterdijk, who in his essay “Rules for the Human Zoo” points out that lingual media like print, thanks to which the ideals of traditional humanism were disseminated in literary societies and used for the “taming” of humanity, are becoming more and more obsolete as a result of the popularization of new technologies. Sloterdijk himself argues that—because of this technological shift—traditional humanist “taming” will be increasingly replaced with biotechnological “breeding.” Although Verbeek does not question the growing importance of bio­ technologies, he questions Sloterdijk’s stress on their centrality, arguing that these technologies will constitute only one of a number of ways in which the posthuman subject will be shaped—in the same way that literary humanism was only one of many ways in which the human subject was constructed in the era of modernity: The texts that were written, read, interpreted, and handed down have always been products of the concrete practices in which they were con­ sidered relevant, and the humanity of humans was always shaped not only on the basis of self-written texts but also of their self-created material environment in which their practices were formed. The detached autonomous human of modernist humanism has never existed. (Moralizing 39) Discussing Hayles’s and Verbeek’s positions, Tamar Sharon sees them as belonging to two different, although partly overlapping, types of posthumanism.

18

Technical Mediation and Subjectivity

The former represents what Sharon calls radical posthumanism,2 whereas the latter is methodological.3 The two posthumanisms, according to Sharon, share the need to go beyond modernity’s humanism, but they differ in their aims. Radical posthumanism is prescriptive, as it actively fights against those aspects of liberal humanism that it finds detrimental to all forms of alterity, that is, to these subjects that are outside of liberal humanism’s exclusive definition of human subjectivity. As such, radical posthumanism contends “for a different, more ethical vision of the human and those values that always accompany such visions” (Sharon 50).4 Methodological posthumanism, on the other hand, is “more descriptive than prescritptive” (50), as it is primarily concerned with the development of theoretical apparatus that could be applied in an insightful analysis of the subjectifying effects of human–technology interaction. What is important, however, is that descriptive work of methodological posthumanism can open space for ethics, and this is exactly what the strain of philosophy of technology represented by Verbeek, but also by Steven Dorrestijn, does.5 Referring to Foucault’s theory of the human subject, both Verbeek and Dorrestijn argue in their works that human–technology inter­ action should be seen as part of a wider field of power relations.6 Thus, Ver­ beek’s and Dorrestijn’s philosophy of technology, allowing people to understand in what way technology as an aspect of power affects their subjectivity, helps them to form a critical perspective, which, in turn, may allow them to contribute actively to the processes of their subjectification within the existing relations of power. As a result, this philosophy may contribute to the establishment of new forms of alterity or reinforce the existing ones, which is postulated by radical posthumanism. Equally importantly, in their investigations of the subjectifying effects of human–technology interaction, both Verbeek and Dorrestijn put the main stress on the idea of technical mediation, so that they refer to their own type of philosophy of technology as the philosophy of technical mediation.7 And both see their philosophy as emerging from Ihde’s posthphenomenology and Latour’s ANT.

Philosophy of Technical Mediation—Key Concepts The philosophy of technical mediation is founded on the acknowledgement of the mediating role of technology in human life. As it keeps the distinction between the subject and the object, it appears to be closer to postphenomenology than to Latour’s ANT,8 but it shares a number of important insights with both the former and the latter. One of the ideas that it shares with the ANT is that of the “script” or “prescription,”9 which is concerned with the way in which certain behaviours of users can be inscribed into technologies by designers. By “prescription,” Latour understands “the beha­ viour imposed back onto the human by nonhuman delegates” (“Where” 232). Perhaps Latour’s most famous example of prescription is a “sleeping policeman” or speed bump: “It is impossible for us not to slow down, or

Technical Mediation and Subjectivity

19

else we break our suspension” (244). This is an extreme case where a tech­ nology exists only for the mere purpose of imposing certain behaviour on humans, but all technologies are created to be operated in a particular way—they demand certain behaviour, and thus people are expected to follow specific “scripts” to use them, although the need to comply with the technology’s script is rarely as strong as it is in the case of speed bumps, and users can have various motives to follow—or not—a technology’s script. In fact, as Verbeek points out, in most cases there is no straightforward cause-effect relationship between the design of the technology and the behaviour of users. If there was, technologies would simply enforce certain behaviour, and that would create the relation of determinism and not med­ iation. In other words, technologies’ ability to co-shape human subjectivity should not be viewed as an inherent property of the technology itself, built into it by the designer, but should be seen as a result of a complex interac­ tion between technologies and their users. This complexity of the human– technology relation may be seen in the so-called rebound effect when the introduction of a specific technology has an effect which is different from— sometimes the opposite of—the one intended by the designers. As Verbeek argues, there are several possible types of rebound effect: “Unexpected effects of introducing a new technology might include users’ bypassing the technology or not using it at all, or using the technology in a way that dif­ fers radically from what designers intended” (Moralizing 93). What also makes it difficult in many cases to predict the way in which technologies will influence their users’ behaviour is the notion of multistability, which refers to the way in which a specific technology can be used in a number of ways and thus can have various meanings for various users—or, in other words, it can have multiple stabilities. The notion of multistability was introduced by Ihde as one of the key concepts of postphenomenology, and he explains it by referring to the famous analysis of the use of a hammer carried out by Martin Heidegger in Being and Time. According to Heidegger, a tool like a hammer usually withdraws from the users’ attention as they focus not on the hammer itself but on the task that is supposed to be achieved with the help of the tool and only when the hammer breaks down does it demand “theoretical” attention for itself (Being 98–9). Heidegger indicates here just two ways in which a hammer can be experienced—as a “working” tool for driving nails or as a broken one. Ihde claims that this analysis leaves some­ thing out—the hammer’s original design (to drive nails) “cannot prevent the hammer from (a) becoming an objet d’art, (b) a murder weapon, (c) a paperweight, etc.” (“Technology”). Thus, a hammer has a dominant stabi­ lity—driving nails—and other stabilities, which depend on the context, specific needs of the user, etc. Discussing Heidegger’s tool analysis in Being and Time, Verbeek also indicates the idea of transparency that comes to light in this analysis (What 80). When a tool works properly, it is transparent—the attention of the user goes “through” it towards the task that is to be accomplished with the tool,

20

Technical Mediation and Subjectivity

in the way that light goes through transparent material like clear glass. It is only when the tool breaks down that it becomes opaque: the user’s attention is suddenly directed towards the tool itself—the attention is “blocked” by the tool in the way that light is blocked by an opaque material. As Verbeek points out, transparency is a key characteristic of what Ihde calls embodi­ ment relations between humans and technology, which occur when “[t]he artifact is symbiotically ‘taken into’ my bodily experience and directed toward an action into or upon the environment” (Ihde, Postphenomenology and Technoscience 42). A simple example of embodiment relations may be seen in people wearing glasses. When the glasses are comfortable, users forget about them—the glasses become part of their bodily experience of the world. They also become transparent, as they do not call users’ attention to themselves (unless they become dirty, for example). Embodiment relations constitute one set of relations between humans and technology occurring in the process of mediated perception. The other set is made up of hermeneutic relations, which take place when technologies are carriers of representations that have to be decoded by humans: “Instrument panels remain ‘referential,’ but perceptually they display dials, gauges, or other ‘readable technologies’ into the human-world relationship” (43). A simple example of hermeneutic relations may be seen in reading a thermo­ meter: the device provides a representation of one aspect of the world—its temperature—which has to be interpreted by the user. As Verbeek underlines, the hermeneutic relation is not based on transparency but on representation (What 126).10 All cases of technically mediated perception, whether representing embodi­ ment or hermeneutic relations, share what Ihde calls a magnification–reduction structure—that is, technologies magnify or amplify certain aspects of the human experience of the world, and at the same time they place aside or reduce other aspects. For example, a telescope allows the user to see mountains on the moon, but simultaneously it removes the moon from the context of the night sky in which it is visible to the naked eye (Ihde, Technology and the Lifeworld 76; Verbeek, What 131, 171). Arguing that Ihde uses his idea of the structure of magnification–reduction mainly in the context of technologically mediated perception, Verbeek proposes a parallel idea of the structure of invitation–inhibition that is reflected in the technologically mediated action, as, according to Verbeek, in such action cer­ tain activities are invited whereas others are discouraged by the mediating technology. In the case of Latour’s speed bump, for example, what is invited is slowing down, whereas driving fast is inhibited (Verbeek, What 171). In Verbeek’s view, analyzing the structures of magnification–reduction11 and invitation–inhibition in human–technology relations helps to make visible the way in which technologies influence human experience of the world and thus contribute to the constitution of human subjectivity (171). Asle H. Kiran goes even further than Verbeek in developing Ihde’s idea of the structure of magnification–reduction, arguing that it should be seen as

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an example of a general phenomenon of two-sidedness of technical media­ tion. According to Kiran, this two-sidedness might be seen in a number of dimensions, of which he analyzes four, arguing that they are all inter­ connected. The first is the ontological (or existential) dimension, in which technologies “involve a revealing–concealing structure, constituting what kind of world we find ourselves in” (“Four” 124; emphasis in original). Kiran follows here the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, arguing that a specific approach to a technology determines its function in the environment and, as a result, reveals this environment to the user in a specific way. Thus, various technologies reveal the natural environment in different ways, as Heidegger claims: “The wood is a forest of timber, the mountain a quarry of rock; the river is water-power, the wind is wind ‘in the sails’” (Being 100). But, as Kiran notices, when the world is revealed in a specific way as a result of the use of a particular technology, other possible ways of seeing this world are concealed.12 Following Kiran here, one could focus on two uses13 of aeroplanes to show two different approaches to a technology resulting in different revealing–concealing structures. When aeroplanes are used for spraying insecticides in intensive farming, they reveal the natural world as a site to be exploited by humans and conceal it as a balanced ecosystem. When they are used for patrolling a wildlife reserve, then the first revealing–concealing structure is reversed. According to Kiran, the ontological dimension is important for our con­ stitution as subjects, because having ontological impact, technological mediation shapes the world in a sense that is also a matter about shaping us, humans, as individuals and as societies. As such, this shaping has impact on how we perceive and act in the world, and how we see ourselves as being in that world. (“Four” 125; emphasis in original) The second of the four dimensions indicated by Kiran—epistemological— allows for seeing technologies as magnification–reduction structures, “thereby shaping the type of knowledge we have about the world” (124). Kiran’s magnification–reduction structure is the exact counterpart of Ihde’s (and Verbeek’s) magnification–reduction structure. Kiran disagrees with Ihde, who sees this structure as always reflecting the tension between good and bad aspects of technologies: Enhancing phenomena in the world is done because we want to focus on some particular aspect. Not letting this being accompanied by a corresponding reduction of other aspects will create noise and impede perception, of the scientific type as well as the everyday type. (129) Magnifying certain phenomena, technology can also reveal certain aspects of the world, and in this way this dimension overlaps with the ontological one.

22

Technical Mediation and Subjectivity

Looking for examples of the epistemological dimension of the two-sided­ ness of technological mediation, one could focus on the phenomenon of the so-called quantified self, which consists in creation of the representation of an individual on the basis of numerical data that can be gathered about her. More and more such data is produced by various self-tracking devices, which translate into numbers not only bodily functions like blood pressure or heartbeat but also behaviour and habits. Thus, processes and activities that can be rendered in numerical data are magnified, whereas all other aspects of the individual’s life are reduced in significance. As a result, human beings are revealed as entities that can be, literally, quantified, but what is concealed is the emotional and spiritual side of human life. In the third dimension—practical—“technological mediations exhibit an enabling–constraining structure that shapes action and behaviour” (124). This structure corresponds to Verbeek’s structure of invitation–inhibition of technologically mediated action, and Kiran develops Verbeek’s analysis of the significance of the structure. According to Kiran, the enabling–con­ straining structure affects our subjectivity as it defines for us our practical space, which indicates the limits of our technically mediated action: “While enabling us to do specific things, technologies simultaneously shape how we do these things, and thereby divert out attention from other possible ways of doing it” (131; emphasis in original). Thus, for example, social media enable the user almost simultaneous communication with a number of people, regardless of their distance from her. At the same time, they constrain the user from meeting these people face to face, because she starts to regard meeting them in person as a timeand energy-consuming activity. And, again, there are parallelisms between enabling–constraining and revealing–concealing structures: when social media enable quick communication with big numbers of people, they reveal people as social beings who thrive on social contact with other people, but they conceal people as beings who need time on their own to think or to relax. The enabling–constraining structure can also be interconnected with the magnification–reduction structure—thus, for example, binoculars enable a magnified view of distant objects, but, as a result, constrain the watchers from coming closer to these objects, which, perhaps, could give them additional insight. Kiran’s exploration of the enabling–constraining structure may be sup­ plemented by his earlier study of the phenomenon of technological presence. In “Technological Presence: Actuality and Potentiality in Subject Constitu­ tion,” he shifts his focus from “actual technical mediations to possible technical mediations” (80), arguing that the mere presence of specific tech­ nologies which can be, potentially, used in the future has a profound impact on our subjectivity because it opens to us various possibilities. For example, knowing that thanks to a mobile phone we can contact our friends at any moment, we do not worry about losing sight of them in a crowded market square that we are visiting together. As Kiran points out:

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We conduct ourselves now in anticipation of what we see ourselves as being able to do, to achieve, both in terms of actions that we are able to undertake in the immediate future and in terms of what we might achieve “in life.” (88; emphasis in original) This potentiality also reveals the world to us in a specific way—as a field of possible activities and goals—and thus shapes us as specific subjects capable of specific actions in the future. The last dimension of the two-sidedness of technical mediation analyzed by Kiran—ethical—“expresses an involving–alienating structure, in which technologies both support and deplete our efforts to chisel out a good life for ourselves” (“Four” 124; emphasis in original). As Kiran notices, in the ethical dimension of technical mediation, more than in any other, certain normative judgements concerning the sides of the mediation are inevitable. A good example may be seen in assistive technologies, which allow the elderly and frail to stay at home (instead of going to a nursing home or hospital), as their condition is constantly monitored by various devices, including CCTV cameras. These technologies may be seen as involving, as they allow “users to create a better, and more dignified life with them than without them. However, assistive technologies also imply alienating aspects. For instance, some care receivers report that they feel controlled and dehu­ manized when living in a smart house” (136). What is important here is that the normative ambivalence of the ethical dimension “very often is related to the two-sidedness found in the other dimensions of technological mediation” (135). In other words, the ethical dimension can be superimposed on all the other dimensions as a kind of meta-dimension. Thus, for example, the fact that one technology enhances some aspects of human experience and reduces other (epistemological dimension) may be considered alienating by some users and involving by others. The same is true about the two-sidedness in practical and ontologi­ cal dimensions. As Kiran points out, whether one or the other of the two sides of the involving–alienating structure is seen as dominating often depends on the context and individual perspective of a technology’s user. Thus, instead of viewing technologies as inherently good or bad, we need to go beyond the dichotomy, and rather assess [technologies] in terms of the opportunities and hindrances they pose for us to create for ourselves a good life, or, more tangible; a good work life, good mar­ riage, good parenting, good care, and so on. (136) However, even when a technology was designed for a particular use that we find alienating in our specific situation, and we cannot escape from the technology, there is often no need for despair:

24

Technical Mediation and Subjectivity technologies are multistable … thinking that a given behaviour, moral or otherwise, can be ensured through designing and developing tech­ nologies in specific ways is to underestimate the material, social, cul­ tural, and personal complexity involved in how technologies are received and in how technological mediations are performed. (137)

The stress on the individual relation to technology in the ethical dimen­ sion—on the right to alterity, as it were—aligns Kiran’s perspective on technical mediation with that of Verbeek and Dorrestijn, especially in their interpretation of Foucault’s theory of subjectivity. Both Verbeek and Dor­ restijn argue that Foucault’s investigation of the ways in which power con­ tributes to the process of the constitution of the human subject, as well as his later studies of methods by which people themselves may co-constitute their subjectivities within the existing relations of power, could be helpful in the understanding of the phenomenon of technical mediation.

Technical Mediation and Foucault In Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality Volume I: An Intro­ duction, Foucault proposes (and in other works elaborates and explains) an idea of the workings of power that differs from the usual understanding of the way in which power functions, which typically assumes a top–bottom structure of power relations, with those who hold power represented as occupying the top positions of the social hierarchy. What is important here is that Foucault does not dismiss this traditional idea of power as completely wrong but simply as not sufficient to reflect the whole complex network of power relations. Because, according to Foucault, power is everywhere and can be found in all social interactions—as he puts it: “power must be understood in the first instance as the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization” (History 92). As the term “multiplicity” indicates here, power relations are not limited to certain dominant individuals or institutions but may stem from a number of diverse sources placed at various levels of social hierarchy. These relations are also “immanent in the sphere in which they operate” (92), which means that they exist in particular contexts—social, economic, administrative, sexual and so forth—that they also co-constitute, creating a specific kind of power networks. One of the most important types of power is what Foucault calls bio­ power. Biopower manifests itself in two basic forms: an anatomo-politics of the human body and biopolitics of the population. Anatomo-politics of the human body, or, simply, discipline, “implies the management of population in its depths and its details” (“Governmentality” 219). Thus, discipline is concerned with individual members of the population and is focused “on the body as a machine: its disciplining, the optimization of its capabilities, the

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extortion of its forces, the parallel increase of its usefulness and its docility, its integration into systems of efficient and economic controls” (History 139). This kind of biopower is exercised, for example, in the army and the system of education, but also in prisons and psychiatric hospitals. The other form of biopower, that is, biopolitics, is concerned with the whole population as the collective social body, and it focuses on “the pro­ blems of birthrate, longevity, public health, housing, and migration” (140). Thus the aim of biopolitics is to understand and regulate the life of the whole population, and it works mainly through the institutions of the state. What is important, however, is that these two forms of biopower are inter­ twined, and biopolitics “does not exclude disciplinary technology, but it does dovetail into it, integrate it, modify it to some extent, and above all, use it by sort of infiltrating it, embedding itself in existing disciplinary techniques” (Society 242). One of Foucault’s most famous examples of the way in which biopower may work is the Panopticon prison, proposed by Jeremy Bentham and ana­ lyzed by Foucault in Discipline and Punish. The Panopticon has the form of a round building in which the guards are placed in the middle tower and thus are able to easily see all prisoners, who occupy inward-facing cells surrounding the middle tower at some distance and who themselves cannot see the guards. Not knowing whether they are observed or not, the prisoners must assume that they are under constant surveillance and thus must behave accordingly—the gaze of the guard is, as it were, internalized by the pris­ oners. For Foucault, however, the Panopticon “is in fact a figure of political technology that may and must be detached from any specific use.” It is an important idea, because it “automatizes and disindividualizes power” (Dis­ cipline 205), which has its source not in a particular person but in a specific distribution of bodies, gazes and lights. In the passage, Foucault argues that the Panopticon should be seen as “a figure of political technology.” It has to be pointed out here that Foucault’s understanding of “technology” is wider than the one adopted in this volume. In an interview with Paul Rabinow, Foucault argues that what is typically understood as technology (and what he himself calls “hard technology”)— for example, the technology of electricity or of architectural engineering— represents a narrow meaning of the word “technology” and he himself is more interested in what in ancient Greece was known as “the tekhne-, that is to say, a practical rationality governed by a conscious goal” (“Space” 364; emphasis in original). Thus, for Foucault, “government is also a function of technology: the government of individuals, the government of souls, the government of the self by the self, the government of families, the govern­ ment of children and so on” (364). As Dorrestijn points out, in the interview Foucault makes it clear that “hard technology” like architectural engineering may be studied in relation to the wider concept of tekhne—technology of government, that is, the way in which power is used for the production of specific subjectivities. Thus, Dorrestijn argues, “[t]he notable relevance of

26

Technical Mediation and Subjectivity

Foucault’s work to the philosophy of technology is exactly this approach of revealing the role of (hard) technology for governing and fashioning human subjects” (“Technical” 223; emphasis in original). Dorrestijn sees the Panopticon as the primary example of (hard) technol­ ogy that is analyzed by Foucault as a technology of the government of people. Verbeek also focuses on the Panopticon in his analysis of Foucault’s theory of power, arguing that the design of the Panopticon prison can be analyzed entirely in terms of its mediating role in human actions and perceptions. Power can be “at work” through the material envir­ onment in the form of technological mediation. From this perspective, the subject in a technological world is a product not only of metaphy­ sical thinking but also of material mediation. (Moralizing 70) For most of his career, Foucault investigated ways in which various power relations constitute subjects. He was particularly critical of the modern idea of the autonomous subject that was first elaborated by Immanuel Kant, according to which people should be driven in their moral life by pure reason that, ideally, should not be disturbed by the outside world. In works like Discipline and Punish and History of Sexuality Volume I, Foucault argues that what modernity (influenced by Kant) interprets as an autono­ mous subject is, in fact, a result of various power relations which constitute a specific type of subject. It was in his late works, concerned with the idea of “the care of the self,” that Foucault changed perspective and instead started to investigate in what way people may preserve freedom in such a situation. The fact that the subject is the result of power relations which are everywhere, working both through discursive and non-discursive mechanisms, does not mean that there is no space for freedom. As Foucault himself explains, The claim that “you see power everywhere, thus there is no room for freedom” seems to me absolutely inadequate. The idea that power is a system of domination that controls everything and leaves no room for freedom cannot be attributed to me. (“Ethics of the Concern” 293) The freedom of the subject as Foucault understands it, is not gained by finding space outside of power relations but by shaping one’s life within these relations. Thus, the process of subject constitution—which Foucault calls “sub­ jectification”14—may take the form of a two-sided process—on the one hand, the subject is constituted by various power relations to which the individual is subjected. On the other hand, however, people themselves can co-shape their subjectivities by filling the space of potential freedom left by

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power with their own agency, thus contributing actively to the structuring of power relations.

Modes of Human–Technology Interaction Verbeek and Dorrestijn underline the significance of Foucault’s theory of subjectification for the philosophy of technical mediation in very similar terms. Dorrestijn additionally deepens his analysis by introducing categor­ ization of modes of human–technology interaction, that is, of ways in which technology affects human beings. Dorrestijn categorizes these modes in the light of answers to a number of questions: “If our existence is mediated by technology, then one can ask the question what is the effect, but also: How does the effect reach the human? What is the contact point? Where does the effect affect the humans?” (Design 64; see also “Theories and Figures” 221–2). And thus he distinguishes four modes of interaction: • • • •

Above–the–head (abstract): Generalizing claims about technology and humans. Before–the–eye: (cognitive): Cues to the mind that can change decision making. To–the–hand (physical): Changing gestures through bodily contact. Behind–the–back (environment): Influences on humans without direct contact. (Design 64)

As Dorrestijn points out, the modes may overlap or remain in competition with each other. What is also important, his categorization is not supposed to exhaust the theme of subjectification through human–technology interaction but is focused primarily on the kinds of interaction that, according to Dorres­ tijn, are most important for the practice of industrial design. Therefore, in my outline of his categorization I will extend it with examples of interaction which will be useful for my study of human–technology interaction represented in sf. Abstract Mode of Human–Technology Interaction The first mode refers to the way in which descriptive discourse affects the social reality that it describes: “The formation and use of concepts for describing the world are entangled with human action that is transforming and constructing the world” (Design 65). In other words, this mode refers to the way in which theoretical assessments of the role of technology in human life may, in turn, affect attitudes to, and uses of, various technologies. Technology fashions human subjects here in a two-stage process—it first stimulates theoretical reflection, and then this reflection contributes to the subjectification of individuals using technology.15 Dorrestijn argues that such generalizing theories about technology tend to move towards extreme

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positions of utopian and dystopian perspectives, which may increase their power to affect public opinion. Thus, “the general philosophical figures of mediation are valuable both for understanding and possibly for debunking the views about technology that nourish people’s sentiments and evaluations and which heavily mark debates about technology” (66). What is important is that generalizing claims about technology can be accommodated into—or even stimulated by—political agendas. Thus, as Dorrestijn points out, the utopian perspective on technology was essential for technocratic planners who invoked visionaries like Le Corbusier to convince people about their way of government. On the other hand, countercultural movements of the 1960s whose echoes are clearly dis­ cernible in today’s various green parties, saw Herbert Marcuse’s pessimis­ tic assessment of the role of technology in human life among their most important inspirations. Dorrestijn, however, does not indicate in what way the political agenda that is most important in developed societies today—neoliberalism—utilizes generalizing claims about technology in fashioning neoliberal subjects. This issue has been analyzed by Nikolas Rose, who in his works indicates the alliance between, on the one hand, optimistic thinkers and confident experts whose opinions often coalesce into more general claims, and, on the other hand, neoliberal governments. Optimistic assessments of the role of tech­ nology in human life are thus combined with the neoliberal ideological image of the free individual who should manage her own affairs. This combination, according to Rose, is especially visible in the field of health, where patients are increasingly urged to become active and responsible consumers of medical services and products ran­ ging from pharmaceuticals to reproductive technologies and genetic tests … This complex of marketization, autonomization, and responsi­ bilization gives a particular character to the contemporary politics of life in advanced liberal democracies.16 (Politics 4) What Rose does not mention here is the increasing importance of quantifi­ cation and self-quantification in the field of health. New digital and mobile technologies allow for new methods of quantification of bodily and mental functions, which prompts generalizing claims about their (potential) sig­ nificance in human life. Thus, for example, in her article entitled “Health 2050: The Realization of Personalized Medicine through Crowdsourcing, the Quantified Self, and the Participatory Biocitizen,” Melanie Swan argues that always-on health information gadgets which quantify a number of bodily functions should become an essential part of preventive medicine. Claims of this kind, in turn, contribute to the marketing power of neoliberal entre­ preneurs who argue that tracking and self-tracking devices and services they offer may significantly improve the quality of human life.

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The growing popularity of computer games also resulted in the appear­ ance of a number of theoretical works reflecting on the use of technologies for the gamification17 of life, both in personal and professional contexts. One of the most influential figures in the field of gamification theory is Jane McGonigal, who started her career as a game designer and, after some years of experience in the field, published a book under a very telling title: Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World (2011). In the book, McGonigal uses her research on the effects of playing games on human life to propose the idea that games can literally change the world for the better. McGonigal’s vision has contributed to the growing popularity of the idea of gamification, which has become one of the most important strategies in neoliberal capitalism, used to assure the loyalty of customers and employees without—apparently—compromising their freedom and autonomy. Thus Dorrestijn’s abstract mode of interaction involving gen­ eralizing claims about technology and humans contributes to the fashioning of a specific kind of subject. Cognitive Mode of Human–Technology Interaction The second category of interaction between humans and technology that Dorrestijn specifies—cognitive—refers to the way in which technologies influence the process of human decision-making through various signals that the user’s mind receives from them. Dorrestijn distinguishes three variations of this kind of influence: guidance, persuasion and expression of lifestyle and self. The first of these variations consists in the way in which a technology “guides” the user towards a specific kind of behaviour, or, in other words, the way in which a technology suggests the proper course of action if certain desired aims are to be achieved. This may be achieved by the specific shape of a part of the machine, which, for example, suggests that it should be held in hand or it may be achieved by specific symbols, like the numbers of floors on the buttons in a lift, which suggest to the user which button should be pressed to get to a specific floor. Persuasion is the second variation of the cognitive mode of interaction, and it denotes the way in which technologies may “persuade” people to change their behaviour by specific signals. Here Dorrestijn gives the example of the speedometer on the side of the road that displays the speed of approaching cars. This road sign does not just provide neutral feedback about the speed, but it tries to convince drivers to change their beha­ viour, namely to keep to the speed limit. (Design 72; see also Dorrestijn and Verbeek 47) But persuasive technology does not work only by stimulating rational, deliberate thinking about our actions—referring to the research carried out by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, Dorrestijn argues that persuasive

30

Technical Mediation and Subjectivity

technology can also be quite effective when it appeals to what Thaler and Sunstein call the automatic system of human cognition. Thus, for example, a specific arrangement of buttons on a food dispenser may induce the user to choose more healthy food without making her realize that she has been influenced in any way (Design 72; Dorrestijn and Verbeek 47). The last variation of the cognitive mode of interaction that Dorrestijn specifies—an expression of lifestyle and self—denotes technology’s influence on the way in which the user sees herself. Dorrestijn follows here argu­ mentation of Daniel Miller, who points out that the role of technology in the context of self-expression is not limited to providing means of repre­ sentation for the pre-existing self, but that during their interaction with various technologies users also create their own style of life. Although Dorrestijn does not indicate it, all three variations of the cog­ nitive mode of interaction may be seen in the use of computers and other information-processing technologies. Computers are employed to guide, and certainly to assist, many activities involving cognitive processing. In this field, the technology of augmented reality (AR)18 is quickly gaining popu­ larity—useful information can be superimposed on the view of physical reality. Computers are also more and more often used as persuasive tech­ nology, with a number of applications, for instance, specifically designed to persuade people to change their lifestyle into a more healthy one. What is more, as the internet is slowly replacing television, computers (and smartphones) also take over the subjectifying role of television in that they influ­ ence the outlook of viewers by promulgating certain models and norms and thus “persuade” them to behave in a specific way. Computer-based social media and other ICTs also form a huge field for self-expression. In fact, the analysis of this kind of cognitive mode of human–technology interaction is far more extensive in the work of the phi­ losopher Luciano Floridi, who argues that ICTs “are the most powerful technologies of the self to which we have ever been exposed” (59; emphasis in original).19 Following the narrative account of the self developed in the philosophy of the mind, Floridi distinguishes between self-conception, social self and personal identity: “the construction of your social self (who people think you are) feeds back into the development of your self-conception (who you think you are), which then feeds back into the moulding of your per­ sonal identity (who you are)” (64). Self-conception may be influenced by how the individual sees herself in a specific situation, but it is primarily formed by the continuous amassment of memories that create the narrative thread of one’s life. ICTs are important here because they influence the user’s memory by recording past events, but, as Floridi notices: “It is not just a matter of mere quantity. The quality, availability, accessibility, and replaying of personal memories may deeply affect who we think we are and may become” (72).20 Self-conception may also be influenced by interaction with others who have a particular opinion about the individual—this is what Floridi calls social self, noticing: “The social self is the main channel

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through which ICTs, and especially interactive social media, exercise a deep impact on our personal identities” (60). If the feedback from others (reflect­ ing social self) is not consistent with the self-conception, then the individual may modify this conception or behave in such a way as to make the feed­ back more consistent with it.21 ICTs allow users to present their self-con­ ception to the world and receive theoretically unlimited feedback by means of interaction with other users. Personal identity, in turn, reflects who the individual really is—as Floridi rightly points out, “there is a crucial difference between being Napoleon and believing oneself to be Napoleon.” And he adds: “The two selves—our personal identities and our self-conceptions—flourish only if they support each other in a mutually healthy relationship” (60; emphasis in original). Floridi’s account of the self is very useful in the interpretation of some ways in which ICTs like social media influence human self-expression. However, it could be argued that he puts too much stress on the relation­ ship between personal identity (who we really are) and self-conception (who we think we are) and, as a result, does not give enough attention to subjectifying processes that escape self-reflexive thinking.22 It is to under­ line these processes that I use the term “subject” in the title of this volume, instead of the term “self.” In my opinion, apart from being (partly) con­ stituted by her self-conception, an individual is also formed by—in other words: subjected to—forces of which she may not be self-consciously aware (and which constitute a significant part of Foucauldian power rela­ tions).23 Such forces may affect, for example, the automatic system of human cognition discussed by Dorrestijn and mentioned above. In the case of social media, the automatic system of human cognition may be seen at work, for example, in the way the specific design of webpages affects or limits the users’ methods of self-expression. In more general terms, inter­ action with computers and ICTs may influence users’ thinking and deci­ sions without making them realize that they are influenced in such a way. The psychologist Sherry Turkle, apart from analyzing the influence of social media on users’ self-conception, focuses on some ways in which ICTs structure their thinking and behaviour outside of their self-conscious thought, by, for example, eroding what she calls deep attention through the encouragement of multitasking, which develops what she calls hyper attention (Reclaiming).24 Physical Mode of Human–Technology Interaction The third mode of human–technology interaction that Dorrestijn distinguishes— physical—denotes technology’s influence on human behaviour through bodily contact, by which he understands any human–technology interaction which affects the user’s body. Thus, in this mode, not only the sense of touch, but also other senses, like the sense of sight or hearing, could be affected. Again, Dorres­ tijn sees here three variations of this mode: coercion, technically mediated

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gestural routines and subliminal affects. The first of these includes technologies which literally coerce people to do (or not do) certain things by means of physical contact, whether as an obstacle or active force. Dorrestijn refers here to the examples of technical mediation provided by Latour, like speed bumps, which make drivers slow down, or heavy key fobs used by hotel owners to make their guests leave the key at the reception desk.25 In contrast to Latour, who focuses primarily on the role of technology in this kind of interaction, Dorrestijn also indicates the role of designers and those who employ the technology, pointing out that they “govern other people by means of behaviour-steering technology” (74). Of course, one has to remember here about the phenomenon of the multistability of technology use and the rebound effect discussed earlier in this chapter. Also, coercion of this kind very often involves what Verbeek calls “interpretive step” (Mor­ alizing 97)—when a hotel guest is given a key with a heavy fob, she usually makes a conscious decision to leave the key at the reception desk—and thus the cognitive mode of human–technology interaction is involved here, at least in the first instances of coercion, because after some time reaction to the coercion of this kind may become automatic. The interpretive step may also be involved in the second variation of the physical mode of interaction—technically mediated gestural routines. Dor­ restijn uses here examples of writing with a pencil or riding a bike to argue that certain technologies structure human behaviour because users need training in order to master them. The cognitive mode—interpretive step— may be present in the early phase of the formation of gestural routines, as certain movements, for example, may be explained by the instructor. Once the proper use of the technology is learnt, the period of training may be forgotten, as the new bodily routines involving the technology seem to be quite natural. In other words, the technology becomes transparent. Refer­ ring to Foucault’s analysis of disciplining practices, Dorrestijn concludes: “Through training, people acquire skilful routines in which the human body and technologies function as one assembled unity” (Design 75; see also “Technical Mediation” 230). This variation will, obviously, also include limb prostheses, although Dorrestijn does not mention them, as well as all means of transport, which demand from users a specific kind of behaviour to fulfil their purpose. Subliminal affect is, according to Dorrestijn, another variation of the physical mode of interaction. This kind of human–technology interaction involves behaviour steering by technology by affecting human senses at the subconscious level. Although no direct physical force is involved here, Dor­ restijn argues that this interaction should be seen as a variation of physical interaction because technology affects here people through direct contact with their senses. What is also important, cognition is not involved here, as it is in the case of persuasion. According to Dorrestijn, a clear example of subliminal affect may be seen in the Mosquito, a device that emits irritating sounds of high frequency that are heard only by young people. Because they

Technical Mediation and Subjectivity

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cannot stand the sound, the device is described by its producer as “the most effective tool in the fight against anti-social behaviour” (75). Dorrestijn argues that this kind of interaction can also be found in advertising which affects people at the subconscious level, but it should be noticed here that in the case of advertising there is often a very thin line between subliminal and cognitive levels, especially in the case of the automatic system of human cognition suggested by Thaler and Sunstein. Also, addictive mechanisms built into social media should be seen as being responsible for the mixture of both cognitive and physical modes of interaction. Although the use of social media may be driven by simple curi­ osity, and thus represents the cognitive mode, once the use becomes com­ pulsive the physical mode of technical mediation kicks in—the user’s organism reacts to new stimuli without the participation of the mind. Sherry Turkle explains the addictive quality of the constant internet communica­ tion indicating its unconscious nature: Our neurochemical response to every [new message] ping and ring tone seems to be the one elicited by the “seeking” drive, a deep motivation of the human psyche. Connectivity becomes a craving; when we receive a text or an e-mail, our nervous system responds by giving us a shot of dopamine. We are stimulated by connectivity itself. We learn to require it, even as it depletes us. (Alone 227) In fact, this type of addiction is similar to behaviour resulting from operant conditioning based on the reward–punishment principle that was studied by B. F. Skinner, as both types of behaviour depend on the development of automatic neurochemical processes in the brain.26 The category of the physical mode of human–technology interaction should also be broadened by the addition of any kind of technology that affects the sensory capacities of the users, like, for example, spectacles or hearing aids. Such perceptual instruments modify the functioning of our senses and thus modify our physical experience of the world. Also, bodily implants should be put under this category, as they can affect users’ beha­ viour in a number of ways, from enhancing their general strength and energy levels in the case of bypasses to affecting their sensory capacity in the case of retinal implants. Discussing implants and other technologies that are supposed to function within the human organism, Verbeek argues that in their case technology “merges” with the human organism in a more or less fixed manner, creating what he calls cyborg relations between humans and technology: recent technological developments show a convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, and information technology, which makes it possible to intervene in “human nature.” Brain implants can enable deaf people to

34

Technical Mediation and Subjectivity hear again. “Deep brain stimulation” can mitigate the effects of depression and Parkinson’s disease. Psychopharmacological drugs drastically improve people’s mood. And in the field of genomics, ever more sophisticated interventions in human genetic material are designed. (Moralizing 140)

Verbeek’s cyborg relations indicate, again, the fuzziness of the boundary between the physical and cognitive modes of human–technology interaction. Whereas the contact point between the human and the technology is within the human body, and some implants may aim only at the improvement of physical bodily functions, others may also involve results affecting the human cognitive system, whereas still others—by improving the general functioning of the organism—may only indirectly affect cognitive processes. The same may be said about pharmacological drugs or—although this is still mostly in the sphere of speculations (or sf)—genetic modification and nanotechnology. Verbeek argues that cyborg relations no longer exemplify technical med­ iation: “In all of these cases, technologies do not mediate human actions and decisions but rather merge with the human subject, resulting in a hybrid entity” (Moralizing 140; see also “Cyborg” 391).27 It could be contended, however, that it is not important whether a technological device has been actually placed within a body (or whether the inside of the human body has been changed by technological means) or not, as the technology can still be clearly differentiated from the human organism and thus can still be per­ ceived as mediating human existence. This is the point of view of Tamar Sharon, whose idea of mediated posthumanism “extends the notion of ‘technological mediation’ … —the idea that technologies are not a mere modest means to an end but active mediators that help shape the relation­ ship between humans and their world—into the realm of bio-technology” (11; emphasis in original). Seen from this perspective, genetic engineering is also a mediating technology, and genetically modified behaviour represents the Latourian prescription, that is, “the behaviour imposed back onto the human by nonhuman delegates” (“Where” 232). What is important here is that genetic modification is not completely deterministic either—as in the case of “external” technologies, the effects of genetic engineering very often differ from the ones desired by the engineers. Genetic and other biotechno­ logical modifications of the human organism could also have subjectifying effects in the cognitive mode of human–technology interaction, affecting the subject’s thinking but also significantly changing the self-conception of the person subjected to such modifications. A different issue is whether germline genetic engineering (that is, mod­ ification of egg cells or sperm), which results in the creation of the so-called designer babies, should still be viewed as technical mediation in the meaning espoused in this book. As far as the produced babies are concerned, in my opinion it should not, as technical mediation takes place when technology

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“use”—however broadly understood—influences the subject’s experience of the world. The point is that in the case of germline genetic modification, there is no “subject” prior to technological intervention. In other words, this kind of genetic engineering co-creates the subject rather than mediates her experience of the world—the subject is not constructed in the world as a result of various forces affecting her, but enters this world with specific features (however different they may be from those intended by engineers). Germline genetic engineering, however, would have subjectifying effects on the people who would choose to have designer babies—it would affect their self-conception as parents, offering them choice in the sphere in which such choice was not possible before the advent of genetic engineering.28 Both germline and in vivo genetic engineering can also have significant subjectifying effects on the genetic engineers themselves, as they allow them to see themselves as possessing god-like power of creating or changing life itself. Environmental Mode of Human–Technology Interaction The last mode of human–technology interaction—environmental—denotes indirect influence on humans from the technological environment. Technol­ ogy affects humans here because it changes their experiential surroundings, and direct interaction with technology does not take place. According to Dorrestijn, this kind of influence may be seen, for example, in the history of technological evolution, where new technologies replace old (Design 77). The new technologies come with new functionalities and allow for the appearance of new activities, thus changing humans’ behaviour in general and their perspective on the surrounding world. Dorrestijn refers here to Marshall McLuhan’s argumentation about the subjectifying effects of script and reading, which were responsible for the growth in the significance of vision in human interaction with the world. But one could give here examples of technological inventions closer to our time, like modern means of transport or communication. These technologies create specific infrastructure which we learn to take for granted. Although we do not have to actually use these technologies, we look at the world, assuming their being at our disposal. So, for example, we might consider short holidays on the other side of the globe because thanks to aeroplanes this is feasible. In other words, we have a completely different idea of the distance from the one shared by people before the invention of aeroplanes. Dorrestijn also includes in this category utopian cities designed—and sometimes realized—by Le Corbusier, as well as any kind of space reflecting technocratic planning which is supposed to stimulate progress through spe­ cific infrastructure conducive to creative thought and technological experi­ mentation (76). On the other hand, referring to Foucault, Dorrestijn points out the Panopticon as another example of the environmental mode of human–technology interaction, and explains how the Panopticon produces a specific type of subjectivity:

36

Technical Mediation and Subjectivity Technologies and practices of surveillance such as the Panopticon, form a material environment that has conditioned a typical configuration of experience of the self. Moral consciousness is surveillance internalized, applied by people upon themselves … The subject as configured through ubiquitous surveillance sees itself as inclined to vice and called to watch over itself. (78–9)

It could be argued, however, that in the case of the Panopticon-like envir­ onment, the environmental mode is mixed with the cognitive one, as it contributes to the formation of a kind of social self which does not have its source in the opinions of specific people but in the general and constant visibility/exposure of the self that potentially may give rise to some opinions. In other words, feedback has to be imagined, and with time the constant presence of this imagined feedback is taken for granted and becomes inter­ nalized. The subject acts on this internalized feedback as if she was reacting to actual opinion creating her social self. Dorrestijn’s categorization of human–technology interactions may be seen as running parallel—to a certain extent—to the categorization of the twosidedness of technical mediation proposed by Kiran. Theoretical assessments of technology representing the abstract mode of human–technology interac­ tion often see technologies as either alienating or involving. The enabling– constraining structure of technical mediation may characterize cognitive, physical and environmental modes, whether in the case of actual or poten­ tial use. Magnification–reduction structure may appear in the cognitive mode when technologies affect users’ cognitive processes by foregrounding certain data and hiding others. Finally, the revealing–concealing structure may come to the foreground as a result of human–technology interaction in all the four modes indicated by Dorrestijn—any interaction with technology may reveal the world in a specific way, concealing other understandings of this world.29

Ethics of Technology The subjectifying power of technology, as it has been already indicated, does not leave the subject devoid completely of freedom—people can contribute to the process of their subjectification by assuming agency in the space left by power relations. When people, for example, use a technology for a pur­ pose which is different from that for which it was designed, they exercise their freedom—at least initially, for the new use may be quickly accom­ modated within the larger power structure. When an individual exercising her freedom in this way is aware of the consequences of her behaviour for the way in which she is constituted as a subject then she views herself in the light of what Foucault calls “‘ethics,’ which is the relation to oneself” (“Genealogy of Ethics” 266).

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Dorrestijn points out here that Foucault’s idea of ethical subjectification (that is, involving the relation to oneself)30 should be interpreted along with Foucault’s idea of a critical ontology of ourselves: “In my interpretation and use of Foucault, the ethics of technology means an ongoing ‘problematiza­ tion,’ or a ‘critical ontology’ of our technically mediated existence. The aim is finding, or forcing, openings to possible transformations of our way of being” (“Care” 319). Foucault conceived his idea of critical ontology as an answer to the idea of criticism presented in Immanuel Kant’s “What is Enlightenment?” In his own, identically titled essay, Foucault explains that for Kant criticism “consists of analyzing and reflecting upon limits” (“Enlightenment” 113; emphasis in original), whereas today, according to Foucault, criticism should be focused on transgressing limits. Thus, a critical ontology requires that individuals gain a critical awareness of themselves as subjects who come into being as a result of a specific configuration of power relations that is, however, always contingent. It is this awareness that should be the source of the individuals’ liberating transformation (“Enlightenment” 118). As Eduardo Mendieta explains: a critical ontology of ourselves reveals the constructedness of our being, its contingency, its revocability and thus its transformatibility. Because we have become, we can also become different. A critical ontology of ourselves, as a genealogy of our modern selves, allows us to extract from the very contingency that has made us signs or ciphers of the possibility of becoming other than what we presently are. (122) Dorrestijn, however, is aware that people rarely approach technology with the kind of critical attitude that ethical subjectification demands—in other words, they rarely use technology thinking in what way it influences them as ethical subjects. Writing about the way in which people accommodate RFID technologies in their hybrid—that is, technically mediated—lives, he points out that they often do this on the basis of the technologies’ functionality: “Rather than preserving theoretically conceived principles of autonomy, freedom and privacy, they choose and elaborate a certain style of hybrid existence that they find convenient for living” (Design 148). Here one could also wonder whether using one’s Facebook account to express oneself or attain a lifestyle within the limits established by Facebook is an example of ethical subjectification. Facebook users often modify their accounts, thus consciously constituting themselves as specific subjects. Crucial here, how­ ever, is the fact whether they are aware of the way in which technology itself contributes to their subjectification, for instance, by limiting the ways in which they may present themselves to the world. Dorrestijn sees the role of ethics of technology precisely in working to increase this awareness, that is, in “ethical accompaniment of practices of subjectivation in relation to technology” (Design 159)31—the task of the

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ethicist is to make people aware of the effects of technical mediation on the process of their constitution as subjects so that they can achieve freedom by deliberately shaping and fashioning their hybrid self within power relations mediated by technology. According to Dorrestijn, an ethicist of technical mediation, apart from theoretical work based on multidisciplinary research, could cooperate with artists and designers testing new technologies to deepen the philosophical exploration of the effects of technology use on human subjectivity. What is important is that additional insights into these effects could be gained by considering speculative scenarios of the future. Art may explore human–technology hybridization by imagining new technologies or new uses and contexts for existing ones. Testing of planned technologies is usually future-oriented—designers speculate about the potential performance of the technology, and testing is supposed to verify these speculations. In his analysis of the design process of new technologies Verbeek also argues about the sig­ nificance of future-oriented speculation—what he calls moral imagination (Moralizing 99). According to Verbeek, designers should try to imagine the various contexts of use in which the technology-in­ design could play a role, focusing on how the technology could help to shape specific practices and ways of taking up with reality and how it could shape experiences and ways of interpreting reality. (Moralizing 100) Also, philosophers themselves, in the process of studying human–technology interaction, could engage in future-oriented speculation. In her chapter entitled “Postphenomenology with an Eye to the Future,” Diane P. Michel­ felder argues that postphenomenologists should reach into the future to consider the potential impact of technologies that are not yet used or are just emerging: The worst case scenario for postphenomenology’s future is that while it could continue to offer insights into a range of technologies of everyday life, it would not have much to say, without taking a speculative turn, about “technologies-in-the-making” which aim, through those who write their “scripts,” at influencing and controlling human behaviour by working behind the scenes. (245) Taking such a speculative turn, Marie-Christine Nizzi adopts “an episte­ mological strategy inspired by the philosophical tradition of thought experiments” (87) in her investigation of the ways in which sf movies represent the question of technology’s influence on human identity. Nizzi argues that she can enrich her philosophical reflections with outlooks reflected in sf movies: “we believe that science-fiction blockbusters seen by

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millions of spectators throughout the world gain their success by appealing to widely spread concerns in the general public” (87). According to Nizzi, whether the human–technology interaction is represented in a movie in a positive or negative light—which, in turn, reflects general attitudes to the problem shared by the audiences—depends on two main principles: func­ tional pragmatism and consecutive evolution of the norm. Movies showing technological development as something to be desired usually depict tech­ nologies that serve clear pragmatic purposes with which the members of the audience could identify themselves—like saving lives—and they show the technological change as progressive and affecting great numbers of people, which allows for the evolution of the social norm concerning given technology. Nizzi’s chapter, however short and thus limited in its use of philosophical concepts, clearly indicates sf as the field of artistic expression whose analysis could contribute to the speculative turn in philosophical investigations that is advocated by Dorrestijn, Verbeek and Michelfelder. At the same time, such an analysis of sf could contribute significantly to the body of critical perspectives on the genre. As I argue below, sf often represents the effects of human–technology interaction on human subjectivity, and an analysis of this issue in sf could, in my opinion, benefit from the use of the theoretical fra­ mework developed by the philosophy of technical mediation. In this book, I offer precisely this kind of analysis of sf—thus, shedding light on one of the most important themes in sf, I also contribute to philosophical reflections on the technical mediation of human life. Before I move on to the analysis of selected works of contemporary sf, however, I will clarify the meaning of the term science fiction assumed in this study, and then I will provide a short historical survey of sf representing the issue of the subjectifying potential of technology use. Here, I will limit myself to works which envision technologies that were already emerging at the time of the work’s creation or that could be easily extrapolated from technoscientific knowledge available at that time, as I use the same criterion in the process of selection of material for my examination of contemporary sf in the following chapters.

Science Fiction Science fiction is notoriously difficult to define—as the editors of The Ency­ clopedia of Science Fiction argue, “[t]here is really no good reason to expect that a workable definition of sf will ever be established” (Clute and Nicholls 314). What is more, nowadays sf is associated with various media and forms of expression, including movies, short films, card and computer games, comics, cartoons, poetry, short stories and novels. This study will focus on the last of these—an arbitrary choice, but methodologically justified in the light of such a cornucopia and specifically dictated by my professional background in literary criticism. Even this kind of arbitrary limitation,

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however, does not make the task of defining sf any easier, not only because sf novels, being a literary form of expression, yield to a variety of formalist and typological categorizations developed by literary criticism,32 but also because they reflect the thematic abundance of the whole universe of sf, as the medium of written text places few obstacles to human imagination. This study, however, circumvents the conundrum by opting for a specific understanding of sf, which sees in the genre a method for exploring the role of technology in human life, as this approach fits the subject of this book perfectly. What is more, it is also one of the most common ways of com­ prehending the genre, which is reflected in its name—if we understand sci­ ence as inextricably linked with technology in the phenomenon of technoscience.33 In The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction, Istvan CsicseryRonay, Jr. argues that works in the genre often represent the “transformation of human societies as a result of innovations attending technoscientific projects” (7). According to Csicsery-Ronay, the technological theme is realized in two narrative structures: “the expansive space opera and the intensive technoRobinsonade” (217; emphasis in original). The former borrows many narrative devices from the traditional adventure stories going back to ancient times, while the latter develops narrative models that Csicsery-Ronay calls the “modern adventure cluster,” which includes the classical Robinsonade. According to Csicsery-Ronay, space opera—“signifying spectacular romances set in vast, exotic outer spaces, where larger-than-life protagonists encounter a variety of alien species, planetary cultures, futuristic technologies (especially weapons, spaceships and space stations), and sublime physical phenomena” (218)—frees the traditional adventure story from social and historical determinations, as time and space themselves are subject to technoscientific speculation. Techno-Robinsonade, on the other hand, reflects the socio-historical conditions accompanying the growing significance of the idea of technolo­ gical mastery of nature and society in modern times, in the same way that classical Robinsonade reflected the bourgeois project of the control and exploitation of colonial lands. Although Csicsery-Ronay’s main focus is on the narrative structure of techno-Robinsonade, which he explores through analysis of possible relationships between a number of typical elements of this kind of story, he points out that techno-Robinsonade plays a similar role to that played by bourgeois realist and modern adventure fiction, which “provided models of language and action, of plausible behaviours and goals” (243) and thus was involved in cultural mediation of the construction of specific subjectivities at the times of consolidation of nation-states and imperial expansion. Sf’s rise to prominence simply reflected the appearance of new socio-historical conditions when “national political power had become a function of technology’s power to correlate every aspect of social existence” (244). These conditions have been responsible for the develop­ ment of the new type of subjectivity, and sf contributes to this development in the way in which classical Robinsonade contributed to the development of the subjects of the imperial era.

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If Csicsery-Ronay only touches upon the idea of the construction of the subject in the context of the development of sf, Roger Luckhurst makes the idea one of the main concerns of his history of sf. Luckhurst also sees sf primarily as a reflection of the human–technology relationship—in his view, sf is a literature of technologically saturated societies. A genre that can therefore emerge only relatively late in modernity, it is a popular lit­ erature that concerns the impact of Mechanism (to use the older term for technology) on cultural life and human subjectivity … SF texts imagine futures or parallel worlds premised on the perpetual change associated with modernity, often by extending or extrapolating aspects of Mechanism from the contemporary world. (3) Luckhurst’s understanding of sf is crucial for this study not only because he underlines the importance of technological themes in the genre but also because he situates his approach in the tradition of cultural history, which studies “SF texts in a broad network of contexts and disciplinary knowl­ edges” (2) and is thus, by definition, interdisciplinary. Equally important for Luckhurst is Mark Poster’s definition of cultural history, which describes it as “as the study of the construction of the subject” (Poster 10; qtd. in Luc­ khurst 2; emphasis mine). Thus, choosing the perspective of cultural history, Luckhurst makes it clear that the study of sf can contribute to our under­ standing of the processes of construction of modern subjects, which is also the focus of the philosophy of technical mediation outlined above. In fact, Luckhurst acknowledges that sf “runs in parallel to a significant strand of philosophical and cultural discourse throughout the twentieth century that tries to get the measure of Mechanism, yet is constantly having to readjust its calibration” (4). Thus he admits that the shifts in the perception of the role of technology in human life are common both to sf and philosophy of technology, as they both are different manifestations of an enquiry into constantly changing and increasingly technicized life specific to the era of modernity, which is responsible for the production of modern subjectivity.34 The difference between them is that philosophy, in the process of investiga­ tion of this problem, develops specific conceptual tools with which to ana­ lyze human–technology interaction and which give certain rigour to its claims, whereas sf provides a less rigorous representation, but one that is more imaginative and more embedded in a broader picture of human life, and thus—closer to the actual experience of technology. This difference also makes it clear that the conceptual apparatus developed by the philosophy of technology can be used in the study of sf’s representations of the influence of technology on human subjectivity. Luckhurst situates the origin of Anglo-American sf, which is the main area of his study, around 1880 (16), arguing that the spread of literacy

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among the working classes of the two nations and the appearance of new forms of mass literature in the form of cheap magazine formats stimulated the development of new literary genres like detective and spy fiction, as well as sf. The appearance of sf was additionally conditioned by the unprece­ dented progress of technoscience in the last decades of the 19th century and the rapid development of technical and scientific education, which together were responsible for the increasing infiltration of everyday life by technol­ ogy. The new technologies like the telephone quite quickly started to be seen as exerting significant influence on human beings, which Luckhurst shows by quoting opinions from the time: “‘The telephone changes the structure of the brain,’ Gerald Stanley Lee claimed, because it forced men ‘to live in wider distances, and think in larger figures’” (26). Most certainly, this awareness of the power of technoscience to affect humans was also the reason why Cust made Wells the offer of writing short stories for his weekly. As it was indicated in the introduction to this volume, the stories led to The Time Machine, which is, according to Luckhurst, the first important work representing what he calls the evolutionary paradigm in the develop­ ment of sf—the novel stresses the subjectifying power of technical mediation by translating it into an evolutionary force. Because of its time perspective, however, The Time Machine does not focus on actual human–technology interactions, but rather on their long-term effects. Still, several conclusions can be reached concerning the types of modes and dimensions of this inter­ action that were, most probably, involved in the processes of subjectification of the Eloi and the Morlocks. As far as the former are concerned, their condition seems to be the result of human–technology interaction in the environmental mode—Nature has been “subjugated” and machines (oper­ ated by the Morlocks) remain in the background (or rather underground), allowing the Eloi to lead their work-free life. This subjectification represents the two-sidedness of technical mediation in its practical dimension. Enabling them to give up labour, technology constrained any physical or intellectual effort on their part. In consequence, they degenerated both physically and mentally, so that their life is devoted to dancing, singing and adorning themselves with flowers. Most probably, the Eloi were also finding technical mediation to be an involving experience and thus the reader is justified to reach the conclusion that technology that appears to contribute to the users’ wellbeing may have negative subjectifying effects in the long run: weakened by generation after generation of technologically assisted life, the Eloi finally lose features that would allow them to resist the Morlocks. The condition of the Morlocks, who are descendants of the working class, could be interpreted as a result of disciplinary power involving, most prob­ ably, the physical mode of human–technology interaction. Forced to operate machines underground they were also, perhaps, alienated by the experi­ ence—in the beginning. At the time when the Traveller meets them, how­ ever, they can no longer stand daylight, and it is not clear whether they find

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operating machines to be alienating—perhaps not. Thus they adapted, at least partly, to their life as a result of evolutionary subjectification. Although they also degenerated in the process, they retained the vigour and skills of efficient machine operators, which allowed them to gain the upper hand over the Eloi. Although The Time Machine is rather vague about human interactions with specific technologies, they come into sharper focus in Wells’s vision of a closer future presented in When the Sleeper Wakes, published in 1899 and set in 2100. As one of the characters notices: “After telephone, kinemato­ graph and phonograph had replaced newspaper, book, schoolmaster, and letter, to live outside the range of the electric cables was to live an isolated savage.” The two-sidedness of technical mediation is clearly reflected here: in its practical dimension, the new technologies enable new types of com­ munication, learning and entertainment but constrain the old ones. This is accompanied by ethical judgements, as the use of the new technologies is considered to be a thoroughly involving experience—to live without them is both like being isolated from the rest of the world and like being an unciv­ ilized savage. This development is also a clear example of the subjectifying effects of the environmental mode of human–technology interaction: by changing their experiential surroundings, technology changes human expec­ tations of social life. As a result of this environmental pressure, all people in the universe of Wells’s novel live in a few great cities, in which electricitydriven technology abounds and makes life easier and more comfortable: “The city had swallowed up humanity; man had entered upon a new stage in his development.” Wells’s novel thus illustrates David Seed’s claim that “the city becomes a key embodiment of futuristic technology” (Science Fic­ tion 47) in the genre—much of subsequent sf is set in cities which are sup­ posed to represent the most sophisticated technological environment. In contrast to The Time Machine, which suggests the pointlessness of technological development on a long-term scale, the Sleeper warns about more immediate negative consequences of this development in the political context. The narrative shows that new ICTs can be abused by those in power for manipulation and subjugation of the masses: most importantly, the “Babble Machines”—devices for efficient and quick dissemination of news—are used by the post-revolutionary regime to spread propaganda. This kind of ambivalent attitude to the role that technology plays or may play in human life is also visible in Wells’s other scientific romances of the 1890s: The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) and The War of the Worlds (1898). In the following decade, however, Wells significantly changed his per­ spective. In 1901 he published a collection of futurological essays entitled Anticipations, which brims with optimism because it sees the use of technology as an overwhelmingly involving experience. Anticipations was followed by another collection of optimistic essays, Mankind in the Making (1903) and a fictional representation of a bright technological future, A Modern Utopia (1905), in which Wells envisioned the elite class of technocrats—the Samurai—

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who control technologically advanced society. When the narrator declares: “There appears no limit to the invasion of life by the machine,” it is with full approval, as he considers technology to be responsible solely for the “emanci­ pation of men from the necessity of physical labour,” which should not be seen as “anything more than the curse the Bible says it is.” Thus, when the narrator wakes up in an inn after the first night spent in Utopia, he muses on the auto­ matic efficiency of his room, admiring its various work-saving devices and its design, which, as he guesses, facilitates the work of “a mechanical sweeper.” In this utopia, Wells again stresses the environmental mode of human–technology interaction—in consequence of technological progress, there is more time for leisure, but this is a positive development, as the narrator at one point notices: “From leisure, in a good moral and intellectual atmosphere, come experiments, come philosophy and the new departures.” Thus, the perspective offered by this work presents a stark contrast to the one represented in The Time Machine, where leisure finally leads to degeneration. This kind of degeneration, as A Modern Utopia makes it clear, can be avoided by nurturing healthy competi­ tion—apparently with the position of the Samurai as the top price—which will decide “who are to be pushed to the edge, and who are to prevail and multiply.” The close relationship between Anticipations, Mankind in the Making and A Modern Utopia shows clearly that sf of the type written by Wells should also be seen as an example of the abstract mode of human–technol­ ogy interaction, as both his essays and his fiction reflect his theories about the role of technology in human life. In fact, much of subsequent sf depict­ ing either optimistic or pessimistic visions of the technological future may be seen as representing the abstract mode of human–technology interaction: in this kind of fiction, the authors clearly want to achieve something more than to tell an engaging story—they want to convince their readers to accept their view on the significance of technological development. Wells’s own utopian belief in the inherently beneficial nature of technol­ ogy very quickly gave rise to polemical visions of humanity’s technological future. The optimistic vision of no limits to the invasion of life by the machine was first famously criticized in E. M. Forster’s short story “The Machine Stops,” published in 1909. Forster takes the idea of technological emancipation of men from the necessity of physical labour to its grotesque conclusion, drawing a picture of society in which people spend virtually all their lives alone in underground cells clustered in cities, with the Machine— a term referring to a kind of computerized technology infiltrating all aspects of human life—satisfying all their physical needs and providing means of communication that are not very different from today’s internet. The Machine seems to be supervised by the powerful Committee of the Machine, but the narrative describes it several times as equipped with agency—in this way Forster seems to suggest that technocratic government may finally blend in with technology, or even that technology itself may take over the government.

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Apart from this wider socio-political perspective, Forster also offers a more personal one, as the story is a detailed vision of the subjectifying effects of this kind of total dependence on technology. “The Machine Stops” starts with the description of a single-room cell which is, apparently, a more advanced version of the room in Wells’s utopian inn, but the description of the cell’s inhabitant (“a swaddled lump of flesh—a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus” [3]) immediately suggests that, in Forster’s view, unlimited invasion of life by the Machine will have other consequences apart from the emancipation of users from work. In contrast to Wells, who—greatly influenced by Darwinian theory that organisms evolve to adapt best to their environment—devotes most attention to the environmental mode of human–technology interaction in his visions of the technological future, the main focus of “The Machine Stops” is on the abstract mode of this interaction, as Forster, most apparently, sees the pro­ selytizing zeal of the advocates of saturation of human life with technology to be as important as technological development itself. The abstract mode in the story has the form of generalizing claims about the importance—in fact, indispensability—of the Machine, which is believed to allow for the best possible way of life imaginable. The admiration for the Machine assumes characteristics of a quasi-religious worship, with the manual of interaction with the Machine—the Book of the Machine—clearly resembling the Bible. But apart from the abstract mode, Forster’s story also shows the subjectify­ ing effects of technical mediation in other modes. The cognitive mode is represented primarily by the way in which the communication system is used for the delivery of lectures and following conversations, which limits the intellectual activities of inhabitants to incessant commentary on quasischolarly subjects. The physical mode is represented by the gestural routines that the inhabitants develop in interaction with the Machine—their physical activity is limited to the operation of the machinery in their rooms. Finally, the Machine creates a total environment for the inhabitants of the under­ ground cities, making them completely dependent on its services; as a result of which, they expect everything to be provided by the Machine, are unwilling to leave their cells and abhor physical contact with other people. The extent of their subjectification resulting from their interaction with the Machine is clearly revealed in the concluding parts of the story when the Machine starts to malfunction, and people are unable to repair it, whereas its final collapse leads to the necessary conclusion in the form of the death of its inhabitants. Human interaction with technology represented in the story also shows the phenomenon of the two-sidedness of technological mediation. In the ontological dimension, life in the Machine reveals the world as a network of minds, whereas it conceals its physical and natural aspects. In the practical dimension, enabling its inhabitants to lead labour-free lives, the Machine constrains them from engaging in any sort of physical exercise. In the epis­ temological dimension, mediation of life by the Machine magnifies the type

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of quasi-scholarly knowledge that can be shared via its communication system and reduces in significance virtually all other kinds of knowledge about the world. Perhaps most important, however, is the ethical dimension of technical mediation: whereas one of the two main characters—Vashti— finds life in the Machine to be thoroughly involving, her son Kuno finds it deeply alienating. What is more, Kuno clearly represents Foucauldian cri­ tical ontology, as his personal rebellion is based on a critical assessment of the situation, and the story revolves around his attempt to carve for himself a niche of freedom from the power of the Machine.35 As Kuno appears to have Forster’s full sympathy it can be safely assumed that he represents the author’s own attitude to technological development at the beginning of the 20th century. Thus the difference between the two visions of the future—Well’s utopia and Forster’s pessimistic polemic—can also be seen from the perspective of the idea of the two-sidedness of tech­ nological mediation in its ethical dimension. The two writers bring to the reader’s attention the opposite sides of the involving–alienating structure of work-saving technology. For the utopian Wells, this kind of technology overwhelmingly supports the users’ efforts to create a good life for them­ selves, as it frees them from the drudgery of mindless toil and allows them to pursue their intellectual interests. For Forster, the same work-saving technology, enabling people to pursue their intellectual interests, will alie­ nate them from their bodies and Forster’s narrative strongly suggests that, as embodied beings, humans need physical movement and personal, physical contact with other people and with the natural world. This difference can be easily translated into a generic one. While Wells writes in the well-established tradition of utopian writing, Forster’s story, as the editors of The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction argue, is a pio­ neering work: as “a futuristic monitory parable that dramatizes the con­ sequences of a troubling social trend in the present day,” it has become a classic of dystopian literature and “the model for the ‘if this goes on …’ story that was one of the dominant forms of later science fiction” (Evans et al. 50; ellipsis in original). This perspective is shared by Graham J. Murphy, who, in his entry on dystopia in The Routledge Companion to Science Fic­ tion, argues that Forster’s short story “has the strongest claim to being dystopia’s originary text” (473). While early British sf represents the evolutionary paradigm, early sf in the US, according to Luckhurst, was dominated by a different paradigm—that of the engineer/inventor, influenced by the archetypical figure of the famous American inventor Thomas Edison. These early fictions created the first type of the American sf hero: a brave young man who changes the world for the better with the help of his engineering genius. He makes inventive use of the available new technologies, most importantly electricity, which at the end of the 19th century started to be associated with progress in general, as it was the driving force behind most famous inventions of the time like the electric bulb and the radio.

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Probably the most influential figure during the initial phase of the develop­ ment of sf reflecting the engineer paradigm was Hugo Gernsback, who—apart from being an sf writer and the publisher of the first literary magazines devoted to sf, Amazing Stories and Science Wonder Stories (both launched in the 1920s, the latter popularized the term science fiction, which grew from the original term scientifiction used in the former)—was also an amateur inventor and the publisher of such periodicals as Modern Electrics and Science and Invention. Promoting sf, Gernsback tried to explain “how important this class of literature is to progress and the race in general” (Gernsback qtd. in Luc­ khurst 63), as he believed that the mission of sf was to imagine the ways in which science and technology could change human life and the world for the better, and thus to underline the need for technical education and inventive­ ness. It is clear that from Gernsback’s perspective, sf can be identified with the abstract mode of human–technology interaction. And, like the utopian Wells, Gernsback was firmly convinced that technical mediation is a highly involving experience. Actually, his belief in the inherent goodness of technol­ ogy use was so great that, as Edward James points out, he argued that any fiction representing technoscience in a negative light was simply “propa­ ganda … which tends to inflame an unreasoning public against scientific progress, against useful machines, and against inventions in general” (Gerns­ back qtd. in James 53). Gernsback’s zeal is faithfully reflected in his most important sf work—his novel Ralph 124C 41+ (serialized in 1911–2, published as a book in 1925). The novel is generally considered to be a literary failure, but Gernsback was apparently interested in something else than critical success. The plot of the novel, revolving around the adventures of a young inventor living in a future technological utopia, is merely a pretext for a parade of gadgets and tech­ nologies—in fact, already in the very first scene of the novel, Gernsback acquaints his readers with several futuristic devices (which include telephot, language rectifier, telautograph and luminor) and dozens of them appear in the rest of the narrative. Gernsback (in contrast to Wells, who often veered towards philosophical generalizations in his visions of the technological future) almost adoringly describes his devices in actual use and the source of the novel’s enthusiastic optimism lies in the fact that he focuses on the enabling side of the practical dimension of technical mediation (and, to a certain extent, on the magnifying side of epistemological dimension), which he unfailingly shows to be an involving experience: technologies just enhance human capabilities and, Gernsback implies, there is nothing that could be wrong with this. What is also important, as Luckhurst points out, is that, as the plot develops, the young inventor finally has to assume responsibility for the whole of humanity, and thus with his novel Gerns­ back contributes to a shift from stories focusing on the adventures of inventors to fiction about the significance of technocratic government which thrived in American sf in the latter decades of the first half of the century (Luckhurst 61).

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In 1932 Aldous Huxley published Brave New World, which was a reac­ tion to both technocratic tendencies in American culture and Wells’s utopias (Luckhurst 44, 69). According to Peter Firchow, it is the utopian egalitar­ ianism—achieved through eugenic breeding—described in Wells’s later utopia Men Like Gods (published in 1923) that bears the brunt of Huxley’s criticism (263–4). Huxley simply did not believe that an egalitarian society consisting solely of superhumans would survive for a long time, and hence in his novel he offers a vision of the mass production of different types of people—castes—as a more realistic prediction of the way in which future society will develop. Huxley’s inspiration was Ford’s system of industrial mass production based on the assembly line, but he did not see in it a model for work-saving technol­ ogy—in the universe of the novel technological automation of work is deliber­ ately limited as the government of the World State is afraid that too much free time could lead to social unrest—but a model for mass production of people based on cloning. In his vision of a biotechnological future, Huxley was influ­ enced, as David Seed points out, by a pamphlet, “Daedalus or, Science and the Future,” published in 1924 by the visionary geneticist J. B. S. Haldane (“Aldous Huxley” 477). In the pamphlet, Haldane hailed biology as the new centre of scientific focus and relegated physics and chemistry, which contributed to breath-taking developments in transport and communications at the turn of the century, to the sphere of merely commercial problems (Shmeink 1). Haldane, as Seed notices, “built on the prophetic optimism found in Wells to evoke a near future where biology has become applied to eugenics so successfully that dis­ ease has been eradicated” (“Aldous Huxley” 477). Reacting to Haldane’s (and Wells’s) vision Huxley, however, comes up with his own version of the future, in which genetic engineering is used not only for the eradication of disease, but, first of all, for the creation of an orderly society. Produced in great “hatcheries,” the clones in Huxley’s novel are divided into several castes (ranging from the most intelligent Alphas to moronic Epsilons) according to the role they are supposed to play in society in their adult life: embryos of castes expected to have less demanding jobs during adulthood are given less oxygen, which limits their intelligence. In this way, it is assumed that the least satisfying jobs will be done without any risk of dissatisfaction. As was the case with germline genetic engineering, this kind of embryonic modification could hardly be seen as an example of technical mediation. The use of technology for social control, however, is not limited to it. Technical mediation combining physical and cognitive modes is deployed in the early childhood of the lower castes, as they are exposed to “neo-Pavlovian” behavioural conditioning36 based on the reward–punishment principle—for example, any sign of interest in books, which could have potentially sub­ versive effects, is punished by electric shocks and loud noises. Also, their hatred of flowers is conditioned in a similar way to discourage useless trips to the country. However, as the Director of the London Hatchery explains,

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We condition the masses to hate the country … But simultaneously we condition them to love all country sports. At the same time, we see to it that all country sports shall entail the use of elaborate apparatus. So that they consume manufactured articles as well as transport. (24) Excessive consumption (always involving technology) contributes to the stability of the World State in two ways—by reinforcing the economy and by distracting the citizens from potentially dangerous political and social issues. Older children of the upper castes are influenced in the abstract mode of technical mediation, as they are given guided tours of the cloning facil­ ities, whose ideological purpose is to “to induce admiration for an achieved system” (Seed, “Aldous Huxley” 481). Finally, the use of a relaxing drug soma is propagated among all castes as a cure for what ennui remains. What has to be noticed here is that, in stark contrast to Forster’s polemic on Wells’s utopias, Huxley does not think that the body will lose its sig­ nificance in the technologically induced future. On the contrary, physical pleasures and distractions are part of the World State’s essential effort to keep citizens satisfied with their life. The difference between Forster’s and Huxley’s visions of the future may stem from the fact that Huxley’s Brave New World was heavily influenced by his 1926 visit to the US with its fier­ cely materialistic hedonism (Seed, “Aldous Huxley” 478–9). This hedonism, often sexualized, is clearly seen in the character of Lenina Crowne, who represents in the novel what Huxley described—borrowing a phrase from T. S. Eliot—as the promise of “pneumatic bliss” shown by the bodies of American flappers (Snyder 141). Thus, in Huxley’s world, a total technological environment is created which is geared towards maximizing both efficiency of work and enjoyment of leisure time, and thus no time is left for reflection and critique—as one character observes: “no leisure from pleasure” (52). The two-sidedness of technical mediation is important here in several dimensions. In the practical dimension, enabling pleasant entertainment, technologies constrain other ways of spending free time (perhaps devoted to critical reflection). In the ontological dimension, technical mediation reveals the world as a place of perfectly organized work as well as physically gratifying entertainment. What is concealed is that this world is built on systemic social inequality and, most importantly, a lack of freedom. As a result, technically mediated life is supposed to be a thoroughly involving experience—the purpose of all technologies is to make the life of the clones as efficient and pleasant as possible. Technology use also has subjectifying effects on the ruling technocrats, the most important of whom are called World Controllers. Coming from the caste of Alphas, they have to assume responsibility for the orderly func­ tioning of the whole society, and the two-sidedness of the technical media­ tion is slightly different in their case than in that of the governed masses,

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especially in the practical dimension—enabling strict control of society (in the manner of Ford’s control of his car factory), technical mediation con­ strains ways of government allowing for greater self-determination of subjects.37 Technology, however, is not always successful in its subjectifying effects, as some clones still feel alienated. One of them is Bernard Marx, a dis­ contented Alpha-Plus who, nevertheless, does not question the system. As Seed points out: Bernard Marx has been misconditioned so that he is saddled with a selfimage he hates. The roots of his dissatisfaction are physical (he is just that bit too short, just too hairy) and arise from his perceived failure to measure up to the physical norms of the state which ultimately he does not question at all. (“Aldous Huxley” 485) In other words, Bernard is concerned about his social self, but never ques­ tions the standards according to which this social self is created. Never­ theless, as a potential source of trouble, he is sent to an island where other misfits are allowed to live. When he learns about his exile he is devastated— trying desperately to fit in, he is not able to achieve Foucauldian freedom based on critical ontology. It is his friend Helmholtz Watson who manages to achieve this freedom, however limited it is. Helmholtz’s dissatisfaction is not based on an infer­ iority complex but on a critical assessment of the system in which he plays a prominent role as a lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering and a successful writer of propaganda slogans and scenarios for “feelies”—porno­ graphic movies using sophisticated technology to stimulate all the senses of the members of the audience. He becomes dissatisfied with his work and starts to question his writing for feelies admitting in a conversation with Mustapha Mond, one of the World Controllers, that “it is idiotic. Writing when there’s nothing to say …” (193; ellipsis in original). As the feelies have hardly any plot, in his conversation with Mond, Helmholtz underlines a clear contrast between technologically induced pleasure and meaningful reflection expressed in words—between entertain­ ment based on gratification of basic desires and art demanding cognitive effort. This, obviously, is a perspective that cannot be tolerated in the World State, which uses sensual pleasures as one of the main means of control and is particularly wary of anything that could stimulate critical reflection. When Watson is finally sent into exile for antisocial behaviour, he chooses the Falkland Islands because he believes that their cold climate will be con­ ducive to his creativity. Huxley’s dystopia has been often compared, also by Huxley himself, with George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, which offers a completely different vision of the future of human society. This disparity in visions results from

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the fact that the two authors were responding to completely different sociohistorical situations. Huxley’s novel was inspired by the growing role of consumerism and the entertainment industry in the US in the 1920s. Orwell’s vision, in turn, was primarily shaped by his first-hand experience of the Stalinist communists’ totalitarian regime, with which he came into contact during the Civil War in Spain in 1937. This experience led to Orwell’s obsession with the nature of the totalitarian society, and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) is a result of this obsession. The communist purges in Spain, however, are not the only source of the novel’s vision. After his return from Spain, Orwell keenly followed accounts of life in Stalinist Russia published at the time and in one of them he read about “a world in which the leader’s portrait hung in every apartment, children denounced their parents as traitors, and even making an inap­ propriate gesture could lead to arrest and imprisonment” (D. J. Taylor). The account depicts a world in which the subjects have to be constantly on guard because every word or gesture of displeasure with the government could be reported to the authorities not only by the police but also by acquaintances and even their own children. In his novel, Orwell imagines that technology could make this kind of surveillance far more effective. And he takes television—in the second half of the 1930s, Britain was the first country in the world which offered regular public television service (Burns 576)—as a model for this technology, adding to a TV set a recording capa­ city and creating thus a “telescreen.” In this way, he imagines a kind of Panopticon extended to the whole of society, as the round building of the prison is replaced by omnipresent telescreens that are equipped with cam­ eras and microphones recording everything within their field of vision and hearing. This constant surveillance, which represents the mixture of envir­ onmental and cognitive modes of human–technology interaction, contributes to the subjectification of the inhabitants of Oceania as docile and obedient citizens of the totalitarian regime. But telescreens are also used for broadcasting programmes which mix propaganda (there is a distant echo of Wells’s “Babble Machines” here) with behavioural conditioning to stimulate visceral hatred of the government’s purported opposition: The next moment a hideous, grinding screech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil, burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room. It was a noise that set one’s teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one’s neck. The Hate had started. As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed onto the screen. (14) Here cognitive and physical modes of human–technology interaction are combined to achieve desired subjectifying effects.

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The main difference between the two visions of the future—Huxley’s represents a society that is permissive to a great extent, whereas Orwell’s is highly oppressive—is also responsible for the role played by technology in each of these societies. In Huxley’s future, various technologies are meant to stimulate satisfaction with life and thus minimize the risk of revolt, whereas in that of Orwell technology is supposed to fuel both hatred of the enemies of the state and, even more importantly, fear of the government. In other words, the totalitarian regime in Brave New World is founded on technol­ ogy which is supposed to be involving, whereas the one in Nineteen EightyFour makes use of essentially alienating technology. Orwell shows how the alienating technology of telescreens makes the protagonist, Winston Smith, try to avoid it—he believes that he has found a place in his room which is outside of the telescreen’s field of vision, and he uses this place to write a diary in which he records his criticism of the gov­ ernment. He also starts an illegal relationship—sex is allowed only for reproductive purposes—with a young woman, and together they clandesti­ nely rent a room in an old building that they believe is free of surveillance technology. Their Foucauldian search for freedom, however, is short-lasting, as they are not able to escape the ubiquitous surveillance, and both are arrested. In this way Orwell expresses his pessimism concerning technolo­ gical development—instead of contributing to human emancipation, new technologies will greatly enhance the means of human subjugation. Comparing Orwell’s picture of the future with the one he himself pain­ ted in Brave New World, Huxley argued that his own vision is more probable as persuading people into loving their subjection by means of hedonism and excessive consumption is simply an easier method of con­ trolling society than fear (Greenberg and Waddell 6). Still, it has to be remembered that in Huxley, as it is in Orwell, social order is based on unyielding state power as any venturing outside the limits established by the technocratic government—however permissive they are—meets with instant reaction (Greenberg 123). Twenty years after the publication of Brave New World, another sf satire on excessive consumption, The Space Merchants (initially serialized in 1952), by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth, moved the centre of power from the state to big corporations, although the corporations still have to negotiate the government’s feeble attempts to regulate the market. In fore­ seeing this shift, Pohl was extrapolating from his personal experience—he worked for several years as a copywriter, and the most powerful companies in the novel are advertising agencies which have taken over the processes of manufacturing and selling advertised products. As the corporations in The Space Merchants lack the authoritarian power of the Huxleian World State, they cannot depend on the institutional conditioning of the whole popula­ tion, but their methods of producing active consumers are hardly subtler: as the narrative starts, a new brilliant method of ensuring the loyalty of cus­ tomers is tested—adding addictive substances to food. Developing their

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vision of future advertising, the authors also put an equation mark between technological and purely linguistic means of influencing the consuming public, thus suggesting that both may be used to achieve the same subjectifying effects: during a board meeting of an advertising corporation, one of the characters announces proudly that they have replaced compulsive subsonics in commer­ cials—recently forbidden by the government—with specific words that are supposed to resonate with the listeners’ subconscious. The compulsive subsonics is a clear example of technological subjectification on a subliminal level and thus represents the physical mode of human–technology interaction. It is apparently banned because it is perceived as too deterministic, and thus the advertisers resort to linguistic manipulation, which cannot be prohibited because language is supposed to be cognitively processed, but the new adverts, in fact, appeal to the automatic system of human cognition and as such also bypass the processes of conscious reflection. The frenzy of consumerism in the novel is fuelled in spite of dwindling natural resources because of the corporate elite’s unwavering faith in the power of technoscience to solve all problems. It is only a “fringe” group of Conservationists who oppose the exploitative nature of the economy, but they are considered by corporations to be more a laughing stock than a serious threat to the status quo. The dismissive attitude towards the Con­ servationists and their warnings is clearly a result of subjectification in the abstract mode of human–technology interaction, which instigates among the members of the corporate elite blind faith in technoscience’s capacity to make up for the shortages of natural resources, which, in turn, leads to further rapacious, technologically assisted consumerism. In contrast to the two dystopian novels discussed above, The Space Mer­ chants offers an alternative to the main social system, for it shows that a whole social group can use technology in opposition to the ruling elites. The Con­ servationists are not affected by the theory/myth of technoscience’s ability to overcome the shortage of natural resources, but this does not mean that they reject technological progress—they use interplanetary spaceships to establish on Venus a society free from the evils of excessive consumerism and there is a clear hint of utopian hope in their undertaking. What is equally important, however, is that originally Venus was supposed to be colonized under the aus­ pices of a big corporation as a capitalist venture. Thus, rocket technology which was supposed to facilitate further subjugation of people to the dictates of the ruling elite is ultimately used as a freedom-giving technology. In this way the novel clearly represents the phenomenon of technology’s multistability— the fact that one type of technology can be used for different purposes, resulting in different processes of subjectification. The Conservationists’ appropriation of technology for their own purposes is an example of Foucault’s ethical subjectification stemming from critical ontology—their actions follow con­ sideration of possible transformations of their way of being. The phenomenon of multistability is even more pronounced in William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984), the first—and widely considered to be the

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most important—novel in the cyberpunk subgenre of sf, which reflected the growing popularity of computer technologies in the 1980s. In fact, the idea of multistability is suggested in the very term cyberpunk: the second part of the blend, “punk,” as Mark Bould points out, came from punk rock and suggested attitude that “can be seen as urban political disaffection expressed through incoherent outbursts against accepted authority” (“Cyberpunk” 218). Thus punk indicates a desire to break the rules—including those of technology use. This meaning is underlined in Gibson’s cyberpunk short story “Burning Chrome,” in which the narrator’s reflection that “[t]he street finds its own uses for things” may be read almost as a definition of the phenomenon of multistability. The street’s own uses for things are contrasted in Neuromancer with the uses sanctioned by big multinational corporations. These uses are reflected in the first part of the blend cyberpunk—“cyber” comes from Norbert Wiener’s cybernetics, and refers to a future in which cybernetic control is exercised through computerized information networks.38 ICTs, which are utilized by big corporations to make money and control society, are appropriated by a variety of hackers for their own purposes. In this way hackers engage in a more or less deliberate ethical subjectification, as they choose their own way of living, which is emphatically different from that of the passive consumer of goods produced by corporations. The rebellious activities of hackers take place in cyberspace,39 which is a kind of virtual reality. The experience of cyberspace as represented in Neu­ romancer has its source in a specific kind of interaction between humans and technology which mixes cognitive and physical modes and bypasses the senses, as the user’s brain is directly connected to the global information network via “dermatrodes” attached to the upper part of the user’s head. As a result of this kind of interface, the user’s mind is “translated” into a digital being that exists in the global information network, digitally represented as a three-dimensional space. This way of using computers to access informa­ tion networks has clear subjectifying effects: whereas “jacking in” demands specific bodily gestures, exploration of cyberspace itself dismisses the body as completely unnecessary—in fact, some hackers exist solely as digital constructs in cyberspace. This aspect of human interaction with computers in the novel was criticized because it was considered as embracing the idea of human beings that reflects the Cartesian separation between the mind and the body, heavily prioritizing the former:40 Descartes believed that human essence should be identified solely with the workings of the mind and the main character in Gibson’s novel, a hacker called Case, is clearly scornful of the body—the “meat,” as he calls it—identifying himself primarily with his mind that can exist in cyberspace. It is in cyberspace that Case is able to fend for himself most effectively, in the process confronting, almost on equal terms, the power of corporations. Thus technology has clear subjectifying effects not only as a source of his self-assurance but also because it enables an ontological separation between the mind and the body. Kiran’s idea of the ontological dimension of two-sidedness of technological mediation is

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clearly represented here because Case’s use of cyberspace reveals humans as information-processing entities, and it conceals their physical existence. In fact, a similar revealing–concealing structure is at work in Forster’s “The Machine Stops,” with the inhabitants of the Machine focusing on the intel­ lectual side of their life at the expense of their bodies. Gibson simply takes this approach a step further, but he also deprives it of Forster’s pessimism, who sees this development as highly alienating for human beings. The human body so contemptuously disregarded by Case, however, gets its due in the novel’s universe in the character of Molly Millions, a mercenary with enhanced fighting abilities, including retractable steel blades hidden under her fingernails, quickened reflexes and augmented sight enabled by implanted mirror lenses that replace her eyes. These enhancements clearly represent the physical mode of human–technology interaction, and they have potent sub­ jectifying force as they extend the limits of her physical capabilities, thus enlarging her experiential reach.41 But her enhancements, especially the implanted mirror eyes, may also be seen as expressing her lifestyle as a tough “razorgirl”—technology contributes to Molly’s self-conception as a specific type of person with this kind of capabilities. In fact, in the novel there are many examples of technology use for the specific purpose of self-expression. At one point, for instance, Case learns about a new subculture of Panther Moderns who use various technologies of a bodily makeover for the sole purpose of expressing their lifestyle, which is supposed to differentiate them from other people (and subcultures) and to announce their rebellious attitude to the social order in which they exist. Apart from mechanical and electronic modifications of the body, the novel depicts the wide use of drugs with all negative consequences of addiction, although new methods of dealing with debilitating drug depen­ dence like organ transplants and modifications allow some control over it. Also, other biochemical substances are used with potentially significant subjectifying effects—at the beginning of the novel the reader learns that Case’s nervous system has been damaged with mycotoxin by his enemies so that he is unable to jack into the cyberspace and this invalidity casts a deep shadow on his personality. Finally, genetic engineering is used for bodily modifications in the novel, although on a far smaller scale than other types of modifications, apparently because of the costs involved. One character has used genetic rejuvenation therapy to reach the age of 135, but the nar­ rative does not explore subjectifying effects of this kind of treatment. These kinds of human–technology mergers in Neuromancer represent Ver­ beek’s category of cyborg relations with technology. In fact, it could be argued that the experience of cyberspace as Gibson imagines it also represents these relations—although no technology is inserted inside the user’s body, the experience clearly involves a human–technology merger. Here, however, it is the human (mind) that goes inside the machine, and not vice versa. What is important, the term “cyborg” is another blend involving cybernetics, as the word means “cybernetic organism” and refers to a human–machine hybrid.

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The idea of the human–technology merger could also be further elucidated in the light of Donna Haraway’s theory of the cyborg (first developed in an essay published in 1985, just a year after the publication of Neuromancer), as Karen Cadora points out in “Feminist Cyberpunk.” In “A Cyborg Manifesto,” Haraway indicates the inherent ambiguity of the idea of the cyborg—on the one hand, it refers to a human–machine merger pursued in the name of masculine obsession with control and war (this idea is clearly represented by Molly Millions) but, on the other hand, “a cyborg world might be about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial iden­ tities and contradictory standpoints” (Haraway 154). Cadora argues that what she calls “feminist cyberpunk” explores this other side of the idea of cyborgs. According to Cadora, feminist cyberpunk thus departs from the main tendency in feminist sf, which often “replicates the cultural stereotype that equates technology with masculinity” (158) and prefers to associate its female characters with the world of nature.42 Fem­ inist cyberpunk, on the other hand, represents the conviction that “cyborgs also hold the high-tech keys for survival. Cyborgs can ground a political vision in which identity is fragmented and contradictory, yet not without power. A cyborg is a multiply positioned subject enabled by technology” (160). As an example of this kind of feminist sf, Cadora gives Laura Mixon’s Glass Houses (initially serialized in 1991), whose protagonist, Ruby, is a young woman who uses remote manipulators—called waldos—to salvage things from dangerous places and eke out a marginal existence by selling them. She operates the waldos by means of a device that digitally translates her nervous impulses into the programs controlling them, and uses the same device to receive perceptual feedback from the manipulators so that her mind appears to be in the waldo she is using. As a result, as Cadora points out, “[h]uman and machine meld together, a fusion that is reflected in the doubling of prepositions: Ruby is ‘I-Golem’ or ‘I-Tiger’ or ‘me-Rachne’ when she is linked to them” (161). Apart from feminist concerns, the subgenre of cyberpunk was also used to explore—and thus emphasize—the issue of the relationship between race and technology. Walter Mosley’s Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World, published in 2001, is a collection of interconnected short stories that use main tropes of the cyberpunk genre, sometimes inverting them in an illuminating way. The universe of Futureland is dominated by multinational corporations that use technology to further widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots among whom blacks constitute the overwhelming major­ ity. Although some brilliant hackers in this universe are black, in several stories Mosley also shows why there are not more of them, foregrounding one of the most serious problems of the time when the collection was writ­ ten: the racial digital divide—the problem of unequal access to ICTs stem­ ming from ethnic, social inequalities.43 In the first story of the collection, “Whispers in the Dark,” Mosley describes how a family of blacks solve the

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problem of the digital divide: one of the characters, Chill, sells his eyes and his spinal nerve (which leaves him paralyzed) to ensure desired education for his nephew, the cost of which includes expensive internet connection. It should be noted here that the technology of transplantation is also featured in Neuromancer, where it is often used by people whose organs are destroyed by drug addiction. What Chill does represents thus the phenom­ enon of multistability with a gruesome twist caused by poverty—technology of transplantation is used to “save” lives, but not of those who receive the organs, but those who lose them. The street indeed finds its own uses for things. Another twisted echo of Neuromancer can be heard in the short story “Little Brother,” in which the main character Frendon Blythe—an African American who, in spite of his intelligence, has never had a chance to escape the clutches of poverty—stands trial for murder in front of an AI court of law. During his trial, Frendon is connected to the AI computer by means of a fibre-optic cable which is attached to the back of his skull. Although Frendon normally talks to the AI, the cable has the capacity to translate his consciousness directly into a computer, forming in this way a kind of braincomputer interface that Case uses in Gibson’s novel. At one point, Mosley makes Frendon reflect that for people like him this kind of cable is worth a fortune, commenting in this way on the ability of the poor to engage in the kind of hacking that is a staple diet for Case in Neuromancer: to be a “console cowboy” like Case you have to be able to afford a console. Analyzing Futureland, Isiah Lavender III focuses on the short story “Angel’s Island,” which he calls a techno-prison story. According to Laven­ der, it is “a disquieting response to the late twentieth century’s political manipulation of social stereotypes that disparaged the intelligence of blacks and played up their tendency for violence and crime as drug addicts and gang members” (112). The American government’s answer to this image of blacks was imprisonment, as a result of which African Americans con­ stituted a disproportionately big part of inmates in prisons. In the 21st cen­ tury, the tendency has not changed, as Lavender points out referring to 2007 statistics: “Black men are imprisoned nearly six times more often than white men” (112). Mosley represents this disproportion, making it clear that blacks form the overwhelming majority of inmates in the prison on Angel’s Island. As the prison is privately owned, the story shows “that a government pact with business uses the separation caused by prison to reinstitute slavery for the sole purpose of making money” (Lavender 113–4). What makes the works of inmates on Angel’s Island particularly efficient is the way in which they are supervised. Each prisoner wears a “snake­ pack”—a hi-tech device, combining bio- and computer technology in the form of a band wrapped around the right bicep of the prisoner. The pack is equipped with electronic extenders that connect with the nerve system of the prisoner and are capable of reading his reactions to various stimuli—it is, for example, capable of recognizing whether the prisoner is telling the truth

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or not. As it communicates with the external infrastructure of the prison, it also knows where the prisoner should be and what he should be doing. Each transgression of the prison rules is immediately punished by a dose of pain or sleeping drug administered by the snake pack—both can be lethal in the case of serious misbehaviour. The snakepack may be seen as a variation on the idea of the Panopticon, although prisoners are no longer seen by guards or cameras, but are “observed” by the device which monitors both their external behaviour and the functioning of their organisms. As the snakepack uses physical power to discipline prisoners, it also plays the role of the Latourian “sleeping police­ man,” who, however, is fully awake and whose script includes both the general rules of the prison, and tasks specifically designed for each prisoner. Still, some prisoners manage to carve out a niche of Foucauldian freedom for themselves in the snakepack world. One of them, for example, develops an addiction to the sleeping drug administered by the device, so that he transgresses minor rules on purpose to get high. The main character, a brilliant hacker called Bits, uses a weak point in the snakepacks’ script— they automatically turn off for a few minutes in the case of “their” prison­ er’s medical emergency—to temporarily deactivate the whole security system in the prison. In the last two stories of the collection, the narrative focus shifts from computer technology to genetic engineering—when Mosley was writing his stories, the idea of mapping the human genome was often in the news, and the first “rough draft” mapping was announced just a year before the col­ lection was published. This event stimulated a wide belief in the accelerating development of genetic engineering, and Futureland reflects this belief, but Mosley gives it again a racial twist. An illegal group of white supremacists pays renegade scientists to create a virus that would exterminate all blacks in the world. Genetic engineering used in this way clearly represents the two-sidedness of technical mediation in the ontological dimension, which reveals the whole human society as easily malleable according to some ideas of uniform perfection and conceals this society as a very complex structure that may thrive on its diversity. The plan of white supremacists is dis­ covered by a group of black hackers, but during their attempt to destroy the virus, they only manage to damage it. As a result, it mutates and extermi­ nates all humans apart from those who have “at least 12.5 % African Negro DNA” (351). This irony is a simple but powerful warning of the risks con­ nected with genetic engineering—whatever its purpose—but the accident also seems to be a miraculous end to the subjugation of blacks. Thus Mosley wryly suggests one way in which racial inequality might be finally eradicated by technology. But perhaps a more probable end to this inequality is suggested at the end of “Angel’s Island.” It turns out that the corporation which created snakepacks has signed a contract with the government to provide millions of these packs for the army and mental health institutions, and the narrative

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indicates that schoolchildren will be next in line. In this way Mosley sug­ gests that corporate technology will indeed eradicate racial inequality to a significant extent, but not in the way that African Americans could hope for. Technology will not liquidate injustices against the blacks, but it will reach beyond the ethnic borders to grab more slaves for the corporate masters. This interpretation is confirmed by one of Mosley’s characters in a different story. Folio Johnson is an African American who is on the hit list of the group of white supremacists that later develop the virus. When another character, a young white man, asks him why they want to kill him, Folio answers: “Cause I’m black. Can you believe that? In this world where the last thing you got to worry about is skin color, and they still wanna kill me. That’s some crazy shit.” A moment earlier Folio makes it clear, what, according to him, is the problem that everyone should worry about: “The corporations. The madmen who run ‘em” (278). In this way Mosley underlines one of the main themes of the cyberpunk genre: corporate capitalism’s attempt to control society for its own gain. The importance of capitalism in cyberpunk is also seen as the genre’s main claim for its continuing relevance. Quoting Tom Moylan in their introduc­ tion to Beyond Cyberpunk: New Critical Perspectives, Graham J. Murphy and Sherryl Vint point out: “the one consistent element in cyberpunk texts is their portrayal of the ‘triumph of planetary capital.’ In important ways, the continued relevance of cyberpunk tropes for understanding our current material reality is best summed up by this expression” (xvii). This planetary capitalism is in today’s reality, as it was in classic cyberpunk, based on global information networks and although the kind of experience of cyber­ space that is represented in Neuromancer is (still) sheer science fiction, in many other ways reality superseded cyberpunk visions of the future. If the actual “cyberspace” can still be “entered” only figuratively, it has permeated everyday life to the extent that is hardly envisioned in cyberpunk fiction, and thus the significant subjectifying effects of interaction with ICTs are exten­ ded to the majority in populations of developed countries—instead of a small group of hackers or other tech-savvy characters on which the classic cyberpunk fiction focuses. In fact, the present life is saturated by technology on a far bigger scale than it was in the decade of Neuromancer. And even before that novel there were voices who said that—because of the strong presence of technology—“[w]e live science fiction” (Marshall McLuhan qtd. in Bukatman 6). Nowadays, this reflection is more pertinent than ever, and this might be seen as another reason to explore sf in search of the ways in which tech­ nology can subjectify humans. The material chosen for my exploration is, of necessity, very limited. The first important criterion employed in the process of selection is that the works should represent more or less contemporary sf, that is, published within the last two decades. It is within these 20 years or so that developed societies have witnessed the appearance or meteoric rise in popularity of several technologies which shape the present experience of the

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world: Google search engine, social media, smartphones, self-tracking devi­ ces and, more and more frequently, smart-home devices. The year 2000 is also, as I have already indicated above, the time when the first “rough draft” mapping of the human genome was announced—an achievement which was possible only thanks to tremendous advances in computer technology and which can be seen as a symbolic mark of a new era in the field of bio­ technological interventions in the human organism.44 These developments necessarily found their way to sf written in the 21st century, affecting the shape of envisioned futures, especially in sf dealing with the near future. This time limitation is the second criterion applied in the process of selec­ tion of material for analysis—chosen works are set within the next several decades or so and deal with technology that may be easily imagined to be used within this time, that is, technology which is either very similar to the one used at present or technology which is a result of a continuing process of development rather than anything based on a great technoscientific breakthrough which could not, at present, be taken for granted (or, indeed, any technology having its source in an alien intervention). Such criteria ensure the pertinence of sf analysis for the study of the present, maximizing its contribution to the understanding of the ways in which various technol­ ogies influence users today. But this kind of sf also provides insight into the ways in which technology may, with a relatively high degree of probability, affect users in the near future. The use of these criteria, however, still leaves a significant number of sf works in the potential field of analysis. To limit this remaining number and give my analysis certain consistency, I have decided to focus on novels whose narratives are set in the US, which, as the country that has been at the forefront of technoscientific development for more than a century, may be seen as a natural choice of setting for visions of this development in the near future. As I have previously noticed, Huxley already based his vision of Brave New World on what he saw in the US in the 1920s, claiming in an article published a few years before the novel that “the future of America is the future of the world. Material circumstances are driving all nations along the path in which America is going” and thus “speculating on the American future, we are speculating on the future of civilized man” (qtd. in Seed “Aldous Huxley” 478). In the final stage of the selection of works for analysis, I have abandoned the idea of a more superficial analysis of a larger number of novels in favour of a comprehensive study of a small number of works—two stand-alone novels and one trilogy—which offer visions of the near future filled to the brim with technology and thus allow plenty opportunities for the examina­ tion of the subjectifying effects of human–technology interaction in the broad context of everyday life depicted in the narratives. Such a broad con­ text gives the analysis of sf an advantage over purely theoretical philoso­ phical speculations, which sometimes may seem to be too abstract and thus detached from everyday human experience.

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The analytical part of this book starts with an examination of The Circle by Dave Eggers as the time of its action seems to be nearest to the present moment. This futuristic story is a rare departure from Eggers’s typical, nongenre fiction45—still, it does not envision any novel technologies apart from an apparently fully functional retinal display, a technology which at the present moment seems to be at least several years away from reaching this level of sophistication. Retinal displays, however, are only mentioned in passing, and the narrative focuses primarily on personal computers, smartphones and surveillance cameras. As a result, The Circle reads almost like a realist novel, but at the same time it fulfils Luckhurst’s definition of sf as literature of technologically saturated societies, for it represents the experi­ ence of the world dominated by the use of ICTs. The specific value of Eggers’s novel lies not so much in showing that social media may completely take over the life of an individual—this is already obvious—but in an exploration of the ways in which the use of these media may change the user, including her behaviour, values and general outlook on the world. Eggers underlines the subjectifying potential of social media by making his protagonist Mae, an intelligent young woman from a provincial town, start work at the headquarters of the Circle—a huge corporation that combines the features of Google, Facebook and Twitter. In awe of the corporation’s innovative edge, its power and global status, Mae does everything to fit in as quickly as possible and thus embraces—more or less eagerly—every new task, gadget and application and, most importantly, accepts the necessity of sharing all her personal data. In this way Eggers manages to show how the increasing permeation of everyday life by social media slowly affects more and more aspects of the user’s life, as his protagonist is expected to share various kinds of information concerning her life which are produced by an ever-increasing number of applications recording, measuring and quantifying ever new areas of her existence so that, finally, virtually the whole of it finds its way to the social media platform. Mae’s use of social media, underpinned by processes of gamification, represents primarily the cognitive mode of human–technology interaction, as it affects her social self and, thus, her self-conception. The value of the novel also lies in its focus on the subjectifying effects of the environmental mode of human–technology interaction as the growing number of surveillance cameras and other sensors increasingly affects human life, as well as in showing how the abstract mode of this interaction contributes to the crea­ tion of new values and norms of behaviour. Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge reaches a bit further into the future, as its main focus is on the subjectifying effects of sophisticated wearable computers, complete with displays integrated into contact lenses. Of all the analyzed novels it is the clearest example of sf, as Vinge is an established sf writer who has always been faithful to the genre. In Rainbows End, he uses a slightly different narrative trick to introduce the reader to the possibilities of the new ICTs that he envisions: instead of a newcomer from the provinces, he uses a Rip-Van­

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Winkle figure—an old man, Robert, who has recovered from years of debili­ tating Alzheimer’s and thus has to catch up with the times embracing new technologies. Through Robert’s difficulties with learning to control his wear­ able computer and contact lenses, Vinge focuses distinctly on the effects of the physical mode of human–technology interaction, reminding the reader that mastering each technology affects human bodily habits. In turn, the novel’s teenage characters are clearly supposed to represent what has come to be known as digital natives—people whose mastery of new technologies seems to be an aspect of the natural process of growing up—and they are used by Vinge mainly to explore the cognitive effects of new types of ICTs that he envisions in the novel, among them, most importantly, displays in smart contacts which allow for instantaneous access to the internet and enable a virtually realistic experience of augmented reality. The novel also explores to a significant extent the environmental mode of the human–technology relationship, representing how the sophisticated technological infrastructure of sensors and servers may affect the lives of people in the future. The last analyzed work will be Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy. There was some controversy, caused by Atwood herself, concerning the generic category into which MaddAddam fits: Atwood at first denied that Oryx and Crake, the first volume of the trilogy, is an sf work, defining her novel as speculative fiction, and thus markedly different from sf which, as she claimed, is concerned with “intelligent squids in space” (qtd. in Adam Roberts 443). After a public discussion with Ursula Le Guin, however, Atwood admitted that it all boils down to different terminologies and that Oryx and Crake could, indeed, be categorized as sf (Introduction). All three novels of the trilogy move between representations of the postapocalyptic world caused by a deadly plague and the technologically saturated neoliberal society which preceded the apocalypse. In my analysis I focus pri­ marily on the first two volumes as it is in them that most descriptions of the neoliberal society can be found, although also the third volume, whose narrative is set mainly in the post-apocalyptic world, includes some scenes which shed additional light on the pre-plague society. In this society, biotechnologies play a far more important role than in societies depicted in both Eggers’s and Vinge’s novels. Atwood’s narrative focuses, first of all, on the way in which bio­ technologies, including genetic engineering, are used for various rejuvenation and modification therapies aimed at alleviating fears of ugliness, old age and death. This focus allows Atwood to explore all the four modes of human– technology interaction—first, the environmental mode is represented by the way in which technological infrastructure announces the possibility of bodily change. Such a change is advocated in generalizing claims by various experts, which represents the abstract mode. The cognitive mode is represented by beautifying and rejuvenating treatments that allow for the expression of self and style, and, finally, the physical mode is represented by the actual treatments.46 Atwood’s focus on biotechnology does not mean that she forgets about the importance of ICTs for human subjectivity—her main stress here is on

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the subjectifying influence of the internet, which eliminates the necessity of the contact with the feared Other, affecting users in a mixture of cognitive and environmental modes. On the other hand, The Circle and Rainbows End, whose main focus is on ICTs, both indicate the importance of the body in their technologically saturated environments. Eggers shows how the human body, thanks to tracking and quantifying technologies, may be easily rendered into a form that is shareable on social media, whereas Vinge’s novel, apart from focusing on training regimes necessary for mastery of new technologies, also indicates potential subjectifying effects of new bio­ technologies, both enhancing and therapeutic. Apart from differences stemming from their focus on specific types of technology, these works represent also significant differences in tone as far as their approach to technology’s role in the near future is concerned. Of the analyzed works, Rainbows End is the most optimistic—especially when it envisions the role that wearable computers with smart contacts could play in human life—although Vinge is also clearly aware of possible negative sides of technical mediation. The MaddAddam trilogy and The Circle, on the other hand, offer more pessimistic perspectives. In his vision of the growing dominance of social media over the lives of ordinary people, Eggers shows the birth of what Claeys and Sargent call anti-utopia—a kind of society which results from utopian dreaming going awry (2)—whereas the MaddAddam trilogy’s representation of technology at the service of ram­ pant neoliberalism is a perfect example of dystopia (which is interwoven with apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic narrative). What is more, in both Eggers’s and Atwood’s works, characters appear who find technological saturation of their life highly alienating and in their critical stance repre­ sent Foucauldian ethical subjectification, although both narratives show the ultimate failure of their quest for (even limited) freedom from the subjectifying influence of technologically advanced society in which they live. In contrast, in Rainbows End, Robert, who at first finds the techno­ logically saturated world highly alienating and appears to be engaged in a search for Foucauldian freedom, with time accepts this new brave world and finds satisfaction in his new IT job. In the conclusion of the book, I will interpret the differences between the analyzed novels (both in their tone and in their focus on different types of technology) from the perspective of cultural history. As Ashplant and Smyth point out, a cultural history of an artefact should involve an exam­ ination of the systems of its production and signification, which depend on the specific historical and cultural contexts in which the artefact was cre­ ated (6). Although not much time separates the publication of the novels analyzed in this volume—with Atwood’s trilogy spanning the whole period—development and perception of new technologies is at present such a dynamic field that even a few years may change a discursive perspective on a specific technology. This time difference, however small, together with other contexts that Ashplant and Smyth indicate, contribute to the

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differences in focus and in tone as far as the representation of the new technologies is concerned in the analyzed novels. What is also important is that from the perspective of cultural history, every interpretation is conditioned by time-specific socio-cultural phenom­ ena accompanying its production—in other words, systems of a cultural artefact’s reception are also always context-dependent (Ashplant and Smyth 6). Therefore, I have to underline the fact that my analysis is as time and culture-sensitive as the novels that are its object: I write at a specific point in time from the perspective of an English Studies scholar who uses the most recent theoretical and critical works concerned with both philosophies of technology and science fiction. Thus, I am well aware that future developments in the sphere of human–technology interaction and new cultural contexts emerging in the future may either question or corroborate both the visions represented in the fiction analyzed in this book, and the analysis itself. In fact, the disastrous COVID-19 pandemic, which broke out as I was completing the first draft of this book, represents a development that sheds clarifying light on some important aspects of technology use discussed by me in the following chapters, for the disease affects human–technology relations on several levels—it foregrounds the issue of safety/security versus surveillance, it points to the potential risks and benefits of bio­ technology, and it increases the significance of distance learning, working and socializing. As all these levels are important, in one way or another, in the novels that I analyze, in the conclusion I will discuss a number of parallelisms between developments in technology use connected with the spread of the disease and specific aspects of technical mediation that are explored in these novels. Ultimately, however, it has to be remembered that whether sf writers look at the future of human–technology interaction that just looms on the hor­ izon, is a few steps away or, indeed, starts to embrace us, and whether they look at this future through rosy- or black-coloured lenses, they often offer valuable insights into the mediating role of technology in human life. In other words, they explain in a perceptive way what technologies can do to us, and, thus, how they can contribute to the processes of our subjectifica­ tion. The insights offered by sf can be further deepened and systematized by the application of theoretical apparatus developed by the philosophy of technical mediation and other disciplines concerned with the human subject (although we have to remember that future cultural developments may render some of these theories obsolete to a lesser or greater extent). In this way analysis of sf texts not only brings to light meanings carried by these texts, but also contributes to a better understanding of the process of sub­ jectification through technical mediation. This understanding could be used—on both an individual and collective basis—in a power struggle for Foucauldian freedom.

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Notes 1 Sceptical about this solution, Jürgen Habermas, another representative of Critical Theory, sees in it echoes of “Jewish and Protestant mysticism, of the ‘resurrec­ tion of fallen nature’” (Toward a Rational Society 86). According to Habermas, technical rationality is inherently objectifying. 2 Apart from Hayles, Sharon puts in this category several other thinkers, including Braidotti and Haraway. 3 Here Sharon includes primarily Latour and Ihde. 4 Sharon argues that the main limitation of radical posthumanism is what she believes to be its main fear: that the idea of the “human” can be re-naturalized in the posthuman era along the old liberal humanist lines. In Sharon’s view, this fear is partly unfounded, as there may be different types of re-naturalization of this idea, not necessarily negative: “I suggest that positive re-naturalizations may be characterized by their relocalization and coordination in creative and produc­ tive ways within new narratives of nature, identity and selfhood that take on at least momentary and context-specific intelligibility insofar as they hold together and can be functional for users” (11). It has to be noted here that Sherryl Vint— who clearly represents radical posthumanism (as Sharon defines it) in her criti­ cism of exclusiveness and universality of liberal humanism—offers interpretation of posthumanism that almost exactly matches Sharon’s own perspective. 5 Sharon acknowledges this (147), claiming that Verbeek’s philosophy paves the way towards her own ethical conception of posthumanism, which she calls mediated posthumanism. This type of posthumanism, on the one hand, uses the idea of technical mediation (developed by, among others, Verbeek), and, on the other, overcomes what Sharon sees as the main flaw of radical posthumanism, namely, its fear of re-naturalization of the idea of the human in posthumanism (see footnote 4 above). 6 The similarity between Verbeek’s and Dorrestijn’s philosophies stems from the fact that the latter wrote his doctoral dissertation under the supervision of the former. Dorrestijn acknowledges Verbeek’s great support at the beginning of his dissertation, whereas in his preface to Moralizing Technology Verbeek thanks Dorrestijn for “the engaged and congenial discussions” and admits: “Steven’s idiosyncratic reading of Foucault’s ethical work was a major source of inspira­ tion for me” (ix). 7 The term “technical” is often replaced in this context with the term “technolo­ gical.” While Dorrestijn consistently uses the former, Verbeek is less consistent— in What Things Do he uses both terms, “technological” and “technical,” as synonyms, whereas in Moralizing Technology he almost exclusively uses the term “technological.” 8 In Moralizing Technology Verbeek claims that his philosophy of technical med­ iation builds upon both Ihde’s and Latour’s theories, but describes his approach as “postphenomenological” (14). Also Dorrestijn, indicating his inspirations in Ihde, Latour and Verbeek (Design 63–4), sees his philosophy of technical media­ tion as a radical follow up on postphenomenological approach to human-tech­ nology interaction (79). 9 As Latour admits, he borrowed the term from Madeleine Akrich (Latour “Where” 232). 10 Apart from embodiment and hermeneutic relations Ihde distinguishes two other types of human-technology relations. Relations of alterity occur whenever tech­ nologies are experienced “as quasi-objects or even quasi-others” (Ihde, Postphenomenology and Technoscience 43) with whom users can interact. Interaction with robots is an obvious example here but also use of ATMs. Finally, back­ ground relations take place between humans and technologies which are part of

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13 14 15

16

17

18

19 20

Technical Mediation and Subjectivity environment and as such function without direct contact or interaction with humans (43). Using electric light is a simple example of this kind of relation. Verbeek uses the word “amplification” instead of “magnification.” As Kiran points out, Heidegger focuses on human-technology relation in two texts: Being and Time, which contains his analysis of the use of tools including a hammer (see discussion of this analysis above, pp. 19–20), and “The Question Concerning Technology,” in which Heidegger focuses on modern technology in general (see pp. 13–14 above). According to Kiran, some post-phenomenologists (including Ihde) usually refer to the latter in order to dismiss Heidegger’s philo­ sophy of technology as unnecessarily dystopian. In Kiran’s view, however, Hei­ degger’s analysis of tools in Being and Time shows that the revealing-concealing structure does not have to be associated exclusively with the negative influence of technology on human existence as it is shown in the later essay (“Four” 127–8; see also Verbeek, What 80–3). That is, two of a number of stabilities that together constitute the phenomenon of the aeroplane’s multistability. In French “assujettissement,” which is also translated as “subjection” or “sub­ jectivation.” I have decided on the form “subjectification” (used also, for exam­ ple, by Nikolas Rose) as it can be paired with the verb “to subjectify.” The reflection on the significance of technology does not have to be limited to philosophical speculation, but it may take the form of fictional speculation. Csicsery-Ronay sees sf involved in this kind of two-stage process of techno­ logical subjectification: “Since their inception, these tale-forms have been shaped by the social factors that have led to the cultural ascendancy of tech­ noscience, a process that they have shaped in turn by giving it a store of mutually reinforcing narrative vehicles disseminated through art, journalism, and propaganda” (217). Rose often uses the term “advanced liberal democracy” to suggest that during the last decades of the 20th century even governments leaning to the centre of the political scene started to follow the neoliberal rhetoric of freedom, autonomy and choice (Rose and Miller 18). On the “responsibilization” of the neoliberal sub­ ject, see also Brown (42). Gamification is “a technique that seeks to apply game mechanics to non-game contexts, thereby aiming to ‘transplant’ some of the motivational qualities of games into contexts that are not inherently leisure-focused or motivating in themselves” (Raczkowski 141). According to a simple definition, the concept of AR refers to “a real-time direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment that has been enhanced/ augmented by adding virtual computer-generated information to it” (Car­ migniani and Furht 3; emphasis in original). Although the computer-generated information does not have to be processed through the sense of sight only, visual imagery is by far the most popular type of augmentation in the currently devel­ oped AR systems. Floridi points out that the phrase “technologies of the self” was invented by Foucault, thus acknowledging parallelism between his theory and that of Foucault. Focusing specifically on videogames Brendan Keogh adds a valuable insight into the question of technology’s significance for human memory, arguing that in order to understand it we need the concept of what he calls cybernetic memory, which should include not only technologies as means of data storage—keeping records of our past—but also technologies which, through their mediation, actively contribute to the creation of our memories (for example, those created while playing a computer game). In other words, in Keogh’s view, memories

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23

24 25 26

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29

30

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contributing to the establishment of our self-conception are constantly mediated by our interaction with technologies. Floridi’s theory thus reflects the theory of the self developed in interactionist social psychology, according to which social interaction contributes to the for­ mation of the self (see Owens and Samblanet). According to Rose, this deficiency characterizes narrative and interactionist accounts of the human subject in general. In Rose’s view, these accounts—how­ ever useful—are not sufficient: “the focus on language and narrative, on the subjectification as a matter of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, is, at best, partial, at worst misguided. Subjectification is not to be understood by locating it in a universe of meaning or an interactional context of narratives, but in a complex of apparatuses, practices, machinations, and assemblages within which human being has been fabricated, and which presuppose and enjoin par­ ticular relations with ourselves” (Inventing 10). Nick Mansfield gives a similar reason as to why he prefers the term “subject” to the term “self”: “Although the two are sometimes used interchangeably, the word ‘self’ does not capture the sense of social and cultural entanglement that is implicit in the word ‘subject’” (2). Turkle borrows both terms from N. Katherine Hayles. One could also mention here coercive technologies which steer human behaviour by more drastic means, for example: electric shock. See also Madrigal and Lewis. Benjamin Grosser, writing about Facebook’s stra­ tegies stimulating user engagement also indicates designs creating “an endless interaction loop that draws on the user’s desire for more to compel the consistent generation of content for Facebook” (“What”; emphasis in original). The notion of “hybrid entity” could be also understood differently—following Latour, Dorrestijn argues that “Humans are always hybrids of supposedly human and technical aspects” (“Technical” 226; emphasis in original)—in other words, every human-technology interaction creates a hybrid entity. In fact, any technology allowing prospective parents to make a decision con­ cerning their future child—like prenatal screening—can have similar subjectifying effects. In Moralizing Technology Verbeek examines such subjectifying effects of ultrasound scanning of a foetus. Dorrestijn sees his categorization of the modes of human-technology interaction as reflecting Don Ihde’s characterization of various human–technology relations (see p. 20 above). According to Dorrestijn, the physical mode of human-technol­ ogy interaction reflects Ihde’s relation of embodiment, cognitive mode reflects both alterity and hermeneutic relations and his environmental mode is the coun­ terpart of Ihde’s background relation (Design 64–5). What has to be added here is that Ihde’s relation of alterity, apart from cognitive mode could also involve elements of physical interaction. It could be also argued that Dorrestijn’s abstract mode of interaction partly overlaps with Ihde’s idea of macroperception, which refers to a larger historical, cultural and anthropological context of technology, in contrast to individual sensory perceptions of the user of technology that Ihde calls microperception. According to Ihde, “there is no bare or isolated microperception except in its field of hermeneutic or macroperceptual surrounding; nor may macroperception have any focus without its fulfilment in microperceptual (bodily-sensory) experience” (Postphenomenology: Essays 77). Not to be confused with Kiran’s ethical dimension of technical mediation, although the two concepts overlap to a significant extent: when I consider a technology as either involving or alienating, I usually do this in relation to myself. Dorrestijn develops here the approach proposed by Gilbert Hottois and Verbeek.

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32 The problems connected with attempts to provide a formalist definition of sf are well exemplified by the reception of Darko Suvin’s influential characterization of sf as the “literature of cognitive estrangement” (7). Suvin’s strict formalism meant that he excluded from the genre many works that are commonly con­ sidered to be sf, mainly because they did not live up to the idea of “cognitive” value. As Roger Luckhurst notices, Suvin’s definition of sf is “a profoundly pre­ scriptive and judgemental formulation that often berates SF works for failing to measure up. Books are policed for the rigour of their cognition” (7). However, according to Peter Fitting, also the idea of estrangement allows Suvin to be dis­ missive of some works traditionally understood as sf: “despite Suvin’s protests, there is a science fiction which continues to claim for itself some predictive or extrapolative function, from the discussions of space travel in the science-fiction magazines of the 1940s to the dystopian forecasts of writers as diverse as John Brunner and Margaret Atwood. (That these predictions or blueprints have not been realized does not really change their status.)” (136). 33 See Ihde’s concept of technoscience, outlined above (12). 34 Therefore, both philosophy and sf have to be seen as parts of Dorrestijn’s abstract mode of human-technology interaction, which is constituted by general­ izing claims about technology and humans. 35 I explore Kuno’s search for Foucauldian freedom in greater detail in “‘You mustn’t say anything against the Machine’: Power and Resistance in E. M. For­ ster’s ‘The Machine Stops.’” 36 Huxley’s neo-Pavlovian conditioning is an example of operant conditioning, analyzed by B. F. Skinner. 37 This two-sidedness, however, is not black and white. The narrative clearly indi­ cates that society based on the masses’ right to self-determination is prone to violence and disorder—as traditional human societies actually are. In fact, there is an element of ambiguity in Huxley’s treatment of technocratic government—as Nathan Waddell points out, “different readings of Huxley’s account of technoc­ racy diverge on the nature of his response to technocracy” (32). 38 The theory of cybernetics, developed by the mathematician Norbert Wiener in 1940s, eradicates the difference between humans and machines in that it sees both as systems of command and control (Wiener). 39 The term coined by Gibson in Neuromancer, again utilizing the first part of Wiener’s cybernetics. 40 See, for example, Hayles’s How We Became Posthuman (36–7). Vint, however, offers a different reading of the novel, suggesting that “while the novel articulates Case’s desire to escape from his material reality, it ultimately demonstrates the futility of such a project” (111). 41 It could be argued that martial arts skills have similar subjectifying effect. On the similarity between martial arts and embodied technologies (that is, representing the physical mode), see Ihde’s Technology and the Lifeworld (74). 42 Cadora’s assessment of early feminist sf is shared by Luckhurst, who notices that feminist writers entered the genre with a belief that sf “could be recomposed and redirected for new political ends—even if those ends were explicitly anti-scientific or anti-technological, striking at the heart of historic definition of SF” (182). 43 Although, as Lisa Nakamura and Peter A. Chow-White notice, the racial digital divide has narrowed thanks to mobile communication revolution, the use of ICTs still differs significantly according to the ethnic background of the user. 44 In Lars Schmeink’s words: “with the turn of the twenty-first century, the genetic has become not just a theme in sf, but rather a cultural formation that transcends the borders of the literary genre and establishes itself in mainstream culture” (9). 45 As I am preparing this book for the press, it has been announced that Eggers’s sequel to The Circle is going to be published at the end of 2021.

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46 Genetic engineering is also used in the production of designer babies, carried out to an extreme form in the case of the Crakers, humanoid creatures who are sig­ nificantly modified both in their bodily functioning and their appearance. Although the Crakers present a fascinating subject for analysis, they are a result of germline genetic modification which, as I have already argued, does not represent technical mediation. For this reason, they are beyond the scope of my analysis in this book.

2

The Circle Embracing Social Media and Personal Transparency

Of the novels analyzed in this volume, The Circle is set in the nearest future and as such does not envision any novel technological developments apart from fully functional retinal displays integrated into contact lenses,1 although they are only mentioned in passing, and Eggers is clearly not interested in their potential subjectifying effects. He is far more concerned about the way in which ICTs that already exist may affect human behaviour and values, and about the role which these technologies may play in the abuse of power. Thus, presenting his vision of the near future Eggers extrapolates only minimally from the present situation as he imagines some new uses for existing technologies and a different corporate structure in the social media market. He also uses less direct means to represent the effects of technology use on the human self, sometimes depending on symbolism to drive his point home. The narrative structure of the novel is quite simple: the story is told from the point of view of Mae, a young American who starts to work for the Circle—a social media company which seems to be a fusion of today’s Facebook, Google and Twitter.2 The novel follows her gradual rise in the company ranks (sometimes accompanied by her doubts about her work) and her changing relationship with her parents and her former boyfriend, who represent a perspective that is critical of the Circle. The novel ends with Mae’s final and complete acceptance of all the principles behind the model of social media championed by the company. When Mae gets a job at the Circle, she clearly believes it to be the best place in the world in which one could work, and when she arrives at the company’s campus her initial impressions confirm this belief. In fact, the very first sentence of the novel—Mae’s reflection at the beginning of the first day in her new job— is supposed to convey the utopian dimension of the company: “My God, Mae thought. It’s heaven” (1). A few passages into the story, as Mae is walking from the parking lot to the main building of the company, the reader learns what the company is supposed to stand for: The walkway wound around lemon and orange trees and its quiet red cobblestones were replaced, occasionally, by tiles with imploring DOI: 10.4324/9781003166320-3

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messages of inspiration. “Dream,” one said, the word laser-cut into the red stone. “Participate,” said another. There were dozens: “Find Com­ munity.” “Innovate.” “Imagine.” (1–2) The slogans reflect a specific belief about the role that the internet and social media should play in human life. This kind of belief is reflected, for example, by Yochai Benkler in The Wealth of Networks, published in 2006, in which he writes about social changes caused by what he calls “the Internet revolution,” believing that it will foster individual freedom, democratic participation, selfdevelopment and human welfare in general. Benkler’s book is a clear example of the abstract mode of human–technology interaction—he wants his readers to see internet technology in the way that he does: as a great tool for human­ ity’s improvement. The slogans that Mae reads may be seen almost as key words of such an assessment, whereas their placement on the walkway is sup­ posed to increase their exhortative function—it is clear that the Circle wants to be associated with this kind of utopian theorization. Mae’s reading of the slogans cut in the tiles, however, ends with an apparently insignificant incident whose meaning becomes clear only later. Engrossed in the inspirational messages, she “just missed stepping on the hand of a young man in a grey jumpsuit; he was installing a new stone that said ‘Breathe’” (2). To breathe, one needs breathing space, which is usually associated with freedom, and the Circle is supposed to provide such breathing space to its users, giving them the freedom to pursue their dreams in whatever direction they lead. However, as the story develops and Mae becomes more and more important in the company, the symbolic sig­ nificance of her—and that of social media in general—power to crush breathing space slowly becomes clear to the reader.3 As such, the incident becomes one of the most important symbols in the novel, showing Eggers’s pes­ simism concerning the development of social media giants that are represented in the novel by the Circle.

Utopian Vision of ICTs as Subjectifying Discourse The reader is given background information on the company when Mae is shown around the campus by her friend Annie, who has helped her to get the job at the Circle. Annie, as she explains to Mae, gives her “the same spiel” (19) that she gives to heads of state and, as such, her explanations can be seen as part of the positive theorization behind the technology—an aspect of the abstract mode of human–technology interaction. The company is run by three people—the so-called Wise Men—Ty Gos­ podinov, Eamon Bailey and Tom Stenton. Ty, the original inventor, left college after the first year to create the initial system, but he was so socially awkward that before the IPO of his company he decided to hire Eamon Bailey and Tom Stenton to help him with the business side of his enterprise.

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Stenton is supposed to give reassurance to investors and business partners as an almost iconic figure of neoliberal capitalism. He was more in the mold of the eighties Wall Street traders, unabashed about being wealthy, about being single and aggressive and possibly dangerous. He was a free-spending global titan in his early fifties who seemed stronger every year, who threw his money and influence around without fear. (23) As such a figure, he creates conflicting feelings among the more utopian­ minded workers of the company but, it should be guessed, his potentially destructive drives are tempered by the other two Wise Men. Eamon Bailey is supposed to contribute to the image of good people at the helm as he appears to be a friendly, avuncular figure: “He preferred to be called Uncle Eamon, and when he strode through campus, he did so as would a beloved uncle, accessible and genuine” (24). Bailey is most likely to present himself on campus, taking part in social events organized there, but he also acts as a representative of the company outside, appearing in various talk shows and on social occasions. His explanations of the company’s activities often veer towards abstract theory, and in his capacity as the company’s spokesman Bailey clearly represents the abstract mode of human–technology interaction as his theoretical interpretations of the var­ ious functionalities of the platform influence, in turn, users’ approach to the technology. Ty is the most reclusive of the three, but he remains the almost legendary inventor of the system, which was supposed to limit the user’s presence on the internet to one verified account—“the TruYou, unbendable and unmaskable”—that would be used for everything: “paying, signing up, responding, viewing and reviewing, seeing and being seen … One button for the rest of your life online” (21). The benefits are obvious: the TruYou simply allows internet users to save time and trouble. What is more—and this is suggested by the name of the system—it is supposed to represent the true self of the user, with all the consequences for the etiquette of the internet use: “Overnight, all comment boards became civil, all posters held accountable. The trolls, who had more or less overtaken the internet, were driven back into the darkness” (22).4 Ty’s system had its opponents, but the opposition was quickly crushed, as Annie explains: “Though some sites were resistant at first, and free-internet advocates shouted about the right to be anonymous online, the TruYou wave was tidal and crushed all meaningful opposition” (21–2). The right to be anonymous online is important in the cognitive mode of human–technology interaction, as it gives users the freedom to experiment with various identities, which, as the psychologist Sherry Turkle argues, is greatly beneficial for the development of self-conception (Alone 12). In the universe of the novel,

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however, this advantage of the anonymous use of the internet is clearly not considered to be worthy of preservation—it pales in comparison with the con­ notations of the phrase “TruYou” which, moreover, is unbendable. There is a bitter irony here, for most of the rest of the book is devoted to representation of the ways in which the subjectivity of the user is bent into conformity with the system, but at this point this irony escapes the attention of the reader. The tidal wave which crushes opposition to the TruYou, however, owes its impact to something more than the righteousness of Truth and eradica­ tion of trolling. False identities and multiple accounts simply mean a waste of money spent on ineffective advertising—the business motive behind the Circle is also indicated by Annie: And those who wanted or needed to track the movements of consumers online had found their Valhalla: the actual buying habits of actual people were now eminently mappable and measurable, and the market­ ing to those actual people could be done with surgical precision. (22) Ty’s system eliminates, on the one hand, trolling on various forums and social media sites, and, on the other, it limits ineffective advertising. The apparent multiple benefits of the system also reflect the essential multistability of the internet—this is a technology that can be used for various purposes, but none of them seems to be wrong. The business potential of the Circle, however, is played down as just a side effect of the original idea of the system that would simply make the life of users easier and simpler—Ty denied that he was at the beginning aware of the financial benefits of his system “and most people assumed this was the case, that the monetization of Ty’s innovations came from the other two Wise Men, those with the experience and business acumen to make it happen” (22). The term “monetization” suggests that an already existing technology is simply not allowed to be wasted economically. This perspec­ tive is also an integral part of the positive theorization of the technology and the company behind it, which can hold on to its claims that users and their needs come first. There should be hardly any objections to this kind of business model, and therefore the Circle makes it no secret that it is also a highly profitable business enterprise. What additionally adds to the credibility of this positive theorization of the technology provided by the Circle is the fact that the company clearly represents the idea of progress, which is the most general type of abstract mode of human–technology interaction. This understanding of the Circle as a beacon of progress is exemplified by Mae herself, who worked for a utility company in her home town before she got the job at the Circle. After an elite liberal arts college Mae was gravely disappointed that she had to return to the small town in which she grew up, but she had no other means to repay the college loan. What particularly dispirited her about the utility was

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the backwardness of the place: “It was sickening, all of it. The green cin­ derblocks. An actual water cooler. Actual punch cards. The actual certifi­ cates of merit when someone had done something deemed special” (11; emphasis in original). Her supervisor was not better: a man named Kevin, who served as the ostensible technology officer at the utility, but who, in a strange twist, happened to know nothing about technology. He knew cables, splitters; he should have been oper­ ating a ham radio in his basement—not supervising Mae. (9–10) Both the place and the people had not managed to catch up with the tech­ nological progress, with which Mae, as a graduate of an elite college, iden­ tified herself. As a result of this discrepancy, Mae felt suffocated and removed from anything that could be meaningful in the world: All of it felt like something from another time, a rightfully forgotten time, and made Mae feel that she was not only wasting her life but that this entire company was wasting life, wasting human potential and holding back the turning of the globe. (11) The company does not live up to the idea of progress and this has con­ sequences for Mae on the cognitive level, as it puts pressure on her self­ conception—feeling absolutely out of place in the company, she is desperate to leave and finally asks Annie for help with getting a job at the Circle. When she finally finds herself on the campus of the hi-tech company, how­ ever, Mae initially also feels a discrepancy between her self-conception and her work, but this time she believes that it is she who is below the level of techno­ logical savvy that is expected from her in the new place: after entering the campus for the first time, Mae is “trying to look as if she belonged” (1). This sense of inadequacy is underlined sometime later when Mae walks around the campus with Annie. As they enter one of the cafeterias on the campus, they stop at several tables “meeting fascinating people, every one of them working on something Annie deemed world-rocking or life-changing or fifty years ahead of anyone else” (18; emphasis in original). What is also important is that the Circle is something more than just an ultra-modern, hi-tech workplace: when Mae asks Annie about the financial side of all these original projects, Annie answers: “it’s not just about money here, as I’m guessing you know. There’s enough revenue to support the passions of the community” (18). The company provides state-of-the-art infrastructure so that people can follow their dreams of advancing human civilization, and the slogans on the tiles appear to reflect the place perfectly. As such, the Circle clearly represents the idea of progress but also a specific environmental mode of human–technology interaction, sti­ mulating human creativity and self-development.

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In short, the place has everything to represent the idea of progress as unconditional good—state-of-the-art infrastructure, money that is just a side effect of making life easier for others, and people who are ready to confirm the idea with their world-changing inventions. As the narrative develops, however, smudges start to appear on the utopian edifice of the Circle—some of them are noticed by Mae herself, some are pointed out to her by others, and some escape her attention. Focusing on these smudges and on the way in which Mae learns to accept those of which she is aware Eggers all the time indicates the subjectifying power of social media and the internet in general.

Self-Conception, Social Self and the Internet as Archive The first crack in the utopian image of the company appears already during Mae’s first day at the Circle. Before she meets Annie, she is given a short tour around the place by Renata, Annie’s assistant. When they are in an elevator, it reads Mae’s ID and then says hello, showing a picture of her. As Mae learns from Renata, this functionality of the elevator usually impresses guests, but Mae is not pleased with the photo, which, as she believes, represents her old self of teenage anger and rebellion: “She’d tried, since high school, to be more open, more accepting, and seeing it here, this document of a long-ago era when she assumed the worst of the world, rat­ tled her” (6). Mae thinks that she has changed since the time the photo was taken and thus that the photo simply misrepresents her current self. Although the photo in the elevator did not have to come from the internet—the reader only learns that it was Annie who fed the photo into the system—the incident indicates the troubling potential of social media and the internet in general to remind people of their past. What is important is that the persistence of traces from the past on the internet is not only about a momentary embarrassment, as it can have more significant subjectifying effects in the cognitive mode of human–technology interaction, especially in the period of the formation of self-conception. According to Floridi, “any technology, the primary goal of which is to manage memories, is going to have an immense influence on how individuals develop and shape their own personal identities” (72). Floridi also notices that until recently social media and the internet were considered to be offering people great help in the construction of their personal identities, but now their influence starts to seem more ambiguous: “Recorded memories tend to freeze and reinforce the nature of their subject. The more memories we accumulate and externalize, the more narrative constraints we provide for the construction and devel­ opment of our personal identities” (72). Easily available records of one’s past may disturb the development of the self, which very often consists in leaving behind the old habits, milieus, beliefs—in short, in forgetting about the past—and this is precisely what Mae would like to do as far as her rebellious youth is concerned.

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What makes the problem of persisting traces from the past even worse in this context is that in the era of the internet they are easily accessible to others, and part of Mae’s irritation at her photo in the elevator is caused by the fact that it is also seen by Renata, who can be interpreted as the representative of the masses of internet users. Disliked pictures from the past that before the internet were usually confined to bottom drawers or to musty family albums, now can be seen by almost anyone in the world. As such, they contribute to the estab­ lishment of the social self, which reflects the way in which others see the indi­ vidual. Exploring this issue Sherry Turkle describes the problems of a student who wanted to have a new start in college: Dawn tried to “scrub” her Facebook page when she got into college: “I wanted a fresh start,” she says. But she could only delete so much. Her friends had pictures of her on their pages and messages from her on their walls. All of these would remain. She says, “It’s like somebody is about to find a horrible secret that I didn’t know I left someplace.” (Alone 259) The photo in the elevator is clearly Mae’s “horrible secret” from the past. Persisting records of the past, however, are not the only controversial feature of the internet in the context of one’s social self. Even worse pro­ blems can be caused by distorted or incomplete information that could be found on the internet. The potential consequences of the gap between what a person is really like and her social self on the internet are explored in the novel in the subplot concerning Mae’s relationship with her former boy­ friend Mercer, an artisan who creates chandeliers out of antlers. At one point during one of their conversations, Mercer, exasperated by Mae’s growing dependence on the internet, asks her to talk to him directly instead of relying on the opinions of strangers: “A few months ago, you read something about me, and remember this? When I saw you, you were so standoffish.” “That’s because they said you were using endangered species for your work!” “But I’ve never done that.” “Well, how am I supposed to know that?” “You can ask me! Actually ask me. You know how weird that is, that you, my friend and ex-girlfriend, gets her information about me from some random person who’s never met me? And then I have to sit across from you and it’s like we’re looking at each other through this strange fog.” (131) With the figure of “strange fog” Mercer indicates the subjectifying potential of the internet in the cognitive mode: the amount of information about any

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person—some of it false—that can be found on the internet makes it diffi­ cult for others, even friends, to see this person clearly: the person’s social self becomes blurred, and this may negatively affect her or his self-concep­ tion, as is the case when Mae is standoffish towards Mercer, and he does not know why. In fact, this issue could be seen in the context of the problem of privacy, which is one of the main themes of Eggers’s novel. Daniel J. Solove, in his seminal article on the importance of privacy, criticizes the existing defini­ tions of privacy for their limitations and postulates an idea of privacy which would subsume all problems associated with personal information. What, according to him, is more important than the precision of the definition of privacy—and it would be extremely difficult to create a definition encom­ passing all aspects of the issue—is that every question that could be even distantly associated with privacy should be recognized, first of all, as a pro­ blem needing a solution. For example, I classify as a privacy violation a problem I call distortion, which involves disseminating false or misleading information about a person. Some might argue that distortion really is not a privacy harm, because privacy only involves true information. But does it matter? Regardless of whether distortion is classified as a privacy problem, it is nevertheless a problem. (760) What matters here is that the problem of distortion is similar to other privacy problems, and considering them together could be helpful in solving them. Mercer is lucky because he can explain to Mae that the information about him that she found on the internet is false. Even worse could be a case when the victim of false information is ignorant of what exactly he is accused of or criticized for—as Mercer is at first. Such a person has to deal with peo­ ple’s unjust behaviour towards himself, trying to decide whether he is really guilty of some kind of transgression or is a victim of a misunderstanding or deliberate malevolence. This kind of confusion allows Solove to refer to Kafka’s The Trial as the best metaphor that could describe this type of privacy problem. In the novel, the main character is submitted to legal pro­ ceedings having no idea what it is that he is accused of, and throughout the novel he tries to learn something about the charges against him, devoting most of his energy and time to the task. This kind of uncertainty might certainly influence one’s self-perception, as it creates a sense of insecurity and self-doubt. The question of the distortion of the social self in the novel, however, is not limited to false information or outdated pictures—this distortion may also be a result of misinterpretation of some apparently insignificant traces left in the digital world. Shortly after starting her work for the company

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Mae is summoned unexpectedly by Dan, the boss of her section. When she comes to see Dan, it turns out that Mae has gravely offended one of her co­ workers. The actual cause of the offence at first seems ridiculous to Mae, but Dan treats it very seriously, making an official note of it: Story: Alistair of the Renaissance, Team Nine, held a brunch for all staffers who had demonstrated an interest in Portugal. He sent out three notices about the event, none of which Mae, of the Renaissance, Team Six, answered. Alistair became concerned that there was no RSVP or communication of any kind from Mae. When the brunch occurred, Mae did not attend, and Alistair understandably was distressed about why she would not respond to repeated invitations, and then fail to attend. This was non-participation in a classic sense. (108) Mae is shocked by the whole situation as she had never met Alistair before and simply missed notifications from him. What is more, she is not a Por­ tugal enthusiast, although she once visited the country, and there is no mention of Portugal in her profile. However, sensing how seriously Dan takes the incident, she apologizes to Alistair but leaves her boss’s office mystified. It is Annie who explains the incident to her a few hours later when Mae talks to her about it. When she was in Portugal, Mae took some photos and she kept them on her laptop, all the contents of which were transferred to the company’s cloud on her first day of work. Annie explains: When Alistair wanted to do his brunch, he probably just asked for a search of everyone on campus who had visited the country, took pic­ tures or mentioned it in an email or whatever. So then he automatically gets a list, and sends his invitation out. It saves about a hundred hours of nonsense. (111) What Annie means by “about a hundred hours of nonsense” is, most prob­ ably, learning about somebody’s interest in Portugal during personal conversations. In this way, Mae learns about the importance of traces left as a result of her technically mediated activities. As Heather Wiltse points out, “[t]hese traces of activities and the technological infrastructures in and through which they are produced have come to constitute and reveal our environ­ ments, and to reveal us to each other” (15). In other words, the significance of digital traces points to the two-sidedness of technical mediation in the ontological dimension. They reveal our environments as saturated with retrievable information about activities of other people, concealing them as, for example, places of personal meetings. Alistair knows that in the envir­ onment of the Circle he does not have to waste a hundred hours on the

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nonsense of face-to-face communication with, possibly, hundreds of people. This results in his unwillingness—understood by Annie—to engage in more traditional ways of discovering people interested in Portugal. Instead, he chooses an automatic method for the creation of the list of his guests on the basis of the digital traces left by his co-workers. What is also visible here is the two-sidedness of the technology in the practical dimension—enabling automatic list-making, the technology “constrains” Alistair from meeting people face to face. Equally important is the manner in which his co-workers are revealed to Alistair as a result of his action. They appear to be searchable sets of key words/traces that are supposed to characterize them in a sufficient way, whereas they are concealed as complex beings who could have various relations to the digital traces they left. In the case of Mae, at least, this two-sidedness is responsible for the distortion of her social self, which, as it has already been indicated, could have consequences for her self-conception. If Alistair talked to her, he would probably learn that she is not interested in Portugal very much and thus would understand her absence during his brunch. His automatic solution results in misunderstanding and Mae’s confusion. But this incident represents the cognitive mode of human–technology interaction not only in the way in which Mae’s social self (and thus, poten­ tially, her self-conception) is affected but also in the way in which Alistair’s judgment is distorted. Significantly, Alistair can be seen as a kind of allego­ rical figure: it turns out that, according to Annie, “he writes great code. The guy is a machine” (113).

Subjectifying Power of the Algorithm What is obvious is that Alistair thinks like a machine not only when he is writing code, but also when he interacts with other machines (and through them—with other people) on a daily basis. This subjectifying process is indicated by Robert N. Spicer, who argues that human–technology interac­ tion often results in the transparency of the latter, which, according to him, consists in the erasure of difference between technologies and their users: The thought process creating the transparency moves in one direction or the other—you are either a human being asked to think of yourself as a machine as you communicate with a machine or you are a person communicating with a machine being asked to think of it as a person. (86) In the case of Alistair, it is evidently the former that is true. Of course, no one actually “asks” users like him to think of themselves as machines, but interacting with machines they start to behave and think like machines so that the interaction is as effective as possible: as the machine “thinks” in an algorithmic way, the human operator also starts to think in this way.

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Luciano Floridi explains this kind of subjectification, referring to what he calls the “infosphere.” The infosphere, according to Floridi, is an environ­ ment including informational organisms—inforgs—in their capacity as both agents and patients, as well as the relations between them. Inforgs include both humans and non-humans in the form of computers, gadgets and other machines. These machines are smart, but according to Floridi they are still a long way from human-level intelligence. They are light AI: they can be lightning fast in making calculations, but they always have to proceed according to an algorithm devised by humans. What is important is that in the contemporary world these smart machines work not only in the back­ ground providing necessary services without direct interaction (thus con­ stituting the environmental mode of human–technology interaction), but they also start to interact with people and, as a result, become what Floridi calls artificial companions—ACs (thus giving rise to cognitive and physical modes of interaction). As people depend on ACs more and more, the whole smart system consisting of people and non-human inforgs has to be honed to the capacities of the ACs as much as possible so that as much work as possible can be done by ACs without human involvement. This develop­ ment, however, is going to have serious consequences for the human part of the smart system—using the metaphor of marriage, Floridi argues: light AI is the stupid but laborious spouse and humanity the intelligent but lazy one, so who is going to adapt to whom, given that divorce is not an option?5 (150) The two-sidedness of technical mediation is clearly visible here in several dimensions. In the epistemological dimension, these technologies magnify the importance of machine-readable data and thus reduce the significance of other kinds of information. In the practical dimension they enable certain activities, at the same time constraining users from taking other courses of action. In this way they reveal the world as inhabited by machine-like beings, concealing its other—social and natural—aspects. The way in which Alistair organizes his brunch could be followed, in fact, by Floridi’s AC as there is no need for per­ sonal contact and usual socializing—no need for hundreds of hours of nonsense. This kind of approach to socializing is taken to another level with the new program developed at the Circle and presented by one of its creators, Gus, in front of thousands of Circlers a few days after the incident with Alistair. Mae attends the presentation with Francis, with whom she is going out at the time. The program, called LuvLuv, is supposed to scan the web in search of the personal information that could help someone prepare a perfect date with a new love interest. Gus needs a volunteer for his presentation, so that everything is more realistic. To Mae’s horror, Francis volunteers onstage and thus the program is supposed to glean from the net all the important information about her.

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LuvLuv is a logical development of the contemporary trends visible in social media which encourage users to place all important information about them­ selves in their self-descriptions. But it is not only that, as LuvLuv searches all the internet for specific information about the user’s date: at the beginning of the presentation, someone from the audience wants the application to check if Mae has any allergies, and it turns out that she has several—information is taken from messages that she posted in the past. Then Gus goes on to show how his program can help one choose a place to eat and a dish to order by searching the whole internet for Mae’s remarks and opinions about restaurants and types of food, but also going through her TruYou paying bills. The pro­ gram’s algorithm then arranges all that information in the form of rankings, and Gus ends this part of his presentation with an apparently unarguable proof of the program’s desirability: “Uncertainty eliminated” (124). Obviously, the uncertainty is not eliminated, as Mae could have disliked some dishes she ate at various restaurants and then did not mention them. What is important, however, is that Gus would like uncertainty to be eliminated and the presentation of the program in the novel calls attention to the fact that even nowadays practically all information about people that was digitized can be potentially retrieved through the net. Some people try to ignore this fact and, according to Turkle, [t]his is an understandable and unstable resolution. The idea that you leave a trace because you make a call, send a text, or leave a Facebook message is on some level intolerable. And so, people simply behave as though it were not happening. (Alone 261) During the presentation Mae is suddenly jerked out of this willed, blissful ignorance. Although she is most uncomfortable when Gus gleans all the details about her life and her preferences from the internet in the presence of thousands of spectators—in fact, she is so uncomfortable that she finally leaves the audi­ torium before the end of the presentation—afterwards, she tries to rationa­ lize her discomfort, and she tries to convince herself that it was not the fact her personal details were revealed in front of so many people: She wasn’t angry at the revelation of her allergies. Or her favorite foods. She had openly offered this information for many years, and she felt that offering her preferences, and reading about others’, was one of the things she loved about her life online. So what had so mortified her during Gus’s presentation? (125) She grapples with the question for a moment—was it the surprise she experienced or the precision of the algorithms? But then she realizes that the

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details were not perfectly accurate. The potential danger of such an inaccu­ racy is clear: if someone assumed the completeness of the LuvLuv informa­ tion, a misunderstanding with allergies, for example, could have very serious consequences. But Mae’s unease seems to go deeper than potential health hazard, as she continues to reflect on LuvLuv: “Having a matrix of preferences presented as your essence, as the whole you? Maybe that was it. It was some kind of mirror, but it was incomplete, distorted” (125). LuvLuv works on the same basis on which Alistair executed his search for people interested in Portugal: in both cases, the search of the web returns the fastest results and the three dimensions of the two-sidedness of technical mediation—epistemological, practical and ontological—are equally important here. But there is a sig­ nificant difference between the two situations. Whereas Alistair’s brunch is a semi-official party in which people do not have to know each other person­ ally, LuvLuv is supposed to replace conversations between two intimately involved people. Thus, in the case of Alistair’s brunch the negative effects of his automatic search are limited to potential misinterpretation of the avail­ able data. This danger is also present in the case of LuvLuv, but here something else is also in jeopardy—part of the charm of dating may consist precisely in the slow and gradual discovery of a partner’s likes and dislikes, favourite restaurants, etc., including errors and surprises. Thus, in the case of LuvLuv, also ethical dimension of the two-sidedness of technical media­ tion is very important. The application may be seen by some users as simply making their life easier, but for others it may be highly alienating, as it reduces a potential lover to a bunch of data—a very incomplete mirror reflection. Significantly, Mae ends her reflections with a rhetorical question: “And if Francis wanted any or all of that information, why couldn’t he just ask her?” (125; emphasis in original). However, there is no one to validate her doubts, as all afternoon she only gets congratulatory messages from Circlers who now associate her with this new application and when a few days later Mercer addresses the very same issue, claiming that personal questions are better than getting information from the internet, she disagrees with him, as if she already forgot or dismissed her own doubts. In fact, in her conversations with Mercer it is she who is always the advocate of the internet and algorithms exploiting its resources. In the case of LuvLuv, the potentially alienating effect stems from the fact that dataanalysis methods, suitable for the discovery of market trends or scientific phenomena, are grafted to social and personal contexts, in which fastness and efficiency is not always the best method of proceeding. But this method is not always the best even in the context of business marketing. Mercer is an artisan who creates chandeliers out of antlers, and he is pleased with the way his business develops, but Mae is convinced that he loses a lot because he does not use the Circle’s tools for business. These tools would probably use some algorithms to analyze the internet in search of potential customers

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of Mercer’s products, in the same way in which LuvLuv analyzed the internet in search of Mae’s likes and dislikes. Mae is unable to understand that with his business model Mercer does not need the efficiency that the tools could offer him. Mercer, however, has a different opinion: “I know I’m successful if I sell chandeliers. If people order them, then I make them, and they pay me money for them. If they have something to say afterward, they can call me or write me” (132). In his business Mercer prefers personal contact with his clients because then everything can be explained and put right without unnecessary misunderstandings. Again, both enabling–constraining and involving–alienating structures of technical mediation can be seen here. Mercer is afraid that Circle tools would constrain his personal contact with clients and that by losing personal touch with them he would feel alienated from his work. As an artisan, however, Mercer represents a small minority of businesses—for the rest, tools offered by the Circle have to be of benefit; otherwise, the company would not be as suc­ cessful as it is. But to be as efficient as possible, such tools need data so that the results they churn out are as accurate as possible. All this data comes from users’ activities on the internet and particularly—on social media.

Pressure for Social Media Activity The importance of sharing everything on the internet is one day explained to Mae by Denise and Josiah, who work for the HR department of the Circle. At the very beginning of their conversation they tell Mae that they think her to be shrouded in mystery because she was not active on social media during the preceding weekend. Mae explains that on Friday she went back home because her father, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, had an apparent seizure. It was a false alarm, but Mae decided to stay with her parents for the weekend. She is easily convinced by the HR people that her account of the incident on social media could be helpful for someone in a situation similar to hers— it turns out that there are “four groups on campus for staffers dealing with MS” (182)—and thus she promises to join one of the groups and describe what happened. But when she learns that she should also give some account of what she was doing on the rest of the weekend, she is initially more doubtful, for she believes that she was not doing anything special—on Saturday she just watched women’s basketball on TV at her parents’. Denise and Josiah, however, disagree with her vehemently. It turns out that Josiah loves WNBA himself and, what is more, there are 143,891 participants in the Circle’s global WNBA discussion group. This suggests that there would be plenty of people—including Josiah—interested in what she would have to say about the subject. When Mae tries to explain that she did not think she would have anything interesting to say as she is not passionate about the sport, exasperated Josiah asks her about Sunday, which also leaves no trace on Mae’s social media.

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On Sunday Mae was kayaking alone on the bay and this turns out to be a better example for explaining the benefits of sharing everything all the time. Denise and Josiah are shocked that Mae is kayaking once every few weeks, and there is no trace of this on social media. What is more, she uses a foldable paper guide whenever she is curious about the species of a bird that she cannot recognize. This gives Josiah an opportunity for clarification of his stance: he believes that paper is a dead end of communication, whereas if Mae used online tools for the identification of birds, a number of people would benefit because she would leave digital traces of her activities— “naturalists, students, historians, the Coast Guard. Everyone can know, then, what birds were on the bay on that day. It’s just maddening, thinking of how much knowledge is lost every day through this kind of shortsightedness” (187). Hearing Josiah’s argumentation Mae starts to feel guilt—there indeed seems to be something lost when one is not sharing—but when he offers to sign her up for one of the Circle’s groups of kayaking enthusiasts she is still not sure about it. If she found it convincing that some people could be interested in the animals she actu­ ally saw while kayaking, she does not understand why she should join an interest group. The HR people, however, do not give up, claiming that there are more than 2000 people on the campus alone who have declared on social media that they like to kayak, and these people would like to hear what Mae has to say about her own experience of kayaking. When Mae suggests that she does not find the topic of her kayaking interesting, Denise finally zeros in on what she believes is the problem with Mae, asking her: “Are you reluctant to express yourself because you fear your opinions aren’t valid?” (188). After a moment of hesitation, Mae answers: “‘Maybe,’ she said, buying time, knowing she shouldn’t be too pliant. ‘But sometimes I’m sure that what I say is important. And when I have something significant to add, I definitely feel empowered to do it’” (189). Immediately, Josiah pounces on her phrase “sometimes I’m sure” as the core of the problem. According to him, Mae does not find that “sometimes” often enough—in fact, she should be sure “always.” The HR people’s insistence on the necessity of sharing stems from general­ izing claims about the way in which social media allow for a new freedom of communication, which should be exercised as frequently as possible, because every communication is potentially significant. The philosopher D. E. Wittkower, for example, argues: This is what is so valuable about Facebook: the indeterminate meaning of so much of what it is, and what it does. This indeterminacy allows us users plenty of space to make things mean what we want them to. If there’s anything humans are good at, it’s creating meaning through social interactions. (xxii)

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In using this kind of generalization—which represents the abstract mode of human–technology interaction—social media platforms encourage users to share as much information as possible. As Sherry Turkle notices, showing much less enthusiasm than Wittkower: Online, social networks instruct us to share whenever there’s “some­ thing on our mind,” no matter how ignorant or ill considered, and then help us broadcast it to the widest possible audience. Every day each of us is bombarded by other people’s random thoughts. (Alone 276) What is important is that the result of this kind of subjectification was satirized by embittered Mercer during one of his earlier conversations with Mae, so it is probable that her initial cautious resistance to the argumentation of the HR people is the result of this conversation with Mercer, who argued: And judgments like “like” and “dislike” and “smiles” and “frowns” were limited to junior high. Someone would write a note and it would say, “Do you like unicorns and stickers?” and you’d say, “Yeah, I like unicorns and stickers! Smile!” That kind of thing. But now it’s not just junior high kids who do it, it’s everyone, and it seems to me sometimes I’ve entered some inverted zone, some mirror world where the dorkiest shit in the world is completely dominant. The world has dorkified itself. (132–3) When at the time Mae tries to convince him that he sees the situation in such a way because his social needs are not sufficiently developed, he answers: “It’s not that I’m not social. I’m social enough. But the tools you guys create actually manufacture unnaturally extreme social needs. No one needs the level of contact you’re purveying. It improves nothing. It’s not nourishing” (133–4; emphasis in original). Sherry Turkle devotes much of her analysis to people—especially young— who are overwhelmed by the constant need to attend to communication. She presents the case of Hannah, who is 16: Hannah thought that online friendships would make her feel more in control of her social life. Her “original assumption,” she says, had been that she could be online when she felt like it but skip out “and not feel bad” when she was busy. This turned out not to be the case. Her online friends get angry if she doesn’t show up in the chat room.6 (Alone 250) Mercer himself also feels emotional strain: “You know how I spend an hour every day? Thinking of ways to unsubscribe to mailing lists without hurting anyone’s feelings” (133).

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He goes on to compare this kind of artificially bloated socializing to junk food, which is specially designed to be consumed in the largest quantities possible, although it has hardly any nutritional advantages. In fact, there are more and more voices comparing the mechanisms used by social media designers to other designs aiming at the production of addictive behaviour, including those used by the designers of gambling machines (Madrigal; Lewis). An addictive loop mechanism inscribed into an application no longer belongs to the abstract mode of technical mediation but can be seen as reflecting the mixture of physical and cognitive modes. Mercer also points out the reason behind the constant subjectifying pres­ sure for social media activity: “And meanwhile, your company is scanning all of our messages for information they can monetize. Don’t you think this is insane?” (134) For Mercer this is insane, but in the light of the aims of neoliberal society this is as sane as it gets: [social media] platforms operate as cultural intermediaries and, as such, are power structures able to construct digital subjects where being a good neoliberal subject means sharing through socialization, network­ ing, and navigating. Good subjects post, update, like, tweet, retweet, and most importantly, share. (Kennedy 131; emphasis in original) Good subjects in neoliberal societies are subjects who generate profits. In fact, the importance of profits is clearly indicated by the HR people in their conversation with Mae. When Mae tries to play down her interest and the activity itself, saying that it is just kayaking, Josiah comes up with his final argument: “‘Just kayaking?’ Do you realize that kayaking is a three­ billion-dollar industry? And you say it’s ‘just kayaking’! Mae, don’t you see that it’s all connected? You play your part. You have to part-icipate” (188; emphasis in original). According to this logic, if Mae is benefitting from many services provided by the digital community, in return she should “play her part” by contributing to the knowledge base of the community. As “it’s all connected,” it seems only fair that Mae should be helping the company which provides technology—here the Circle—by giving away as much about herself as possible through sharing, so that the information could be sold to advertisers interested in her activities, either companies producing or servi­ cing kayaking equipment or tourist businesses organizing trips. However, because in the neoliberal economy profits have to be pursued as relentlessly as possible, the benefits of users become—slowly but persis­ tently—neglected in favour of the advantages that could be gained by tech companies (Zuboff). Still, the willing cooperation of users—in the form of as intensive participation as possible in internet communication—is vital in this business model, so they have to be convinced that constant internet activity is actually good for them. One of the methods—which has already been indicated—to do this is to contribute to the abstract mode of technical

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mediation so that it would represent an appropriate perspective. This method is employed by the HR people, who present Mae with argumenta­ tion on why she should share as much as possible on the internet, and thus they enter into indirect polemics with Mercer vying for Mae’s soul. The point is, however, that Mercer is from the beginning doomed to fail— Denise and Josiah represent her dream workplace and the most innovative company in the world. Mae wants to be convinced by their arguments: After the interview, at her desk, Mae scolded herself. What kind of person was she? More than anything, she was ashamed. She’d been doing the bare minimum. She disgusted herself and felt for Annie. Surely Annie had been hearing about her deadbeat friend Mae, who took this gift, this coveted job at the Circle … and had been skating through. Goddamnit, Mae, give a shit! she thought. Be a person of some value to the world. (189–90; emphasis in original) The passage clearly shows how both abstract and cognitive modes of human–technology interaction affect Mae’s subjectivity. Mae’s failure to conform to the specific way of using a technology prescribed by theory contributes to her social self, that is, to the way that others see her in the light of this theory. And Mae realizes that it is not the way that she would like to be seen at the Circle. Fortunately, Denise and Josiah offer her help in changing herself—she is given the opportunity to take part in a special programme which is supposed to make her more willing to share her thoughts on the internet. The programme, although it stems from the positive theo­ rization of constant social media activity, also represents other ways of encouraging people to “participate.” Pete Ramirez, who is in charge of the programme and introduces Mae to it, starts with a hyperbolical compliment which Mae decides to take at face value: “You’re here because your opinions are valued. They’re so valued that the world needs to know them—your opinions on just about every­ thing. Isn’t that flattering?” Mae smiled. “It is.” (227) She is provided with a headset consisting of a headphone and a microphone, and then Pete explains to her the purpose of the experiment: The idea is to take the pulse of a chosen sampling of Circle members. This job is important. You’ve been chosen because your opinions are crucial to us, and to our clients. The answers you provide will help us in tailoring our services to their needs. Okay? (228)

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“Tailoring our services” most probably means smoothing out an algorithm responsible for choosing advertising most suitable for the user, as questions that Mae receives are exclusively concerned with her opinions on various goods and services. Every time a question is about to be asked, Mae will hear a delicate bell; she will nod indicating that she is ready, and the ques­ tion will be asked. Mae practices answering questions for a few minutes and then Pete tells her that she is expected to answer a certain number of ques­ tions a day, about 500. She may answer all the questions at once or, alter­ natively, she may wait for the prompts given when the program decides that she is too slow in answering them. In this case, she is expected to answer the questions during other activities. In other words, whenever she loses herself in another activity so much that she forgets about the questions, she will be fairly quickly reminded about them. What is particularly interesting is the sound of the prompt reminding Mae to return to the questions. For it is her own name spoken in her own voice slightly modified by the program. When Mae hears the prompt, she reflects: It was her voice, she knew, but then somehow it sounded less like her and more like some older, wiser version of herself. Mae had the thought that if she had an older sister, an older sister who had seen more than she had, that sister’s voice would sound like this. (232) The wiser sister is clearly Eggers’s allegorical representation of the pressure for social media participation exerted on users, and it can be interpreted in several ways. The adjective “wiser” suggests someone who knows more than Mae and thus may indicate the role of abstract theorization in explaining the need for sharing. This abstract theorization has an ideological function, thus the reminding call to her may be seen as Althusserian “interpellation,” that is, the way in which “ideology ‘hails’ the subject, so that individual subjectivity is formed by pre-existent ideological structures” (Milner and Browitt 232). The nagging of the wiser sister may also be seen as a figurative repre­ sentation of the way in which the user’s profile on social media—an element of her social self—demands constant attention. This kind of pressure is indicated by Turkle, who relates a teenager’s experience of the internet: Hannah, sensitive to having all these new eyes on her, becomes drawn into what she describes as “an all-consuming effort to keep up appear­ ances.” She says, “On Facebook, things have gotten out of control … You don’t have to be on a lot, but you can’t be on so little that your profile is totally lame. So, once you are on it, it makes you do enough so that you are not embarrassed.” In this construction, tellingly, it is Facebook that has volition. (250; ellipsis in original)

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Facebook in Turkle’s conclusion should be interpreted as standing metony­ mically for Hannah’s Facebook profile—it is her profile that “demands” constant attention because Hannah wants her social self—the way in which she is perceived by others—to be all right. What is important here, however, is that Facebook appears to have a will of its own—to be a kind of being with whom Hannah interacts. Mae’s wiser sister can be thus interpreted as representing the technology in this kind of relation. This relation takes place in the cognitive mode, although the figurative significance of a sister who demands attention could also indicate a switch from what Ihde describes as a hermeneutic relation to technology (when a technology is generating “texts” that have to be decoded) to what he sees as the relation of alterity (when technology appears to be a quasi-other).7 The prompter, demanding constant attention even during Mae’s other activities, is also an obvious encouragement of multitasking, which can be seen as another way of increasing social media participation. And multi­ tasking is also an object of extensive theorization—Turkle calls multitasking “our twenty-first-century alchemy,” as it is supposed to save time in an almost magical way: over time, the conversation about its virtues became extravagant, with young people close to lionized for their ability to do many things at once. Experts went so far as to declare multitasking not just a skill but the crucial skill for successful work and learning in digital culture. (Alone 162) However, as Turkle indicates referring to psychological studies, multi­ tasking hardly ever increases efficiency, and most often it is counter­ productive. In spite of this, it is extremely popular because it feels good: “the body rewards it with neurochemicals that induce a multitasking ‘high.’ The high deceives multitaskers into thinking they are being especially pro­ ductive. In search of the high, they want to do even more” (163). And doing more and more multitasking takes its subjectifying toll on users. As Turkle argues, constant multitasking develops what she calls hyper attention— which consists in quick shifts of focus from one thing to another—at the cost of deep attention, which is capable of continued concentration on one subject (Reclaiming). Turkle is echoed by the cognitive neuroscientist Mar­ yanne Wolf, who argues that multitasking erodes our ability to focus on anything for a sustained period of time and thus leads to what she calls the skimming mindset, which, in turn, “affects our ability to navigate a constant bombardment of information. It incentivizes a retreat to the most familiar silos of unchecked information, which require and receive no analysis, leav­ ing us susceptible to false information and demagoguery” (“Skim Reading”). This influence, detrimental to autonomous thinking, is also presented by Eggers in a figurative way. It turns out that Mae is so good with the ques­ tionnaire that the programme is expanded to other workers in her pod—at

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the time, she already has a dozen or so newbies under her supervision. Their primary job is to deal with customers’ inquiries, which come in a steady flow, so in order to answer the questions from the questionnaire they have to multitask. Eggers’s description of Mae’s co-workers nodding—to indicate that they are ready for the next question—and answering the questions all the time is particularly evocative: “At certain moments, there was the happy visual of a herd of heads nodding in what appeared to be unison, as if there were some common music playing in all of their minds” (234). Two images may appear in the mind of the reader at this moment—that of a herd of sheep bleating in unison and that of children led by the Pied Piper to drown in a river. With this scene, Eggers also indicates the subjectifying power of multitasking in both physical and cognitive modes—constantly switching one’s attention between various tasks develops both mental and bodily habits. Apart from the promotion of multitasking, however, the programme represents another popular strategy that is supposed to increase social media activity, namely, gamification.

Gamification and the Quantified Self Questions that Mae answers in the questionnaire are automatically counted, and the number is translated into a position in a ranking which shows the results of all people taking part in the programme. The ranking immediately encourages competition, and Mae reconciles herself to the second position on the list, knowing that she has far more work to do than the newbies, one of whom is at the top. This ranking, however, is only one of several, the most important of which seems to be the Participation Rank, or PartiRank. Mae is introduced to it by another employee, Gina, on one of her first days at the Circle. The PartiRank uses a special algorithm to measure the inten­ sity of her participation in the social life of the community as reflected by her activity and presence on social media: every time you post or comment or attend anything, that gets factored in, and you’ll see your rank change accordingly. That’s where the fun comes in. You post, you rise in the rankings. A bunch of people like your post, and you really shoot up. It moves all day. (101) The PartiRank is an internal ranking created for the employees of the Circle—the assumption is that working for a social media company you should indicate with your life the importance of social media. But an even more important assumption is that it is all supposed to be fun—as Gina introduces Mae to the intricacies of the digital social life at the company, she indicates the entertaining element several times. In this way the novel points out one of the characteristic features of social media, that

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is: gamification. Theoretical assessments of the subjectifying power of tech­ nologies based on the principle of gamification constitute, as it has been indicated in the first chapter, the abstract mode of human–technology interaction. People like Jane McGonigal represent a utopian approach, as they believe that gamification can change the world for the better, and this is also a perspective adopted by the management of the Circle in Eggers’s novel. But gamification can also be seen in dystopian light—Mathias Fuchs claims that the idea of gamification is nowadays often used as “ideology and therefore a mechanism of the dominant class to set agenda and to legitimize actions taken by this very class or group” (143). Eggers clearly shares Fuchs’s perspective on the role of gamification in social media, and this is the meaning that he wants to convey in his novel: the agenda at the Circle is that of maximization of sharing of information. Pushing people into sharing as much as possible is justified in a number of ways—some of them were presented by Josiah and Denise—but one of the most important ways con­ sists in trying to convince people that it is all fun. According to Fuchs, the essential mechanism of gamification consists in amassing various kinds of tokens: “A gamified work process, a gamified consumer service, or a gamified learning experience will always try to keep the customer accumulating points, badges or money” (148). What is impor­ tant is that the numbers of accumulated points can be compared with those of other “players” in various rankings, and thus another mechanism asso­ ciated with gaming comes into play—competitiveness. At the same time, however, rankings also form, according to Foucault, an important aspect of disciplinary power: “Discipline is an art of rank, a technique for the trans­ formation of arrangements. It individualizes bodies by a location that does not give them a fixed position, but distributes them and circulates them in a network of relations” (Discipline 146). When Mae is introduced to the “fun” of the PartiRank, her position in the ranking is below 10,000. As she does not want to appear to be slacking in any area of her new life at the Circle, she decides to stay in the evening to improve her PartiRank. The next several long paragraphs of the novel are filled with descriptions of messages in her social feed that Mae deals with and whose subjects range from an invitation to join a dog-lovers group, through flu of one of her friends, the US foreign policy in the past to the question of legalization of drugs in the world. Mae does not seem to be interested in the great majority of these subjects; she just wants to go through the backlog created during the few days that she missed on the company’s social media. During the next days she tries to deal with the messages as they come but then on the weekend when her father has a sei­ zure she forgets about the PartiRank. Then it turns out that the PartiRank is not all about fun. When the HR people are talking to her, they use the ranking as the main proof that she is not pulling her weight in the field of social media. Talking about what the weekend is for, Denise explains:

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What is obvious at this point is that, contrary to what Denise says, the company is “all number-geeky” and the numbers are treated as the final argument. Their immediate remedy for Mae is to put her in Pete Ramirez’s pro­ gramme—which ultimately leads to another ranking—but even their scold­ ing alone is enough for Mae to try to change her self, “this self who couldn’t seem to get out of her own way” (183). She knows that she has to change in order to deserve this new life that she was given a chance to taste. And she knows that she has to start with her social self—changing the way in which she is perceived by others. Thus when she returns to the social feed with renewed determination, she is not focused on the content of messages at all—it is just sheer numbers that are her aim, and a long paragraph describes the drudgery of her attempt to go up in the ranking (190). What Eggers suggests with this change is that in their attempts to affect their social self—reflected here in Mae’s position in PartiRank—social media users like Mae have to modify their behaviour so that it is most rewarding in the “game.” And what is most rewarding is, again, not quality but quantity—the sheer number of interactions, because each of them con­ tributes to a higher position in the ranking. In fact, the PartiRank can be seen as a logical conclusion of what is already going on in societies in which communication has been digitized to a large extent. Sherry Turkle reflects on this development: “The self shaped in a world of rapid response measures success by calls made, e-mails answered, texts replied to, contacts reached. This self is calibrated on the basis of what technology proposes, by what it makes easy” (Alone 166). What Turkle points out (and what is visible in the passage describing Mae’s attempt to improve her PartiRank) is that the content of the communication—what is actually said—becomes less and less important, which is clearly visible in social media like Facebook. An important difference between the PartiRank and what Facebook now offers in the field of gamification seems to be the fact that the PartiRank is very precise, as it gives the user her exact position in the ranking. However, the existing social media platforms like Facebook also go to great lengths in order to allow users to determine their position in relation to others. This can be seen in the number of friends, followers, likes, comments, etc., that a user can amass. In his paper “What Do Metrics Want?” Benjamin Grosser analyzes this quantification in Facebook, arguing that it reflects the human desire for accumulation of social capital. Following Pierre Bourdieu’s ideas of social capital, Grosser explains how using Facebook “[w]e want to ‘win’ the

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confidence of our friends, to accumulate a capital of ‘social connections, honourability and respectability’ that can be exchanged later within our social system.” Thus, although Grosser does not mention gamification, he clearly refers to the same concept that is important there, that is, the idea of accumulation. The parallel between the accumulation of social capital and the social significance of games may be seen as exemplified by great sports champions, who gain social capital through excelling at games. In the era of social media, companies like Facebook suggest that everyone can be such a great champion—everything depends on the time spent playing the games. Facebook’s metrics, according to Grosser, are supposed to objectively quantify this social capital accumulated by the users. As a result, the user’s personal worth can be estimated as precisely as possible—it suffices to compare numbers with other users. What is more, rankings in social media facilitate—or, even, take over—making of what is known in social psy­ chology as “social comparisons,” through which “people judge and evaluate themselves in comparison to particular individuals, groups, or social cate­ gories” (Owens and Samblanet 228). Social comparisons are established on two kinds of self-reference bases—criteria and normative: Criteria bases come into play when, for example, people compare themselves to others in terms of superiority or inferiority, or better or worse, on some criteria of interest. Normative comparison bases fall along dimensions of deviance or conformity, or believing one is gen­ erally in harmony and agreement with others or in disharmony and opposition to them. (228) Both bases can be used in processes of gamification—when Mae is intro­ duced to various metrics in the social media at the Circle, she is usually told the average scores of all the employees, and thus what is the norm that she should, at least, try to achieve, but it is criteria bases that are far more engaging, as they often result in competitiveness. What has to be remembered here is that the desire for high positions in various game rankings often has its origin in the close relationship between social self and self-conception, as self-conception is partly influenced by interaction with others—people who have a particular opinion about the individual and thus create her social self. If this opinion differs from the individual’s self-conception, she may either change this conception or try to act in such a way as to change this opinion in order to make it closer to her own conception of herself. In the context of competitive gamification, this opinion can be easily identified with the place in the ranking, and thus trying to affect one’s social self usually means struggling for the best position in the ranking. However, as the user is focused on the competition (or on the norm) which is supposed to boost her social self, she may not be fully aware of the

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subjectifying processes which affect her. In rewarding particular types of behaviour and ignoring others, gamification influences users, making them choose activities or express views most likely to be rewarded by the algo­ rithm of the “game.” Craving the best feedback in the form of the highest score, users are locked in social structures of strictly patterned behaviour, which may completely dominate their life and thus may have significant subjectifying results, of which superficiality of communication is an obvious example. Of course, striving for a high position in various social media rankings possesses not only value as a means of improving one’s image in the social group, that is, one’s social self. It is, first of all, highly profitable for busi­ nesses which create these rankings and algorithms in a specific way because they want to maximize their profits, and not to facilitate or stimulate meaningful communication (Zuboff). Already an increase in the sheer volume of internet traffic is beneficial for these businesses, as it means that more profitable data is produced. But rankings can have additional effects of great benefit to the internet companies. An individual with a highly valued social self—that is, someone who excels at the game created by the com­ pany—can be looked up to by other social media users and, as a result, this individual may become a trend-setter or influencer. In this way such an individual also increases her exchange-value in the general economy driven by social media as she becomes valuable to the company. The development of this role of metrics in social media is again taken to its logical conclusion in Eggers’s novel with the introduction of another ranking, which is based on the measurement of the so-called Conversion Rate. This rate is explained to Mae in the following way: So every purchase initiated or prompted by a recommendation you make raises your Conversion Rate. If your purchase or recommendation spurs fifty others to take the same action, then your CR is x50. There are Circlers with a conversion rate of x1,200. That means an average of 1,200 people buy whatever they buy. They’ve accumulated enough credibility that their followers trust their recommendations implicitly, and are deeply thankful for the surety in their shopping … Below the Conversion Rate is your Retail Raw, the total gross purchase price of recommended products. So let’s say you recommend a certain keychain, and 1,000 people take your recommendation, then those 1,000 keychains, priced at $4 each, bring your Retail Raw to $4,000. It’s just the gross retail price of the commerce you’ve stoked. Fun, right? Mae nodded. She loved the notion of actually being able to track the effect of her tastes and endorsements. (250–1) As a result, popularity of the social self can be easily translated—con­ verted—into value expressed in dollars. The blatantly revealing name of the

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ranking indicates that Eggers is here at his most bitter because with this ranking no wool is pulled over Mae’s eyes—she willingly accepts the view that it is fun to be converted into monetary value. Her social self is expressed in terms of profit she is able to generate and this finds its direct reflection in her self-conception. Although Eggers is obviously critical of this kind of evaluation of social media users, it reflects, again, the idea of the two-sidedness of technical mediation. What for Eggers is apparently dehumanizing and objectifying, for some people may appear to be empowering—as it is for Mae in the novel. Although Mae does not seem to benefit financially from her position in the ranking, in real-world social media high-ranked users find their social media activity highly profitable, with earnings reaching seven-digit figures. These users are admired by millions of followers, many of whom dream about reaching a similar position.8 What is visible here is, again, the involving– alienating structure of the technology of quantification of social media participation. The use of quantifying technologies, however, is not limited to social media—they are also essential in the Circle’s health programme. The programme, which is based on the idea of prevention rather than treatment, includes biweekly checkups for all the members of the company’s staff, which monitor any variances in their overall health. As a result, any pro­ blems can be detected very early, and the costs of the company’s health care are far lower than the average. What is important, the checkups’ results are complemented by data coming from wrist monitors in the form of attractive bracelets that check the most vital functions of the organism. The aim is to create as complete a medical record of a person as possible—activating such a bracelet for Mae, the company’s chief physician, Dr Villalobos, explains: “The idea is that with complete information, we can give better care. Incomplete information creates gaps in our knowledge, and medically speaking, gaps in our knowledge create mistakes and omissions” (155). Mae immediately agrees with her, remembering a case when in her college three students died of meningitis before the illness was put in check. Collecting all this data, the bracelet represents self-tracking technology. Traditional techniques of self-tracking included strategies like diary-keeping and other kinds of autobiographical texts which were mediated through the technology of writing. As Stefan Danter et al. point out, “all forms of selfmonitoring are medium-dependent and consequently at least partially code­ termined by the medium or technology” (54). Thus, diary-writing was lim­ ited to recording thoughts concerned mainly with the writer’s experiences, emotional states and knowledge. As such, this kind of self-tracking was very important for the writer’s self-conception, as it allowed to organize and put in order reflections concerned with the writer’s idea of herself in the context of the reigning cultural values and norms. Nowadays, the growing popularity of self-tracking is concerned with measuring bodily functions, which reflects the development of diagnostic

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technology that can be obtained by people who are not health professionals. This kind of self-tracking, as Deborah Lupton indicates, may be a result of private initiative (as it most often was in the case of diary-writing) and, as such, it is often driven by the desire for self-improvement, but the motives could also be “related to curiosity about what their data would reveal, an interest in quantitative data and numbers in general as part of being a ‘geek,’ an interest in experimenting with new tools for self-tracking” (Lupton, “SelfTracking” 6). When Mae starts to self-track, however, she does not represent this kind of private self-tracking but what Lupton describes as “pushed selftracking,” which “departs from the private self-tracking mode in that the initial incentive for engaging in self-tracking comes from another actor or agency” (7). As Lupton points out, advocates of pushed self-monitoring often come from institutions focused on preventive medicine, health promotion and patient selfcare, but employers also may try to encourage their workers to use self-tracking devices—and this is the case in the Circle. Apart from playing the role of diagnostic tools, self-tracking devices may also motivate users to lead a more healthy life, which represents the per­ suasive variation of the cognitive mode of human–technology interaction. Among scores of other things, Mae’s bracelet measures the number of steps taken during a day, informing the wearer about how many more she should take to reach the optimal number of 10,000 steps a day. As such, the bra­ celet also teaches the user responsibility—as Andréa Belliger and David J. Krieger notice: “Putting body-related data into the hands of those who are directly concerned makes them responsible for doing something with the data, for interpreting and making use of the data” (25). Such “responsibili­ zation,” as Nikolas Rose calls the process of teaching subjects responsibility for themselves, is an important characteristic of neoliberal societies (Rose Politics 4; Brown 42). What is more, self-tracking devices can also be con­ sidered to be biopolitical tools, for the interpretation of the data by the responsible users has to be done according to the norms established by the institutions of social control. As such, they represent a further development of what Foucault calls “technologies of power, which determine the conduct of individuals and submit them to certain ends or domination, an objecti­ vizing of the subject” (Foucault, “Technologies” 225). As Belliger and Krieger point out: Objective knowledge of the body sets a norm for health, such as BMI (Body Mass Index), to which one should comply by means of exercises, diet, etc. Body tracking and self-quantification is a means to quickly, easily, and continuously measure the difference between the norm and one’s present state. (32) These aims are clearly indicated by Dr Villalobos, who sees the Circle’s health programme as allowing for efficient detection of departures from the

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norm: “So when there are deviations, we’d like to know about them, and see if there are trends we can learn from” (156). Of course, it would be not only the question of learning from trends, but of using the gained knowledge to correct “deviations.” The question that has to be asked here is who is going to decide what is the norm and what is deviation. Dr Villalobos provides the answer herself: we, that is, she and other medical experts. The data from self-tracking devices will, most probably, both contribute to the establishment of the norm and allow to identify those guilty of its transgression. What is important is, to work in this way, the data has to be shared. In fact, the importance of sharing is indicated in the motto of the Circle’s health programme engraved in a steel strip placed above rows of immaculate cabinets in Dr Villalobos’s room, which reads: “TO HEAL WE MUST KNOW. TO KNOW WE MUST SHARE” (150). This slogan clearly represents the abstract mode of human–technology interaction. The promotion of self-tracking may also involve the cognitive mode—self-tracking gadgets may be aesthetically pleasing, in this way appealing to the user’s sense of style. When Mae is given her bracelet, she is clearly impressed by its look: “The bracelet was beautiful, a pulsing mar­ quee of lights and charts and numbers. Mae’s pulse was represented by a delicately rendered rose, opening and closing. There was an EKG, shooting right like blue lightning and then starting over” (156). Also, the use of selftracking devices often “naturally” fits the strategies of gamification, thus representing cognitive and physical modes of human–technology interac­ tion—trying to reach a prescribed number of steps can undoubtedly be seen in terms of a game. The possibility of slacking or cheating in various games “organized” by the bracelet is additionally minimized—if not entirely eliminated—by Mae swallowing a sensor which will measure all vital functions of her body and then communicate them to the bracelet. In fact, the way in which Mae is made to swallow the sensor may be—again—interpreted figuratively. Dr Villalobos first asks Mae whether she wants the bracelet to record all recommended measurements and when Mae agrees, she gives her a smoothie in the form of a dense green liquid. After Mae drinks it down, Dr Villalobos tells her that the smoothie actually contained a sensor that will record all these measurements and explains: “It’s the best way. If I put it in your hand, you’d hem and haw. But the sensor is so small, and it’s organic of course, so you drink it, you don’t notice, and it’s over” (154). Most apparently, Dr Villalobos was afraid that Mae could change her decision on learning that the necessary sensor will have to be inside her body—in other words, that she will have to become a cyborg. But this scene could also be seen in a more symbolic light, as representing the way in which people are duped into accepting total “dataveillance” with a “smoothie” of gamification and style, which eliminates any opportunity for conscious reflection, that “hem and haw.”

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Listening to Dr Villalobos—and admiring her new bracelet—Mae is only able to appreciate the whole scheme, as there seem to be no weak points in it. Eggers, however, wants his readers to see also the other side of the coin. In “Tracing the Tracker” Yoni Van Den Eede argues that self-tracking technologies “may bring about change for the better in one’s exercise rou­ tines, but—on the reductive side—simplify rich, ‘felt’ experience to stats and graphs” (149). The proof of such a reduction Van Den Eede sees in the articles appearing on the internet page of the Quantified Self movement, which gathers people fascinated with self-tracking devices—some of these articles have the phrase “living by numbers” in their headlines. In fact, the name of the movement itself is more telling than anything else. An illustra­ tion of this kind of reductive effects of the use of self-tracking devices is provided by Eggers in an intimate scene in which Francis and Mae gauge each other’s emotions by looking at their bracelets, showing the measure­ ments of their pulses. When she finally puts her hand on his lap, they both look at his bracelet: “It was astonishing. It quickly rose to 134. She thrilled at her power, the proof of it, right before her and measurable. He was at 136” (202). What this passage shows is that even during an intimate scene, Mae is excited not so much by her partner but by her sexual power over him, which she can—as she believes—clearly see translated into numbers. On the cognitive level, Francis disappears behind numbers. This scene also shows the potential of self-tracking of bodily functions for use in the so-called relationship-tracking. As Alex Lambert explains, “[r]elationship trackers cultivate techniques such as fitting sensors, oper­ ating applications, making measurements, objectifying and interpreting emotions, ranking social ties, and in some cases building and refining complex systems out of these elements” (72). Mae and Francis use puls­ ometers to objectify their emotions towards each other and see in the numbers the direct translation of the intensity of these emotions. Although they never pursue this path further, with this scene Eggers shows another potential development in the field of self-tracking technology. In fact, the use of bodily self-tracking illustrates well all the four dimen­ sions of the two-sidedness of technical mediation. In the ontological dimen­ sion, self-tracking reveals people as sets of data on the functioning of their organism (and on their life in general in the case of relationship-tracking), and conceals other dimensions of human existence. In the epistemological dimension, self-tracking magnifies all those bodily functions and activities that can be measured, and it reduces in significance those aspects of human life that escape quantification. In the practical dimension, it enables mea­ suring of only certain processes, constraining other—perhaps more holis­ tic—ways of approaching the human body and life in general. Finally, in the ethical dimension self-tracking may be perceived as enhancing or depleting the user’s wellbeing. Mae herself is clearly impressed with its beneficial potential, and when she learns that she can also have her parents covered by the Circle’s health programme she cannot believe her luck—her father, who

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suffers from MS, cannot get decent medical care, and as a result the life of her parents slowly turns into a nightmare. It is the experience of Mae’s parents that allows Eggers to show the alienating potential of monitoring technology, of which self-tracking devices form only a part.

Surveillance and Personal Transparency Once Mae’s parents are added to the Circle’s health programme, its beneficial effects on her father are obvious very quickly. On her first visit to her parents after they have been included in the programme, Mae notices a clear change for the better in her father’s behaviour. The programme almost certainly includes self-tracking devices like the one Mae wears, but it also demands the installa­ tion of cameras all over the house, and her parents are not very enthusiastic about them—they even cover some of them with fabric. The situation illustrates a typical approach in the present day “telecare,” when patients and elderly people are pressured to accept monitoring devices. The reasons behind such pressure are usually based on the idea of a more effective delivery of health and social care services directly to the home of patients/older people, as the technology for distant monitoring of their health and activities lessens the financial burden of social and health care. And research shows that constant telecare very often does have beneficial effects: referring to a number of studies, W. Ben Mortenson et al. indicate that positive results of distant monitoring include “improved health and wellbeing … enhanced feelings of safety and security … and postponement to institutional care” (514). Thus, as Kiran notices, telecare technologies “are involving in that they grant patients an opportunity to construct an existence as a patient in familiar circumstances” (“Four” 136; emphasis in original). However, on the other hand, “the same technologies can be alie­ nating, as they are a threat to the patient’s privacy in affording surveillance” (136). As a result, in spite of the benefits, elderly people are often unwilling to be subjected to a kind of monitoring that could publicize their condition. What is important, research indicates that professional service providers and older people understand the idea of risk differently—in the context of falling, for example, while the former are “orientated to the management of physical risk,” the latter are “more concerned with the risk to their personal and social identities” (Ballinger and Payne 305). What is of crucial impor­ tance here is older people’s self-esteem, which, as Percival and Hanson indicate referring to earlier research, is “a hallmark of older people’s sense of independence, alongside ‘continuity of the self’” (898). In other words, elderly people fear that the aspect of their social self created by monitoring technologies will intrude too much on their self-conception as independent, capable individuals and, as a result, they may reject technology that is potentially beneficial for them, which is a clear example of the rebound effect. It seems that Mercer understands this, as in his last letter to Mae he admits that he helped her parents to cover the cameras in their house, and

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he notices bitterly: “They want to be alone. And not watched. Surveillance shouldn’t be the tradeoff for any goddamn service we get” (367). Mae, however, is deaf to this argumentation, although she knows that her father does not want even her to know about the moments when his illness undermines his dignity—as is the case when he soils himself. However, although Mae’s parents cover the cameras, they cannot escape the watching eyes, for Mae decides to take part in an experiment which demands from her wearing a camera broadcasting live everything in view of its lens, which is placed on her chest. Thus, as she visits her parents, she broadcasts to thousands of her followers her father’s awkward fall, but focusing on the messages of sympathy she receives from her viewers, she completely ignores the feelings of her parents. They try not to show to Mae their displeasure, as they do not want to appear ungrateful for including them in the Circle’s health programme, but the last straw comes when Mae unexpectedly returns to their house shortly after leaving. She does not find them in the most likely places, that is, the living room and the kitchen: She ran up the stairs, taking them three at a time, and when she reached the top and turned left quickly, into their bedroom, she saw them, their eyes turned to her, round and terrified. Her father was sitting on the bed, and her mother was kneeling on the floor, his penis in her hand. A small container of moisturizer rested against his leg. In an instant they all knew the ramifications. (368–9) After that incident Mae’s parents insist that they do not want to have any contact with her unless it is private. Mae is at first as embarrassed as they are and tries to persuade Bailey that this particular recording should be erased from the company’s cloud, but he refuses: “‘Mae, c’mon,’ he said. ‘You know we can’t do that. What would transparency be if we could delete anything we felt was embarrassing in some way? You know we don’t delete’” (369). What is important here is that the transparency that Bailey talks about is not that of technology use (as explored by the philosophy of technology), but of people—their complete visibility to the outer world. After this appeal, he continues in a more theoretical vein: For this experiment, Mae, and the Circle as a whole, to work, it has to be absolute. It has to be pure and complete. And I know this episode will be painful for a few days, but trust me, very soon nothing like this will be the least bit interesting to anyone. When everything is known, everything acceptable will be accepted. (370) Bailey’s theories represent most clearly in the novel the abstract mode of human–technology interaction. His explanations of various technologies

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created by the Circle take the form of coherent argumentation, which then shapes people’s attitude to—and thus, the use of—these technologies. The idea of personal transparency is Bailey’s favourite. Mae’s personal camera is an element of a larger plan to place around the world as many miniature high-resolution cameras as possible, so that virtually everything that hap­ pens in the world is recorded. The plan is called SeeChange, and Bailey explains it during one of the meetings of all staffers of the company. In his introductory remarks, Bailey announces a beginning of a new era “where we don’t allow the majority of human thought and action and achievement and learning to escape as if from a leaky bucket. We did that once before. It was called the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages” (67–8). Thus he underlines the idea of progress, suggesting that all that happened before the era of the Circle was in fact not much better than the Dark Ages. Then he gives several examples of situations in which SeeChange could be used and finally asks rhetorically: “Why shouldn’t your curiosity about the world be rewarded? You want to see Fiji but can’t get there? SeeChange. You want to check on your kid at school? SeeChange. This is ultimate transparency. No filter. See everything. Always” (68–9). Bailey’s theorizations are concerned with the cognitive mode of human–technology interaction—the examples that he provides are mostly about satisfying one’s curiosity, but the scenarios that he describes could also lead to decisions on the proper course of action. This potential is clearly present when the object of curiosity is a child or a parent—when, thanks to SeeChange, you see that your close ones are in trouble, you can act accordingly. Thus, in these examples, Bailey focuses on the involving side of the technology from the perspective of the watcher, and his audience is thoroughly convinced about the desirability of the technology. It is only sometime later in the narrative, when Mae’s parents are subjected to this kind of surveillance, that Eggers shows the perspective of older people who are aware of being watched, and for them it is an alienating experience. What is also important, for Mae’s parents, two modes of their interaction with technology are equally important: cognitive and environmental. The technology is merged with their envir­ onment, and they believe that it can negatively affect their social self, exposing their frailty. When Bailey himself focuses on the experience of the watched in his speech introducing SeeChange, he does it in a completely different context. At one point during his presentation the audience is shown live shots from cameras placed around Tahrir Square, the cradle of the Egyptian Revolu­ tion. Bailey comments: The square is quiet now, but can you imagine if something happened? There would be instant accountability. Any soldier committing an act of violence would instantly be recorded for posterity. He could be tried for war crimes, you name it. (66)

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And, as Bailey explains, it would be very difficult for authorities of any tyrannical country to get rid of the cameras, as—in spite of their magnificent resolution—they are very small, and it is difficult to find them. Thus, according to Bailey, abuses of power will be eliminated, as no one will risk being recorded doing something illegal. Bailey’s thinking reflects the so-called “Handycam revolution,” which began with a video recording of white Los Angeles police officers beating a black man. The video was shot by George Holliday from the balcony of his apartment and then handed over to the local TV station, causing outrage among the public and thus forcing authorities to take action against the offending officers. As Lorna Stefanick notices, the video “demonstrated the power of the individual with a recorder vis-à-vis large institutions. Everyone with a camera-equipped cellphone in his pocket now can join the ranks of those fighting hegemonic power” (153).9 Arguing along these lines, Bailey states during the demonstration of the SeeChange: “There needs to be accountability. Tyrants can no longer hide. There needs to be, and will be, documentation and accountability, and we need to bear witness. And to this end, I insist that all that happens should be known.” The words dropped onto the screen: ALL THAT HAPPENS MUST BE KNOWN. (67) Bailey appears to believe that ultimately tyrants will learn that they, too, are accountable, and thus the world will change—for the better. Hence the name of the technology: SeeChange. But the edifying role of the technology, according to Bailey, should not be limited to tyrants, which becomes clear during his conversation with Mae after the incident with a “borrowed” kayak. The incident takes place after the introduction of SeeChange but before Mae starts to wear her personal camera. One late evening on her way back from her parents’ to the campus of the company she stops at the bay, hoping the kayak renting business is still open, but finds it, to her great disappointment, closed. Nevertheless, she notices a kayak leaning on the fence, probably left there by someone who did not manage to return it before the closing of the outfitter, and she deci­ des to just “borrow” it for a few hours, not knowing that SeeChange cam­ eras have been installed nearby. It turns out that someone is watching the bay through one of the cameras and notifies the police about probable theft. Mae is caught by the police when she returns the kayak, but, fortunately for her, the owner of the business, who has been summoned by the police and who knows Mae, corroborates her version that she has been just late in returning it and Mae is released. However, the footage of Mae “borrowing” the kayak quickly reaches Mae’s superiors at the Circle, and Bailey decides to talk to Mae, as he sees the incident as a very good illustration of his belief that constant surveillance of everyone will have positive moral consequences.

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During his conversation with Mae he argues that constantly watched people would not do anything immoral or illegal: “In a world where bad choices are no longer an option, we have no choice but to be good.” And he believes that people would welcome such surveillance: “There would be this phenomenal global sigh of relief. Finally, finally, we can be good” (290). Bailey echoes here dreams of Jeremy Bentham, the inventor of the Panopticon prison, who saw it as a tool for humanity’s improvement. As Foucault notices, Bentham’s Panop­ ticon must not be associated solely with prisons: it is the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form; its functioning, abstracted from any obstacle, resistance or friction, must be represented as a pure architectural and optical system: it is in fact a figure of political technology that may and must be detached from any specific use. (Discipline 205) Understood in this way the idea of Bentham’s Panopticon should be seen as perfectly reflected by the SeeChange programme. Thus, Bailey may be seen as the new Bentham, for he enthuses in a similar manner about his tech­ nology’s potential to change humans for the better. Bailey is apparently right about the edifying potential of constant visibi­ lity, which is shown most clearly when Mae reflects on the power of her personal camera to change her behaviour. With her camera Mae is a pio­ neer, for the plan is that within one year all the company’s staffers will become “transparent,” but at first, to smooth out any imperfections, the number has to be limited. When Mae starts to wear her camera, she almost instantaneously becomes a celebrity and enjoys her status: “Mae was loving it, too, feeling daily the affection of millions flow through her” (311). She also notices changes in her behaviour—the first time when she goes to the kitchen, and opens the fridge with the intention of taking a chilled brownie. But then she sees on her wrist monitor, which shows her image from her camera, her own hand reaching for it, and she pulls back. Instead, she takes a packet of almonds and leaves the kitchen. What happens in this scene is that Mae realizes that all she does potentially contributes to her social self— the way she is seen by others. Thus, if she wants to be seen in a particular way, she has to be constantly on guard, and this kind of behaviour becomes the norm—she gives up unhealthy food and eats and drinks more moder­ ately as “anything immoderate would provoke a flurry of zings of concern” from people following her Circle account. What is important, her experience seems to confirm Bailey’s theorization: “she found it freeing. She was liber­ ated from bad behavior … Since she’d gone transparent, she’d become more noble” (329). Although in the scene with a brownie she catches the image of her hand on her wrist monitor, later she most probably “internalizes” the presence of her camera and then—when the SeeChange programme gathers pace—of other cameras. Thus, again, two modes of technical mediation are important: environmental, as the technology merges with the environment

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which seems to be watching her; and cognitive, because trying to influence the way in which others see her through this technology (her social self) she has to take appropriate decisions. As far as the two-sidedness of technical mediation is concerned, the Panopticon-like SeeChange reveals the world as a kind of arena in full light, and it conceals this world as a space of shadows, nooks and crannies. This two-sidedness in the ontological dimension gives rise to different interpreta­ tions of technical mediation in the ethical dimension. Whereas Bentham sees the Panopticon in utopian light—as a tool for humanity’s improvement— Foucault’s perspective is dystopian: at one point he describes it as “a cruel, ingenious cage” (205) whose only function is to discipline people. The change in Mae’s behaviour could also be explained in the light of the writings of Erving Goffman, who analyzed human behaviour in society in dramaturgical terms and introduced a distinction between what he called the front-stage behaviour and back-stage behaviour. As Greg Smith explains, front-stage behaviour (which contributes to the individual’s social self) refers to everyday conduct which derives from “being the kind of person who enacts and sustains the standards of conduct and appearance of their social group” (43). This is a kind of situation that characterizes any normal type of social behaviour, but front-stage behaviour comprises only part of human life. The other part takes place in the back-stage area, which is separated from the front stage by “barriers to perception” (Goffman qtd. in Smith 42). It is there that the basic activities of private life—which do not demand sustaining of the standards of conduct—take place. With her camera on, Mae performs on the front stage virtually all the time—only in the bathroom is she allowed to turn it off—and she herself notices a trans­ formation in her behaviour, which she considers to be a change for the better. Apparently, she sees the mediation of the technology to be involving, although it is not clear to what extent she really experiences a liberating change and to what extent she wants the change to be liberating and thus positive because she has been convinced by Bailey of its beneficial effects. It is not difficult, however, to imagine someone who would experience the mediating role of SeeChange as alienating. Mortenson et al., who use Goff­ man’s theory in the paper evaluating the effects of systems of constant activity monitoring on telecare patients, notice that, [a]s basic activities of daily living usually occur within the back-stage area of home, it is conceivable that those being observed may actually experience a decline in ability, as has been found in cases of perfor­ mance anxiety … In this regard, the need to be “in-face” all of the time may be extremely taxing. (522) What may aggravate the negative effects even more is the risk to the selfesteem of those who simply cannot keep up appearances all the time—as is

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the case with Mae’s father. But even when there are no such immediately negative effects, the subjectifying results of the technology may be profound, as Foucault points out about the effects of the Panopticon: He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spon­ taneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection. (Discipline 202–3) Bailey’s theorizing about the SeeChange technology, as it has been already indicated, represents Bentham’s utopian perspective on the Panopticon. However, because SeeChange will not be limited to institutional use, as was the case with the original Panopticon, but will be present virtually every­ where, its edifying mission will challenge the idea of privacy—when during her conversation with Bailey Mae points out that there are some things that people simply would prefer to keep to themselves, Bailey answers that in this case two developments will take place. First, people will decide that everyday, harmless activities should not be shameful and thus they will lose power to shock when exposed. And then he moves to the alternative: “if we all, as a society, decide that this is behavior we’d rather not engage in, the fact that everyone knows, or has the power to know who’s doing it, this would prevent the behavior from being engaged in” (288). The immediate, unacknowledged problem is this “we”—in other words, the question of who will constitute this part of society with the right to decide what is legal and what is not, what is the norm and what is a deviation. The answer to this unacknowledged question, however, is clearly indicated in the novel: “we” means democratically established majority. In fact, it is Mae herself who suggests—through her idea of Demoxie—an effective way in which the Circle could be used in a process of democratic rule. She comes up with the idea at a meeting of the management during which Bailey presents his plan to use individual Circle accounts for auto­ matic registration of voters. Mae suggests that Bailey’s idea could be taken “one step further”—every voting-age citizen could be required to have a Circle account. And if that was achieved, every voting-age citizen could be required to vote. At this point Annie asks in what way people could be made to vote and it is Bailey who answers her that it would not be a problem: users’ Circle accounts could be blocked until they vote. This seems to be a relatively mild way of forcing anyone to do anything, but when it is understood in the context of the Circle’s growing penetration of all areas of social life it has to be seen in a different light. The Circle, for example, moves towards the aim of taking over all financial transactions of its users—abstaining from voting would result in the loss of access to one’s money.10

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Seeing encouragement on the part of Bailey and Stenton, Mae goes on to draw a vision of a unified system that would take on the role of various state institutions: it could be used for paying taxes, registering to vote, and paying parking tickets or renewing licences. In consequence, users would save “hundreds of hours of inconvenience” (390). Again, it is Annie who offers doubtful remarks, suggesting that something like this should be cre­ ated by the government.11 This time it is Stenton who answers, telling her that this kind of infrastructure would simply go beyond the financial means of the government, whereas ceding the right to organize the whole system to the Circle would save the government hundreds of billions of dollars. Encouraged further, Mae speculates how the plan would be responsible for dramatically increasing democracy, as voting could be organized on almost any problem encountered at any level of society, from decisions concerning neighbourhoods to those of national significance. At this point Stenton adds: “It would eliminate the guesswork,” Stenton said, now standing at the head of the table. “Eliminate lobbyists. Eliminate polls. It might even eliminate Congress. If we can know the will of the people at any time, without filter, without misinterpretation or bastardization, wouldn’t it eliminate much of Washington?” (391–2) The young are enthusiastic. Sometime after Mae’s presentation of her idea she meets a group of young Circlers who tell her that they never voted because they never believed they would be heard by the distant politicians. With Demoxie, they believe, this will change: “the country and the world will hear from the youth, and their inherent idealism and progressivism will upend the planet” (399). Demoxie, the young believe, will be a highly involving technology: through it, they will be able to contribute to the creation of a better world and thus better lives for themselves. There is a clear echo in this enthusiasm of the belief in what Maria Bakardjieva calls “a democratic potential in the Internet” (126). In fact, noticing the inertia of the political institutions and their traditional model of one-way commu­ nication with the populace—even in the era of the early internet—Bakard­ jieva argues that “in order for that potential to start materializing, innovative social and political interfaces between citizens and political institutions should be imagined and implemented to match the technical interface already in place” (126). Demoxie seems to be a perfect fulfilment of this need, creating thus Bailey’s “we”—the people who establish values and the norms of behaviour, conformity to which is then guarded by the SeeChange cameras. Bailey’s idea of total personal transparency, however, is not limited to the edifying role of SeeChange. He explains to Mae the need for as complete a knowledge as possible about the world and about individual people, refer­ ring to the logo of the Company—the Circle. Complete information

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constitutes a complete circle, the only perfect shape in the universe, whereas any missing information creates a break in the circle. That is the reason why Bailey believes that everything should be known about everybody and that a complete, undistorted image of an individual can be achieved (286–7). This kind of image would involve not only video recordings from the SeeChange cameras, but also all other kinds of information that could be linked with particular individuals, including the data from their self-monitoring devices, the history of their shopping, and their likes and so on. Even the past going beyond people’s lives and thus including the lives of their ancestors should be known publicly. The project which is supposed to deal with this area of knowledge, called PastPerfect, is another of Bailey’s favourites, and it con­ sists in harnessing the power of the web and of the billions of members of the Circle to find as much as possible about the lives of past generations. The first person who volunteers to have her ancestors mapped by PastPer­ fect is Annie, who towards the end of the novel starts to feel insecure about her position in the company. Unfortunately for her, it turns out that her ancestors were slave owners and traders, whereas her parents were involved, under the influence of drugs, in the death of a homeless man. As a result of these revelations—which get enormous publicity—and constant stress at work, Annie collapses into a coma. This incident sheds important light on Bailey’s theory of total personal transparency. Earlier, during his conversation with Mae, he compares incomplete information to a broken mirror, which shows a distorted reflec­ tion—Bailey sees the ideal in the complete identity between people and their mirror reflections. The all-encompassing, total transparency guarantees objectiveness of representation (287–8). The case of Annie, however, shows that Bailey’s mirror, theoretically neutral, would mediate reality, again, in a two-sided manner. In this situation it is perhaps the epistemological dimen­ sion of the two-sidedness of technical mediation that is most important, as social media like the Circle, whose business model is based on the intensifi­ cation of user participation, push to the top of the feed—that is, magnify— pieces of information that are most sensational and thus shared most fre­ quently, and reduce in significance all other kinds of information. What the technology magnifies in the case of Annie are the most shocking details of her ancestors’ lives, whereas the significance of other facts, which are typical and thus boring, is reduced. PastPerfect thus extends the social self of Annie, including the lives of her ancestors, but the incident makes it clear that the more the social self is extended, the more vulnerable it becomes to distor­ tions of this kind. In spite of what happens to Annie, Mae fully accepts the idea of personal transparency, convinced by the visions of charismatic Bailey. Mercer, however, is terrified by it, and this contrast is a clear indication of the two-sidedness of technical mediation of human life in another dimension: ethical. What for Mae is involving, for Mercer is alienating. In fact, in his last letter to Mae Mercer hopes for a future division of society along this contrasting line:

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The Circle If things continue this way, there will be two societies—or at least I hope there will be two—the one you’re helping create, and an alter­ native to it. You and your ilk will live, willingly, joyfully, under con­ stant surveillance, watching each other always, commenting on each other, voting and liking and disliking each other, smiling and frowning, and otherwise doing nothing much else. (367)

What Mercer envisions here is a society whose development might easily lead to Forster’s underground cells. Mae herself is not convinced by Mer­ cer’s argumentation and is too impatient to read the rest of the letter in which, most probably, Mercer describes the other society and the reasons behind its emergence. The reader, however, has learnt enough about his views to realize that his stance might be seen as representing Foucault’s ethical subjectification based on critical ontology. Mercer does not question the idea of the internet in general, but he is critical of the way in which the model of the internet use developed by the Circle affects its users, as it is responsible for big amounts of time spent online on mindless activities, distortion of social self and increasing surveil­ lance. The goal he sets for himself as a result of his reflections is a self free from these negative side effects, which, as he apparently believes, could be attained through a style of life which resembles the standard from before the popularization of social media. In other words, a style of life which is markedly different from the one that the Circle tries to force upon its users. Realizing that he will not be able to attain this goal using the internet and even living in his old place he moves to a cabin in the woods near a tiny town in Oregon. Although he does not tell anyone about his new address, he is found by Mae within several minutes during the first test of the new project at the Circle—the SoulSearch, a technology which is supposed to locate any person on earth with the help of the community of Circlers and digital traces that they left—“real estate sites for rental histories … credit card records, phone records, library memberships, anything he would have signed up for” (453). At the time when the SoulSearch is tested, Mae has not seen or heard from Mercer for several months, and she believes technology might impress him when he is found thanks to it, although the main purpose of the test is to impress millions of viewers. However, the test ends tragically for Mercer, who drives into a steep gorge trying to escape drones released on him during the chase that follows the discovery of his cabin. In this way Eggers suggests that a kind of ethical subjectification which attempts to escape cyberspace will be difficult, if not impossible, in the time of the total domination of life by digital technology created by companies like the Circle. This vision is confirmed by Ty Gospodinov in his final conversation with Mae. When Mae first meets Ty on the campus of the Circle, she does not recognize him, and he introduces himself as Kalden. Mae becomes more and

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more fascinated with mysterious Kalden, who somehow manages to evade the company’s identification grid, and they start a romance, meeting in an underground space beneath the campus where he can cut her off from the network so that they may talk in private. Shortly before their last meeting she is officially introduced to the elusive Ty, in whom she recognizes Kalden. A few moments later, she meets him in his underground lodgings, and he tells her that he is frightened by the way in which the Circle develops. When Mae points out to him that the company was his own idea, he tells her that his aim was to make the web more civil, but he did not envision mandatory membership in a platform that channelled all government and private life of the user. Among other things, he focuses on the idea of Demoxie: “This democracy thing, or Demoxie, whatever it is, good god. Under the guise of having every voice heard, you create mob rule, a filterless society where secrets are crimes” (483). Why this “mob rule” is so dangerous is that people could be manipulated into taking specific decisions by the Circle—the com­ pany which would organize voting and, even more importantly, which has an almost complete monopoly on web search. Ty points out: you and I both know that if you can control the flow of information, you can control everything. You can control most of what anyone sees and knows. If you want to bury some piece of information, perma­ nently, that’s two seconds’ work. (482) In other words, the dominance of the Circle in the cognitive mode of human–technology interaction will be virtually complete, and Demoxie will lead to an almost total conformity creating a society of homogenous citi­ zens, fed on the same selected pieces of information and making decisions— and voting—on the basis of them. There is a clear echo here of the sub­ jectifying effects of technical mediation represented by Huxley in Brave New World, although Huxley imagines different technologies leading to these effects. As David Seed notices, quoting Huxley himself: “Huxley’s gloomy perception [was] that liberty in 1920s America had come to mean the enforcing of the will of the majority in order to produce a ‘general uni­ formity of habits, customs, and beliefs’” (“Aldous Huxley” 482). When Mae questions Ty’s line of argumentation, saying that there will be a lot of protective measures to prevent potential abuses of the Circle’s con­ trol of information flow, he tells her that no one—even powerful politi­ cians—would act against the Circle because people owe their reputation to the Circle. In other words, the Circle creates their social self. And he gives an example of a powerful senator who threatened the Circle monopoly, and very soon incriminating materials were found on her computer. It turns out that this is the way in which Stenton deals with his adversaries—the senator was only one of dozens of his victims. In fact, according to Ty, Stenton hijacked the Circle:

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Stenton’s appropriation of the Circle is a clear example of technological multistability. Both Ty and Bailey wanted to create technology that— according to them—would make human life better. Ty created one elegant system that was supposed to make the internet experience more elegant and civil, whereas Bailey’s technologies of transparency were supposed to edify people and extend the pool of human knowledge. Stenton took these tech­ nologies for the improvement of human life and turned them into technolo­ gies of money-making and control. What is equally important is that in Ty’s vision people who were finding his technologies alienating were free to opt-out. Bailey’s idea of total trans­ parency would make such opting out far more difficult, but Bailey was gen­ uinely convinced that it would all be for the best. Stenton has no such idealistic motives and the way in which he deals with his adversaries, breaking their lives and careers, indicates that he is a ruthless man—it is clear that in his hands, the technology of total transparency will turn into the technology of total surveillance. In fact, Stenton’s ruthlessness and greed for power may have been fuelled by the Circle’s technology as it enables this kind of power, and thus Stenton himself may be seen as subjectified to a great extent by technical mediation. Bailey, however, is not the only idealist who plays into Stenton’s hands. Every now and then the Circle organizes meetings during which various inventors try to make the management of the company interested in their ideas—if they are successful, they are employed by the company and their ideas stand a chance of being turned into reality.12 At one of such meetings, several of the “aspirants” present programmes intended to enhance public security. The first of them, Belinda, describes a system which would allow police to see, through retinal displays, any offenders equipped with manda­ tory chips or bracelets. A specific colour scheme would show the difference between the seriousness of committed crimes. The technology is supposed to reduce the effects of racial stereotyping, according to which members of certain ethnic groups are monitored more closely than others by police officers. The second person, Gareth, proposes a complementary technology which would allow people registered as living in a certain neighbourhood to see, again with the help of a specific colour scheme, who of the people present in the neigh­ bourhood is a registered neighbour and who is a stranger with potentially criminal intentions. Finally, the third person, Finnegan, proposes technology that would supposedly eliminate domestic abuse—special sensors would

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recognize movements that could be interpreted as indicating violence and then they would trigger an alarm. Finnegan also sees potential for combining all three technologies “to quickly ensure behavioral norms in any context … And then the sensors would pinpoint any antisocial behaviour” (426–7). This is an almost ideal representation of the idea of the Panopticon analyzed by Foucault, but its scope and penetration of society would be far greater than Foucault could have ever imagined. This penetration would become even more comprehen­ sive after the implementation of the programme on which Francis works and which is mentioned by Belinda. Designed to prevent child abduction, the programme involves chipping babies in such a way that the chip could not be removed from the body. With all the citizens chipped from the beginning of their lives, there would be no need for mandatory chipping or bracelets— recognition of the number of the already implanted personal chip would be enough. The technology would thus allow for easy monitoring of what Belinda calls “career criminals,” as they would stand out from the crowd for anyone equipped with retinal displays able to read the signal. This is an idealistic theory, but Stenton’s “rapt” attention (419) suggests that he would find other uses for the technology. In fact, he himself indirectly reveals these uses, saying that Belinda’s system of colour categorization should be devel­ oped to include the suspect’s “co-conspirators” that would be identified by intelligence agencies (420). Although apparently he is talking about common criminals, the word “conspirators” suggests as much—if not more—political dissidents.13 Thus technology that was intended to make human life safer will be used to turn this life into what Ty calls in his last conversation with Mae a “totalitarian nightmare” (481). What is obvious is that this totalitar­ ian order will have at its disposal technology far superior to the one that is used, quite effectively, for social control in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Ty, however, believes that it is not too late to stop this development. As Mae is a great star at the Circle at the moment, he wants her to read his statement when she has the maximum amount of viewers. He hands Mae a piece of paper with a handwritten text on it entitled “The Rights of Humans in a Digital Age.” As Mae scans the text, she catches several passages: “‘We must all have the right to anonymity.’ ‘Not every human activity can be measured.’ ‘The ceaseless pursuit of data to quantify the value of any endeavor is catastrophic to true understanding.’ ‘The barrier between public and private must remain unbreachable.’” At the very end of the text there is one line, written in red ink and saying: “We must all have the right to dis­ appear” (485). Unfortunately for Ty, at that point Mae is already convinced about the inevitability of progress as represented by the Circle. She betrays Ty, telling Bailey and Stenton about his plans, although the reader learns about it only from her reflections during a scene taking place a few months later. Mae thinks about the compassion of the two older Wise Men, who have allowed Ty to “stay on campus, in an advisory role, with a secluded office and no

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specific duties” (495), but it is clear to the reader that this means forced confinement. In the meantime, the Circle has been moving forward with its agenda, with millions of people already having gone fully transparent, which means broadcasting every moment of their life. Mae thinks about her par­ ents and their ill-advised desire for privacy, about their secrets and their shame. And she realizes that All of that would be, so soon, replaced by a new and glorious openness, a world of perpetual light. Completion was imminent, and it would bring peace, and it would bring unity, and all that messiness of humanity until now, all those uncertainties that accompanied the world before the Circle, would be only a memory. (495) But the transformation of humanity under the auspices of the Circle will not be confined to the idea of transparency. Sometime earlier, Mae muses about the contrast between the campus of the company and the rest of the world: Walking through San Francisco, or Oakland, or San Jose, or any city, really, seemed more and more like a Third World experience, with unnecessary filth, and unnecessary strife and unnecessary errors and inefficiencies—on any city block, a thousand problems correctible through simple enough algorithms and the application of available technology and willing members of the digital community. (370–1) This vision of improving the conditions of human life in poor neighbour­ hoods all over the world seems to be quite a distance apart from Ty’s ori­ ginal idea of improving the online experience, but one of the main themes of the novel is to clarify this connection—to show how the modes of human– technology interaction are connected with each other. The aim of Ty’s ori­ ginal system was to improve the experience of internet use by making it more civil and efficient at the same time. The system created by Ty—repre­ senting primarily the cognitive mode—is a kind of invention that enables the theorization of technology as unconditional good, which then contributes to the further popularization of the technology and thus represents the abstract mode of human–technology interaction in its utopian dimension. As the system becomes extremely popular, Ty’s company becomes more and more powerful until it dominates the whole internet, whereas its campus becomes the model of the kind of life that is made possible by the new technologies. Life on the campus, where dreams seem literally to come true, appears to support the utopian vision of the beneficial effects of technological progress, but the narrative shows that the campus is a field of relentless subjectification—repre­ senting all the modes of human-technology interaction—of its inhabitants along the lines of an ideological agenda.

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What Mae wishes for in the above-quoted fragment is, in fact, a kind of Foucault’s biopower, whose aim is to make life everywhere similar to life on the campus of the Circle. Algorithms and technologies—in other words, various technical media­ tions—that subjectify the Circlers (among them Mae) should be applied outside of the campus and then all the world could look like the head­ quarters of the Circle. Indeed, life at the campus appears to Mae so won­ derful that, at one point, reflecting on the total personal transparency that the Circle pioneers, she wonders: “Who but a fringe character would try to impede the unimpeachable improvement of the world?” (240) And yet, such fringe characters do exist—in fact, two of them were, at different points of Mae’s life, her lovers. The difference between theirs and Mae’s attitude to the subjectifying power of the Circle indicates clearly the two-sidedness of technical mediation in its ethical dimension. As Kiran points out, this kind of two-sidedness is to be expected: very often, there are people who believe that certain technical mediations make their lives better, and there are those who find the same mediations alienating. Acknowledging this two-sidedness, Eggers’s story emphasizes two points: first, Mae herself was significantly subjectified to regard mediation of her life by the Circle as an involving experience; this, however, should not be seen as something necessarily wrong—as Foucault notices, people are always under the influ­ ence of various subjectifying powers. What is wrong—and this is the second, most important point made by Egger’s story—is that people in this utopia are unable to free themselves, at least partly, from the subjectifying power of technical mediation when they do find it alienating. In other words, they are unable to enjoy Foucault’s freedom of ethical subjectifica­ tion based on critical ontology. Mercer’s argumentation and behaviour represent a clear example of such ontology: he reflects critically on the way in which technologies developed by the Circle affect him and decides to escape their subjectifying influence. Ty shares much of Mercer’s critical perspective, especially his desire to opt-out of the system, but he is also aware of the way in which the Circle’s ability to control the flow of information and the ease with which information may be manipulated gives the company enormous power. According to him, this power, in connection with the ease with which the idea of total transparency may be transformed into the idea of total surveillance, may lead to an author­ itarian system of nightmarish proportions, in which subjectification of people will take place in all the modes of human–technology interaction. The failure of Mercer in his attempt to escape the subjectifying grid and of Ty in his challenge to Bailey and Stenton show clearly that such a night­ mare will, indeed, be the case in the universe of the novel. Writing in the tradition of the anti-utopia—and thus intervening in the actual abstract mode of human–technology interaction—Eggers wants his readers to treat his novel as a warning, making them reflect and, possibly, change their attitude to the digital revolution.

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Notes 1 The narrative does not focus on the technical details of the retinal displays, so the reader can only guess that they are integrated into contact lenses, as their users do not seem to wear any glasses. 2 Although the kind of unification that is presented in the novel is rather unlikely in the nearest future, developments described by Eggers certainly can be ima­ gined. Scott Galloway in his book The Four published in 2017 claims that the present internet giants (Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon) are “engaged in an epic race to become the operating system for our lives.” Other thinkers, however, believe that we witness now an emerging status quo, in which the internet market is divided among several companies that no longer compete with each other, but have monopolized their respective fields of activity and often cooperate lobbying regulators (Staltz; Gehl). 3 The symbolism of the incident thus becomes a distant but clear echo of Orwell’s figurative description of totalitarian power: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever” (307). 4 In fact, Ty’s TruYou should be seen as a hypothetical conclusion of the trends in contemporary internet, in which the rise of Facebook and Google+ has been accompanied by “claims that authenticity facilitates a better social environment” (McNicol 205), with Mark Zuckerberg expressing his opinion on the matter of multiple internet identities in an obviously moral frame: “having two identities is an example of a lack of integrity” (qtd. in McNicol 204). 5 Sherry Turkle echoes Floridi’s argumentation—writing about the self conditioned by contemporary media, she notices: “This self is calibrated on the basis of what technology proposes, by what it makes easy” (Alone 166). 6 See Deborah Lupton (Digital) for another account of the overwhelming nature of social media participation. 7 The sister can also represent the transparency of the technology as indicated by Spicer—the case when “you are a person communicating with a machine being asked to think of it as a person” (86; see p. 79 above). 8 A different question is that of evaluation of the profits earned by social media platforms like YouTube or Instagram thanks to this mechanism. Only a very small number of those who use these platforms can profit from their position, whereas activities of a huge majority of users is monetized by the platforms without any kind of remuneration. On the “un(der)-paid” aspiring influencers, see Duffy. See also the following chapter for my discussion of “free labour” in Rainbows End. 9 As I point it out in the introduction, most recently mobile phone cameras have been used to record the brutal killing of another black man, George Floyd, by a white police officer. The recordings, placed on the internet, triggered massive protests against police brutality across the US. I will return to this incident in the conclusion of this book. 10 This kind of instrumental treatment of money for political or administrative reasons is very easy once an economy switches towards a cashless paying system (Scott). 11 It is not clear why Annie offers this resistance to the scheme, but most probably she knows Stenton and realizes that this could give him great power. 12 This situation seems to be a logical conclusion of what is already happening today—in her Guardian article from December 2017, Olivia Solon points out: “As power consolidates into the hands of a few, the best a startup can hope for is to be bought by one of the tech giants. This, in turn, leads to further consolidation.”

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13 What has to be noticed here is that real life is not far behind—in a clearly science fictional development, Chinese police are experimenting with smart glasses able to identify potential suspects as they are equipped with facial recognition tech­ nology (Russell). In fact, in some areas technological developments in China run almost parallel to Eggers’s vision of the society of total control and in some already seem to be ahead of it. In China “each person’s cell phone number and online activity is assigned a unique ID number tied to their real name” (Matsa­ kis) so the country already has its own TruYou system. China is also developing a dense system of ubiquitous surveillance cameras equipped with facial recogni­ tion software. But perhaps most notorious is China’s social credit score system, which utilizes various rankings for disciplining citizens, who may be rewarded for good behaviour (including consumer loyalty or dutiful repayment of loans) with preferential treatments by various institutions and businesses, or may face punitive measures when their ranking score goes beneath a certain number. Various offences may lower the ranking score, but already people critical of the government find their scores going drastically down as a result of their activities. One of activists affected by a low social credit score is Liu Hu, a journalist investigating government corruption: “Frozen out by the network, he can no longer buy real estate, secure a commercial loan, or pay for airfare. He can’t even travel on the national high-speed rail network” (Greenfield).

3

Rainbows End New Vistas Through Displays in Contacts

Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge offers a vision of a slightly more distant future than that painted by Eggers in The Circle. Displays integrated into contact lenses—which in Eggers’s novel appear to be worn by relatively few people, in Vinge’s novel are an integral part of personal wearable computing systems that are the norm for the great majority of inhabitants of this future, which is also set in the US. The narrative point of view follows several characters, the most impor­ tant of whom is Robert Gu, a once-famous poet who has recovered from Alzheimer’s and tries to recreate his life in a society which has witnessed a considerable technological advance during his illness. At first, with a physi­ cally rejuvenated body and with his old contempt for technology, he waits for the return of his poetic genius with growing impatience. In the mean­ time, he becomes involved in a plan to save the university library from destruction during the process of its digitization and—unwittingly—in a quasi-terrorist, unsuccessful attempt to take control of strategically impor­ tant biotech labs. Robert’s initially hostile attitude to technology is contrasted with that of characters belonging to younger generations, especially his grand­ daughter Miri and her friend Juan, who are tech-savvy teenagers making the most of wearable computers. As Robert’s talent does not return, he finally decides to embrace new technologies, and asks Juan to teach him how to use them. He also discovers that he has gained a new talent for dealing with technological problems, which at first he finds useless but then slowly begins to appreciate so that at the end of the novel he finds a job as an IT specialist. The main focus of the narrative as far as subjectifying power of technol­ ogy is concerned is on the ICTs, and especially on displays integrated into contact lenses. Part of the novel, however, shows the effects of the bio­ technological treatment which cures Robert’s Alzheimer’s and rejuvenates him at the same time. I will start my analysis with this part as it also shows a specific attitude to technology, which the rest of the novel is clearly set to put in question. DOI: 10.4324/9781003166320-4

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New Life After Alzheimer’s Vinge does not go into details concerning Robert’s treatment—the reader only learns that it is called Venn-Kurasawa treatment and that it depends on “meds and machines that are floating around inside” Robert (28). This kind of human–technology interaction clearly represents cyborg relations in which technologies merge with a human body. In fact, Robert is unusually responsive to the treatment as in his case it also becomes a rejuvenating therapy that eradicates in him most effects of ageing (it could thus be speculated that his treatment involves gene editing), although the process is gradual: So much was changing and all for the better. One day he was walking again, even if it was a lurching, unstable gait. He fell three times that first day, and each time, he just bounced back to his feet. (31) His returning capacities turn his attention to his body, which normally is not an object of human awareness. According to the phenomenologist Kris­ tin Zeiler, in most situations the body which functions properly “dis­ appears”: “the body is not a thematic object of the subject’s experience. The object of the subject’s experience is instead, typically, something outside the body” (335),1 that is—the task to be accomplished. Using the terminology of the philosophy of technical mediation, it could be said that the body is transparent. The body may appear in the field of the subject’s awareness— and thus become opaque—in two cases: when it becomes a source of nega­ tive or positive experiences. Referring to these two cases, Zeiler uses Greek prefixes that nowadays are most often used in the context of varieties of utopia.2 In the case of negative sensations like pain, the body, or rather its part which is the source of the unpleasant sensation, becomes the centre of the subject’s attention—in other words, “[i]t dys-appears to her, i.e. it appears as bad or ill” (336). In the case of body becoming the source of positive experi­ ence, like pleasure or satisfaction, the body “eu-appears” as it “stands forth, to the subject, as well, easy or good” (338). During his illness Robert experiences dys-appearance of his body when he finds it inadequate or aching, but this is typical of the situation of sickness. It is his recovery that is important in the context of the subjectifying power of technology, for thanks to the therapy Robert not only regains some bodily capacities from the period immediately preceding the illness, but in some areas—like physical movement and appearance—he also starts to enjoy a body characteristic of a young man. Vinge, however, does not devote much attention to Robert’s experience of the eu-appearance of his modified body: Robert never muses on the drugs and machinery floating around inside him, and there are just a few scenes in which he focuses on the new—regained and enhanced—capacities of his body: his new strength,

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accuracy of his movements, and precision of his senses. In one scene, his regained sense of sight makes Robert reflect on the way in which his body functions: And now that he could see—really see—he could do things with his hands. No more pawing around in the dark. He had never realized how important sight was to coordination. There are uncountable ways that things can lie and tangle and hide in three dimensions; without vision you’re condemned to compromise and failure. But not me. Not now. (31–2; italics3 in original) Sometime later, he plays Ping-Pong with his granddaughter Miri. After losing to her for most of the game, he suddenly experiences a short phe­ nomenal spike in his performance, and then he returns to his normal level and loses the whole game: [S]he ran around the table to hug him. “You are great! But you’ll never fool me again!” It didn’t do any good to tell her what Aquino had said, that the reconstruction of his nervous system would cause randomly spiky performance. He might end up with the reflexes of an athlete; more likely the endpoint would be something like average coordination. (32) In the scene, Robert seems to be already accustomed to getting this kind of surprise, which he starts to take for granted and in which, apparently, he slowly loses his interest. Also, his new appearance—after the treatment, he looks like a very young man—seems to arouse little excitement in him. The reason for this is that his longings connected with his recovery are placed somewhere else—more than anything else, he would like to regain his poetic talent, and his old poetry was never concerned with technology and its influence on human life: “In his former life, Robert Gu had paid even less attention to technology than he had to current events. Human nature doesn’t change, and as a poet his job was to distil and display that unchanging essence” (31). Before his illness Robert clearly believed that technology could be separated from human nature—that is, human sub­ jectivity. Now, saving his life, technology manifested its presence in a forceful way, but only, as he still believes, in order to allow his own nature to continue as before: “It was a new chance at life, a chance to continue his career. And where he should continue his art was obvious: with Secrets of the Ages” (31). Secrets was an acclaimed sequence of long poems in which Robert was exploring the human condition, starting with “Secrets of the Child” and ending with “Secrets of the Dying.” Now he intends to write another canto: “Secrets of the One Who Came Back.” The One Who Came Back, however, will find technology too large an issue to be dismissed.

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Materiality of Discourse In fact, technology forces its presence on Robert from the very beginning of his attempts to return to writing. He tries to write on an electronic foolscap, as normal paper is no longer used for writing: when he wrote on it, his scrawling penmanship was re-formed into neat, fontified lines … he could see that his soul was sucked out of the words before he could make them sing! It was the ultimate victory of automation over creative thought. Everything was beyond the direct touch of his hand. That was what was keeping him from finally con­ necting with his talents! (70) Robert’s irritation in the scene is caused by the opacity of the new technol­ ogy of writing, which he is forced to use—instead of thinking about what to write, he thinks about how he is supposed to write. What is important, the novelty of this technology of writing does not have its source in the bodily movements involved in forming letters in longhand writing—he uses the same gestural routines that he was using writing with pen and paper. But in spite of this, this new technology is still opaque to him because the materi­ ality of the process of writing is different. Although he still writes in long­ hand, his senses receive different feedback than in the case of writing on paper, and this affects his thinking—thus, both physical and cognitive modes of technical mediation are involved here. Robert’s distress could be interpreted in the light of Friedrich Kittler’s analysis of the significance of the materiality of discourse for authors. In what Kittler calls the classical-romantic discourse of 1800, written texts were perceived as dwellings of the Spirit of the author—it was the imma­ terial voice of the author that mattered.4 In other words, inscription tech­ niques were supposed to be transparent. Around the year 1900, however, authors started to pay attention to the materiality of texts. One of such writers was Friedrich Nietzsche, who “even as a school boy dreamed of a machine that would transcribe his thoughts” (Kittler 193) and who acquired one of the first typewriters ever produced. Kittler comments: Nietzsche as typist—the experiment lasted for a couple of weeks and was broken off, yet it was a turning point in the organization of dis­ course. No other philosopher would have been proud to appear in the Berlin Daily as the owner of a strange new machine. (193) And a few months later, Nietzsche is able to theorize in a letter that “[o]ur writing materials contribute their part to our thinking” (qtd. in Kittler 196).

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Kittler uses the example of Nietzsche and other similar writers to make a claim that around the year 1900 the whole discourse network changed, with writers becoming, in general, more aware of the materiality of discourse. In the light of this argumentation, Robert’s attitude to poetry seems to be hopelessly outdated. However, Kittler himself admits that “poets more than any other profession remained faithful to the classical discourse network” (265), that is, to the view of literature—understood both as a creative process and finished work—as a transparent transcription of the immaterial voice of the Spirit.5 In fact, it could be said that there are basically two types of poets (or artists in general)—a division which reflects the two-sidedness of technical mediation in the ethical dimension. There are those for whom the appearance of new technologies is an involving experience—an oppor­ tunity to experiment with the materiality of discourse—and those for whom it is alienating, because they find the opacity of the new technologies distractive.6 Nevertheless, although some poets remain faithful to the classical-romantic discourse network, they are more and more marginalized, as the new media take over poetry’s dominion over the human imagination. Kittler argues that in 1900 film and the gramophone, and, a bit later, radio, were changing the sig­ nificance of poetry, “leaving to the media its previous effect on the imagination” (249). The process that Kittler describes here reflects, in fact, the two-sidedness of technical mediation in its practical dimension, which exhibits an enabling– constraining structure: as new technologies enable new methods of creative expression, the old methods lose their popularity. When Robert recovers from Alzheimer’s, this process seems to be com­ plete. In fact, creative imagination is associated with the audio-visual media to such an extent that when Robert offers to recite his new poem at the local school it is something very unusual. This recitation is an indirect result of Robert’s continuing desperate attempts to find lost inspiration—at one point he decides that a change in his surroundings could be helpful and enrols on an adult education course which is attached to the vocational track at the local school. He recites the poem in “Creative Composition” class, in which all younger students present multimedia presentations. He speaks in front of the whole class, and in this scene the voice of the poet is significantly con­ trasted with the multimedia presentations of other students. Robert’s reci­ tation is as neutral as possible, so that Juan, one of those listening, does not think that it is poetry at all: “it couldn’t really be a poem since his voice didn’t get all singsong. Robert Gu just talked about the lawn that circled the school, the tiny mowers that circled and circled across it” (63). This delib­ erate disregard for “singsong” suggests that what is important here is the language, the words, and not the expressive qualities of the tone of voice. In fact, it could be said that this kind of recitation is supposed to resemble silent reading, during which the voice of the poet is deprived of tonal expressiveness.7 Moreover, what can be described as a kind of epiphany that Juan experiences listening to Robert’s poem testifies to the evocative power

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of words and indicates that imagination moved by the “voice” may be as powerful a tool of visualization and representation as any electronic device: And then Juan wasn’t really aware of the words anymore. He was seeing; he was there. His mind floated above the little valley, scooted up the creek bed, had almost reached the foot of Pyramid Hill … when suddenly Robert Gu stopped talking, and Juan was dumped back into the reality of his place at the rear end of Ms. Chumlig’s composition class. He sat for a few seconds, dazed. Words. That’s all they were. But what they did was more than visuals. It was more than haptics. There had even been the smell of the dry reeds along the creek bed. (64; ellipsis in original) A moment earlier Juan himself gave a performance, which combined music and special effects visible in AR. The narrative represents his performance from the point of view of Robert, who sees it in his portable foolscap browser and considers it “as impressive as any advertising video that [he] had seen in the twentieth century” (62). These two performances underline the subjectifying effects of the two-sidedness of technical mediation in the practical dimension. The scene shows how new media technologies, enabling new forms of artistic expression, constrain its old forms to such an extent that they disappear. On the one hand, Juan’s mastery of audio-visual effects is comparable to that of professionals of the time when the technol­ ogies were relatively new. On the other hand, he is clearly surprised that words alone can have a strong effect on the imagination, which suggests that he never read poetry (and perhaps fiction). Although Juan is greatly impressed with Robert’s poem, Robert himself is convinced that—measured by the standards of his older poetry—it is worthless. He slowly begins to realize that his poetic genius might never return, and his frustration grows until it is released in a cathartic moment. In a shop class Robert, who has recently discovered in himself a new talent for dealing with mechanical problems, becomes increasingly irritated because every piece of technology that he checks is a black box that cannot be meddled with. Upset that even his new talent might be useless, he finally uses a makeshift cutter to make a hole in the drive compartment of a selfdriving car to see whether there are any serviceable parts inside—there are not. The scene of the wrecking of the car can be regarded as the final man­ ifestation of Robert’s critical attitude towards the new technologically satu­ rated world, which he has been contesting since his return to health. In fact, his initial refusal to conform to this world reflects characteristic features of Foucault’s ethical subjectification—he tries to carve for himself a niche of freedom based on his old values. The reason why he fails in this attempt is that this freedom, as he imagines it, could be fuelled only by creativity. The essential disappointment of his new life is his loss of poetic talent, but when

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he starts to believe that even his new ersatz talent for solving mechanical problems is useless, he explodes with despair. The narrative shows, however, that this despair is to a significant extent unfounded. The point is that this technologically saturated world is brim­ ming with creativity, although it is not to be found under the bonnet of a self-driving car (at least not by an amateur technician like Robert). It is wearable computing with smart contacts that is an oasis of creativity, and even Robert will finally discover this once he gives up his resistance to new technologies and starts to “wear”—as he does after the wrecking of the car. In fact, wearable computers with contacts are by far the most important technology in the universe of the novel, and much of Vinge’s effort goes into demonstrating their potential as he shows not only how they enhance the sensory and cognitive powers of their users but also, perhaps most impor­ tantly, how they enable imaginative self-expression and creativity, although of a very different type than the poetic rendering of immaterial voice.

Wearing: The Physical Mode The main body of the wearable personal computer is distributed in clothes, in which “the net of microprocessors and lasers” has a form of subtle embroidery “more noticeable to the touch than the eye” (105). Interaction with the computer, which is complete with displays and cameras integrated into contacts, involves what is called in the universe of the novel “ensemble coding,” that is, driving one’s wearable “with little gesture cues and eyepointer menus” (53). In other words, the computer is operated by means of micro-movements of various parts of the body as well as movements of the eyes (less experienced users may use phantom keyboards to input data). As a result, learning to wear involves a lot of sheer physical training and thus represents the physical mode of human–technology interaction in its varia­ tion of technically mediated gestural routines. Robert himself reflects on the training routines that he develops tutored by Juan: Robert was practicing with his beginner’s outfit, trying to repeat the coding tricks Juan had shown him. For the most part, even the simplest gestures didn’t work when he first tried them. But he would flail and flail—and when the command did work, the success gave him a pitiful spike of joy and he worked even harder. Like a boy with a new com­ puter game. Or a trained rat. (105–6) Also, the mastery of contacts—essential for the experience of AR—needs effort: He had to put them on every morning and then wear them all day. There were constant twinkles and flashes in his eyes. But with practice,

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he got control of that. He felt a moment of pure joy the first time he managed to type a query on a phantom keyboard and view the Google response floating in the air before him. (105) What has to be noticed here is that Vinge’s vision of the development of the computer interface is distinctly different from the one depicted by Gibson in Neuromancer, which leads towards bypassing the senses. Treating the user’s body as merely a socket for computer plugs connecting to the user’s mind, Gibson underlines the Cartesian mind–body duality, prioritizing the former. Vinge not only avoids denigration of “meat” as almost (or completely) use­ less for a computer user but also shows that interaction between computergenerated imagery and the physical world may be far more fascinating than purely mental immersion in this imagery. Vinge’s user is still aware of the physical world, although in a different manner than someone looking at the traditional screen. This is a difference in the physical mode of human–technology interaction—in fact, it could be argued that smart contacts represent a new stage of development in the physical relationship between the media display and the user that was star­ ted with mobile devices. Before the introduction of mobile phones or lap­ tops, the user’s body was immobile, and it was only her eyes that were moving. This relationship between the eyes and the rest of the body could be described, according to Ingrid Richardson and Rowan Wilken, using the screen-as-window metaphor, which “sets up a particular kind of corporeal trope: to look out a window and to view a screen, at the imperative of the eyes and face, one’s body must be turned towards the apparatus” (187). As Richardson and Wilken further argue, following Introna and Ilharco, immobile screens became synonymous with the source of the relevant knowledge about the world, attracting the attention of their users and making them abandon all other activities. According to the authors, this relationship, which “can be said to discipline the body more or less into a face-to-face interaction,” differs significantly from the one demanded by mobile screens, as “our ‘turning towards’ them is usually momentary (checking for a text or missed call) or at most can be measured in minutes” (188). Although published in 2012, these remarks obviously refer to the first mobile phones. With the advent of smartphones, this momentary character of the relationship with mobile screens went away, as users can spend hours looking at them, although their location is not determined by the stationary position of the screen, as was the case with TV sets or stationary computers. What mobile screens still share with stationary screens is that the user has to “turn towards” the screen and thus has to “turn away” from everything else. In the case of displays in smart contacts as they are represented in Rainbows End this “turning” is no longer necessary, as the user faces the display all the time, whatever she or he does. This is visible in the scene in which Robert—who at this point of the narrative is not yet familiar with

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smart contacts—notices his granddaughter Miri playing on a swing and apparently staring into the distance. When, intrigued by her occasional speaking to the empty air, “he asked her what she was doing, she would start and laugh and say that she was ‘studying’” (33). Thus, if the traditional screens—both immobile and mobile—disciplined the user into, even momentary, face-to-face interaction, contacts get rid of this discipline. In fact, the way in which the user is aware of the visual space around herself thanks to contacts resembles the way in which people are aware of the auditory space surrounding them. Quoting earlier research by Phil Turner et al., Richardson and Wilken argue that, unlike pictorial or televisual space, auditory space is not “boxed-in” or framed as a window-on-the-world; instead, it is fluid and dynamic, and filtered rather than contained or “stopped” by material obstacles such as walls and corners. Thus, it is not enclosed or “held” in place, but creates “its own dimensions moment by moment.” (193) With the mediation of smart contacts as they are envisioned in Rainbows End, visual space is not framed as a window, either—what is more, material obstacles like walls or floors do not stop or block visual space, as it is pos­ sible for users to see “through” the walls using imagery provided by cameras behind the walls. Robert quickly learns about this functionality: “Robert and Xiu Xiang had mastered most of the Epiphany8 defaults … Look at the object a different way, and he often could see through and beyond it!” (149). A scene at the end of the novel shows Robert using this functionality—he visits the university library when he hears a voice: “Hey, Professor Gu! Look up here.” Robert looked in the direction of the voice. The ceiling above him had become transparent, as had the one above that. His view had tun­ nelled through to the sixth floor. Carlos Rivera was looking back down at him, a happy smile on his face. “Long time no see, Professor. Come on up, why don’t you?” (375) The fragment, in which apparently also voice is mediated through Robert’s wearable computer, is a very good example of the similarity between audi­ tory and visual space as mediated by technology—neither of the spaces is stopped or blocked by floors. Although it would be possible to imagine Rivera’s voice being carried down through, for example, a staircase, he can be seen by Robert only thanks to his contacts. Smart contacts are also frequently used to see views recorded by cameras placed both near and far away. The so-called “improved” land—which

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seems to extend all over the inhabited areas—is equipped not only with servers and various sensors constantly sending and receiving data, but also with multitudes of cameras placed everywhere. Even clothes sport a number of them, and many people make their cameras available to the wider public. As a result, people with contacts can see in any direction, zoom in or out, see through walls or smog, or use distant cameras to see things far away. These functionalities represent both the magnification–reduction and enabling–constraining structures of the two-sidedness of technical media­ tion, but Vinge almost exclusively focuses on their enhancing effects—the scene, discussed above, in which the contacts enable Robert to see through several floors is a good example. As a result, Vinge shows how the con­ tacts give people almost superhuman capacities, and this effect is even stronger when the use of contacts becomes transparent—it is as if their users had their sense of sight enhanced. Using contacts to see views from omnipresent cameras also indicates a changed attitude to the ever-present potential of being closely watched by friends and strangers. An example of this kind of use of the technology is represented in the scene in which Juan “looks around” his classroom, taking a break from paying attention to what the teacher, Ms Chumlig, is saying: “So Juan tuned her out and wandered from viewpoint to viewpoint around the room. Some were from students who’d set their viewpoints public” (53). When he is interested in particular people, Juan watches close-ups of their faces. Although a classroom is a specific place where one can expect to be watched, if not by one’s classmates, then at least by the teacher, it could be argued that a similar situation could take place in a street—people who are apparently alone, walking or sitting on a bench, would never be sure if there was someone watching a close up of their face. This potential of being watched all the time represents the Panopticon-like environmental mode of human–technology interaction. As such, it could have significant subjectify­ ing effects as far as the social self of the watched is concerned, but the novel does not explore the issue.9

Cognitive Enhancement Apart from affecting physical aspects of the human experience of the world, wearables with contacts also affect cognition. In fact, Vinge seems to be far more interested in the role that this technology may play in cognitive tasks and in social situations, both of which are also extremely important for human subjectivity. One of the basic cognitive functionalities of contacts consists in displaying information in the form of text and images—either still or moving—that were recorded by the user or retrieved from an external database. Because of this functionality smart contacts represent an ultimate form of external technology whose purpose is to enhance human cognitive skills. They also fit Andy Clark’s argumentation concerning the nature of the human mind

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perfectly. In Natural-Born Cyborgs, Clark argues that human thinking has been inextricably mixed with biologically external operations and resources since the beginning of our existence as species: It is the presence of this unusual plasticity that makes humans (but not dogs, cats, or elephants) natural-born cyborgs: beings primed by Mother Nature to annex wave upon wave of external elements and structures as part and parcel of their own extended minds. (31) The only difference between modern digital technologies and old media like paper books is that these new technologies may be far better constructed for smooth retrieval of information than the old ones.10 What is important here is that, according to Clark, transparent use of various external technologies influences human subjectivity: For our sense of self, of what we know and of who and what we are, is surprisingly plastic and reflects not some rigid preset biological bound­ ary so much as our ongoing experience of thinking, reasoning, and acting within whatever potent web of technology and cognitive scaf­ folding we happen currently to inhabit. (45) Clark’s theory may be used to interpret the scene in which Robert seems to be stuck on his project—constructing a strange mechanical clock—during workshop classes preceding the wrecking of the car. Seeing that he is upset, Juan tries to help him. First, he records with his contact lenses the move­ ment of the mechanism: He captured about three seconds of the contraption’s motion, enough to identify stationary points and dimensions. There was an old mechanics program that came in handy for medieval gadget games; he fed the description into it. The results were easy to interpret. “You just gotta make that lever a quarter-inch longer.” He poked a finger at a tiny spar. (82) With a camera integrated with his contacts and a wearable computer, Juan’s reaction to the problem is as quick as if he had considered it in his mind. This kind of ability certainly contributes to his self-confidence in certain areas of life. In fact, Clark gives an example which bears a striking resemblance to Vinge’s vision: he imagines a basketball fan who is equipped with a retinal display interface to his computer and thus is able to provide, almost instantaneously, facts about any important player. In this example, the ret­ inal display provides access to an external database and in this way extends

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the knowledge of the user, who does not have to memorize all this infor­ mation but can treat the external database as part of his memory. As a result, a different approach to learning evolves, a phenomenon that Robert briefly struggles to conceptualize when he thinks about Juan’s learning: Juan Orozco was distinctly less able than the students of Robert’s experience. By twentieth-century standards he was subliterate … except where he needed words to access data or understand results. Okay, perhaps he was not subliterate. Maybe there was some other word for these crippled children. Paraliterate? (147–8; ellipsis in original) What Robert reflects upon here is, again, the enabling–constraining struc­ ture of technical mediation. Technology which makes access to external information almost as quick as thinking may lead people to conclude that they do not have to learn anything. Such a conclusion, however, would be wrong, and contacts do not make memorized knowledge completely useless. Juan’s teacher, Ms Chumlig, insists on the need for this kind of knowledge—to be successful in the modern job market, one also has to know something. This is also stressed by Luciano Floridi, who reflects upon a new kind of education needed in an information society and points out that “new information always requires some old background information to become meaningful and useful, and to be appropriated critically” (83). Thus, it is not enough to know how to search and analyze: “today, because so much information is just a click away, there seems to be a tendency to privilege know-how over know-that. This is silly, especially if one recalls the importance of background infor­ mation stressed earlier” (84). It seems that Robert’s granddaughter Miri accepts this wisdom which is indicated when he notices her studying for hours on the swing in the garden of their house. The way in which contacts may affect the use of memory, however, is important not only in the case of education, as memory is also extremely important for the narrative aspect of human self-conception. In The Fourth Revolution, Floridi argues that “any technology, the primary goal of which is to manage memories, is going to have an immense influence on how individuals develop and shape their own personal identities” (72). The question of the importance of technologically-aided memory is also explored by Soraj Hongladarom, who builds on both Clark’s and Floridi’s ideas. In The Online Self, Hongladarom argues convincingly that the theory of the continuity of the human self based solely on the continuity of memory con­ tained in this self’s mind, which was started by Locke and is still quite influential, is often inadequate. Hongladarom claims that the human self is co-created by external factors such as diaries and other written records, photographs, accounts of other people etc. This external side of the self is important, according to Hongladarom, as “[c]ases of failing memory or

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confusion between imagination and memory (where a scenario from the past cannot be distinguished as memory or imagination) seem to show that memory is not entirely reliable” (51). Vinge’s novel, however, shows that relying on external memory for the building of the narrative thread of one’s life may itself be problematic. Robert’s bout of amnesia caused by Alzheimer’s lasted several years, and after his recovery he is curious about the time of which he has no memories. He believes, as most people would do in his situation, that what happened to the Robert without memory happened to himself, and thus he wants to fill in the gaps in his life. Robert is particularly interested in the part of his forgotten past which is connected with his wife Lena, who left him before his illness because of his despotic character, but when he was suffering from Alzheimer’s she returned and took care of him. After it became clear that he would recover, however, she left him again, afraid that he would return to his old despotic self. And to make sure that he would leave her alone, she asked everyone to tell him that she had died. Thus, when Robert starts his inquiries about Lena, the members of his family are rather reluctant to talk about her, telling him only that she is dead. Because there are, apparently, no family archives in the form of paper photographs or documents, Robert’s next step in his search is—as, in fact, it would be today in a similar situa­ tion—to turn to the public archive through the Google search engine. Pieces of information on Lena that he finds on the internet, however, are often contradictory, and he realizes that it is a result of activities of an organiza­ tion called Friends of Privacy: “It was hard to imagine such villains, doing their best to undermine what you could find on the net. A ‘vandal charity’ was what they called themselves” (34). The Friends of Privacy, whose ser­ vices are used even by state institutions—at the end of the novel it turns out that even the army uses their services when they want to suppress certain news—offer a striking contrast to what happens in Eggers’s novel where, apparently, everything moves towards complete transparency. What Robert’s search for information about his wife makes clear at this point is that false information on the internet may also have negative effects, as lies about one­ self11 may be confusing for others, which is exactly the case with Robert. This ambiguous blessing of lying on the internet is thus a clear example of the involving–alienating structure of technical mediation. Still, Robert hopes that he will be able to differentiate between important truth and disinformation: “One way or another, he would recover his lost times with Lena” (68). Seeing his search in the light of Hongladarom’s argumentation, it is obvious here that Robert not only wants to fill gaps in his memory with what he finds on the internet, but he believes that what happened then happened to himself. The ease with which false information can be created and distributed on the internet, however, indicates significant risks for this kind of reliance on external information, of which Hongla­ darom says nothing. This risk is important in view of the fact that contacts and wearable computers further increase the significance of external memory

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for the subjectivity of the user, who takes for granted the continuous recording of everything that happens to her. This significance—and increased risk connected with it—is indicated clearly when the police seize Juan’s wearable computer after the incident in the San Diego labs. During the incident, Juan is tasered and afterwards remembers nothing of the event. In the process of the following investigation his wearable, which has recor­ ded everything in the field of his vision and hearing range, is taken by the police, and he complains: “I don’t remember anything after Miri and I got to campus. And the police are still holding what I wore. I can’t even see the last few minutes of my diary!” (346) The police also confiscated the wear­ able of Robert’s granddaughter Miri. Because of the trauma she experienced in the labs, she also has problems with memory, as Robert’s son, Bob, explains to Robert: “Her worst problem is some mental confusion about what happened in the labs” (341). Juan’s and Miri’s situation is somewhat similar to that of Robert—both teenagers have problems with memory and would like to consult “external memory” to fill in the gaps in what they remember. However, the possible consequences are potentially far more serious in their case than in the case of Robert. They are suspected of involvement in a crime, and the police have their digital diaries, which recorded moments that they themselves do not remember. If the police wanted to frame Juan and Miri—fabricating proofs of guilt by the police is not an unheard-of situation—they could simply corrupt the diaries. The teenagers would believe that—or, in the best sce­ nario, would not be sure whether—they really committed a crime, and this could have grave consequences for their self-conception. The case of Juan’s and Miri’s confiscated wearables indicates that Clark’s theory of the extended mind ignores certain very significant risks. Although the processes of retrieving information from one’s brain and from a wear­ able computer are similar, the sources from which information is obtained are certainly very different as far as the security of this information is con­ cerned.12 This question of (in)security may have very significant subjectify­ ing effects, especially for neurotic characters.

Personal Interaction and Multitasking In the same way that wearable computers equipped with contacts may be seen as a more advanced form of desktop computers in the context of cog­ nitive tasks, such wearables may be seen as a more advanced form of mobile phones in the context of communication and interpersonal contact. Wear­ ables can be used for telephone-like conversations for which contacts are not needed, but the ease of enhancing conversations with images—recorded or computer-generated—visible through contacts means that voice-only com­ munication is rare in the universe of Rainbows End. Far more frequent is silent messaging called “sming,” which is a kind of texting done by means of ensemble coding and visible in the form of text displayed by contacts. If the

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users are good at ensemble coding, they can send and receive messages in a way that is virtually unnoticeable to others. This feature makes the tech­ nology close to telepathy, and Vinge makes much of it, showing believable situations in which the characters do not want to admit that they are text­ ing. “Telepathic” sming, for example, is admired by Juan, who looks at his teacher “with new respect” (55) when she manages to sming him a warning at the moment when she is apparently consulting her notes. In fact, sming represents, again, the enabling–constraining structure of technical mediation, but Vinge focuses almost exclusively on the enabling side, whereas he just hints at the constraining side. In one scene Robert, who is being tutored by Juan in the use of his wearable, notices that Juan “seemed to lose his train of thought” (147). Robert is not yet aware of the functionality of sming, but the reader knows that the boy is exchanging smings with someone else at the same time as he is talking to Robert. Enabling the users to lead two or more conversations simultaneously—and thus, to multitask—the technology constrains them from engaging in these conversations consecutively. As a result, the attention devoted to each interlocutor wanders. In fact, the scene may be treated as a representation of the way in which contacts could significantly contribute to what the sociolo­ gist Erving Goffman describes as engagement disloyalty, which occurs when some of the participants in a social situation turn their attention away from this situation, in spite of the fact that everyone is expected “to withhold attention from matters occurring outside of the engagement” (179). Vinge does not explore the subjectifying consequences of the way in which sming might disrupt face-to-face conversations, but these consequences could be extrapolated from the current studies which clearly indicate that mobile phone use—or even presence—can have detrimental effects on the relationship between people engaged in a face-to-face conversation as the phone user or owner is not able to commit herself fully to the conversation.13 Sming, however, is just one way in which contacts may be used for com­ munication. Much of Vinge’s effort in the novel goes into showing how the use of contacts may visually enrich human communication, as thanks to them users may visit their interlocutors in the form of AR avatars.14 What is important for this kind of communication is not only the contacts’ cap­ ability of showing a computer-generated figure of the interlocutor in AR, but also the fact that the avatar may see the world using the technology of “ghosting,” which is a kind of synthetic view created digitally on the basis of available real views of the place. This synthetic viewpoint can be matched with the viewpoint of an avatar with a body created in AR visible through retinal displays. Vinge introduces the technology of ghosting avatars visible in AR in the very first scene of the novel after the Prologue. Three characters—IndoEuropean Alliance security agents—meet in a café in Barcelona, but only one of them, Alfred, is fully present. After a moment they are joined by a third avatar in the form of a rabbit, who represents a person the agents

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want to hire for a specific job. One of the avatars is an exact copy of the German agent behind it: Braun was as ephemeral as the rabbit, but he projected a dour earn­ estness that was quite consistent with his real personality. Alfred thought he detected a certain surprised disappointment in the younger man’s expression. In fact, after a moment, Günberk sent him a silent message. (8) It is not clear in what way the avatar is capable of projecting these subtle emotions—whether this is a result of intentional steering of the expression of the avatar by the user, or rather a result of an automatic “translation” of the real face expressions of the user, recorded by ubiquitous cameras and processed by the computer aiding avatar imagery. Perhaps both scenarios are possible. The avatar of the Japanese agent Keiko Mitsuri, however, “was frankly masked. She looked a bit like Marcel Duchamp’s nude, built from a shifting complex of crystal planes” (8). Mitsuri is “frankly masked,” but the novel also represents situations in which users are showing avatars that look like normal human beings, although completely different from what their operators actually look like. This kind of masking, whether “frank” or not, is quite common in the universe of the novel, with avatars—especially those of teenagers—often appearing in the form of characters from fictional universes. On the one hand, masking can breed distrust—characters often wonder who is behind a particular avatar, although identification appears to be possible in certain cases. The way in which the identity of the avatar could be confirmed is indicated in the scene in which Robert—who is still inex­ perienced in the use of his wearable—unwittingly “invites” the avatar of a student named Sharif to his meeting with a group of old acquaintances. One of Robert’s colleagues, Tommy, tells Sharif’s avatar: “You could be almost anything. You could be a committee. When you want to sound like a lit-lover, we get chat from a member who knows about poetry.” Tommie tilted back his chair. “There’s an old saying: The beginning of trust has to be an in-person contact. I don’t see any usable chain of trust in your biography.” (129) The phrase “usable chain of trust” indicates that there are ways of acknowledging the identity of an avatar’s operator. On the other hand, masking can give the avatar’s operator freedom to experiment with her sense of identity, and could be seen as a development of the possibilities afforded by fake identities on the traditional internet, which

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are praised by the psychologist Sherry Turkle: “Creating an avatar—perhaps of a different age, a different gender, a different temperament—is a way to explore the self” (Alone 12). Vinge apparently shares this enthusiasm— although he is aware of possible dangers, he is clearly more fascinated with the potential advantages of fake identities and sees the progress of technology as contributing to the development of the phenomenon of self-experimentation. In fact, identity workshops involving ghosting ava­ tars would have a decisive advantage over any kind of self-experimentation involving “traditional” social media platforms, or even virtual reality, as they would be taking place in the real, albeit augmented, world. What is more, the operator of the ghosting avatar looks at her interlocutor from the per­ spective of the avatar’s eyes, so the eye-to-eye contact is perfectly easy—this is crucial for the impression of the reality of the situation. Following Sartre, Frances Bottenberg claims that what we receive in the look of the Other is the recognition of relationality. This “recognition is a pre-condition for conversation, but it is also essential to our self-construction as subjects who can relate to otherness” (186).15 In general, the potential that contacts and AR create for the users to experiment with various identities on the one hand, and, on the other, to deceive interlocutors, represents, again, the involving–alienating structure of technical mediation. The narrative is firmly set on the involving side: Vinge devotes much attention to the sheer fun of using avatars—I will return to this point later in the chapter—but he barely indicates their alienating potential. Although he shows that avatars can be used to deceive people, no one in his story is really hurt as a result. Apart from augmenting phone-like conversations and facilitating identity experimentation, ghosting presence can be utilized at school for remote education. In one scene Robert, who does not yet wear contacts, sees his teacher, Ms Chumlig, talking to an empty classroom as if it was full of students, and he realizes that she teaches a class of AR avatars (66). This kind of distance learning is certainly better than one in which students have to watch recorded or live lectures on the screen of their computers, as using the technology of ghosting avatars the students are immersed—at least visually and aurally—in the environment of the class. Again, however, the enabling–constraining structure of technical mediation is clearly visible here. Although contacts allow for this kind of distance learning, as well as for AR presentations for students physically present in the classroom—Ms Chumlig uses it for showing her students various charts and graphs, which appear to be floating in the air—contacts can also be detrimental to the student’s attention. In one scene of the novel, Juan is physically present in the class­ room, but, in spite of the presence of his teacher, Ms Chumlig, he starts to observe his class using various viewpoints coming from cameras in the room as if he was walking around the class. Thus he uses here a kind of tele­ presence—or rather, teleabsence—to play mentally truant, although he limits himself to the viewpoints in the classroom:

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He didn’t route to the outside world except when he could use a site that Chumlig was talking about. She was real good at nailing the mentally truant. But Juan was good at ensemble coding, driving his wearable with little gesture cues and eye-pointer menus. As her gaze passed over him, he nodded brightly and replayed the last few seconds of her talk. (53) What Juan does is a type of engagement disloyalty that Goffman calls “away”: When outwardly participating in a social activity within a social situa­ tion, an individual can allow his attention to turn from what he and everyone else considers the real or serious world, and give himself up for a time to a playlike world in which he alone participates. This kind of inward emigration from the gathering may be called “away.” (69) In the classroom, it is Ms Chumlig and her lecture that form the “serious world” and Juan emigrates mentally from it. Using his contacts, Juan observes his classmates and surfs his own database—“[l]ike most kids, he kept lots of stuff saved on his wearable” (53)—for information about them.16 He does all this while pretending that he is paying attention to Ms Chumlig and her words—most probably he sees her all the time in part of his field of vision. In fact, Ms Chumlig herself may be guilty of going away at times when she is supposed to listen to the students. At one point, for example, Juan does not know how to interpret her reaction to Robert’s recitation in the class: “Ms. Chumlig looked glassy-eyed. Either she was very impressed or she was surfing” (64). Goffman, obviously, sees the limits of “away,” which most often takes “the form of what is variously called reverie, brown study, woolgathering, daydreaming, or autistic thinking” (70),17 in the imagination of the person going “away.” “Away” in the universe of Vinge’s novel finds its limits only at the boundaries of the available internet resources. As a result, contacts-enabled AR would, most probably, facilitate, if not encourage, Goffman’s “away,” as it would allow the user to keep an eye on the main situation, and at the same time, for example, to read a text superimposed on what she sees in front of her, or to watch a movie clip in a small window hovering in the air. Using contacts to wander away from the teacher and her words is, in fact, very similar to using laptops or mobile phones for the same purpose. Com­ menting on the new norm allowing laptop (and, more and more frequently, mobile phone) use in the classroom, Turkle argues: These days, attention is in short supply—in college classrooms, its scarcity poses special problems because, after all, so much money, time, and effort has been spent to bring together these students, this professor, these

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This lack of consistency is also indicated, albeit indirectly, in Vinge’s novel. At one point Juan reflects on the idea of physical presence in class: He leaned away from the wall and listened to Chumlig. That was why the school made you show up in person for most classes; you had to pay a little bit of attention just because you were trapped in a real room with a real instructor. Chumlig’s lecture graphics floated in the air above them. She had the class’s attention; there was a minimum of insolent graffiti nibbling at the edges of her imagery. (52) And yet, the benefits of being “trapped in a real room with a real instructor” are heavily undermined by his use of contacts to go “away.” As I indicated in the previous chapters, constant multitasking erodes what Turkle calls deep attention and fosters hyper attention. Although digital media favour hyper attention, Turkle points out that deep attention is essential for knowledge acquisition and reflection, and thus its erosion will impair human cognitive capacity to a significant extent. Also, Maryanne Wolf argues that multitasking may be detrimental to critical thinking—this is what Eggers suggests in his novel when he compares a group of multi­ tasking individuals to sheep nodding in unison. It can be imagined that smart contacts, thanks to which multitasking will be easy in almost any situation, will further contribute to this development.18 Vinge, however, points out still another way in which smart contacts may affect human subjectivity. He indicates it in the scene—already discussed by me—in which Robert recites his poem in front of the vocational track stu­ dents. After he finishes, Juan is not the only student who is impressed, and there is a moment of appreciative silence, but then suddenly some students start to laugh. Robert does not wear contacts at the time, so the giggles are just confusing for him after the moment of respectful hush. However, the situation is also described from the point of view of Juan, who wears con­ tacts. Juan notices the appreciative silence, [b]ut then a classic Pompous Bird flew up from the old farts’ side of the room. It swooped across the room to drop a huge load of wet birdshit on Robert Gu. Fred and Jer burst out laughing, and after a moment the whole class responded. (65) The Pompous Bird, as the reader can guess at this moment, exists only in AR. This kind of offensive AR may be visible to all those equipped with

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contacts, as is apparently the case during Robert’s recitation, or its view may be limited to several people who share what is called a “consensus view.” Such AR may be even restricted to a single personal view, as is the case when Juan augments reality in order to find the courage to talk to Dean Blount: “So talk to him! It’s just another kind of monster whacking. Juan morphed a buffoon image onto the guy, and suddenly it wasn’t so hard to cold-start the encounter” (58; italics in original). This scene also indicates another important functionality of AR: changing people or things by over­ lying them with digital imagery. It is this functionality that allows for the specific use of AR that would be, most probably, far more popular than disrespectful graffiti like the Pompous Bird, although in the novel it is mentioned only once. When Robert is learning to wear, he is often accompanied by an elderly lady, Dr Xiang, who also tries to master her wearable: Xiu Xiang was lagging behind him, mainly because of her self-doubts. She had refused to wear for three days after one particularly mistaken gesture had dumped her into—into she refused to say what, but Robert suspected it was some kind of porn view. (161) One could wonder what this porn view shows, but very probably it involves stripping those in sight from their clothes, using either available imagery of their naked bodies—obtained either legally or illegally—or creating some approximations. Judging from the amount of internet traffic that porn pages attract on today’s internet, it could be guessed that the porn view would be immensely popular. As a result, a woman seeing a man looking at her would never be certain in what way he sees her.19 Morphing images onto other people, however, can also be a result of respect: when Miri visits her grandmother Lena—Robert’s ex-wife—she changes Lena in AR into a wise witch because she admires her wisdom. In this way AR becomes a kind of visual representation of Miri’s respect for her grandmother and actually reinforces Miri’s considerateness for her. Lena’s transformation is visible only to Miri, but this kind of positive aug­ mentation may also be shared by many people, as is the case with the librarian Rivera, who is transformed in AR into important characters from fictional universes that create “official” augmentations of the university library. In this way Rivera is immediately seen by the fans who visit the library as someone in a position of authority. Changing people in AR shared by a number of people will certainly have consequences for their social self, as it will indicate the attitude of others to the one who has been changed in AR, regardless of whether the augmented individual is aware of the exact way in which she has been modified in AR—the mere awareness that one has become the laughing stock of the class is enough to realize that attitude of others to oneself. But even the

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possibility of this kind of modification might have important consequences for self-conception, as the individual will never be sure about the way in which she is seen by others. In the world in which contacts-enabled AR is the norm, people can never be sure where, cognitively speaking, those copresent in a particular social situation have gone or how they modified the present situation: whether this going “away” is—for them—offensive, play­ fully disrespectful, innocent or flattering. This potential will, most probably, be responsible for a kind of bifurcation of attitudes towards others—on the one hand, permanent distrust and, on the other, nonchalant blasé attitude. Needless to say, the subjectifying effect will be far greater in the case of neurotic personalities. Rainbows End, however, shows that this kind of personal use of contacts and modification of people in AR on an individual basis is only one way in which the technology will be used. Potentially equally important—also as far as its subjectifying effects are concerned—will be AR modification of whole places or environments done by institutions or whole groups of people.

Belief Circles and Play This kind of augmentation is represented, for example, in a scene in which Robert is in a self-driving car and, led by curiosity, he checks what kinds of AR are available for him at that time. Limiting his search to “public local reality only,” that is, a list of ARs which are overlaid on the geographical features of the local area only, he finds out that this category comprises 200,000 “realities.” Robert chooses at random one of these: Outside the car, the North County hillsides were swept clean of the subdivisions. The road had only three lanes and the cars were out of the 1960s. He noticed the tag on the windshield of his car (now a Ford Falcon): San Diego Historical Society. Bit by bit, they were recon­ structing the past. (181) It is clear that this kind of AR would be of great interest to people— professionals and amateurs—fascinated by a specific period of history. More than in historical recreations, however, Vinge appears to be inter­ ested in realities produced by “belief circles”20—ARs created by fans of popular novels and films which are supposed to be recreations of settings and characters from these works. After spending a few minutes in the 1960s Robert thinks about universes based on works of fiction and changes his AR to one based on the works of Terry Pratchett: The subdivisions were adobe now. His car was an artfully contorted carpet, swooping down a grassy slope that a moment ago had been the

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grade north of Mountain Meadow Road. In the valley ahead, there were colorful tents with signs painted in a cursive script that made the roman alphabet look vaguely like Arabic calligraphy. (181) As these ARs—both historical and fictional—are available also to non-fans, it could be argued that the universes that the fans create—three-dimensional digital archives of real and fictional cultures—shape the collective memory of those who, in one way or another, come in touch with these universes. And collective memory, like personal memory, is crucial for an individual’s self-conception. In “Archive and Aspiration,” Arjun Appadurai claims that there are two types of archives as far as their relationship with collective memory is con­ cerned: things which found their way to traditional archives were considered to be important because they were associated with what was already known or remembered by many people (as is the case with, for example, war museums). With the advent of new digital archives—among which Appa­ durai includes, for example, game worlds—which can be accessed via the internet, it is very often what is already in the archive that makes an impression on human memories and thus becomes important (18). It could be said that in Vinge’s novel both these processes are represented. The imagery from past periods or fictional works that is used for the creation of augmentations had been important for the aficionados of these periods/ works before the specific AR was created. On the other hand, the recon­ structed or fictional universes of AR enter the collective memory of non-fans when they take part in the digital, semi-digital or real cosplay—as they do, for example, in the UCSD library, which, after digitization, augments the reality of the main reading room to make it resemble a setting from a pop­ ular series of fantasy novels by Jerzy Hacek. This overlay is produced partly to appease protesters after all paper books in the library are destroyed by a shredder in the process of digitization. Even Robert, who never appreciated the type of literature represented by Hacek, is impressed when he first sees the AR based on the universe of Hacek’s novels: There were books, but they were oversized things, set on timbered racks that stretched up and up. Robert bent back. The violet light followed the stacks upward, limned their twisted struts. It was like one of those fractal forests in old graphics. At the limits of his vision, there were still more books, tiny with distance. (172) The books that Robert sees are digital recreations of the volumes destroyed by shredding. Readers physically present in the library are transformed by the software managing the AR overlay into characters from the fictional

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universe created by Hacek. They can walk all over the reading room and reach (often with the help of digital “magic”) for a virtual representation of the book they want to read. If they are new to the fictional universe, they have the opportunity to learn something about it, for they become part of this universe. This kind of relationship can certainly have a deeper influence on them than, for example, learning about the universe from the news or from advertising. In this way the universe based on Hacek’s works becomes part of the collective memory of the people who visit the library. The augmentation of the library, however, is not supposed simply to replace the old reality but, first of all, to be a source of fun—“to endear the shredding project to the public,” as Rivera notices at one point (175). The assumption is that AR in the library should turn reading into a more enjoyable experience. In fact, much of Vinge’s novel is devoted to creating a vision of a society in which play constitutes a very important part of life— especially among members of the younger generation. And AR is shown as contributing to this playful attitude to life in a significant way. Play and playfulness as they are represented in Rainbows End should be distinguished from the idea of gamification, although the two concepts may overlap. The difference between them is indicated by Miguel Sicart in his Play Matters, in which he contrasts play “based on an idea of creativity and expression” with “the instrumentalized, mechanistic thinking on play,” which aims at “efficiency, seriousness, and technical determinism” (5). What Sicart understands as instrumentalized, mechanistic thinking on play is clearly exemplified by the idea of gamification as represented in The Circle. In this novel, fun is invoked as the aim of social media participation, but the narrative shows that the apparently playful activities turn into the drudgery of competition in games that are simply ways of enhancing participation in the media that is profitable for the company and is supposed to categorize the user as a specific type of consumer. Rainbows End, on the other hand, shows “play as a way of expression, a way of engaging with the world—not as an activity of consumption but as an activity of production” (Sicart 5). To be specific, in his work Sicart differentiates between play and playful­ ness. Play is an activity which is autotelic; that is, it has “its own goals and purposes, with its own marked duration and spaces and its own conditions for ending” (16). Playfulness, on the other hand, “is an attitude, a projection of characteristics into an activity, it lacks the autotelic nature. Playfulness preserves the purpose of the activity it is applied to: it’s a different means to the same end” (26). Thus, playfulness is an emotional perspective that people take on the activities they perform and on other people and objects that they just see or with whom they interact. In the light of this differ­ entiation, what happens in the library should be seen as an example of playfulness, which is strongly suggested and/or reinforced by the technology of AR. Those who are new to the fictional universe recreated in the library are invited to familiarize themselves with it, but, first of all, the overlay is

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supposed to appeal to those who are already fans of this fictional universe, that is, Hacek’s Dangerous Knowledge. These fans—some of whom have been enlisted by the library administration to help with the transforma­ tion—appropriate “a context that is not created or intended for play” (27): here, the reading rooms of the library. This kind of appropriation is, according to Sicart, one of the main characteristics of playfulness. Whereas in play the context may be created specifically for play—a simple play­ ground is an obvious example—in playfulness, the context is always appro­ priated or “occupied.” The most common purpose of playful appropriation of the context is changing it from purely functional into emotionally engaging. The way in which playful appropriation works in Rainbows End is shown when Robert and his colleagues walk into the augmented reading rooms: They walked slowly down the narrow aisle. There were side paths. These led not only left and right, but up and down. Snakelike hissing sounds came from some. In others, he saw “Knights Guardian” hunched over tables that were piled with books and parchment; light shone into their faces from the pages of opened books. Illuminated manuscripts indeed. (173) For Hacek’s fans, the AR in the library is, obviously, a highly involving experience. As the AR cannot be changed, however, it is contested by the members of the main rival belief circle, the Scoochis, who find it alienating. Faithful to the atmosphere of playfulness, the Scoochis challenge the fans of Hacek to a mock battle on the grounds of the university—in this way they want to publicize their claim to at least part of the library. The challenge is accepted and the university administration allows the part of the campus near the library to be taken over by fans of the two belief circles. Researchers from various departments of the university and from the local biotech laboratory are allowed to take part in the battle and preparations are shown from the perspective of Tim Huynh, who works in the laboratory and belongs to the Scoochis belief circle. Huynh covers the robots from the laboratory with a layer of AR to create creatures from the Scoochis mythos: “The resulting visual designs were spectacular, and meshed with the reality of the underlying robots and the touchy-feely gear that Huynh had attached to the bots’ hulls” (230). The robots are used in the same way by Hacek sympathizers, whereas fans themselves, on both sides, are covered with digital layers transforming them into characters from the fictional universes. There are numbers of fans who appear just as ghosting avatars and there are a lot of purely digital special effects. As a result, the confrontation between two belief circles looks like a conflict between two fantastic armies. What is underlined several times in passages describing the “battle” is a strong creative element in the design of this AR. As Huynh reflects at one

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point: “In minutes they might burn up months of creativity, but reach an audience beyond all their earlier dreams” (261). This creativity is enabled by the whole infrastructure allowing for AR—not only personal wearables with contacts, but also various sensors and servers on the “improved” land. Here the question of the two-sidedness of technical mediation in the prac­ tical dimension comes to the fore again: this is a kind of new art enabled by new technologies that constrain old forms of creativity like poetry. Although Vinge clearly mourns the decline of literature and books, he also shows how the new forms of artistic expression compensate—to a certain extent—for the loss. What is important is that this form of creative play is not limited to the situations in which a whole group of people is involved, as is the case with the augmentation of the library. Users can give vent to their creative impul­ ses also on an individual basis, which is indicated in an earlier scene, in which Juan and his two friends, the Radner twins, are going to school along a flood control channel. Although no one lives in the vicinity of the channel, the area is kept improved by the County Flood Control. As they walked along, Juan gave a shrug and a twitch just so. That was enough cue for his Epiphany wearable. Its overlay imagery shifted into Hacek’s Dangerous Knowledge world: The manzanita morphed into scaly tentacles. Now the houses that edged the canyon were large and heavily timbered, with pennants flying. High ahead was a castle, the home of Grand Duke Hwa Feen—in reality, the local kid who did the most to maintain this belief circle. Juan tricked out the twins in the leather armor of Knights Guardian. “Hey, Jer, look.” Juan radiated, and waited for the twins to slide into consensus with his view. He had been practicing a week to get these visuals in place. (41) Juan spent several days in order to create—or to contribute to—a digital overlay for the area that would match landscapes from Hacek’s Dangerous Knowledge. But far more interesting in the passage is the figure of “the local kid who did the most to maintain this belief circle,” which means, the most active fan of Hacek in the neighbourhood. This activity, the reader can guess, allows him to assume the title of Grand Duke in the universe of the play. Juan clearly thinks about him with a kind of respect, and transforms his house into a castle in his own rendition of the landscape. From the fol­ lowing conversation, the reader learns that the twins have tried to “oust the Grand Duke” but have not been successful. The respect the local kid enjoys can be explained in the light of Hongla­ darom’s argumentation about the mutual influence that the online and offline worlds exert on each other and the resulting dialectic between the player’s self-conception and social self. What is particularly apposite to the

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present study in Hongladarom’s reasoning is that he uses an example of a game based on a work of fiction, as is the case in the passage quoted above: The player whose avatar is Don Quixote can gain reputation in the outside world as someone who is very good at playing as the Don. An analogy is certainly that of an actor who gains his reputation as some­ one who plays Hamlet very well. No one is going to believe that the actor is the real Hamlet. In the case of the game player whose avatar is Don Quixote, his identity is thus mixed up between that of the Don in the context of the play (which is not necessarily exactly the same as the Don in Cervantes’ novel) and his outside, offline identity. Whatever his latter identity may be, it now has obtained an added dimension as someone who is very good as the Don Quixote avatar. What happens inside the game brushes over to the real world, across the divide if there were one. (157) It could be argued that in the universe of Rainbows End, the potential for affecting human subjectivity that Hongladarom sees in the relationship between the real self and avatar’s self is even greater as the augmented rea­ lity allows for a far greater identification with the game avatar than online universe could ever do because the impersonation takes place in the real world, albeit modified. Hongladarom’s analysis can be here supplemented by Brendan Keogh’s idea of cybernetic memory, which includes not only technologies as means of data storage—keeping records of our past—but also technologies which, through their mediation, actively contribute to the creation of the user’s memories. In the case of a game player, his memories as a character in the universe of the game are mixed with his non-game memories, and thus his self-conception is modified. What is also important, players in Vinge’s novel appear to have greater freedom in adapting the fictional universe to their own personal vision than it is now possible with computer games, although, as Patrick Coppock argues, the potential for personalization is already visible in some computer games. Referring to Umberto Eco’s idea of the open work, Coppock points out that some games allow for substantial modifications, both in the uni­ verse of the game and in the game mechanics. According to Coppock, “[t]he increasing introduction of these kinds of openness options implicitly and explicitly blends practices associated previously with the cultural roles and identities of author/designer/programmer, with those of reader/player/con­ sumer” (270; emphasis in original). By playing this kind of game, users not only can identify themselves with game avatars and the wider fictional world, but they can also change them so that these game elements would match better their preferences. This kind of design of computer games also fits Sicart’s description of playful designs, which are “by definition ambig­ uous, self-effacing, and in need of a user who will complete them” (31).

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Vinge’s novel suggests that the new technology of AR will greatly enhance this creative aspect of computer games and fictional universes in general, as—theoretically—the whole unaugmented world is out there to be com­ pleted by the reader/player/consumer. This, however, does not mean that the corporations that are copyright owners withdraw from the scene completely. At one point in the novel Robert wonders about the amount of work that had to go into the creation of AR imitating the universe of one of Terry Pratchett’s novels. He is at the time accompanied by Sharif, who answers: It’s not the work of one man. There’s probably a million fans who’ve contributed to this. Like a lot of the best realities, it was also a com­ mercial effort, the most successful external cinema of 2019.21 In the years since, it has just gotten better and better, an act of love on the part of the fans. (182) This passage indicates several things. First, that textual fiction is adapted by the owners of the franchise into a more spectacular medium, here the “external cinema,” which, it could be guessed, is a kind of cinema using AR. Second, that ARs tend to be better when media corporations are involved, as, obviously, big money is pumped into the effort. And third, since the time of the commercial adaptation, the project has been left to enthusiastic fans who are allowed to improve it still further with time, and thus keep it updated. As a result, there is a clear interaction between the corporate owner of the franchise and the fans, which is clearly beneficial for both sides. Vinge focuses on this cooperation, showing how fans can find space for self-expression within various fictional universes. It could be imagined that in the universe of the novel, as is the case in the real world, producers usually welcome and encourage fans’ work of love because it enhances the value of their product.22 In the real world, this added value stemming from the fans’ work, however, is most often ignored by fans themselves. As De Kosnik points out, fans often “do not regard their own activities as work that adds or creates exchange-value (rather, they think of their efforts as adding personal use value) and do not seek compensation for their activ­ ities.” Vinge seems to reflect this perspective, representing fans as people who are driven solely by their own enthusiasm, and think nothing of finan­ cial rewards for their work of love. De Kosnik, however, thinks that dis­ regard for financial remuneration puts fans at a disadvantage, as she sees parallels between the work of fans and that of the internet users investigated by Tiziana Terranova, who coined the term “free labour” to describe much work done on the internet. Terranova claims that the digital economy depends to a great extent on updateable work that is very labour-intensive but often done for free. According to De Kosnik,

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Similar to Terranova’s examples is the work that fans put into existing products to update them, to contribute new material in the form of commentary, stories, videos, and music that refreshes the products and feeds (and creates) consumer demand for them. In Vinge’s novel, the new material has the form of ARs based on the media products, but the effects of the labour, it could be imagined, are similar. Behaving in this way, fans constitute an ideal example of prosumers— they both consume the existing material and add to it something of their own (Soteropoulos Incollingo). The producing activity, however, is not always caused by sheer enthusiasm—sometimes, it is prompted by the busi­ ness itself. In Rainbows End, Juan is fond of playing Cretaceous Returns, an AR game set in the time of dinosaurs: It had not been an uplifting experience. He had been “killed and eaten” three times so far this week. It was a tough game, one where you had to contribute or maybe you got killed and eaten every time. So Juan had joined the Fantasists Guild—well, as a junior wannabe member. (44) He designs his own dinosaur and hopes that it will be popular, as he would then earn “creator points” making him more powerful in the game. Whether driven by sheer enthusiasm or by desire for some kind of benefits within the fictional universe, effort put into the improvement of this universe by fans/players is profitable for the businesses that own it, whereas fans and gamers are usually not paid. As a result, the border “between nonproductive leisure activity existing within the sphere of play and productive activity existing within the field of the workplace” is notoriously fuzzy, as Trebor Scholz notices, following Alexander Galloway.

Cognitive Labour and Control This kind of unclear border between work and leisure activities is also visi­ ble in what Ayhan Aytes calls cognitive labour: “the particular type of immaterial labor that characterizes the industrial production of symbolicanalytical services.” In fact, this kind of cognitive labour is the basic model of the economy in Vinge’s novel. One of the subjects that Ms Chumlig tea­ ches is Search and Analysis, and her job is to make her students aware of the expectations of the job market. As she explains: This class is about search and analysis, the heart of the economy. We obviously need search and analysis as consumers. In almost all modern jobs, search and analysis are how we make our living. But, in the end, we must also know something about something. (51)

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Ms Chumlig stresses here the need for memorized knowledge that was dis­ cussed earlier in this chapter, but what at this point is important is that cognitive skills are essential for the job market—her words clearly refer to a society based on finding and/or processing of information, which is exactly what cognitive labour is about. What is important, however, is that these kinds of abilities were once needed only in a very limited number of jobs, and a relatively small number of people can excel at them. This is indicated by one of Chumlig’s adult students: “I know you are correct … But some people are better than others. I’m not as sharp as I once was. Or maybe others are just sharper … What happens if we try our hardest, and it just isn’t good enough?” (51; ellipsis in original) Chumlig’s answer, as she admits herself, comes from the gaming world: “There is always an angle. You, each of you, have some special wild cards. Play with them. Find out what makes you different and better. Because it is there, if only you can find it” (52; emphasis in original). This seems to be a sensible answer; however, the problem with her gaming metaphor is that informational society resembles a game in which some special cards are far more valuable than others. Thus, reflecting on the role that technology plays in her society, she justifies a socio-economic situation which clearly favours a very narrow set of skills, claiming that everyone can benefit from it—it is just the question of finding an appropriate niche for oneself. It is not clear, however, to what extent she herself believes in her advice and to what extent it is just what a teacher should say in this situation. In fact, a better representation of the job market and attempts to stay afloat is shown in the scene in which some children discuss the problems of their relatives—both young and old—who cannot find a job. The only suc­ cess story is about a great-grandmother of one of the children who—after apparently undergoing a rejuvenating treatment similar to that of Robert— could not find a job for 12 years, but then “everything turned out fine in the end. My mom found a treatment site. They specialize in upgraded special­ ities. Forty-eight hours at their clinic and Gee-grantie had the skills of an ad manager” (98). It turns out that the treatment that the woman received in the clinic was the so-called JITT—just-in-time training—and other children do not want to hear about it as it has become illegal. Later on, Robert himself learns about JITT, and he looks it up on the net, finding out that JITT is based on mind-enhancing drugs. The army was using it on a mas­ sive scale during the recent conflict with China to make up knowledge and skills gaps in a record-short time. Reading the definition, Robert remembers about educational shortcuts that were in the sphere of dreams during his youth. But it turns out that JITT has very serious side effects: Learning a language, or a career specialty, changes a person. Cram in such skills willy-nilly and you distort the underlying personality. A very few JITTs suffered no side effects. In rare cases, such people could

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undertake a second hit—even a third—before the damage caught up with them. The rejection process was a kind of internal war between the new viewpoints and the old, manifesting as seizures and altered mental states. Often the JITT was stuck in some diminished form of his/her new skill set … After the war, there was the legacy of the JITTdisabled veterans, and continuing abuse by foolish students everywhere. (180; emphasis and ellipsis in original) And, as the discussion between children indicates—and as could be expected—JITT is also used by older people who are not able to keep up with the times. What Vinge suggests in the passage is that the negative effects could have the form of a clash between the old personality and the new one, which is the result of the cognitive enhancement. But the new personality could also be incompatible with the outside world—including the relatives and friends—with which the old one was a good match. When the story of Gee­ grantie reaches its end, the reader learns that “Gee-grantie lives pretty well as long as she keeps taking her upgrades. She seems happy, ’cept that she cries a lot” (98). It is not clear what is the reason for her crying, but the incompatibility of her new personality with either her old one or with her external situation could certainly be the reason for her unhappiness. What Robert learns about JITT indicates another kind of side effect— being stuck in a diminished form of the new skill set. This effect resembles somewhat the side effects of the drug Adderall, which in the US is prescribed for attention deficit disorder, but is also frequently used as a mind-enhan­ cing drug by healthy people as it dramatically increases the ability to focus on a specific subject. However, as Eli Pariser notices, “Adderall also has some serious side effects. It’s addictive. It dramatically boosts blood pres­ sure. And perhaps most important, it seems to decrease associative creativ­ ity” (92). In fact, the drug is so popular in the US that these side effects are a source of growing anxiety. Pariser quotes Martha Farah, the director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience: “I’m a little concerned that we could be raising a generation of very focused accoun­ tants” (93). Also, Pustovrh et al., who analyze social and personal con­ sequences of what they call pharmacological cognitive enhancement (PCE), point out that “[e]nhancing one cognitive capability can also result in other capabilities being diminished” (307). This effect is a clear example of the two-sidedness of technical mediation in the practical dimension, that is, showing an enabling–constraining structure. Although PCEs like JITT or Adderall represent an extreme form of sub­ jectification with potentially serious negative effects, from the perspective of neoliberal cognitive capitalism it seems to be an ideal solution for the growing demand for cognitive labour, part of which is based on the “microdivision of cognitive tasks and its distribution across cultural, tem­ poral, and geographical zones” (Aytes). Aytes sees the model of this specific

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kind of cognitive labour in Amazon’s digital labour market, Mechanical Turk, “where workers from across the world and around the clock browse, choose, and complete human intelligence tasks (HITs) that are designed by corporate or individual contractors.” HITs include “finding information and images about products and services, translating text from or to English, transcribing audio, tagging images with descriptive text, or answering sur­ veys on various topics.” In the universe of Rainbows End, the role of Mechanical Turk is played, most apparently, by the “answer boards.” When, at the beginning of the novel, the Indo-European agents want to hire someone for a job that they claim is connected with science, the person hiding behind the avatar of the rabbit that they interview for the job answers: “So? Post your needs to the answer boards. That may get you results almost as good as mine, almost as fast. And for certain, a thousand times cheaper” (9). Sometime later, the apparent reason for the cheapness of information obtained through the answer boards is explained when Juan thinks about them: “Answer boards could generate solid results, usually for zero cost. There was no affiliation, just kindred minds batting problems around” (52). The phrase “kindred minds” suggests people interested in the same thing—like fans of a specific work—who answer the questions because they like the subject rather than because they want to earn money. As such, the answer boards clearly represent what Jeff Howe describes as crowdsourcing, that is, harnessing by smart companies the idle cognitive power of crowds—“hobbyists, part-timers, and dabblers.” Their work “isn’t always free, but it costs a lot less than paying traditional employees” (qtd. in Aytes). As Aytes points out, Mechanical Turk is a perfect example of crowdsourcing. The payment for the services on the platform ranges from one cent to several US dollars depending on the kind of task. The US-based “Turkers,” as the people working for Mechanical Turk are called, tend to choose the work fuelled by curiosity or interest in the particular subject with which their HITs are concerned because the payment according to their standards is virtually nonexistent. However, workers from such countries as India or China often treat Mechanical Turk as their primary source of income. The money they earn, however, is not big even by their standards— the real money is made by the contractors who supply the tasks. In Vinge’s novel Ms Chumlig points out to her class: “‘There are many different skills,’ she was saying. ‘Sometimes it’s best to coordinate with lots of other people who together can make the answers.’ The students nodded. Be a coordi­ nator. That’s where the biggest and most famous money was.” But imme­ diately she adds: “Alas, you all intend to be top agents, don’t you?” (50) What she means is that for the students of the vocational track that she teaches far more probable is the position at the bottom—among the crowds. Thus, although students are taught to become smart requesters with the assumption that they would be using the answer boards for obtaining cheap information, what seems more likely in the light of the development of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is that some—if not a substantial part—of

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them, and the great majority in poor countries, would be at the other end of the board, providing information and working hard for very little. Juan, however, is aware that even a position of a humble analyst demands some knowledge: “But what if you weren’t a kindred mind? Say you were on a genetics board. If you thought transcription was a type of translation, it could take you months to get anywhere” (52–3). And he has his own opi­ nion about Ms Chumlig’s perspective: Ms. Chumlig said the secret of success was “to learn to ask the right questions.” But to do that she also said you had “to know something about something.” That wisdom and “everyone has some special talent” were the drumbeats of her classes. But it didn’t help. (80) Thus it is highly probable that people who would be desperate enough to try to earn their living working for answer boards would use drugs like Adderall or a treatment like JITT to be able to work more effectively. And this is in spite of the illegal status and/or harmful side effects of these treatments. Pointing out the potential health risks connected with using PCE, Pustovrh et al. conclude: “Nonetheless, if a person is subjected to internal and external pressures, they may well be more willing to try PCE if they perceive that it might offer them even small potential benefits” (306). An economy based on crowdsourcing of cognitive labour can be seen as encouraging what Aytes calls the mechanization of the human mind—whether artificially stimulated or not—and thus can be seen as disciplinary formation, for to make a living in this way workers will have to spend more and more time completing almost mechanical cognitive micro-tasks. This, in fact, could be seen as a cognitive variation on Foucault’s disciplinary power, which was concerned with taming mechanization of the bodies through training of bodily routines. What is important, wearables with smart contacts greatly facilitate the type of cognitive labour that crowdsourcing creates, as users can deal with their tasks at almost any moment. But wearables with smart contacts channel operations of power also in a different way, which Vinge indicates in an apparently insignificant scene. When Robert is still learning to use his contacts, he decides to visit the university library. As there is a large number of student protesters at the front of the library, he approaches the back entrance while his contacts show him unaugmented reality: There was a faded AUTHORIZED STAFF ONLY sign painted on the wall. The freight door was rolled down shut, but a second, smaller door was ajar … He remembered what Juan had said about getting Epiphany’s default local views. He waggled his hand tentatively. Nothing. He gestured again, a little differently: Oops. The loading dock was plastered with KEEP OUT signs. (111)

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Later, it turns out that the KEEP OUT signs also apply to the authorized staff, so they are not digital copies of the faded AUTHORIZED STAFF ONLY sign but are completely different warnings. These signs, which are visible only in AR, suggest that many—if not all—of the administrative decisions are announced only in default AR views. It could be argued here that without his contact lenses Robert would be similar to an illiterate man who is not able to read anything and thus is at a disadvantage in a world that depends more and more on written texts. This kind of disadvantage was the main driving force behind the spread of lit­ eracy among the members of the rising middle class in the early modern era. Once literacy became more or less general, early modern states started to use the press in order to solidify their rule. According to Jürgen Habermas, the interest of the new (state) authorities (which before long began to use the press for the purposes of the state administration), however, was of far greater import. Inasmuch as they made use of this instrument to promulgate instructions and ordinances, the addressees of the authorities’ announcements genuinely became “the public” in the proper sense. (Structural 21) What, in Dominic Boyer’s view, is missing in Habermas’s argumentation is the focus on the fact that “the modern public is the addressee of biopolitical governance” (90), which, in turn, was investigated by Michel Foucault. Seeing Habermas’s and Foucault’s studies as complementary, Boyer argues that they allow us to approach “the relationship between media and public formation as an essential feature of the emergence of modern political and social subjectivity” (88–9). Boyers also contends that since the 1980s digital publicity and digital media in general have become instrumental in con­ temporary governance of subjects. Vinge’s novel shows how massive adoption of wearables with contacts could be used to enhance further the effectiveness of this governance. “AR literacy” allows for a creation of a new media channel for quick and almost effortless delivery of administrative instructions, which is exemplified by the warning signs at the library’s entrance, but also by the way in which Juan finds his class after overnight rearrangements in his school only because AR arrows lead him to the proper room. It can also be easily imagined that this kind of governance is not limited to “dry” instructions like these signs but utilizes other kinds of information visible in AR—news, for example—for presentation of political, social and economic perspectives favoured by the authorities. In fact, even AR play is used as an element of social control. In Brave New World, Huxley already explored ways in which play can be employed as a means of distracting masses from other, more serious matters. In Rainbows End, the establishment of AR in the library appears to be, at least partly, motivated by the same aim: it is supposed to appease anger after the

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destruction of books during their digitization, and it fulfils the role perfectly. As Blount bitterly comments on the transformed library: “Bastard modern administrators got more good press out of this than all the rest of their propaganda put together. Everybody thinks it’s so clever and cute. And next week they’ll shred the sixth floor” (174). AR in the universe of the novel is also used for fashioning consumers— contacts allow street advertisements and billboards to be shown on an individual basis. When Robert is passing some shops on a freeway, he sees their advertising and realizes: “The malls had guessed he was an old fart, and tuned their ads accordingly” (180). What is important in this scene is that Robert had to be identified here personally because he has a body of a young man. Unfortunately, the narrative does not explain the nature of this identification—the malls could be using facial-recognition programs or data from his wearable. It is probably the latter as he sits inside of a fast-moving car, and thus his face is not necessarily visible. The use of data from wearables, however, is not limited to targeted advertising. When the librarian Rivera—who is a victim of military use of JITT—suffers from a mild attack of his psychosomatic illness, the data about his condition collected by his wearable computer is sent at once to his doctors, who ask him to report immediately for a more detailed examination. This indicates that Rivera is covered by a health programme that is very similar to the one developed by the Circle in Eggers’s novel. Utilized in this way, data on the users’ health creates an overwhelmingly involving experience—it may, potentially, save their life. But this data can also have its alienating side, as Vinge shows in the scene in which Robert is startled by a virtual telephone call while he is watching a football match on school grounds: Robert couldn’t suppress a start of surprise. The invisible stranger gave a little chuckle; somehow he had distinguished the movement from Robert’s natural twitchiness. “No need to be coy. You can’t disguise your reactions here. The medical sensing on school grounds is so good that you might as well be hooked up to a lie detector.” (155) Although spying on medical records without authority is illegal, the stranger makes it clear that it is not difficult for someone with good hacking skills. Such records could then be put on the market, and this creates a potential for abuse—commenting on risks connected with health data, Mark Andre­ jevic points out: “Imagine, for example, a world in which private health insurers mine client data in an attempt to cancel coverage just in time to avoid having to cover major medical expenses” (1681). Health data could also be sold to advertisers or even used for blackmailing people who are afraid lest information about them should become public.23 Again, however, Vinge just barely suggests this kind of risk. In general, although he seems to be aware of the advantages of corporate/state power

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and of the risks connected with abuse of data, he never represents anyone really hurt by such abuse.24 Neither does he focus on the plight of the exploited cognitive workers, although, again, he is aware of potential misery in this field, involving unemployment or the use of harmful mind-enhancing drugs. The only misfortune on which the narrative does zoom in is Robert’s loss of poetic inspiration. This loss could be a result of his illness, but it could also be an accidental consequence of the treatment that saved his life. Perhaps the best interpretation of this loss, however, is figurative: it can be seen as representing the consequences of technological development which, on the one hand, produces technologies saving life and, on the other, creates new media technologies which drive out literary forms of expression. Even this loss, however, is made up for in the novel: on the personal level, Robert gains instead a talent for programming, which he uses to start a promising career in an IT business towards the end of the novel, whereas, on the level of discourse networks, the disappearance of old forms of expression25 is counterbalanced by the explosion of creativity in digital art, expressed pri­ marily by means of AR visible through smart contacts. In fact, it is Vinge’s almost exclusive focus on the positive sides of the potential uses of smart contacts that is responsible for much of the optimism in the novel. The narrative clearly points out smart contacts’ advantages over traditional screens: their hands-free functionality, their unobtrusiveness and the fact that they cover the whole field of the user’s vision, which allows for a very life-like experience of AR, together with avatars that make pos­ sible experimentation with identities. The novel also shows how smart contacts enhance the cognitive and sensory capacities of their users, as they allow for almost instantaneous access to all kinds of information from per­ sonal computers and the internet, as well as to views and other data from ubiquitous cameras and sensors embedded in the improved land. Actually, focusing so much on various functionalities of smart contacts, Vinge barely indicates their distractive potential. As smart contacts and wearables also demand training in gestural rou­ tines, their use represents thus cognitive, environmental and physical modes of human–technology interaction. In contrast to The Circle, however, Vinge’s novel does not explore subjectification in the abstract mode of human–technology interaction. Showing why certain technologies become popular—and thus contribute significantly to the subjectification of users— Eggers indicates the significant role of the theorizations of human–technol­ ogy interaction. At the same time he shows how closely these theorizations dovetail with the economic and political aims of the neoliberal elites. Vinge, in turn, is silent about the role of the abstract mode of human–technology interaction in the popularization of the technologies on which he focuses in his narrative. His stress is on the sheer functionality of wearables with contacts as an apparent driving force behind their development. It is only in passing, as it were, that he mentions the usefulness of these technologies for corporate and administrative powers, but he never allows the reader to think

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that their development and various patterns of use are predominantly shaped by these powers. This generally user-centred vision of future technological development is the main reason for the optimism of his novel. As such, Vinge’s novel itself represents the abstract mode of human–technology interaction with a generally hopeful flavour.

Notes 1 There is here an obvious echo of Heidegger’s analysis of the use of a hammer in Being and Time (see p. 19 above) 2 She follows here the phenomenologist Drew Leder. 3 In the novel italics are used not only for emphasis but also for representation of thoughts of characters. 4 Before 1800, in the time of what Kittler calls the Republic of Scholars, the author of a book was not important: “The Republic of Scholars is endless circulation, a discourse network without producers or consumers, which simply heaves words around. Faust’s raid on his stacks locates no one who could be the writer, crea­ tor, or author of a book” (4). 5 In “Textual Materiality,” I provide extended argumentation that Robert indeed should be seen as representing Kittler’s classical-romantic discourse. 6 There could be also other reasons for rejection of new technologies by artists— see my “Textual Materiality” for examples. 7 According to Kittler, silent reading was one of the characteristic features of the discourse of 1800—during silent reading “[a] voice, as pure as it is transcenden­ tal, rises from between the lines” (65). 8 Epiphany is the most popular operating system in the universe of the novel. 9 Potential consequences of this kind of constant surveillance for human sub­ jectivity are examined in the previous chapter. 10 Clark’s idea of the cyborg is here obviously wider than that of Verbeek, accord­ ing to whom a cyborg is a result of a merger of technology with human organism. 11 Lying on the internet does not have to be limited to spreading false information about oneself. In the previous chapter I analyze the potential subjectifying con­ sequences of lying about others. There is also an immensely important issue of lying about important people or events, the so-called “fake news,” which can lead to tragic consequences in regions where political tension is high. 12 This difference is underlined in the last scene of The Circle, in which Mae becomes exasperated because she does not know whether Annie, who is in a coma, has any thoughts at that moment and she wishes for a technology that could read human minds. 13 I explore in detail the problem of potential subjectifying effects of distractive sming on face-to-face contact in “Too Much of a Good Thing.” 14 Vinge himself uses neither the term “augmented reality” (his own term for the technology is “retinal painting”) nor “avatar,” but as both have since become an almost universal way of referring to these technologies, I will be using them in my analysis. 15 Meeting eyes with the interlocutor also gives the ghosting avatar certain kind of materiality. As Elizabeth Grosz argues, “This attribution of visibility to the visi­ ble as well as the seer is … a claim about the flesh, about a (non-identical, nonsubstantive) ‘materiality’ shared by the subjects and objects of perception” (Grosz qtd. in Bottenberg 188). Being material in this “weak” sense may also have importance for the impression of the reality of avatar’s experience.

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16 This functionality is another indication of an apparently lax approach to the question of privacy. Juan appears to use a kind of facial recognition program which matches the faces of his new classmates against public records. 17 Goffman also indicates other kinds of away, like talking to oneself or doodling, which are more visible to others. 18 I explore this problem in more detail in “Too Much of a Good Thing.” 19 Certain movement in this direction may be seen in an application which “allows users to replace the face of a porn actor in an adult video with pretty much anyone they’d like” (Dovey). There is also the question of AR contacts allowing for an easier—in fact, constant—access to pornography virtually everywhere, which could have detrimental effect on some individuals. See Wassom (Chapter 13) on this issue. 20 Belief circles in the novel are congregations of fans of particular fictional works or universes, modelled on the existing fan communities. 21 The year indicates that Vinge was too optimistic in his calculations concerning the speed of technological development. 22 In Textual Poachers Henry Jenkins points out that there are also disagreements between fans and producers, when the former find it difficult to identify them­ selves with the vision of the development of the work authorized by the latter. 23 This should also be seen as another argument against Clark’s idea of equation of the information kept/remembered in the brain and kept/remembered on external devices. 24 In fact, even the only villain in the novel is not an evil man but rather a wellmeaning technocrat who, like many technocrats, believes that “he knows better” and wants to obtain power in order to save mankind from itself. 25 In “Whose Archive,” I explore in greater detail the influence of the populariza­ tion of easily accessible and relatively trustworthy digital archives of personal experience on the type of poetry—apparently written by Robert before his ill­ ness—concerned with workings of human memory.

4

MaddAddam Trilogy Alleviating Existential Fears

Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy—Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009) and MaddAddam (2013)—alternates a vision of a near-future dystopian society governed by powerful corporations, most important of which specialize in biotechnology, with a portrayal of a postapocalyptic world which comes into being after the dystopian society is annihilated by an artificially created killer virus. The narrative structure of the trilogy is quite complex. The story follows a number of characters, sometimes in parallel timelines, and depends to a significant extent on retrospection. The first volume of the trilogy focuses on Jimmy, a young man who believes he is the sole human survivor of the plague. Jimmy tries to survive in the post-apocalyptic world, simultaneously watching over a group of Crakers—genetically engineered, benign humanoid beings named after Crake, the geneticist who created both them and the killer virus. Through Jimmy’s recollections the reader learns not only about his childhood spent in comfortable Compounds, his friendship with Crake (whom he met in high school when Crake was still known as Glenn) and their later rivalry for the heart of a mysterious immigrant called Oryx, but also about the dystopian, crisis-ridden and corrupt world in which both he and Crake grew up. Convinced that there was no hope for that world, Crake decided to replace humans with their better version created by him­ self—the Crakers. Before releasing the killer virus, however, he immunized ignorant Jimmy against it as he wanted him to take care of the Crakers during their process of adaptation to the new, post-apocalyptic world. The volume ends in a cliffhanger, as Jimmy learns about the existence of a small group of other survivors of the plague and decides to meet them. The narrative timeline of the second volume of the trilogy is more or less parallel to that of the first volume. The story is set mostly in the slum-like pleeblands, where the poor masses live, and follows the events in the life of two women—members of the ecologically-minded religious group of God’s Gardeners. The younger of the two women, Ren, spends her early childhood in one of the corporate Compounds, but then lives for several years among the Gardeners because her mother has an affair with a member of the group. After returning to the Compound and graduating, Ren becomes a dancer in DOI: 10.4324/9781003166320-5

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a strip club and survives the plague locked in the quarantine room of the club. The older of the two women, Toby, after the death of her parents, ekes out her living in the pleeblands and becomes the sex slave of Blanco, a psychotic manager of a burger restaurant in which she works, and finally escapes from her tormentor by joining the Gardeners, whose philosophy she gradually learns to appreciate. Toby survives the plague locked in a spa, where she has found herself escaping from Blanco, again. When the plague dies out, Toby is accidentally reunited with Ren, and they come across a group of survivors living in a cobb house, which includes several former Gardeners. The volume ends when Ren and Toby rescue another former Gardener—Amanda—from two criminals. They also meet Jimmy—the criminals and their victim turn out to be the same people that Jimmy decides to approach at the end of the first volume. The third volume starts at the moment at which the second volume ends. The rescue of Amanda turns out to be only partly successful, as the crim­ inals manage to escape, whereas Amanda and Ren are raped by a group of Craker males, who have been designed and brought up to believe that fertile women always want sex. All involved in the incident join the group of sur­ vivors living in the cobb house, and a large part of the volume is devoted to a description of the way in which the human survivors cope with the postapocalyptic reality. Toby becomes the lover of Zeb, also a former Gardener and half-brother of Adam One,1 the founder of the Gardeners. Zeb tells Toby about their youth and his own hacking experiences. He also tells her about his eventual secession from the Gardeners and establishment of his own group, called MaddAddam, whose aim was to destroy the infra­ structure of the corporate order with bioterrorist attacks. Towards the end of the volume the inhabitants of the cobb house, allied with pigoons— genetically modified pigs with a human level of intelligence—fight with the criminals who earlier kidnapped Amanda. The criminals are captured and executed, but during the fight both Jimmy and Adam One are killed. Sometime after this incident Amanda and Ren give birth to human–Craker hybrids and everything seems to go well in the small community. The trilogy ends with the death of Toby, who apparently cannot find the energy to live after the disappearance of Zeb, most probably killed in a fight with strangers. It is the pre-apocalyptic neoliberal society that is of most use for my analysis of the subjectifying power of technical mediation. This society represents an extreme form of capitalist system, in which the gap between the haves and the have-nots has grown to monstrous dimensions and is indicated most obviously by their dwelling spaces, with the rich living in the comfortable Compounds and the poor in the run-down pleeblands. The infrastructure that is part of this spatial arrangement may be seen as a spe­ cific technological environment which has strong subjectifying effects, and thus life in the Compounds and the pleeblands represents the environmental mode of human–technology interaction with dramatically different effects.

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Life in the Compounds The difference between the Compounds and the pleeblands reflects, first of all, the social segregation between their dwellers. Commenting on this seg­ regation, J. Paul Narkunas argues that it may be seen as part of a biopoli­ tical arrangement of the whole society—reflecting what Foucault calls “state racism”—in which certain categories of citizens are allowed to die, and others are made to live (23). As such, they may be seen as exemplifying social arrangements in neoliberal societies—also referring to Foucault, Robert Castel argues that in these societies there are “differential modes of treatments of populations, which aim to maximize the returns on doing what is profitable and to marginalize the unprofitable” (qtd. in Ong, 86). Following both Foucault and Castel, Aihwa Ong finds this kind of process in the smaller countries of South-East Asia, in which the state relinquished some of its power in favour of big international corporations in order to enter global competitive markets. Ong’s findings are worth considering here, for they show a striking resemblance to what happens in the trilogy. Ong argues that in these countries the pre-existing ethno-racializing schemes inherited from the colonial divide-and-rule policies are now reinforced as well as crosscut by new ways of governing that differentially value populations according to market calculations. To remain globally competitive, the Asian tiger state makes different kinds of biopolitical investments in different subject populations, privileging one ethnicity over another, the male over the female, and the profes­ sional over the manual worker. Different sectors of the population are subjected to different technologies of regulation and nurturance, and in the process assigned different social fates. (86) As a result, certain segments of the country’s population enjoy far better social facilities, educational opportunities and healthcare—much of which is technologically assisted—than others. The US of the trilogy is not a small post-colonial state, but what happens here is very similar to what Ong describes because the state is weakened as a result of a series of economic and environmental crises: thus, the differential treatment of the population takes place in spite of the fact that there is no colonial heritage. Most of the population of the country lives in the pleeblands, vast urban areas which lack proper education, healthcare and infrastructure. Deprived of access to well-paid jobs offered by the corporations, the pleeblanders are also left to their own devices as far as justice and security is concerned—unless they are engaged in activities that could be harmful to the rule of the corporations, in which case they are ruthlessly eliminated. This creates a kind of survival-of-the­ fittest environment which favours a particular type of personality: the most resourceful or the most ruthless (or both at the same time).

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The Compounds, on the other hand, are high-tech gated communities, complete with their own shopping malls and hospitals. They enjoy strict security provided by the CorpSeCorps, a private corporation which has replaced both the police and the army, but also has judicial and legislative power. The Compounds are connected with each other by sealed bullet trains so that their inhabitants should have as little contact with the outside world as possible. When Jimmy is still small, his father explains to him that the Compounds were created to allow corporate workers and their families to isolate themselves from the cities—the pleeblands—which were full of criminals and other unsavoury characters. He then compares the Com­ pounds to castles, which “were for keeping you and your buddies nice and safe inside, and for keeping everybody else outside” (OC 28).2 This is an apt comparison for it stresses the significance of the sense of security in both cases. On a less figurative level, however, the Compounds might be seen as the final effect of a certain trend in the development of modern cities. As Richard Sennett notices, facing the complexities of life in contemporary cities, architects and urban planners “tend to withdraw to the local, intimate, communal scale” because they find it “difficult to organize diverse urban scenes” (Conscience). This focus on the local also reflects an attempt to remove the threat of contact with the Other, as differences between people are assumed to be “more likely … mutually threatening than mutually stimulating” (Conscience). This elimination of the threat of social contact is, according to Kevin Robins, responsible for “the blandness of the ‘neutralised city’” (101). Robins sees in this situation a close parallelism with Disneyland, which “is no more than the parodic extension of this principle” (101), and quotes Michael Sorkin, according to whom in Disney­ land “the highly regulated, completely synthetic vision provides a simplified, sanitised experience that stands in for the more undisciplined complexities of the city” (Sorkin qtd. in Robins 101). In the trilogy, Jimmy’s mother has a similar opinion about the Compounds. When his father says that in the Compounds life is as safe as it used to be when he was a child, “Jimmy’s mother said it was all artificial, it was just a theme park and you could never bring the old ways back” (27). The Disneyland delusion of security and detachment affects the self-con­ ception of people like Jimmy’s father and Jimmy himself. As Sennet argues, social contact—an “attempt to deal with ‘otherness,’ to become engaged beyond one’s own defined boundaries of self” (Uses)—is essential for responsible and civilized life for it makes people aware of the way in which their actions affect others. Life in the Compounds clearly has not developed this awareness in Jimmy, which is indicated, for example, in the scene in which he is going in a bullet train through the pleeblands, watching the poor neighbourhoods: He glimpsed a couple of trailer parks, and wondered what it was like to live in one of them: just thinking about it made him slightly dizzy, as he

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imagined a desert might, or the sea. Everything in the pleeblands seemed so boundless, so porous, so penetrable, so wide-open. So subject to chance.3 (196) Jimmy clearly does not see the connection between his comfortable life and the pleeblanders, on whose exploitation this life depends to a significant extent. He seems to treat the pleeblands as a kind of natural phenomenon that exists completely independently of his own existence—in a clearly sar­ castic vein, Atwood makes his reaction echo what Edmund Burke described as a reaction to the natural sublime. The Compounds, however, allow their dwellers to separate themselves not only from the social and economic effects of corporate activities. The narrative makes it clear again and again that the effects of genetic engineer­ ing spill out of corporate laboratories into the streets of the pleeblands. Crake, who after graduation works for one of the best corporations specia­ lizing in genetic engineering and thus is in the know, warns Jimmy at one point that the pleeblands were a giant Petri dish: a lot of guck and contagious plasm got spread around there. If you grew up surrounded by it you were more or less immune, unless a new bioform came raging through; but if you were from the Compounds and you set foot in the pleebs, you were a feast. It was like having a big sign on your forehead that said, Eat Me. (OC 287) In the same way in which the Compound dwellers avoid contact with the outside other, this other is kept from coming inside. The gates of the Com­ pounds are heavily guarded with the assistance of state-of-the-art technol­ ogy—when Jimmy visits Crake in the Compound of his prestigious WatsonCrick college, he notices “dozens of CorpSeCorps men, complete with sprayguns and rubber clubs” (OC 197) at the gate. In spite of the fact that Jimmy has an invitation from his friend, the guards take the print of his iris to check it against their files on undesirable individuals. The way in which they create such files on pleeblanders is indicated in the second volume of the trilogy, in which the reader learns that CorpSeCorps “favoured official marriages only as a means for capturing your iris image, your fingerscans, and your DNA, all the better to track you with” (YF 115). In fact, even the interior of the Compounds is presumed unsafe, but here the risk is posed not by pleeblanders but by insiders who are working either for competition or for anti-corporate activists. This danger is fought by means of surveil­ lance—Jimmy’s mother argues at one point that all ICTs in the Compound are bugged.4 Thus a kind of prison-like Panopticon is created, although one in which people shut themselves in voluntarily in order to be safe from the ever-growing risks lurking outside.5

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Neutralization of the threats and fears caused by modern life is not left to walls and surveillance only, that is, to the environmental mode of human– technology interaction. The cognitive mode involving visual technologies in general is equally important. These technologies, according to Robins, have been responsible for the creation of a sense of security in the modern world: Vision is becoming separated from experience, and the world is fast assuming a derealised quality. The proliferating system of new vision and image technologies is now instituting what can only be regarded as a structural and generalised condition of dissociation from the world (from its perceived threats and dangers). (13) Describing how teenage Crake and Jimmy spend their free time, Atwood suggests in what way visual infotainment technologies enabled by computers and the internet allow inhabitants of the Compounds to cope with their anxieties. The boys—as Crake’s mother calls them—spend a lot of time watching specific programmes. One of them is Noodie News, a news programme presented by nude reporters. According to Robins, “[w]ithin the domain of mediated senses, the catastrophic and the banal are rendered homogeneous and consumed with equal commitment” (118) and the Noodie News can be seen as the epitome of this role of media—as the world in which the story takes place is in a deep ecological and economic crisis which, as the narrative makes it clear, can only worsen, the news cannot be other but catastrophic. Its significance, however, is immediately neutralized by the fact that the presenters are nude. The boys also watch various kinds of reality TV showing death, including assisted suicides and executions of criminals. These programmes represent the logical conclusion of the idea of reality TV: “What are being mobilised by reality shows are feelings and sensations, at the expense of reason, ana­ lysis, reflection. Engagement is about flooding the senses and shocking the emotions” (Robins 121). As a result of this flooding and shocking, a kind of anaesthesia is produced, neutralizing anxieties connected with ordinary life. What is specific about the programmes the boys watch is that they are con­ cerned with the most terrifying aspect of human life—its end. In this way the programmes alleviate the most profound existential fear of death.6 In fact, according to Robins, much of TV and video watching is char­ acterized by this sort of anaesthetic effect: In this placeless and timeless meta-world, one may feel intensities of affect—the euphoria of electronic presence—but at the same time, there is a weakening—numbing—of the real emotions that depend on a grounded and embodied existence and connection with, and commit­ ment to, a real world of objects. (141)

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These conclusions could also be applied to internet pornography, which the boys also watch in great quantities. In her book Why Internet Porn Matters, Margret Grebowicz follows Jean Baudrillard’s analysis of the way in which modern means of communication affect the significance of pornography. In contemporary information societies there is pressure to show—to communicate—everything in what Baudrillard calls “the ecstasy of com­ munication.”7 The internet intensifies this “ecstasy” significantly, also influencing the perception of pornography: We have witnessed a shift in the logic of consumption of bought sex, from the modern urban prostitute as “spectacle,” as grotesque and car­ nivalesque female body, to pornography as immediacy and transpar­ ency, the vanishing of both alienation and desire in a frenzy of the visible, of signifers circulating without any anchoring in referents. (Grebowicz 46) It could be argued that in this way internet porn eliminates the anxiety over the contact with the Other—this time in the sexual dimension—and unexpected consequences of this contact. But by making sex transparent “in a frenzy of the visible” internet pornography also destroys the allure of the genuine sexual relationship, which, as Baudrillard claims, is based on the mystery of the Other. That is perhaps the reason why Oryx8 immediately catches the boys’ attention when they see her for the first time on a global sex-trotting site HottTotts. Although she is still a child—about 8 years old—playing her part in an erotic fantasy scene which is “both innocent and obscene” (OC 90), she manages to rouse in Jimmy a sense of both mystery and guilt because of an apparently adult wisdom reflected in her eyes.9 Oryx, however, is an exception to the rule: “None of those little girls had ever seemed real to Jimmy—they’d always struck him as digital clones—but for some reason Oryx was three-dimensional from the start” (90). Thus, in general, whether through porn or through reality shows—and Grebowicz points out that in the era of the internet both have much in common (35)—the internet undermines the viewers’ grip on the real world—it constitutes “some form of narcosis of the senses” (Robins 112). Significantly, the boys often enhance their sensations during watching programmes available on the web by smoking skunkweed: So they’d roll a few joints and smoke them while watching the executions and the porn—the body parts moving around on the screen in slow motion, an underwater ballet of flesh and blood under stress, hard and soft joining and separating, groans and screams, close-ups of clenched eyes and clenched teeth, spurts of this or that. If you switched back and forth fast, it all came to look like the same event. Sometimes they’d have both things on at once, each on a different screen. (OC 86)

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The representative function of the imagery can be even further undermined by manipulation possible in the case of digital technologies of image recording/production. After watching “dirtysockpuppets.com, a currentaffairs show about world political leaders” (OC 82), “Crake said that with digital genalteration you couldn’t tell whether any of these generals and whatnot existed any more, and if they did, whether they’d actually said what you’d heard” (82). According to Robins, the changing of rea­ lity that is enabled by digital technologies “reinforces its perception as a domain in its own right” (42). As a result, a kind of alternative reality is created. Suppressing normal reactions to real events through a kind of anaesthesia on the one hand, and production of alternative reality on the other con­ stitute thus two basic functions of visual technologies which fit Freud’s observations “that evasive strategies may take the form of screening or fil­ tering painful realities, or, alternatively, they may work towards the trans­ formation or even the substitution of reality” (Robins 112). While various reality shows and news programmes represent the former, the latter may be seen in digitally manipulated images but also in computer games, which create a kind of microworld that gives the players a sense of control they might lack in the real world. Commenting on the concept of the microworld, developed by Seymour Papert, Robins points out: “to enter the microworld is apparently to enter a world of order and reason” (49). It is not surprising, then, that Jimmy, who deplores the pleeblands where every­ thing is “subject to chance,” should find such a world attractive. However, according to Robins, the microworld is not limited to creating an impression of order and reason—it is also responding to deeper needs and drives than those of reason. This image space is also a container and a scene for unconscious and pre­ rational dramas: getting “into” the image is also about acting out cer­ tain primitive desires and fantasies or about coming to terms with fears and anxieties. (49) The games the boys play appear to respond to these needs and drives. They are concerned, generally, with negative and positive sides of human civili­ zation: with violence, death and extinction on the one side, and, on the other, with comfort, art and scientific achievements. Their first favourite is Barbarian Stomp: One side had the cities and the riches and the other side had the hordes, and—usually but not always—the most viciousness. Either the barbar­ ians stomped the cities or else they got stomped, but you had to start out with the historical disposition of energies and go on from there. (77)

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Then they move to Blood and Roses, a trading game: The Blood side played with human atrocities for the counters, atrocities on a large scale: individual rapes and murders didn’t count, there had to have been a large number of people wiped out. Massacres, genocides, that sort of thing. The Roses side played with human achievements. Artworks, scientific breakthroughs, stellar works of architecture, helpful inventions. (78) Their last favourite is Extinctathon, a guessing game in which the players check each other’s knowledge about recently extinct species of plants and animals. To enter the game, players have to assume a codename based on a name of an extinct species—it is for this game that Glenn assumes the codename Crake, which sticks to him.10 Playing these games the boys can face simplified versions of problems that are arising in the world outside, sunk in permanent economic and environmental crises. Coping with poli­ tical upheavals and degradation of the biosphere in the games appears to be a matter of skill, knowledge or cunning. In this way anxieties over the situation outside of the Compounds are neutralized. Thus both visual technologies and the gated Compound in which the boys live isolate them from the life of the majority of humans living in the pleeblands and in this way reduce the risk of coping with the Other. Focusing on the boys’ activities in the Compound, Atwood shows the simi­ lar subjectifying effects of both the environmental and cognitive modes of human–technology interaction. This similarity is also indicated indirectly by Robins, who constantly uses metaphors of space in his analysis of the effects of visual technologies, whereas in Flesh and Stone Sennett directly points out the similarity between the ways in which the screen and modern urban planning reduce or eliminate the chance of contact with “otherness.” This parallelism may be seen in the parallel aims of building engineers and TV directors: “The engineer designs ways to move without obstruction, effort, or engagement; the director explores ways for people to look at anything, without becoming too uncomfortable” (18). Thus, what the Compounds-as­ theme-parks, various kinds of reality TV and computer games have in common is that they essentially limit human experience, for they create what Thomas H. Ogden refers to as “substitute formations, which involve turning the condition of non-experience into the illusion of experiencing and knowing, thereby filling the potential space in which feeling states and transformational processes might occur” (qtd. in Robins 25). Looking at the effects of image technologies like computer games from a Foucauldian perspective, one could say that they preclude what Timothy O’Leary calls, referring to Foucault’s writings, “transformative experience” (“Rethinking”; Foucault and Fiction 76–94)—that is, a kind of experience that disrupts the accepted modes of thinking and behaviour. Within this

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theoretical framework Ogden’s non-experience would be a kind of experi­ ence that has no transformative potential but reinforces the status quo. A transformative experience, on the other hand, changes our ways of acting and thinking and always comes from outside. As O’Leary points out, for Foucault this outside can have a variety of forms—it can have the form of a philosophical work which questions the accepted ways of thinking, it can spring from the body as a source of resistance to the prevailing norms of behaviour or it can be even located within the self itself, but outside of the normalized boundaries of the officially accepted subjectivity. Wherever this outside is located, the narrative focusing on the boys’ activities in their Compound shows that it is not to be found in the shows and games that are mindlessly consumed by uncritical audiences. In fact, life in the Compounds and the mindless consumption of programmes on the internet are, as the narrative shows, instrumental in the preclusion of the kind of experience that could have disruptive potential, for it eliminates chances of contact with otherness located outside. The boys’ interaction with technologies in their Compound also reflects several dimensions of the two-sidedness of technical mediation: enabling life without risks and obstructions, it constrains opportunities for gaining experience and wisdom through coping with problems; magnifying sensa­ tional images of violence and sex (and thus numbing emotions), it reduces in significance types of information that present a more realistic view of the world; revealing the world as a safe TV and game parlour, it conceals its other, more disruptive, aspects; finally, it is supposed to form an involving experience, as contrasted with the alienating life in the pleeblands. In general, as a result of technical mediation, life in the Compounds has a highly subjectifying potential. Technological infrastructure allowing for this mediation is, to a large extent, a result of Foucauldian state racism which invests in these parts of the population which contribute most to the neo­ liberal economy. In consequence, the Compounds produce subjects who are passive in their acceptance of the status quo, indifferent to the suffering of others and pleased with their own place in the scheme of things. This sub­ jectifying potential is fully realized in the case of Jimmy, who becomes a hapless pawn in the system, at best capable of cynical commentary on the situation. In the case of Crake, who evidently escapes this subjectification, it is, most probably, his genius-level intelligence and the death of his whistleblowing father at the hands of the CorpSeCorps that constitute a strong antidote to the subjectifying power of life in the Compounds. I will return to the problem of Crake’s subjectification later in the chapter. What also has to be noticed here is that life in the Compounds has much in common with Forster’s dystopian vision of the future as both are con­ cerned with the way in which the new technologies may lead to the isolation of users: facilitating communication and access to information they remove the incentive to meet the Other face to face. At the same time, by depriving users of the need to meet different people they allow the fear of the Other to

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grow, although Atwood sees the process as stimulated to a large extent by economic and political developments, whereas Forster apparently sees tech­ nology itself as the only driving force. Forster’s vision is also more existen­ tial, for in his story the fear is that of any other human being, whereas in Atwood this fear has clearly social dimensions. In spite of these differences, both writers express their anxiety that the new technologies will deprive people of the experience of the real world and other people.

Ethical Subjectification of God’s Gardeners In the trilogy, life in the Compounds is contrasted sharply with life in the pleeblands—the space of the fearsome Other for the Compound dwellers. Atwood shows that the pleeblanders—because they are not locked up behind the gates of the Compounds—do have opportunities for coming into contact with otherness which has transformative potential. One of the two focalising characters of the second volume of the trilogy is Toby, a young pleeblander who, after experiencing dire poverty after the death of her par­ ents finally finds a job in a fast-food restaurant called Secret Burgers, only to become a sex slave of her boss. She is rescued from her predicament by a group of God’s Gardeners, a religious community to whom she has never given any serious thought and who are generally considered in the pleeb­ lands as religious freaks. When the Gardeners—whose leaders are called Adams and Eves—invite her to become a member of their community, Toby, deprived of any viable alternatives, accepts their invitation, but rather unwillingly. Life with the group, however, slowly changes her to such an extent that she internalizes many of their beliefs. Thus, exposure to other­ ness results in her case in a transformation of her subjectivity, although Atwood shows that such exposure does not have to be always transforma­ tive—some characters who come into contact with the Gardeners do not undergo any transformation at all. The Gardeners’ beliefs can be described as an ecologically-minded mod­ ification of Judaeo-Christian religions, with special stress on the story of the Flood, which, according to the Gardeners, is to happen again: A massive die-off of the human race was impending, due to over­ population and wickedness, but the Gardeners exempted themselves: they intended to float above the Waterless Flood, with the aid of the food they were stashing away in the hidden storeplaces they called Ararats. (YF 47) Humanity’s wickedness in the Gardeners’ beliefs consists primarily in the exploitation and devastation of the natural world, which they associate with the evilness of the technological civilization that is represented by the cor­ porations. As a result, they try to lead eco-friendly lives outside of the

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system developed by the corporations and maintained by technologies cre­ ated by them. What is important, however, is that the Gardeners do not reject technology as such, but only specific uses of specific technologies— primarily those which reveal the natural world as a resource that is up for grabs and conceal it as an ecosystem that should be approached in a sus­ tainable manner. The Gardeners are a clear echo of the Conservationists from Pohl’s and Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants—their way of life is also an example of ethical subjectification based on critical ontology. The Gardeners decide to reject a kind of subjectivity which accepts the idea of ruthless exploitation of the natural world as a proper use of technology because the consequences of this idea are clearly visible in the form of constantly deepening environ­ mental and economic crises. This also means abstaining as much as possible from consumption, as it fuels the exploitation of nature by technological means. Equally important in their critical ontology is the belief that most sophisticated technology serves corrupt power, which is reflected in their fear of modern technology as means of surveillance—when small Ren (who is the other focalizing character in the second volume of the trilogy) finds a phone in the street, the Eves warn her: “Such a thing can hurt you! It can burn your brain! Don’t even look at it: if you can see it, it can see you” (YF 67). In fact, their fear of this abuse of technology is so great that they even do not use traditional paper for writing because of the durability of the text written on it. As Ren remembers her childhood with the Gardeners: We wrote on slates, and they had to be wiped off at the end of each day because the Gardeners said you couldn’t leave words lying around where our enemies might find them. Anyway, paper was sinful because it was made from the flesh of trees. (60) Ren indicates here the combined concerns of the Gardeners—their fear of surveillance and their fear for the planet. Another result of their critical ontology is their rejection of corporate medicine. The Gardener who is responsible for various medicines and drugs made from plants is old Pilar, who—before she joined the Gardeners— worked for HelthWyzer, one of the most important corporations in the universe of the trilogy. Thus she not only is a top-class specialist in bio­ technology but also has insider knowledge of the way in which corporations operate. As a result, her reliance on “folk” medicine is not a consequence of her ignorance of more advanced types of knowledge but is clearly a question of choice. Pilar’s techniques of healing fit with the general beliefs of the Gardeners advocating a return to nature, but they are also a reaction against the appropriation of scientific medicine by the corporations, which have corrupted it completely in search of profit. Pilar’s abhorrence of the official healthcare system is revealed during her conversation with Toby after she

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learns that Pilar is gravely ill. When Toby suggests that she should go to hospital, Pilar answers: “Don’t backslide, my Toby … You know our views on hospitals. I might as well be thrown into a cesspool” (YF 178). What is important here is that her distrust of hospitals does not stem from her dis­ trust of scientific knowledge—when she wants to confirm her own diagnosis of her illness, she has some biopsy samples smuggled into diagnostic labs in HelthWyzer and analyzed there. It rather has its source in her own experi­ ence of the way in which HelthWyzer and other corporations function. She suggests this much during a different conversation with Toby: Now, promise me that you will never take any pill made by a Cor­ poration. Never buy such a pill, and never accept any such pill if offered, no matter what they say. They’ll produce data and scientists; they’ll produce doctors—worthless, they’ve all been bought. (YF 105) When Toby protests, saying that it is not possible that all doctors have been bought by the corporations, she answers that those who resisted the cor­ porations’ money are either dead or left the official health care system—then it turns out that there are several doctors among the Gardeners. Thus, the corruption of the official healthcare system based on the most recent technologies—I will return to this issue later on in the chapter— undermines the Gardeners’ belief in the actual value of these technologies, and they turn to alternatives. It could be argued here that the “folk” technology of the Gardeners represents what Foucault calls subjugated knowledges: “a whole set of knowledges that have been disqualified as inadequate to their task or insufficiently elaborated: naive knowledges, located low down on the hier­ archy, beneath the required level of cognition or scientificity” (“Two Lectures” 82). According to Foucault, these subjugated knowledges started to reappear as a reaction against the relentless centralization and institutionalization of scien­ tific knowledge—a process which marginalized other ways of knowing that could still be valid in certain contexts and situations. Thus, the subjugated knowledges do not question the validity of scientific knowledge but only its quest for total dominance at the expense of other types of knowledge: We are concerned, rather, with the insurrection of knowledges that are opposed primarily not to the contents, methods or concepts of a science, but to the effects of the centralising powers which are linked to the institution and functioning of an organised scientific discourse within a society such as ours. (84) The subjugated knowledge of Pilar emerges as a reaction not only against the total domination of scientific knowledge by corporations, but also against its total corruption.

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This subjugated knowledge fits perfectly with the more general, ecological beliefs of the Gardeners as the corporations are bent on the exploitation of both nature and the human masses. These beliefs constitute the ideological background of their way of life, and the attitude of various Gardeners to this way of life depends on the specific Gardener’s ability to understand and accept this ideological background, but also to believe in the effectiveness of the code of conduct which stems from this ideology. For Adam One and those who agree with him completely, the code is a voluntary choice of self­ transformation—essentially, a liberating practice rejecting the dominant way of life in the spirit of Foucault’s ethical subjectification based on critical ontology. For others, especially children, the code is rather like a moral law that should be obeyed because Adams and Eves say so. There are also those who found refuge with the Gardeners for various reasons but are not con­ vinced by their ideology. What is important is that for the sceptics and the children it is the way of life of the Gardeners that is supposed to bring them to the Gardeners’ per­ spective on life. Adam One admits as much when Toby tells him that she does not believe in many of the tenets of the Gardeners’ creed, in spite of the fact that she tries to behave as if she believed in them: “In some religions, faith precedes action,” he explains. “In ours, action precedes faith. You’ve been acting as if you believe, dear Toby. As if—those two words are very important to us. Continue to live according to them, and belief will follow in time” (YF 168). The tenets of the Gardeners’ “faith,” which include axiological categorization of various technologies, clearly represent the abstract mode of human–technology interaction—generalizations about technology and humans. Adam One apparently believes that Toby will be able to accept them helped by “action,” that is, experience. This experience most obviously reflects the physical mode of human–technology interac­ tion—I will return to this mode in a moment—but it could be argued that it also reflects both cognitive and environmental modes. On the one hand, their way of life based on gardening may be said to be an expression of a certain lifestyle, which they tend to underline by wearing plain clothes from recycled materials. Getting accustomed to this kind of lifestyle may have strong subjectifying effects representing the cognitive mode of human– technology interaction as it influences the Gardeners’ self-conception. What is more, this mode may also be seen in their use of drugs made from plants for inducing spiritual experiences, which are supposed to help them reach difficult decisions, but also for treating emotional problems like depression. On the other hand, the beautifully cultivated garden established on the roof of an abandoned building in the pleeblands forms an environment which can have subjectifying effects—the impression that the garden makes on Toby when she first sees it clearly indicates this potential: The Garden wasn’t at all what Toby had expected from hearsay. It wasn’t a baked mudflat strewn with rotting vegetable waste—quite the

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reverse. She gazed around it in wonder: it was so beautiful, with plants and flowers of many kinds she’d never seen before. There were vivid butterflies; from nearby came the vibration of bees. Each petal and leaf was fully alive, shining with awareness of her. Even the air of the Garden was different. (YF 43) Situated on a rooftop, it creates a secluded space which allows the Garden­ ers to develop their own way of life, including specific practices.11 As such, it may be seen as a reflection of the special environment in which Christian pastoral power was exercised. According to Foucault, this power was based on a series of techniques, which, after the Council of Trent, included “techniques of discursive rendition of daily life, of self-examination, confes­ sion, direction of conscience and regulation of the relationship between director and directed” (“Confession” 200). In Flesh and Stone, Sennett argues that what contributed to the success of these techniques was a special arrangement of the environment in which certain practices were supposed to take place. A very important area for a pre-modern Christian, especially a member of a monastic community, was that of the garden, which was an obvious symbol of the Garden of Eden and as such “set the scene for thinking about the human self-destructiveness that led to Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden” (183). Cloister gardens were designed to foster contemplation on the one hand, but, on the other, were also a place of work. As Sennett points out, the cloister garden “aimed to be a paradise regained on earth. To labor here was to regain one’s dignity” (184). The garden of the Gardeners shares some of this symbolism, although the para­ dise regained is less that of the pre-Fall bond between man and God and more that of the pre-Fall closeness to Nature. The technologies at the disposal of the corporations, however, are so advanced that it is difficult for the Gardeners to escape them completely, even in the garden. At one point, for example, Adam One warns his fellow Gardeners about “a bee cyborg spy controllable by a CorpSeCorps operator, equipped to transmit, and thus to betray” (YF 277). As it can be imagined, this technology is particularly harmful for the subjectifying qualities of the garden as a specific environment, for it destroys the sense of security and freedom from sophisticated technology that is part of the corporate world. But cyborg bees cannot undermine the subjectifying effects of work in the garden. On the most basic level, this work demands training in certain physical routines essential for the proper use of the simple technology of the gardening tools. The work is also a kind of practice which is supposed to instil in the Gardeners certain values and ways of thinking and thus has as its aim a production of a certain type of personality. Similar aims were pursued in the Christian monasteries, where it was supposed that “work in the garden not only restored the worker to the original Garden, but also created spiritual discipline; the harder the work, the greater its moral value”

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(Sennett, Flesh 184). What is important in the case of the Gardeners is that their work accustoms them to certain kinds of technology that differ from the kinds used by the rest of society. This difference is obviously responsible for a different process of subjectification that the Gardeners are supposed to undergo. The fate of a number of Gardeners, however, shows that “action” as Adam One understands it is often not sufficient to bring people round to the Gardeners’ point of view. With children, the Gardeners’ way of life has various results. With some characters, it is quite effective—for example, Ren’s friend Bernice, although she leaves the Gardeners with her mother and attends a liberal arts college, never forgets the Gardeners’ teachings; her convictions make her a nuisance for her roommate Jimmy, and finally she dies in a CorpSeCorps raid on one of the Gardeners’s hideouts after the group is pronounced illegal. Ren herself, however, quickly forgets about the ideals of the group after she returns to her Compound, although she seemed to believe in them. Amanda, a street-wise teenager, spends some time with the Gardeners, but seems to be interested only in the practical knowledge that she can learn there. “Action” also has varied results with adults. Although Zeb—Adam One’s half-brother, who lives with the Gardeners for a time as Adam Seven—finds the Gardeners’ critique of the system correct, he does not believe in the efficiency of their method for saving the world—at one point he calls them “ecofreakshow” (M 328). After some time with the Gardeners, Zeb creates a splinter group, MaddAddam, which secedes in order to fight the system by means of bio­ terrorism—I will return to MaddAddam later in the chapter. Zeb’s lover Lucerne is another outsider who spends some time with the Gardeners, but she is not affected by the Gardeners’ ideology at all. She leaves her comfortable life in a Compound and joins the Gardeners only because she starts a tempestuous affair with Zeb,12 but she remains all the time a solid product of the Compound culture—she seems to be too complacent about the comfortable existence that she led in the Compounds to devote any deeper thought to the Gardeners’ cri­ tical ontology. Toby, on the other hand, is an example of a late-comer who is finally deeply affected by the Gardeners’ philosophy—although at first she is sceptical about their teachings, she gradually embraces their critique and accepts their solution so that at the end of the trilogy it is she, out of several surviving Gardeners, who upholds the values of the group.13 The varied subjectifying results of “action”—which relies heavily on interaction with the simple technologies of gardening—shows again that technical mediation is rarely deterministic. Differences in psychological make-up and previous subjectifying experiences make various Gardeners more or less susceptible to the Gardeners’ worldview. However, for the great majority of those who never come into closer contact with the Gar­ deners, they remain a fringe group completely out of touch with the modern times. The reason for this is that the Gardeners, as a group with ambitions for personal guidance, have to compete with far more fashionable practices.

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In other words, the Gardeners, whose sacrifices are ultimately motivated by their desire to improve the condition of the environment, are no match for egotistic practices whose only aim is the improvement of the individual herself—improvement as it is understood in the neoliberal society. These practices may be considered under the umbrella term of “makeover culture.”

Makover Culture While the Gardeners see humanity’s main existential threat in the destruc­ tion of the environment, and their way of life is supposed to counter this threat, makeover culture sees old age (often paired with, or replaced by, ugliness), illness and death as the main existential threats facing humans, which they may reduce by taking control over their own lives in a specific way. Needless to say, this perspective agrees perfectly with the neoliberal ideology of individual responsibility for one’s life. Cressida J. Heyes explains makeover culture in the following way: countless TV programs, websites, and magazine features concern themselves with changing one’s diet or culinary practices, losing weight, updating fashion habits, developing practices of good health, hygiene, or personal grooming, through to improving the behavior and appear­ ance of one’s spouse (or pet), repairing or renovating one’s home, or landscaping a garden. (“Cosmetic Surgery” 20) When Lucerne finally breaks up with Zeb and returns to her Compound— inventing a story of kidnapping and sexual slavery—she returns to the bosom of makeover culture. As Zeb later tells Toby: “Lucerne had too great an interest in nail polish to make it as a female Gardener” (M 331). She not only resumes her visits to the spa where she met Zeb, but immediately considers other makeovers. Thinking about the first days of their return to the Compound, Ren, who is Lucerne’s daughter, remembers: “Lucerne had been saying how dingy my own teeth were and I needed a cosmetic dentist. She was already planning to redecorate our entire house, but she had some alterations planned for me as well” (YF 215). Lucerne should be seen in parallel to another Gardener who “backslides,” that is, leaves the group: Bernice’s mother Veena. When Ren and Bernice meet at the campus of the college they both attend, Bernice tells Ren that her mother went into a HealthWyzer vitamin-supplements franchise and was quite successful: Bernice said the West Coast was perfect for that because although they all did stuff like yoga and said it was Spiritual, they were really just twisted, fish-crunching, materialistic body-worshippers out there, with facelifts and bimplants and genework and totally warped values. (YF 288)

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The sham “spirituality” of the yoga practitioners criticized by Bernice is also indicated as a potential problem by Pirkko Markula and Richard Pringle in their analysis of “mindful fitness” exercises, of which yoga is a primary example. Although these types of exercises derive from Eastern spiritual and religious traditions, they have been adapted to Western culture as movement forms which combine both mind and body. What is more, in the process of their appropriation, practices like yoga started to be associated with health benefits and as such seem to fit naturally in the range of activities promoted by the fitness industry—as Markula and Pringle indicate, the issues of health and physical exercise are inextricably mixed in the concept of fitness (158). Thus, the adaptation of Asian movement practices like yoga by Western culture involves the combination of their “spiritual” approach with the insights provided by Western medicine based on the scientific, quantitative approach to the human body. As a result, however, yoga risks becoming part of the process of a biopolitical construction of the subject as “an illness free, and thus, obedient and useful citizen” (Markula and Pringle 158). What is more, it may also become involved in the process of the construction of the body ideal, which is the domain of the beauty industry. As Markula and Pringle notice: Mindful fitness forms operate in the same discursive context as other western fitness forms. They are governed by the health apparatus as well as the apparatus of the beauty industry with which commercial fitness practices tend to connect. It is at the intersections of these that the “mindful fitness identity” is constituted. (157) In other words, these practices may “turn into masked governance through bio-power and the endless quest for the ‘true’ self” (157) when they are pursued as a result of market-stimulated fashions for the construction of an ideal, healthy body. HelthWyzer, for which Veena works, has an affiliate, a beauty-and-mood­ enhancing corporation called AnooYoo. Both companies indicate their mis­ sion with their names—between them, HelthWyzer and AnooYoo try to cover the totality of the market concerned with health and beauty, “the two seductive twins joined at the navel, singing their eternal siren songs” (M 249). At one point in the narrative, Zeb reflects on the division of roles of the two corporations: HelthWyzer’s products—the vitamin supplements, the over-the-counter painkillers, the higher-end disease-specific pharmaceuticals, the erectile dysfunction treatments, and so on—went in for scientific descriptions and Latin names on the labels. AnooYoo, on the other hand, was mining arcane secrets from Wiccan moon-worshippers and from sha­ mans deep in the assassin-bug-rich rainforests of Dontgothere. But Zeb

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could understand that there was an overlap of interests. If it hurts and you feel sick and it’s making you ugly, take this, from HelthWyzer; if you’re ugly and it hurts and you feel sick about it, take that, from AnooYoo. (M 249) The functioning of both health and beauty industries depends to a great extent on one of the most important tenets of neoliberal philosophy, namely the perception of “individuals as rational, calculating creatures whose moral autonomy is measured by their capacity for ‘self-care’” (Brown 42). In other words, good neoliberal subjects have to pay attention to their diet and lifestyle, and they have to be on the constant lookout for signs of illness or any abnormalities in the functioning—and appearance— of their bodies. To do this in a responsible way, they have to rely on the opinion provided by experts, who establish the limits of the normal and pathological, the healthy and the ill, and, very often, of the beautiful and the ugly. At the same time, these or other experts indicate a variety of technological interventions which lead to the desired condition of health, beauty and self-improvement.14 The experts, however, are very often con­ nected in a more or less direct way with the health and beauty industries. Thus, on the one hand, people have been freed from the rigorous instruc­ tion of the old religious and political authorities. But, on the other hand, as Rose notices, we have been bound into relationship with new authorities, which are more profoundly subjectifying because they appear to emanate from our individual desires to fulfill ourselves in our everyday lives, to craft our personalities, to discover who we really are. (Inventing 17) Jimmy himself starts to represent these authorities when he begins to work for AnooYoo as a copywriter, translating “expert” knowledge into dreams that can be realized thanks to his company. During the interview for the job, the interviewers—a man and a woman—tell him what would be expected of him: Mind and body went hand in hand, and Jimmy’s job would be to work on the mind end of things. In other words, the promotionals. “What people want is perfection,” said the man. “In themselves.” “But they need the steps to it to be pointed out,” said the woman. “In a simple order,” said the man. “With encouragement,” said the woman. “And a positive attitude.” “They like to hear about the before and the after,” said the man. “It’s the art of the possible. But with no guarantees, of course.” (OC 245–6)

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What this perfection that people want means is partly explained in the second volume, when Toby is about to start working for one of the AnooYoo spas as a middle manager and talks to her new boss, Muffy.15 When Toby asks her what the value is they offer their customers, Muffy answers: “It’s an intangible … They feel they look better afterwards. People will pay a lot of money for that” (263). To have such feelings of looking “better,” one has to strive to match certain norms of beauty that are currently valid. Explaining the willingness of women—the customers of AnooYoo appear to be all female—to adhere to these norms, Cressida J. Heyes refers to Foucault’s concept of normal­ ization, which is a process responsible for the establishment of particular bodily and behavioural standards in society. Normalization, as Heyes noti­ ces, is a feature of disciplinary power which “is itself invisible yet renders its subjects hyper-visible in order to tighten its grip” (Self-Transformations 30). Following François Ewald, Heyes argues that in Foucault the norm is no longer established by reference to an external ideal or model, but instead is determined as a result of an internal play of oppositions between what is considered normal and pathological. In consequence, “[t]here are no abso­ lute standards of good, perfection or beauty, only relative measures within a local scale of meaning; yet norms provide excellent intersubjective commu­ nicative and organizational strategies in the absence of any transcendental values” (34). In other words, these norms establish a type of a perfect social self, which, however, is always changing. A clear example of the processes of normalization may be seen in the changing standard of the size of women’s breasts, discussed by Susan Bordo: Consider breast augmentation, now increasingly widespread, and its role in establishing new norms against which smaller or less firm breasts are seen as defective. Micromastia is the clinical term, among plastic surgeons, for “too small” breasts. Such “disorders” are, of course, entirely aesthetic and completely socially “constructed.” Anyone who doubts this should recall the 1920s, when women were binding their breasts to look more boyish.16 (Bordo 25; emphasis in original) One of the most important factors behind this change of the standard was, obviously, the appearance of the technology which allowed for breast aug­ mentation. Other technologies—print magazines, cinema, television and finally the internet—contributed to the spread of the fashion for breast augmentation, as more and more actresses and models tried to enhance their beauty with artificial implants. In consequence, breast augmentation becomes the norm and once this happens, as Susan Bordo notices, the decision to have one’s breasts surgically enhanced becomes what the psychiatrist Peter Kramer has called “free choice under pressure.” We

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can choose not to have such surgery. No one is holding a gun to our heads. But those who don’t—for example, those who cannot afford the surgery—are at an increasingly significant professional and personal disadvantage. (25) In the universe of Atwood’s trilogy, breast augmentation is apparently so common that real breasts are rare even among teenagers: Jimmy notices favourably “real tits” in his girlfriends and plays the role of an expert in the company of Crake, whom he considers inexperienced in these matters: “‘No way fake tits feel like real tits,’ said Jimmy, who thought he knew a thing or two about that” (OC 200). In the process of normalization of breast augmentation, all four modes of human–technology interaction are involved. The experts’ pronounce­ ments on the desirability of such augmentation represent the abstract mode, as they provide theoretical assessments of the role technology plays—or should play—in human life. Technological infrastructure con­ tributes to the creation of a specific environment which exerts influence on consumers as it establishes in them a sense of what is technologically pos­ sible. Marketing hype which uses various media (and which may utilize theoretical generalizations of the abstract mode) increases the popularity of this kind of body makeover. As a result, consumers start to believe that with the help of technology they will change themselves for the better (they will be more beautiful)—what is affected here is their sense of style and self-conception. Finally, by modifying the bodies of consumers, technolo­ gies are involved in the physical mode of human–technology interaction. What is thus created is a complex net of technologies, ideology, marketing, aspirations and bodies. At the same time, in the practice of breast augmentation, the two-sided­ ness of technical mediation is clearly visible. In the ontological dimension, the body is revealed as highly malleable with the help of technology and what is concealed is the understanding of the human body as a product of natural growth. In the practical dimension, enabling cosmetic makeover— which is presented as a kind of self-improvement—technical mediation con­ strains other possible (perhaps moral) types of striving for the betterment of the self. Finally, in the ethical dimension, the two-sidedness is reflected in different attitudes to cosmetic surgery like breast augmentation—for some women, it may be highly involving, boosting their self-esteem (regardless of whether the positive feelings are already the result of subjectification or not). For critics like Susan Bordo, it is highly alienating. As Bordo notices, however, breast augmentation is just one of several aspects of the new concept of female beauty. Another trend in the shifting standards of female appearance that is rising thanks to new technologies is that of everlasting youth. Youthful appearance has always been a desired feature of a women’s look as it suggests fertility. Once women were past

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their prime, however, they could do virtually nothing about their look, and thus the “only” thing left to them was to age gracefully and with dignity. But in the second half of the 20th century, as Bordo points out, new tech­ nologies appeared that apparently allowed to stop the biological clock. Again, at first actresses, models and other celebrities availed themselves of these technologies, the most extreme of which was cosmetic surgery. With the example set by these role models, more and more “common” women start to consider a treatment that would take the baggage of years from their bodies, and the youthful look for women over 50 slowly becomes the new standard. Exasperated, Bordo reinforces her criticism of the trend with per­ sonal remarks: Last week I saw a sign in the beauty parlor where I get my hair cut. “Botox Party! Sign Up!” So my 56-year-old forehead will now be judged against my neighbor’s, not just Goldie’s, Cher’s, and Faye’s. On televi­ sion, a commercial describes the product (which really is a toxin, a dilution of botulism) as “Botox cosmetic.” (29) In the universe of Atwood’s trilogy, various anti-ageing treatments, includ­ ing Botox injections, appear to be a well-established norm—at least for the Compound dwellers. When Jimmy sees his stepmother Ramona at his highschool graduation ceremony, her planned treatments seem to be completely matter-of-fact: She was getting little creases on either side of her mouth, despite the collagen injections; her biological clock was ticking, as she was fond of pointing out. Pretty soon it would be the NooSkins BeauToxique Treatment for her—Wrinkles Paralyzed Forever, Employees Half­ Price—plus, in say five years, the Fountain of Yooth Total Plunge, which rasped off your entire epidermis. (OC 175) A dozen or so years earlier, when Jimmy was still a small child, his father, who was working on the NooSkins project, explained to him the reasons behind it: The rewards in the case of success would be enormous, Jimmy’s father explained, doing the straight-talking man-to-man act he had recently adopted with Jimmy. What well-to-do and once-young, once-beautiful woman or man, cranked up on hormonal supplements and shot full of vitamins but hampered by the unforgiving mirror, wouldn’t sell their house, their gated retirement villa, their kids, and their soul to get a second kick at the sexual can? NooSkins for Olds, said the snappy logo. (OC 55)

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Treatments like the Fountain of Yooth and NooSkins appear to have elimi­ nated the need for anti-ageing cosmetic surgeries like facelifts, as there is no mention of them in the whole trilogy. What is also worth noticing here is that the treatments are addressed to both women and men. Cultural critics and social psychologists writing about health and beauty industries at the turn of the 21st century notice a growing percentage of male customers in these industries (Negrin; Dittmar), which means that also men start to experience their subjectifying influence. When Jimmy graduates from high school, the culture of everlasting youth is apparently so well established that he finds the new wrinkles on the face of his stepmother “repellent” (OC 175). This attitude to ageing is what some cultural critics of the idolization of youth fear: as various time-stopping technologies become more sophisticated and more popular, the women who, for a variety of reasons, will not avail themselves of these treatments will, inevitably, be unfavourably compared with their “neighbours” who will have chosen to take part in the “Botox Party.” Kathryn Pauly Morgan, for example, suspects “that the naturally ‘given,’ so to speak, will increasingly come to be seen as the technologically ‘primitive’; the ‘ordinary’ will come to be perceived and evaluated as the ‘ugly’” (61). What is important, the main advertising spin behind the beauty industry does not represent anti-ageing technologies as successful means allowing users to hide their real age and thus to conform to new social norms of physical appearance but as tools helping to reveal the true young self hidden in the ageing body. Shown in this light, people who make use of these technologies do this, first of all, for themselves, and not to look attractive to others. In other words, the significance of the social self is played down in favour of stress on self-conception that is, apparently, completely indepen­ dent of external influences. Analyzing a hugely popular television programme “Extreme Makeover,” which shows average Americans undergoing the process of transformation based on cosmetic surgery and other rejuvenating and beautifying technolo­ gies, Cressida J. Heyes argues that the programme is made in such a way as to stress the issues of identity over those of beauty. The participants are represented as taking control over their lives, and the programme shows how their transformation leads to anticipated successes in life: “Thus, in this context, cosmetic surgery is less about becoming beautiful, and more about becoming oneself, including by developing the capacities that were pre­ viously denied or perceived as too daunting” (“Cosmetic Surgery” 21; emphasis in original). What is essential in the programme’s message, according to Heyes, is that the participants are represented as driven by “reasons entirely intrinsic to the individual” (24) and not by the intersubjective pressure to conform to the standards of beauty. A similar spin is utilized by the corporations in Atwood’s trilogy—the slogan on the sandwich board worn by Toby (before she becomes a man­ ager) advertises the services of AnooYoo: “UGLY DUCKLINGS TO

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LOVELY SWANS AT THE ANOOYOO SPA-IN-THE-PARK! Goose Your Self-Esteem!” (YF 260; emphasis in original). When a swan emerges from an ugly duckling, it means that the animal reached its “higher,” but equally natural, form. On the back of the board there is another slogan: “Anooyoo! do it for yoo!” (260). The hollowness of the slogan is ironically underlined after the plague, when Toby lives alone in the spa, not certain whether there are any other survivors of the plague apart from her. Today she will pare her fingernails. Toenails, as well: they shouldn’t be permitted to run rampant. She could give herself a manicure: there are lots of cosmetic supplies in this place, whole shelves of them. AnooYoo Luscious Polish. AnooYoo Plum Skin Plumper. AnooYoo Fountain of Yooth Total Immersion: Shed That Scaly Epidermis! But why bother to polish or plump or shed? But why not bother? Either choice is equally pointless. Do it for Yoo, AnooYoo used to croon. The Noo Yoo. I could have a whole new me, thinks Toby. Yet another whole new me, fresh as a snake. How many would that add up to, by now? (YF 237) What the first paragraph suggests is that the decision to conform to social norms of beauty or to refuse them is important only in the society which has produced these norms. When choosing to “do it” an individual announces publicly that she agrees with these norms. Choosing not to “do it,” on the other hand, may be seen as an act of defiance—of rejection of the social norms of beauty. Now, however, this society is gone, together with the norms it once produced, so both conformity and defiance are equally pointless. In the second paragraph there is a shift in meaning, for Toby remembers the advertising slogan distancing cosmetic makeover from social norms of beauty. Thus, even in the absence of any society, Toby could still “do it” for herself. But immediately, there is an ironic reversal of this meaning, for the transformations that Toby has undergone—a destitute pleeblander, an ascetic Gardener, a manager of spa (the last one involving significant chan­ ges in her appearance)—were both for herself and determined by the watching society: she was not trying to conform to social norms sustained by the societal gaze but to escape this gaze as a fugitive. So also this reason for “doing it” is gone with the society in which she lived. Services of AnooYoo, however, can also be seen as having a deeper sig­ nificance than just correction of physical appearance. This significance is indicated in the scene before the plague in which Toby reflects on the cus­ tomers of AnooYoo. As they leave the spa, “buffed and tightened and res­ urfaced, irradiated and despotted,” they are, as Toby realizes, still frightened, because when might the whole problem—the whole thing—start happening to them again? The whole signs-of-mortality

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thing. The whole thing thing. Nobody likes it, thought Toby—being a body, a thing. Nobody wants to be limited in that way. We’d rather have wings. Even the word flesh has a mushy sound to it. (YF 264) Here, rejuvenating technologies are understood as means of escaping from the fear of death. James Atlas, reflecting on the relegation of old age to the margins of American culture, believes it has its source in the focus on the present moment that is a way of keeping the thought of death at a distance: Americans regard old age as a raw deal, not as a universal fate. It’s a narcissistic injury. That’s why we don’t want the elderly around: they embarrass us, like cripples … Banished to the margins, they perpetuate the illusion that our urgent daily lives are permanent, and not just transient things. (Atlas qtd. in Sobchack 79) In this focus on the present moment there is an obvious fear of the tran­ sience of human life and the inevitable death. Critical of this fear, Toby gives the customers of the spa sarcastic advice in her thoughts: “If you really want to stay the same age you are now forever and ever, she’d be thinking, try jumping off the roof: death’s a sure-fire method for stopping time” (YF 264). The health and beauty industries find themselves splendidly in this atmo­ sphere of fear, but also contribute to it. To convince people to undergo anti­ ageing treatment, advertisers have to vilify this ageing as a process of unne­ cessary degeneration which subtly but persistently points at the thing that should never be looked at—death itself. Thus, on the one hand, advertising creates an impression of a problem, but on the other, it offers a solution (Dittmar 22). Musing about the scared clients of the spa, Toby is aware of this mechanism: “We’re not selling only beauty, the AnooYoo Corp said in their staff instructionals. We’re selling hope” (YF 264). And, sure enough, when Jimmy is hired by AnooYoo as a copywriter, his job includes both mongering of fear and selling of hope: “It was his task to describe and extol, to present the vision of what—oh, so easily!—could come to be. Hope and fear, desire and revulsion, these were his stocks-in-trade, on these he rang his changes” (OC 248). Jimmy himself has no illusions about the effectiveness of the treatments offered by AnooYoo. When Amanda, who is his girlfriend at the time, learns about his new job at the corporation, she is immediately dismissive, telling him that AnooYoo “was a collection of cesspool denizens who existed for no other reason than to prey on the phobias and void the bank accounts of the anxious and the gullible” (OC 247). Jimmy himself quickly learns cor­ porate cynicism, but his most inventive contributions to the marketing power of his employer reveal as much about his ethics as about those of the

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corporation: “Once in a while he’d make up a word—tensicity, fibracio­ nous, pheromonimal—but he never once got caught out. His proprietors liked those kinds of words in the small print on packages because they sounded scientific and had a convincing effect” (OC 248–9). The pseudoscientific character of the marketing of the anti-ageing products and services is very important for the industry, as it elevates their status to the regions occupied by medicine, which is firmly placed in the field of science—as Angela King notices, The cosmetic industries capitalise on the fear of ageing by offering products endorsed by scientific language that claim to prevent or reduce the signs of ageing, which is discussed as though it were some kind of disease that it is every woman’s responsibility to try to prevent. (35) In the universe of the trilogy, as it has already been indicated, male con­ sumers are not exempt from the marketing of corporations like AnooYoo— in an obviously ironic development, Jimmy manages to deceive himself: His hair was getting sparser around the temples, despite the six-week AnooYoo follicle-regrowth course he’d done. He ought to have known it was a scam—he’d put together the ads for it—but they were such good ads he’d convinced even himself. (OC 252) Not everything offered by what Crake calls “body oriented Compounds,” however, is a scam. In a significant scene Jimmy and Crake visit the pleeb­ lands and the high street called the Street of Dreams, which seems to be the centre of trade in body-related products and services: “The shops here were mid-to-high end, the displays elaborate. Blue Genes Day? Jimmy read. Try SnipNFix! Herediseases Removed. Why Be Short? Go Goliath! Dreamkid­ lets. Heal Your Helix. Cribfillers Ltd. Weenie Weenie? Longfellow’s the Fellow!” (OC 288). When Jimmy, professionally impressed with the slogans and advertisements displayed in the street, asks Crake whether these pro­ ducts actually work, Crake answers seriously: “Quite a lot of it” (OC 289). It is clear that some of the transformations advertised in the Street of Dreams go significantly further than anything offered by AnooYoo—the Street of Dreams offers not only cosmetic services correcting one’s look but more significant transformations (including genetic modifications) which affect body functioning and size. It also offers “Dreamkidlets,” that is, pro­ duction of designer babies. In fact, Jimmy’s father and stepmother consider engineering their child, and for them it seems to be a matter-of-fact decision, which indicates that their self-conception as parents has been affected by the technology enabling the design of babies (and advertising that promotes it), although Atwood does not focus on their considerations.

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The only character in the trilogy who undergoes a substantial change in her body’s appearance is Toby, but she does it to hide her real identity—she is pursued by psychopathic Blanco, her former boss at SecretBurgers—and not to express herself. What is more, during the whole makeover process Toby is almost totally passive—it is Zeb who exercises control over the whole procedure: He drove her to a clinic at the back of a Mo’Hair franchise outlet. “We’re doing the hair and skin,” he said. “You’re going dark. And the fingerprints, and the voiceprint. Plus a bit of recontouring.” The biotech for changing iris pigment was risky—there’d been some unpleasant bulging effects, said Zeb—so she’d have to use contacts. Green ones— he’d picked out the colour himself. (YF 261) The scene could be interpreted as showing Toby still in the clutches of patriarchal power—she escapes Blanco only to be ordered about by Zeb, who even chooses her looks. However, the point is that Toby does not seem to mind this, and not, primarily, because Zeb is an expert in fugitive identity shifting, or because she is deeply in love with him—although these aspects of the situation may be contributing to her attitude—but because of her philosophy of life. After she recovers from the operation, Toby reflects: “The alterations hadn’t made her stunningly beautiful, but that wasn’t the object. The object was to make her more invisible. Beauty is only skin deep, she thought. But why did they always say only?” (YF 262; emphasis in ori­ ginal). The last question suggests that Toby thinks that physical beauty is not important at all, and from such a perspective the whole makeover industry appears completely worthless. What is more, Zeb allows Toby to choose the pitch of her voice, and voice here could be interpreted as standing for the “right or ability to express an opinion … or to influence decisions” (Longman Dictionary). This could be a symbolic indication that Toby retains her agency in the sphere that really matters. Still, Toby’s transformation allows Atwood to present her vision of the way in which technologies of cosmetic makeover will develop. The treat­ ment that she is given seems to be within the range of changes offered in the Street of Dreams that are supposed to reflect personal style. One of the ele­ ments of her transformation is the Mo’Hair transplant that merits here deeper attention because it is very popular in the universe of the trilogy. It can be said to represent a transformation that is somewhere in-between fashion and cosmetic surgery—hairstyles have always been placed at the interstice between fashion and the body, but Mo’Hair is actually a trans­ plant of hair (or rather a fleece) grown originally on sheep that has been modified with human genes. As such Mo’Hair may be said to symbolize the similarity between fashion and cosmetic surgery that is indicated by some feminist critics. Anne Balsamo,

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for example, claims that cosmetic surgery could be considered as a form of political statement and indicates its potential as “fashion surgery”—like con­ temporary fashion, cosmetic surgery could be seen as a tool for self-expression: “Like women who get pierced-nose rings, tattoos, and hair sculptures, women who elect cosmetic surgery could be seen to be using their bodies as a vehicle for staging cultural identities” (78). Again, the two-sidedness of technical mediation is important here in practical and ontological dimensions, and Bal­ samo apparently believes that enabling bodily modifications and thus revealing the body as malleable cosmetic surgery boosts personal freedom. As an illustration of what she means by this kind of approach to cosmetic surgery, Balsamo gives the example of Gibson’s Molly Million and her implanted mirrorshades (79). Balsamo’s argumentation, however, is questioned by Llewellyn Negrin, who argues that one of the potential dangers of such an approach to cos­ metic makeover is that it puts too much emphasis on the construction of identity in terms of image: “One must be careful, then, not to become so preoccupied with the experimentation with various guises that one loses sight of the fact that there is more to forging one’s identity than changing appearances” (47). She stresses here the other side of the practical dimension of the two-sidedness of technical mediation: cosmetic makeover may con­ strain people from seeking other forms of self-improvement. Following Joanne Finkelstein, Negrin also argues that one of the problems arising from the promotion of radical restyling of the body by feminist thinkers like Anne Balsamo “is that they overlook the extent to which this is complicit with the commodification of the body within contemporary consumer culture,” as “with the increasing availability of surgical and other techniques for altering appearance, the body has come to be treated as a commodity in constant need of upgrading” (91). Negrin differs here from Balsamo in her evaluation of the two-sidedness of technical mediation in the ontological dimension— revealing the body as highly malleable cosmetic surgery does not indicate a road to personal freedom but creates an opening for the forces of the market. Thus Balsamo and Negrin see in the cosmetic surgery the opposite sides of the ethical dimension of technical mediation. Atwood herself uses Mo’Hair to hint several times what her own per­ spective on the ethical dimension of cosmetic makeover is. While working at the strip club called Scales, Ren considers buying Mo’Hair: Savona was subbing for me on the trapeze. She looked good—glittery and green and sinuous, with a new silver Mo’Hair. I was considering one of those myself—they were better than wigs, they never came off— but some girls said the smell was like lamb chops, especially in the rain. (YF 55) There is an obvious echo here of a situation in which people suffer wearing uncomfortable but fashionable clothes, although Atwood adds here a tint of

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ridiculousness, which she reinforces in the last volume, when, after the plague, Toby lives with a group of survivors who breed Mo’Hair sheep for food. When one Mo’Hair licks her on the leg, Toby realizes that it treats her like a relative because of her transplant: “Just so long as I don’t get jumped by one of the rams, she thinks. She’ll have to watch herself for signs of sheepishness” (M 30). But perhaps most telling about Atwood’s attitude to this kind of self-transformation is the advertisement for Mo’Hair, which indicates clearly the similarity between the model and the sheep: “you’d see the sheep tossing its hair, then a beautiful girl tossing a mane of the same hair. More hair with Mo’Hair!” (YF 238). Atwood deliberately plays here on the symbolism of sheep as women who choose to have the Mo’Hair transplant slavishly follow the dictates of the market. In this way she indicates what is her opinion of the cosmetic makeover industry: body makeover technologies are alienating, their use being a result of herd behaviour. Thus, in both Negrin’s and Atwood’s view, experimentation with the look of one’s body, rather than constituting a subversive activity of undermining the idea of identity as fixed in the patri­ archal order, answers the needs of consumer capitalism which “promotes the idea of a constantly transmuting self where the cult of appearance is privileged over all other modes of self-definition” (Negrin 2). What is important is that the siren song of the makeover industry is heard both in the Compounds and in the pleeblands. The obvious difference is that inhabitants of the pleeblands are often not able to afford the same treatments as Compounders. But even when they are, they face risks that are pleebland-spe­ cific. At one point, Ren reflects on the pleeblanders wearing Mo’Hair: Amanda said there were Mo’Hair shops in the Sewage Lagoon that lured girls in, and once you were in the scalp-transplant room they’d knock you out, and when you woke up you’d not only have different hair but different fingerprints, and then you’d be locked in a membrane house and forced into bristle work, and even if you escaped you’d never be able to prove who you were because they’d stolen your identity. (YF 142) Ren, who is at the time just a child, is not aware that these criminal activ­ ities are most probably taking place with the blessing of CorpSeCorps. In fact, the corporation that replaced the police as an institution responsible for keeping order is responsible for the mafia-like exploitation of pleeb­ landers—as it is indicated several times in the trilogy, the corporation con­ trols in a more or less direct way a variety of illegal activities in the pleeblands if they promise steady and substantial profits.

Producing Patients CorpSeCorps, however, is not the only corporation that represents a hypo­ critical contrast between reality and its purported mission. Even worse is

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HelthWyzer, which uses fake vitamin supplement pills as vectors for dis­ ease—of its own making—for which it also creates drug treatments. As Adam One explains at one point: Random distribution, so no one will suspect a specific location of being ground zero. They make money all ways: on the vitamins, then on the drugs, and finally on the hospitalization when the illness takes firm hold. As it does, because the treatment drugs are loaded too. A very good plan for siphoning the victims’ money into Corps pockets. (M 254) In the second volume of the trilogy Atwood describes the fate of Toby’s family after her mother, who works for HelthWyzer as a franchise operator, becomes a victim of the scheme, although in her case it is not necessarily a random distribution. Toby’s mother takes “a dose of HelthWyzer HiPotency VitalVite supplements daily” (25), but in spite of this, she falls ill with a strange disease at a time when her husband is refusing to sell his land to a developer. As he simultaneously loses his well-paid job, the illness becomes a financial strain on the family: She took more supplements, but despite that she became weak and confused and lost weight rapidly: it was as if her body had turned against itself. No doctor could give her a diagnosis, though many tests were done by the HelthWyzer Corp clinics; they took an interest because she’d been such a faithful user of their products. They arranged for special care, with their own doctors. They charged for it, though, and even with the discount for members of the HelthWyzer Franchise Family it was a lot of money; and because the condition had no name, her parents’ modest health insurance plan refused to cover the costs. (25–6) Although Toby’s father manages to find another job—a less-paid one—and then finally sells the house, his wife’s illness drains all the family’s money and finally turns out to be incurable. Just before her death she is released from HelthWyzer hospital, and she spends her last days in their new, smal­ ler house, which is already on sale because of new debts. After her mother’s funeral, Toby’s father—now unemployed again and completely broken— commits suicide with an illegal gun and Toby, not wanting to face her father’s creditors and the CorpSeCorps investigation concerning the gun, has to go underground in the pleeblands. She becomes aware of the truth behind her mother’s illness only years later when Pilar describes the scheme to her. This scheme is immensely important in the trilogy, not only because it is a recurrent motif in all volumes but also because it deeply affects Crake—I will return to this point in a moment—and thus, most probably, strongly contributes to his decision to implement his final solution to the problem of

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humanity. The scheme seems to be the most evil swindle imaginable, unbe­ lievable even in the context of the predatory neoliberal capitalism, but I argue that it should be read as a satiric extrapolation of the present trends in the pharmaceutical industry, which is one of health and beauty industries and is also increasingly dependent on neoliberal corporate power. And, like the makeover industry, “big pharma” is increasingly responsible for the production of theoretical assessments of the significance of biotechnology (of its own making) in human life—which represents the abstract mode of human–technology interaction. These assessments are supposed to convince an individual that she needs the products offered by the industry, but the problem is that they are increasingly based on manipulation and distortion of the actual data on the effects of these products on people. Part of Atwood’s satire is clearly directed at the fashion for vitamin sup­ plementation. HelthWyzer, one of the most powerful corporations in the universe of the trilogy, is also one of the most successful manufacturers of vitamin supplements—if it does not have a monopoly on them. When Ber­ nice’s mother Veena leaves the Gardeners, she goes into HelthWyzer vita­ min-supplements franchise on the West Coast and quickly expands her business. Toby’s mother not only worked for HelthWyzer but was also a model vitamin supplement consumer—as Toby says at one point, “by weight she would have been half vitamin supplement” (YF 104). The origin and development of this kind of consumer is described by Rima D. Apple in her book Vitamania. Vitamin supplementation was enabled by advances in biotechnology in the first half of the 20th century, thanks to which some of the most important chemical substances needed for the correct func­ tioning of the human organism—vitamins—were identified and then isolated and synthesized. Apple describes how the popularization of vitamin supple­ mentation in the middle of the 20th century was founded on massive advertis­ ing campaigns that “honed in on anxieties about hidden subclinical deficiencies in apparently well-nourished Americans” and thus indicated “the importance of vitamin supplementation as nutritional insurance.” To appear convincing, the advertising, which soon was extended to radio and television commercials, was based on frequent references to scientific material but, as various experts indicated, the references were very often misleading, “based on scientific half­ truths and plain untruths.” In the early 1970s, the Food and Drug Administra­ tion started its attempts to regulate the vitamin supplementation market, describing it as “widespread consumer fraud.” As Apple points out, “[t]here was no conclusive scientific data to convince the agency of the effectiveness of vitamin supplementation. Therefore, in its opinion, these products were at best useless and a waste of money, at worst harmful.” However, in the 1970s, American consumers were already so used to supplementation that the FDA had to overcome the resistance not only of the industry, but also of the public that—convinced about the beneficial effects of supplementation—started to influence the legislative process. And the resistance proved too strong for the FDA, whose several attempts to curb the market failed.

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In the meantime, the belief in the potential value of vitamin supple­ mentation as “health insurance” grew steadily, finally permeating the medi­ cal profession—in the 1980s and 1990s physicians started to recommend supplementing the daily diet with vitamin pills. What is more, in the 1980s, people taking supplementation started to be praised as fitting the neoliberal ideology of taking control over one’s life: “They were what one marketing periodical called the ‘take-charge’ consumers, people who took responsi­ bility for their own health … They were self-reliant people inclined to treat minor ailments such as sore throats and colds by themselves” (Apple). However, as Apple notices, “what was still lacking was substantial evidence based on a well-respected, large, controlled clinical trial.” When finally results of such a study appeared in 1994, they were highly surprising as they showed that those who took beta-carotene [a substance that is partly converted in the body to vitamin A] had an 18 percent greater incidence of lung cancer than those who did not. It appeared that supplementa­ tion increased, rather than decreased, the chance of cancer. The reaction to the results, however, was mixed—some experts started to argue against beta-carotene supplementation, but others found the study to be unreliable. Most importantly, “[a]rticles in the popular media followed the debate and their presentations brought home to the public how difficult it is to construct a meaningful research project on the value of micronutrients for optimal health.” As a result, the study did little to dent the growing general faith in the beneficial results of vitamin supplementation. In conclusion of her book, published in 1996, Apple does not argue with the fact that the science of vitamin supplementation is complex and incon­ clusive, and will be like that for a long time. What she points out, however, is that it certainly is not as optimistic as the main players in the vitamin supplementation market present it. In fact, almost 20 years later, Catherine Price in her own book on vitamania echoes Apple’s words, writing: “Today, we’re still vitamaniacs, such believers in vitamins’ inherent goodness that we don’t realize just how much scientists still don’t understand about how vitamins work in our bodies, or how much of each we require.” What is more, according to Price, “we certainly don’t recognize the irony of our vitamin obsession: that by encouraging the idea that isolated dietary chemi­ cals hold the keys to good health, our vitamania is making us less healthy.” Price indicates here the enabling–constraining structure of technical media­ tion: enabling us to take synthetic vitamins, biotechnology is often respon­ sible for the impoverishment of our natural diet. Both Apple and Price indicate the role of the industry in promoting faith in the unconditionally beneficial role of vitamin supplementation, that is, the role of the abstract mode of technical mediation. What is more, Apple ends her book with advice to her readers that resonates with Foucault’s critical ontology:

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In making our decisions we must be alert to the possibilities and limitations of scientific research and the way science can be manipulated to maximize corporate gains and professional status. Science is not above commerce or politics; it is part of both. We must not allow our bodies to be the sites of profit making or power plays. With the fake vitamin scheme Atwood clearly indicates what her own perspective on “vitamania” in the universe of the trilogy is. The HelthWyzer scheme, however, goes beyond vitamin supplementation into the sphere of illness and drugs, and thus seems to be a more serious matter. Still, I am going to argue that also in this sphere Atwood’s vision should be seen as a satirical exaggeration of existing trends. In “Prescription Maximization and the Accumulation of Surplus Health in the Pharmaceutical Industry,” Joseph Dumit argues that the present pharmaceutical industry is not interested in keeping the public healthy but in finding ways of generating new profits. As he points out, “[a]lmost every pharmaceutical industry textbook I found narrates an ongoing debate over precisely this issue, of whether a pharmaceutical company can afford to care about medicine and people, rather than about profits.” The most straightforward answer to this dilemma is provided by pharmaceutical researchers Tamas Bartfai and Graham V. Lees, who admit: “No one is thinking about the patients, just market share” (qtd. in Dumit 50). What makes this profit-oriented focus valid for the industry is the cost of clinical research. As Dumit points out, writing about the US, the ever-increasing scale of clinical trials, the sheer number of them, and the size of each one has put them more or less out of even government’s financial reach. Across the board, the pharmaceutical industry, government officials, and even critics agree that only corporate institutions have the resources to conduct most clinical trials. (61) Pharmaceutical companies are business enterprises like any other, and they are deemed successful only when they bring profit for shareholders and not when they cure patients. What is more, as with most neoliberal corporate businesses, there is pressure for constant growth: “It might seem that a steady state—keeping the population healthy and improving drug efficacy— would be enough to keep an industry alive, but the pressures on biomedicine to grow are enormous, leading to the need to accumulate prescriptions” (63). As the number of profitable treatments is limited,17 one of the ways out of this problem is to enhance in the public the awareness of illnesses from which they could potentially suffer in the future and convince them about the need for preventive treatment—an approach which is a clear echo of vitamin supplementation advertising campaigns and represents the abstract mode of technical mediation. Various marketing strategies are employed for this aim, among them TV commercials:

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MaddAddam Trilogy The form of such commercials draws on a public-health logic of awareness: the unaware consumer-at-risk must be made into a patient­ in-waiting. In order to achieve this, the consumer’s felt-sense of health must be attacked as not simply mistaken, but dangerous. (56)

These marketing strategies are often accompanied by clinical trials that lower the threshold of risk for the development of illness, if preventive treatment is profitable. As Dumit points out, “If growth is achieved through choosing to study those diseases that have the biggest markets, those mar­ kets can be stretched wider through choosing how to design clinical trials so they indicate more of the population for treatments” (69). A model example of such an approach can be seen in the clinical trial carried out in the early 2000s, as a result of which the recommended level of bad cholesterol was lowered, thus tripling the number of people deemed to be at high risk of developing cholesterol-related disease (47). As a consequence of this development, which includes marketing through various media and clinical trials using the newest technologies, a particular type of “patient” is created:18 one who does not experience physical symptoms of a disease, but instead experiences—or should experience—risk itself. Experien­ cing risk boils down to experiencing fear—here the analogy with the makeover and vitamin supplementation industries becomes obvious, for the pharmaceu­ tical industry proceeds along the same path: first, fear of illness or death is aroused and then a solution is proposed in the form of a consumer product. Dumit describes a typical commercial for a drug as hammering a message: You are now at risk (for being at risk), you now know that you have been at risk, you have to try to do something about it. And the com­ mercial draws you out with “There is hope.” Why is there hope? Because treatments are available. (55) But even in this kind of creative healthcare there is a limit in the form of the “patient’s” capacity to take medication—as Dumit points out: “pharmaceu­ tical companies have redefined health from a measure of symptom reduction to the limit of our body’s capacity to consume treatments. How many drugs could we be mandated to take?” (49; emphasis in original). Apparently, HelthWyzer’s faithful customers have reached the limit in their consumption of vitamins, and thus they could not contribute in this field to the corpora­ tion’s increase in profit. HelthWyzer finds a solution to this problem that seems to be the next logical step in the situation—it creates its own disease. But it is not just a disease but one which is designed to allow for a maxi­ mally profitable treatment. In the first volume, when Crake reveals the scheme behind HelthWyzer contaminated vitamin pills to incredulous Jimmy, he explains, apparently cynically:

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“The best diseases, from a business point of view,” said Crake, “would be those that cause lingering illnesses. Ideally—that is, for maximum profit—the patient should either get well or die just before all of his or her money runs out. It’s a fine calculation.” (OC 211) In fact, a lingering illness is already big pharma’s favourite: in a pharma­ ceutical report published in 2002, a conclusion is that if one were to compare two clinical trials, one for a cure and one for a chronic treatment approach to a disease, one would find the latter to have a four to five times better chance of becoming a blockbuster. (Dumit 81) What further justifies Atwood’s satirical exaggeration is the actually illegal side of clinical trials—“the scandalous practices of cheating in a clinical trial, suppressing research, or ghostwriting results” (Dumit 87)—resulting from the heartless pursuit of profit. A study published in 2017 by four health integrity organizations shows that, contrary to regulations, “the results of medical research are often reported partially, incorrectly or not at all” (Bruckner).19 It can be guessed that only those results are distorted or withheld that could threaten the expansion of the market, but, as the study shows, the distortions can actually lead to harming patients. The study, however, is not a revolutionary, eye-opening report, but comes in the wake of a number of similar studies that have been appearing since the 1990s. In a paper published in 1997, for example, Charles Medawar argues that phar­ maceutical companies downplay the addictive effects of the long-term use of antidepressants. In her book The Truth About the Drug Companies (pub­ lished in 2004), Marcia Angell, a former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, writes about the pharmaceutical industry: Now primarily a marketing machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit, this industry uses its wealth and power to coopt every institution that might stand in its way, including the U.S. Congress, the Food and Drug Administration, academic medical centers, and the medical profession itself. (xviii) And, in words that seem to be just a paraphrase of Dumit’s own findings, Angell gives her opinion on the research about causes of—and treatments for—diseases that was the main subject of the journal in which she worked as an editor: Increasingly, this work is sponsored by drug companies. I saw compa­ nies begin to exercise a level of control over the way research is done

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MaddAddam Trilogy that was unheard of when I first came to the journal, and the aim was clearly to load the dice to make sure their drugs looked good. (xviii)

Writing almost a decade later, Dumit is pessimistic about the possibility of a systemic fight against the abuses of the pharmaceutical industry: Indeed, better regulations would help curb the abuses, like withholding information on side-effects, but it does not address a deeper, structural concern, which is the dynamic shift that takes place when clinical trials are run by industry in order to grow itself. (64) What this dynamic shift boils down to is that pharmaceutical companies’ primary aim is not to find cures for diseases but to turn as many people as possible into (profitable) patients. It could be argued that Atwood’s vision of the future of the healthcare industry only takes this dynamic shift to its logical conclusion. As I have already noticed, the role of the HelthWyzer scheme in Atwood’s narrative is not limited to being just one of the elements of the generally bleak vision of the neoliberal future, and its significance cannot be over­ estimated. Crake’s father, who worked for HelthWyzer, discovered the plan, threatened to reveal it to the public and, as a result, was murdered by his superiors, although the official version was that he committed suicide. This event—the death of his father and the reason behind it, which Crake dis­ covers—affects Crake very deeply and most probably contributes to his conclusion that humanity is corrupt beyond redemption.

Becoming Crake Like Jimmy, Crake grows up in the Compounds. Unlike Jimmy, how­ ever, he does not develop a mentality limited by the Compound life. Most probably, it is the shocking death of his father, combined with his brilliant intelligence, that allows him to transcend this limitation, how­ ever tragic this transcendence will turn out to be. When Pilar—who was his father’s superior at HelthWyzer and used to play chess with Crake when he was a boy (and was still using his first name Glenn)—defects to the Gardeners, Crake remains in contact with her and becomes intrigued by the Gardeners and their ideology. At HelthWyzer High, he asks Ren—who has returned with her mother to the Compound life—ques­ tions about the group: Glenn already knew quite a lot about the Gardeners, but he wanted to know more. What it was like to live with them every day. What they did and said, what they really believed … Sometimes he’d ask me more

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personal things, like “Would you eat animals if you were starving?” and “Do you think the Waterless Flood is really going to happen?” (YF 228) The Gardeners’ ideology clearly interests Crake as it reflects his own con­ cerns. Perhaps his contact with it represents Foucauldian “transformative experience” for him, although the transformation is not necessarily what the Gardeners would hope for—one cannot help getting the impression that the Gardeners’ idea of the Waterless Flood will contribute to his plan of exter­ mination of humanity. At that specific time, asking Ren about the Waterless Flood, he seems to doubt whether it will actually happen and thus he seems to question the Gardeners’ philosophy of patient waiting for a game-chan­ ging crisis. In this, he is similar to Zeb, who shares the Gardeners’ critical assessment of the situation but who believes that something should be done about it. In one of his quarrels with Adam One, Zeb argues: “Peace goes only so far … There’s at least a hundred new extinct species since this time last month. They got fucking eaten! We can’t just sit here and watch the lights blink out” (YF 252). Zeb finally secedes from the Gardeners with several other members creating his own group called MaddAddam and Crake joins the group. MaddAddamites create new “bioforms” that feed on essential infra­ structure and means of transport—Zeb believes that after the destruction of the infrastructure “the planet could repair itself. Before it was too late and everything went extinct” (YF 333). As the MaddAddamites designing “bio­ forms” are former Compound biotech specialists trained to work for cor­ porations creating consumer products that would bring profit, their use of biotechnology as a means of destruction is a clear example of technological multistability. The MaddAddamites thus take the Gardeners’ assessment of the problem, but opt for an aggressive solution based on the appropriation of technology that is part of the problem—genetic engineering is used by corporations for the creation of highly profitable crops like happicuppa, whose mechanized plantations are established on huge areas of land cleared of rainforests. Crake is supposed to be the MaddAddamites’ “inside guy, feeding [them] stuff from the Corps” (M 334). And, as a brilliant geneticist quickly working his way up the corporate ladder, Crake does have access to confidential information—at one point he tells Jimmy: I’ve seen the latest confidential Corps demographic reports. As a spe­ cies we’re in deep trouble, worse than anyone’s saying. They’re afraid to release the stats because people might just give up, but take it from me, we’re running out of space-time. Demand for resources has exceeded supply for decades in marginal geopolitical areas, hence the famines and droughts; but very soon, demand is going to exceed supply for everyone. (OC 294–5)

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Crake, however, does not believe in the effectiveness of the MaddAddamites’ solution for the problem, in the same way in which they did not believe in the effectiveness of the Gardeners’ solution. The point is that Adam One, the founder of the Gardeners, thinks in terms of love, Zeb, the founder of Mad­ dAddam, thinks in terms of war, but Crake thinks in terms of biotechnological experimentation. Crake, unlike Adam One and Zeb, is himself a genetic engi­ neer, and because of this his personality is to a significant extent affected by the subjectifying pressure connected with biotechnological development, which Crake at first witnesses as a child and in which he later plays an active part. Crake grows up in an environment in which biotechnological develop­ ment allows for a completely new view of what is feasible and what is not. When he is about 10, his father—before his discovery of the scheme with fake vitamin pills—is working for HelthWyzer on a rare allergy to red meat caused by certain proteins that enter the human body with tick bites. Crake tells Zeb about the allergy during one of the barbecue meetings at HelthWyzer (at the time, Zeb is working for the corporation as an IT spe­ cialist under a false name), adding: if they could spread it through the population—those tick saliva proteins embedded in, say, the common aspirin—then everyone would be allergic to red meat, which has a huge carbon footprint and causes the depletion of forests, because they’re cleared for cattle grazing; and then … (M 236; ellipsis in original) It is not clear whether the idea is his or his father’s, but obviously Crake seems to be intrigued with the potential of biotechnology to provide simple, however drastic, solutions to complex problems. The two-sidedness of technical mediation is clearly visible here—allowing for a quick technologi­ cal fix, biotechnology constrains the search for other, perhaps more sys­ temic, solutions. Equally important for Crake’s subjectification at the time are experiments involving genetic engineering. This experimentation is described in the first volume from the perspective of Jimmy: “There’d been a lot of fooling around in those days: create-an-animal was so much fun, said the guys doing it; it made you feel like God” (OC 51). The influence of technology here represents the two-sidedness of technical mediation in its ontological dimension as it reveals humans as equal to God and conceals their status as an element of a balanced ecosystem that is the result of thousands, if not millions, of years of development. It is obviously the figure of God the creator that is most pronounced here, but once geneticists start to have creative “fun” of this kind they also have to assume the role of God the judge, as some created hybrids are not allowed to live for long: A number of the experiments were destroyed because they were too dangerous to have around—who needed a cane toad with a prehensile

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tail like a chameleon’s that might climb in through the bathroom window and blind you while you were brushing your teeth? Then there was the snat, an unfortunate blend of snake and rat: they’d had to get rid of those. (OC 51) Jimmy himself is not talented enough to become a geneticist, so this kind of subjectification is lost on him, but Crake grows to be one of “the guys doing it”—and a very brilliant one. In the process, he acquires not only a specific set of wonderful tools of genetic engineering, but also a specific subjectivity. As a result, Crake simply considers humanity as a species of animal, a bot­ ched “experiment” of evolution that has to go to make place for its new, better version—the Crakers—that he himself is capable of creating like a divine artist.20 The Crakers are supposed to be deprived of features of character which, according to Crake, are responsible for the exploitative and belligerent nature of the human civilization—among them, primarily, hier­ archical thinking, possessiveness and propensity to violence. They also have limited capacity for abstract thinking and thus for the creation of tech­ noscience, which, as Gerry Canavan points out, is supposed to prevent them “from replicating Homo sapiens’ previous attempt to master nature through technical artifice” (146; italics in original). Thus Crake wants to use tech­ nology to create a world free from it—from the corrupting power of tech­ nical mediation. This, however, is not the only irony of Crake’s plan, for he is given a state-of-the-art lab and huge resources because he promises his corporate masters to work on immortality. Instead, he uses the lab to create—apart from the Crakers—his killer virus. This departure from the original aim of technology use is perhaps the most extreme form of multistability imaginable. In fact, Crake’s promise of immortality is emblematic of the civilization that he destroys, as much of the technology in this civilization is used to defuse existential fears: fear of the Other, fear of illness, of ageing and, finally, of death. This does not mean, however, that it is a benign and caring civilization—on the contrary, it is based on the ruthless exploitation of nature and the human masses. What is more, this exploitation itself, both intentionally and as a side effect, fuels some of these fears, in this way allowing insatiable corporations to further profit from promising to alleviate them. Among the Compound dwellers, many of the fears combine into one fear: that of inhabitants of the pleeblands, who can be contagious, or violent, or both. For this reason, the Compounds are essential for providing a sense of security for corporate workers. On the most basic level, they provide walls that separate their inhabitants from the pleeblands outside and thus repre­ sent the environmental mode of human–technology interaction. They also provide means of entertainment that, working on the cognitive level, allow their inhabitants to build psychological resistance to the threats outside.

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Atwood focuses here on gaming, but she imagines a different role for it than Eggers and Vinge—in her trilogy, games are responsible for the creation of an anaesthetic effect in the players, neutralizing their anxieties concerned with the threatening Other and making them accept the status quo. The Compound dwellers also resort to technology to defuse their fear of ageing and death. The resulting makeover culture represents all the four modes of human–technology interaction, but Atwood seems to be particu­ larly interested in the abstract mode, showing how health and beauty industries use technoscientific rhetoric for the creation of claims (frequently misleading or completely false) about technology’s capacity to eliminate existential threats in order to cover their real aim: making money—even at the cost of their customers’ life. In general, Atwood makes it clear that the development and uses of all technologies supposed to deal with various existential fears are primarily shaped by corporations, which use them either as means of control or as profit boosters. In this, she shares a pessimistic perspective on the subjectifying power of technical mediation with Eggers. But perhaps the most pessimistic aspect of Atwood’s bleak vision of the future is that from among those who decide, driven by Foucauldian critical ontology, to act against this civilization, it is Crake who succeeds. The Gardeners, with their philosophy of humility and brotherly love towards the natural world, would have a chance to succeed only if they swayed the hearts of others counted in millions, if not billions. But their austere style of life, symbolizing as strongly as possible the neglect of their own needs in favour of those of the natural world, is completely out of place in a civi­ lization founded on the gratification of personal needs. The MaddAdda­ mites’ approach, with its limited bioterror aimed at infrastructure and some corporate products, is basically an attempt to outpace corporations, with their huge resources, in their own game. Crake, in comparison with their partisan warfare, prepares a kind of nuclear holocaust. What is ter­ rifying is that, in contrast to actual nuclear total warfare, which would demand huge logistical effort to come into reality, Crake’s holocaust is prepared almost single-handedly. The only things that he needs are a wellequipped laboratory, the know-how and, most importantly, the mentality of a genetic engineer skewed by tragic personal experience. And, as Atwood suggests, these things will not be a rarity in the kind of world that she represents in her trilogy.

Notes 1 At the end of the last volume of the trilogy it turns out that Zeb and Adam One are not, in fact, blood relatives. 2 Michael Spiegel argues that the neoliberal society of the trilogy represents what he calls, after Hedley Bull, neomedieval system of socio-political organization, in which powerful multinational corporations share power with the weakened state in the manner in which Christian Church shared power with small kingdoms in medieval Europe.

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3 There is some similarity here to Mae’s musings in which she contrasts the life on the campus of the Circle with the outside world, which she associates with the Third World. The difference between the two situations is that Mae imagines that the order characterizing the campus could be extended to the outside world, but in the crisis-ridden universe of the MaddAddam trilogy nobody would cher­ ish such an idea. 4 In spite of this, sometime later she manages to defect from the Compound with some data that she hands over to anti-corporate activists. 5 Atwood develops this kind of situation to an absurd level in her novel The Heart Goes Last, in which she describes people volunteering for a life in prison because they want to escape from the dangers and chaos of life outside of its gates. 6 In a way, much of the economy in the universe of the trilogy is concerned with alleviating this fear of getting old and ultimately dying, as the biotech industries are geared to create products answering this ultimate anxiety of human life. I will return to this point later on in the chapter. 7 Grebowicz notices that Baudrillard coined the phrase more than a decade before the appearance of the World Wide Web, writing about what he referred to as information society. 8 Or a girl similar to her—Jimmy is convinced that Oryx and the girl from HottTotts are the same person, but the narrative leaves the reader in doubt. 9 Oryx can serve as an example of objectification of women and girls through porn industry. As Stephen Dunning notices, the way in which Jimmy first encounters Oryx on HottTotts “establishes her (at least in Jimmy’s outraged estimation) as the exploited third-world ‘Other,’ victim of an imperialistic, commercialized ‘phallic’ gaze. Jimmy’s rage is undoubtedly directed against himself and his gen­ eral complicity in the privileged world that has forced Oryx’s parents to sell her into sexual slavery” (96). Dunning rightly points out that this categorization as a victim is only Jimmy’s estimation, for Oryx is a notoriously mysterious char­ acter, also as an adult (if she is the same person). Her elusive answers to most of Jimmy’s questions never allow Jimmy—and the reader—to understand her per­ spective on her life. 10 Later in the novel it turns out that the chatroom of the game is a meeting point of a group of anti-corporate activists. The game is thus a cover, but as such it has to be similar to other popular games and its subjectifying effects, at least in the case of Jimmy, do not differ from those of other games that the boys play. 11 It is important to point out here that the isolation of the garden itself cannot be said to play the same role that the isolation of the gated corporate Compounds plays, as the Gardeners spent much of their time roaming the pleeblands in search of materials that could be usefully recycled. 12 Passionate on her side and forced on his. He started the relationship only because he was afraid that Lucerne could expose his subversive activities. 13 The mixed response to the Gardeners is visible not only on the plane of the narrative, but also in the critical evaluation of the trilogy. Although critics never question the problem to which the Gardener’s way of life is supposed to be a solution, they differ in their interpretation of this very solution. For favourable views see Bergthaller, Bouson and Dunning. Sceptical interpretations include Canavan, Jennings and Narkunas. 14 In The Circle, it is self-tracking that inscribes itself in this ideology of physical self-improvement by technological means. 15 Toby’s work for AnooYoo is a cover—at the time she has to hide from Blanco. Muffy, her new boss, cooperates secretly with the Gardeners. 16 Analyzing the representation of this problem in the trilogy, Lars Schmeink refers to works by Zygmunt Bauman, who provides an evaluation of health and beauty industry’s methods that is very similar to that of Bordo: Bauman argues that this

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industry creates a situation in which “demand must be created for commodities already launched on the market, thereby following the logic of a commercial company in search of profit, rather than the logic of human needs in search of satisfaction” (Bauman qtd. in Schmeink 77). Bauman’s own example of invented lack of health, as Schmeink points out, is “eyelash hypotrichosis.” This quasimedical concept refers to “eyelashes that are too short and not dense enough for contemporary beauty standards, which makes them the target of corporate mar­ keting. Instead of natural variety, these short eyelashes now become a medical condition in need of cure” (77). 17 Again, pharmaceutical researchers are honest about it: “One of the significant problems for the Pharma industry is that of the 400 disease entities identified, only 40 are commercially attractive by today’s requirements of return on invest­ ment” (Bartfai and Lees qtd. in Dumit 66). 18 There is a clear echo here of Heidegger’s description of people as standingreserve: “the supply of patients for a clinic” (“Question Concerning Technology” 18; see p. 14 above). 19 The findings of the study include, among others, the following: •

• • • •

Scientists working for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration concluded that nearly half of clinical trials of antidepressants had not had a positive outcome. The academic literature gave doctors and patients a completely different impression: there, 49 out of 52 trials were painted in a positive light. 35% of results from all clinical trials of 15 drugs allowed onto the market remained unpublished and hence invisible (2015 study) … Only 11% of publications in journals provided a complete and consistent account of all the serious adverse events experienced by trial participants (2015 study of 300 clinical trials). Researchers at Harvard Medical School found that out of 455 completed trials involving children, 96 had never published results anywhere, in any form. Tens of thousands of children had participated in these trials (2016 study). 198 deaths were recorded in clinical trials of four new drugs, but in the subsequent published papers, only 29 deaths were fully reported (2016 study). (Bruckner)

20 I explore the idea that the Crakers represent artistic creativity in “Crake’s Aesthetic.”

Conclusion

One of the main themes of sf is human–technology interaction and the influence of this interaction on human subjectivity. The more the repre­ sented technology is similar to the actually existing technology, the greater its significance for raising the readers’ awareness of the potential effects of actual technology use on their behaviour and thinking. One of the aims of sf criticism may lie in further increasing this significance by bringing sf’s representations of human–technology interaction into sharp focus and simultaneously providing a conceptual framework that could help readers to understand the subjectifying effects of this interaction. In this, sf criticism might be seen as an answer to the philosophical call for analytical explora­ tion of thought experiments imagining future uses of technology. This volume has brought into such focus the human–technology interac­ tion represented in three works: two stand-alone novels and one trilogy. Representing near-future developments primarily in two technological fields—ICT and biotechnology—these works paint together a very complex picture of the subjectifying potential of new and emerging technologies. Two phenomena characterizing human–technology interactions contribute to this complexity: technologies’ multistability and the two-sidedness of technical mediation. The former indicates that the same technology can be used in different ways and for different purposes, and the latter refers to the basic two-sided structures of the experience of technology use. Writers creating visions of human–technology interaction may focus on specific ways of using a technology, but they also may direct their attention to different sides of one instance of technology use. For the general tone of the work it is probably the involving–alienating structure seen in the ethical dimension of technical mediation that is most important, for the focus on the specific side of this structure shows whether the author believes that a given technology is conducive to a good life or not. Of the three visions analyzed in this volume, two are generally pessimistic in tone—those of Eggers and Atwood—and one, Vinge’s, may be seen as basically optimistic. In other words, Atwood and Eggers show human– technology interaction as a generally alienating experience, whereas Vinge sees technology use as an involving activity. This difference may be partly DOI: 10.4324/9781003166320-6

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explained within the methodological framework of cultural history that, according to Ashplant and Smyth, should involve an examination of the systems of the cultural artefact’s production and signification, which depend on the specific historical and cultural contexts in which the artefact was created. These contexts, in the case of a written text, include “the intentions of the author as well as more immediate biographical, socio-cultural, and political situations with their ideologies and discourses. They also involve discursive institutions such as traditions and genres” (LaCapra qtd. in Ashplant and Smyth 6). Of the three analyzed authors, only Vinge has professional experience of the technologies that are described in his novel as he is a computer scientist (now retired) and thus in his novel envisions further development of the technology that he himself was helping to create—most probably, his fiction reflects the same optimism that was driving his scientific work. What is more, when he was writing his novel there was a widespread hope that the internet would be an overwhelmingly empowering experience for its users. This hope is characteristically expressed in Maria Bakardjieva’s Internet Society: The Internet in Everyday Life, published a year before Vinge’s novel. In the book Bakardjieva, a communication and media studies scholar, admits that what gave impetus to her research was “the proposition that users represent an active force in shaping technology together with various groups of experts and political players” (189). Studying the early homebased adopters of the internet, Bakardjieva referred to various ways in which they employed the new medium for their own purposes. What is most important for her is that the new technology will provide means for empowering individuals in the pursuit of their interests and goals, and thus will be, overwhelmingly, an enhancing technology.1 Even more to the point in the context of the present volume is the opti­ mism shown by the psychologist Sherry Turkle in her early books on com­ puters and the internet, as in her work Turkle is specifically concerned with the way in which human subjectivity is affected by technology. Her book The Second Self (published in 1984), which explored the influence of early personal computers on self-conception, was, in her own words, “full of hope and optimism” (Alone xi). Eleven years later, Turkle published Life on the Screen, which also represented a “positive view of the new opportunities” (although Turkle already had some reservations) (Alone xi). In the book, Turkle presented her studies concerning the way in which the internet was affecting the subjectivity of its users by allowing for experimentation with multiple identities. As I indicate in Chapter 3, Turkle’s hope for the role in which the new ICTs could benefit users by allowing them to experiment with their identity is reflected almost exactly in Vinge’s novel. Atwood’s vision of the subjectifying power of ICTs in the future world is completely different, although she published the first volume of her trilogy— in which she devotes most space to the role of these technologies in human life—just three years before Rainbows End appeared. As a woman of letters

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by profession she most probably looked at the development of computer technology with a greater sense of detachment. Apparently, she also paid attention to a related social phenomenon—a significant increase in the number of gated communities that accompanied the rise of the internet in the 1990s. Apart from the fencing of already existing housing areas, the decade also witnessed the appearance of a new kind of architecture: “for­ tress-like” apartment complexes separated from the urban fabric, which included “amenities such as swimming pools and community centers with gymnasiums” (Ellin 91). Cutting themselves off from the outside world, dwellers of the gated communities were trying to re-establish contact with this world by means of television and the internet—a practice with sig­ nificant subjectifying effects, as Kevin Robins indicates. These developments are quite faithfully represented in Oryx and Crake, in which Jimmy and Crake learn about the outside world from the security of their Compound dwellings. Eggers may be seen as representing an attitude that is similar to Atwood’s—he appears to have ventured into the genre of sf to express his anxieties about technological developments. However, the fact that his novel was written in the second decade of the century is significant, for the years separating the publication of The Circle on the one hand, and Oryx and Crake and Rainbows End on the other, witnessed the rise of Facebook, Twitter and Google social media platforms. At the turn of the new decade, more and more critical views started to indicate the negative effects of these technologies, including a new book by Turkle, Alone Together (2011), in which the author focuses on the increasingly visible detrimental effects of ICTs on human subjectivity, seeing the popularization of Facebook and other social media as the most important factor in this development. Turkle based her research on her own interviews with ICTs users, but also on a wide body of texts that had been appearing in the years immediately pre­ ceding the publication of her book. Also, the exploitative nature of the mechanism of gamification, utilized, among others, by social media plat­ forms for keeping users hooked, started to be indicated in the early years of the second decade of the century—in 2011 Ian Bogost published an influential article “Persuasive Games: Exploitationware.” Privacy Online: Perspectives on Privacy and Self-Disclosure in the Social Web, edited by Sabine Trepte and Leonard Reinecke, and also published in 2011, shows that the problem of privacy and surveillance on social media had already been discussed when Eggers was writing his book. Thus Eggers wrote his novel in a different cultural situation than the one in which both Oryx and Crake and Rainbows End were written. He shares with Atwood a critical attitude to ICTs, but his perspective differs: immer­ sion in the internet is caused not so much by the fear of the Other (stimu­ lated by state racism), but by constant pressure for social media activity. Eggers shows not only how the Circle extols the enabling side of technical mediation—the way in which ICTs facilitate communication, recording and

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processing of information—but also how the company actively conditions people to make constant use of its technologies simply because it profits from this use. In fact, Eggers’s perspective may be partly a result of his own experience as a social media user—one can easily imagine Mercer’s criticism of the Circle to be quite faithfully representing Egger’s own misgivings about the role of the internet in social life. Although Mercer is not a writer, he is an artisan who needs contemplative time to practice his craft—in the same way that a writer needs such time to write. When it comes to biotechnologies, of the three writers it is, again, Vinge, who paints the most optimistic picture of their future, although he is here more cautious than he is in the context of ICTs. Vinge does not focus directly on genetic engineering, but Robert’s treatment seems to involve some genetic modifications, as his biological clock is turned back about 50 years. The narrative makes it clear that in the represented universe bio­ technologies are still very much a hit-and-miss affair as far as the human body is concerned. The reason for this cautious approach may lie in Vinge’s personal scepticism in this field, perhaps caused by the fact that six years after the announcement of the completion of a “rough draft” of the human genome in 2000 and three years after the successful conclusion of the Human Genome Project had been announced in 2003 there was still no clear indi­ cation that revolutionary treatments based on the technology might appear in the market any time soon. What is more, Vinge does not devote much attention to the subjectifying consequences of Robert’s rejuvenating treat­ ment—the problem of these consequences is limited to the simple conclusion that such treatment might have unforeseen side effects affecting human sub­ jectivity as Robert loses his poetic talents but gains those of a good engineer. If these effects are rather a mixed blessing, the side effects of the mindenhancing drugs are unequivocally bad. But the narrative shows that in spite of the harmful consequences of their use, these drugs are still popular because the economy in the universe of the novel is almost completely based on cognitive work. It is perhaps the problem of the mind-enhancing drugs that is the most pessimistic aspect of the universe represented in the novel, for it clearly shows that this specific brave new world will not erase social inequalities. But even here, the very end of the novel offers a gleam of hope, for it turns out that the rabbit, who is, most probably, an avatar of a rogue AI, has been able to cure one of the characters who suffered from side effects of mind-enhancing drugs. In The Circle biotechnologies come to the fore mixed with the questions of the quantified self, surveillance and sharing of data, represented primarily in the context of the Circle health programme. The novel never focuses on the actual medical interventions in the human body but rather on the way in which ICTs may become part of biotechnologies, and Eggers here reflects ideas already popular at the time of the novel’s creation, like the idea of “personalized medicine” which, for example, is the subject of an article by Melanie Swan entitled “Health 2050: The Realization of Personalized

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Medicine through Crowdsourcing, the Quantified Self, and the Participatory Biocitizen,” published in 2012. Although Eggers is clearly aware of the ben­ eficial effects of this kind of use of ICTs, he again chooses to focus on its potentially alienating dimension. The main reason for his criticism is apparently his fear that improved healthcare resulting from the use of ICTs will have the loss of personal data and often privacy as a necessary trade-off. He is also afraid that too much stress on the idea of the quantified self may result in a highly reductive notion of self-conception. In contrast to Vinge’s and Eggers’s novels, Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy offers a wider representation of various biotechnologies and their potential subjectifying effects. The reasons for this strong focus on biotechnology may be seen in the specific cultural situation in which the first volume of the trilogy— which sets the stage for the rest of the trilogy—was written, that is, the very first years of the 21st century. Several factors contributing to this situation are important. The first was the hype accompanying the announcement of the successful completion of the “rough draft” of the human genome in 2000 and then of the Human Genome Project in 2003—the very year when Oryx and Crake was published—which was certainly interpreted in many quarters as a start of an accelerating process of genetic engineering of humans. The second factor was the fact that at the beginning of the 2000s, drug companies were the most profitable businesses in the US—as Arnold S. Relman and Marcia Angell wrote about the drug industry in 2002, “their profits are consistently much higher than those of any other American industry” (28).2 And the third factor could be seen in the heated debate over the desirability of cosmetic surgery for women—one of the important fields of the health and beauty industry—that was engaging feminist thinkers throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. What is more, it was not difficult to imagine these three factors merging in the near future, as genetic engineering seemed the next natural step for the health and beauty industry. This specific cultural situation explains why biotechnologies play such an important role in Oryx and Crake and the following volumes of the trilogy. What needs further explanation is the narrative’s generally negative perspective on these technologies. And thus, when it comes to the bitter portrayal of the corruption of the pharmaceutical industry in the narrative, it could be argued that it is simply a satirical exaggeration of the trends that were already widely publicized at the time of the first volume’s writing. Rima D. Apple’s Vitamania was published in 1996. Much of the material on which Marcia Angell bases her critical evaluation of drug companies in The Truth About the Drug Compa­ nies, published in 2004, comes from the publicly available material (sometimes of a widely notorious quality) that appeared before 2003. In fact, her book is in part a development of an article published in The New Republic in 2002 (a year before Oryx and Crake was published) in which Angell and Arnold S. Relman write about the negative impact of the drug industry on medicine, arguing that for the pharmaceutical corporations profit is far more important than effec­ tiveness—or even safety—of their drugs.

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Atwood’s satirical representation of the use of anti-ageing and beautifying technologies which are the narrative’s counterparts of cosmetic surgery is a more subjective perspective, as her stance reflects just one side of a heated debate that was raging in feminist circles in the years preceding the pub­ lication of the first volume of the trilogy. Atwood is a feminist writer her­ self, and her exploration of the problem of beautifying treatments should be seen as her contribution to the debate. The trilogy reflects the attitude per­ haps most conspicuously represented by Susan Bordo, who throughout the 1990s and early 2000s was arguing against the view of cosmetic surgery and other invasive beautifying treatments like Botox injections as empowering women and boosting their agency—the view that was becoming more and more popular also among feminist thinkers. For Bordo—as they are for Atwood—invasive beautifying treatments are solutions for “problems” arti­ ficially created by a powerful, manipulative industry. Apart from being a health risk, these treatments also create a social stigma, as many women simply cannot afford the new norm of everlasting youth and beauty. In a short update on her former writings, which was published in 2008, Bordo, however, admits defeat in her fight against the standards advocated by the beauty industry and bitterly acknowledges that even among feminist thin­ kers she now represents a minority. And in a significant passage her words link in with Atwood’s futuristic vision: In barely twenty years, we’d gone from cosmetic surgery as a “lifestyle of the rich and famous” to breast implants as middle-class graduation gifts. But no one seemed to care. Not really … I’ve become convinced that nothing I or anyone else writes or says will stop this creeping sci­ ence fiction-turned-normalcy. It’s too lucrative, too technologically fas­ cinating, and too personally gratifying for those who dispense it. And too perceptually and emotionally powerful for those who “elect” to have it.3 (31) It would be difficult not to see Atwood’s trilogy as a perfect example of the creeping science fiction that Bordo talks about. What should make Atwood’s science fiction even more distressing for people sharing Bordo’s perspective is that the trilogy shows how beautifying treatments as a norm move seam­ lessly into genetic engineering. In fact, one could imagine Bordo making exactly the same point about the genetic modification of humans in the future. Whether referring to the present cosmetic surgery or to future genetic modification, the verb “elect” ending the above quotation is doubly ironic— as both Bordo and Atwood indicate, there are scores of people who will never be able to afford these technologies. But even those who can afford them and do make use of them often do this because they have been manipulated to a smaller or larger extent by the industries that profit from the use of these technologies. These industries are responsible for, or greatly

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contribute to, establishing various social norms of behaviour and appear­ ance that require using their technology from people who want to conform. In fact, Bordo’s words about the inevitability of the development and popularization of cosmetic surgery could be applied to all technologies represented in the books analyzed in this volume. These are pessimistic words, for they mean that nothing she, or others, might say, no matter how convincing, will stop development in a certain direction because such devel­ opment does not depend on the question of what is good and what is bad for people—regardless of the fact that in the case of most technologies there will always be an argument over the issue—but on the question of profit­ ability. Bordo’s bitter conclusion is reflected very well in the way in which the internet has been developing so far. In 2005, in Internet Society, Maria Bakardjieva expressed her hope for the development of what she called democratic internet. What is important, she was basing her hope on Andrew Feenberg’s critical theory of technology, which is a modified form of social constructivism. As Bakardjieva explains: Critical theory of technology rests on the basic premise, shared with social constructivism, that natural laws and purely technical principles by themselves do not determine the shape of technology. Social forces drive technological development right down to the level of concrete design choices. (15) Actually, Vinge’s vision of the future might be seen as reflecting the per­ spective of social constructivism, for his narrative suggests that the devel­ opment of ICTs into wearables and contacts will be driven solely by the maximization of their usefulness in the socially important areas of cognitive efficiency, self-exploration and entertainment. Critical theory of technology, however, does not believe that social forces involved in the process of tech­ nological development are as politically neutral as social constructivism believes them to be: Technological progress may indeed achieve advances of general utility such as ease, convenience and speed, but the concrete form in which these advances are realized is determined by the social power under which they are made, and serves the interests of that power … Tech­ nology, therefore, is not neutral. (15) Feenberg, however, believes that this development, shaped by dominant powers, may be resisted. Starting from Foucault’s idea of resistance that always accompanies power, Feenberg comes up with the idea of what he calls sub­ versive or democratic rationalization and argues: “Technical micropolitics involves forms of concrete political protest that aim to transform particular

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technologies or technical systems through pressure from users, clients, or vic­ tims” (Feenberg 38). In other words, democratic rationalization should result in nothing less but changing technologies so that they will be more reflective of the needs of average users and not those of powerful agents. As Bakardjieva admits in the introduction to her book, Feenberg’s critical theory of technology was crucial in her understanding of the way in which the internet had been developing, because she sees in individual users a force that has a strong potential to resist the appropriation of the internet by powerful agents, who tend to shape ICTs “on a traditional information producer/provider versus client model” (194). She sees resistance to this model in a more participatory internet, boosting interfamily ties and broader social networks, creating virtual communities and allowing for “participa­ tory public relations” (194; emphasis in original). Such a resistance, as she admits, can be appropriated by the hegemonic power “into strategies that restructure domination at a higher level” but it may also—and this is what she and Feenberg wish for—“affect the system in ways that weaken the grip of the dominant rationality” (17). Studying the home-based adopters of the internet in the early 2000s, Bakardjieva is hopeful for the latter alternative, for she sees seeds of it in the various ways—she calls them “use genres”—in which the subjects of her study employed the new medium. These use genres (in other words: multistabilities of the technology of the internet) contradict the “producer/provi­ der versus client model” that, according to her, characterizes the dominant rationality. In the conclusion of the book, she claims: I see these genres as a rich resource of ideas that can direct a pursuit of democratic Internet development. Democratic, in this context, means not only building a medium that is equitably accessible, but also equi­ tably meaningful: inclusive of users’ interests and goals, diverse in terms of features and supported activities, open and responsive to users’ intervention and actively seeking users’ involvement. (193) The popularization of Facebook and other types of social media, such as Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, means that her hopes have been materi­ alized to a significant extent. These social media platforms are, indeed, responsible for the creation of virtual communities; they boost social ties and even allow average users to engage in conversations with powerful agents. They are, to repeat Bakardjieva’s wish list, “equitably accessible, but also equitably meaningful: inclusive of users’ interests and goals, diverse in terms of features and supported activities … and actively seeking users’ involvement.” There is just one wish missing from what has been realized, but one that is crucial from the perspective of the critical theory of tech­ nology: that the internet should be “open and responsive to users’ interven­ tion.” In other words, the current internet giants are responsible for users’

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fundamental lack of any power to influence the most important areas of internet use. This lack indicates clearly that what has taken place was, indeed, appropriation of democratic tendencies by the dominant rationality of capitalist production. To use Bordo’s phrase, the internet that Bakard­ jieva dreamt of was simply “too lucrative” to be left alone by the dominant social power, that is, capitalist corporations. Again, there are thinkers, like D. E. Wittkower, who choose to ignore this fact and still see the current social media as a deeply involving technology, because they see these media—such as they are—as answering some basic needs of human beings. But there are also those thinkers, like Shoshana Zuboff, who deplore this complete lack of control on the part of the users, finding it alienating. Zuboff calls the business model embraced by the cur­ rent internet giants like Facebook and Google “surveillance capitalism” and argues that this kind of capitalism, apart from submitting people to constant surveillance, conditions their behaviour so that they produce as much prof­ itable data as possible. Thus, from Zuboff’s perspective, almost complete appropriation of the internet by the tech giants is not just one minor draw­ back that pales in comparison to the benefits that users derive from social media and the internet—the fact that the internet is not open and responsive to users’ intervention means that it is open and responsive to the interven­ tion of corporations that appropriated it. And these corporations use their power to shape social media and internet use not to make them more and more meaningful for users, but more and more profitable for themselves. As a result, developments from Bakardjieva’s wish list are increasingly dis­ torted, sometimes diluted and sometimes (be careful about what you wish for!) intensified, as in the case of corporate media “actively seeking users’ involvement.” In fact, the kind of two-sidedness of technical mediation in the ethical dimension represented by Wittkower and Zuboff has also become visible during the COVID-19 pandemic, which I briefly discuss in the introduction to this volume and which has intensified the technical mediation of human life in developed countries on an unprecedented scale. What is also impor­ tant, developments during the pandemic clearly indicate the relevance of the sf analyzed by me in this book for our understanding of the (potential) role of new and emerging technologies in our life. The highly contagious nature of COVID-19 and the fact that a large number of infected people show no symptoms at all mean that social dis­ tancing is one of the most effective ways of limiting the spread of this kind of disease (until an effective vaccine is created and given to the majority of the population). As physical proximity is so dangerous, people resort to communication via the internet, whether for professional or personal rea­ sons. This means that distance learning and working tools like Microsoft Teams or social media platforms like Facebook—or indeed, the Circle—can offer highly involving technical mediation. What is more, the necessity of social distancing shows that possibility of meeting others in the form of

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photo-realistic AR avatars envisioned by Vinge would be most welcome in this kind of crisis, as such avatars offer a great improvement on twodimensional video chat. Vinge’s vision of ghosting avatars could also take virtual sightseeing tours to a completely different level. In fact, the scene in a café in Barcelona, in which the characters who sit at a table in a crowded restaurant as avatars also pay for their place, shows how the technology could benefit not only tourists but also businesses depending on tourism, which have been disastrously affected during the pandemic. Also, biotechnology use during the pandemic often represents the involving side of technical mediation. Testing for the virus allows for informed decision-making, not only on the institutional level of national and local healthcare and administration but also on the personal level of individuals. Testing as an involving activity brings to mind the situation in the MaddAddam trilogy in which Pilar, who despises the corruption of corporate healthcare, still has some biopsy samples smuggled to the HelthWyzer laboratory to confirm her own diagnosis of her illness. The development of vaccines, in turn, brings hope for the complete eradica­ tion of the disease. The outbreak of the pandemic, however, has also highlighted the alienat­ ing side of technical mediation. The suspicions about the artificial nature of the virus have so far proved to be unfounded, but they indicate the possibi­ lity of the scenario depicted in Atwood’s trilogy, in which fear of contagion is caused by genetically engineered viruses, one of which actually delivers an almost mortal blow to the human race. What is even more important, however, is the way in which developments in technology use during the pandemic have reflected representations of the alienating side of the use of ICTs in the analyzed novels. The Chinese colour code application categor­ izing citizens according to the risk they pose, which, as some commentators fear, might be easily used for political oppression, brings to mind what happens in The Circle—the applications described during the meeting of “aspirants” which also use colour schemes to categorize people according to the risk they pose for society, although here it is criminals who are supposed to be the target and the colours are not displayed on the phones but in AR visible on retinal displays. What is important here is that, as the digital rights activist Samuel Woodhams indicates, the development of various new tracking technologies is by no means limited to China: “This isn’t just an issue with authoritarian governments. This is happening across the world … A lot of the technolo­ gies we’re seeing are alarmingly similar” (qtd. in Roth et al.).4 Still, in Western democracies the coronavirus plague seems, as yet, to have been empowering private enterprises and not governments. The pandemic, for example, has allowed some corporations to flex their muscles in their rela­ tionship with democratically elected governments. As John Naughton indi­ cates, two giants of mobile communication—Apple with its iOS and Google with its Android—have agreed to create application programming interfaces

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(APIs) together that will make it possible for governments to create proxi­ mity-tracking applications on smartphones equipped with either of the two operating systems. What is important about this development is that “the companies insist that if governments do not comply with the conditions that they—Apple and Google—are laying down, then they will withdraw the APIs.” Putting aside the question of real reasons behind this offer,5 Naugh­ ton notices its important aspect: “here we have two powerful global cor­ porations laying down the law to territorial sovereigns.” As the proposal of the giants comes in the wake of some conspicuous failures on the part of national governments to create their own tracking applications, this devel­ opment subtly but clearly points to the situation near the end of The Circle, when the Circlers discuss taking over functions of the government believing that they would be more efficient, or at the universe of the MaddAddam trilogy, where corporations do govern the US after the failure of the gov­ ernment to cope with a series of crises. Tracking applications, however, do not represent the only field in which power appears to be moving away from democratically elected governments and towards neoliberal tech corporations with their philosophy of max­ imizing profits at all costs. As I have already pointed out, the need for social isolation has caused a dramatic increase in distance learning and working, as they eliminate the necessity of risky physical proximity. What this means, however, is that, again, governments, both local and national, have started to consider putting more power into the hands of the tech giants, as they are supposed to be better equipped to deal with the problem, and tech cor­ porations are only too eager to join the effort of dealing with the pandemic. Writing for The Intercept, Naomi Klein has no doubts over the real motives behind the eagerness of tech giants to invest in distance learning and working. Commenting on the planned technological solutions for the need for social distancing, Klein refers to a video presentation delivered by Eric Schmidt—a former CEO of Google and still one of the most important players in the technological world—during one of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s daily coronavirus briefings. Schmidt “joined the gover­ nor’s briefing to announce that he will be heading up a blue-ribbon com­ mission to reimagine New York state’s post-Covid reality, with an emphasis on permanently integrating technology into every aspect of civic life.” On the surface, as Klein notices, Schmidt’s assertions appeared extremely attractive in their professionalism and goodwill: “The first priorities of what we’re trying to do,” Schmidt said, “are focused on telehealth, remote learning, and broadband … We need to look for solutions that can be presented now, and accelerated, and use technology to make things better.” Lest there be any doubt that the former Google chair’s goals were purely benevolent, his video back­ ground featured a framed pair of golden angel wings. (Klein; ellipsis in original)

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Klein, however, finds it hard to believe this benevolence, arguing that Schmidt and his ilk treat the situation “not as a painful necessity to save lives, but as a living laboratory for a permanent—and highly profitable—no­ touch future.” To prove that the pandemic is only a pretext for their vision of the future, Klein refers to a presentation delivered by Schmidt before the outbreak of the pandemic, in which he was pushing for exactly the same vision of a technological no-touch future. In his pre-pandemic presentation, however, Schmidt was justifying the urgent need for taking steps leading to the realization of his vision, referring not to the risk of contagion but to the Chinese competition. Thus, ignoring the angelic imagery that accompanied Schmidt’s coronavirus presentation, Klein has no doubts that the bright future that he envisions will not create a better society: This is a future in which, for the privileged, almost everything is home delivered, either virtually via streaming and cloud technology, or physi­ cally via driverless vehicle or drone, then screen “shared” on a mediated platform … It’s a future that claims to be run on “artificial intelligence” but is actually held together by tens of millions of anonymous workers tucked away in warehouses, data centers, content moderation mills, electronic sweatshops, lithium mines, industrial farms, meat-processing plants, and prisons, where they are left unprotected from disease and hyperexploitation. It’s a future in which our every move, our every word, our every relationship is trackable, traceable, and data-mineable by unprecedented collaborations between government and tech giants. What is more, this bright future will not offer greater social mobility, either. Although the advocates of distance learning tout it as more democratic— you can listen to the best teachers in the world regardless of your physical location—Klein is less enthusiastic, arguing that “there is no technological solution to the problem of learning in a home environment that is over­ crowded and/or abusive.” Klein’s interpretation of this bright vision of the future shares important elements with both Eggers’s and Atwood’s narra­ tives. Like Eggers, she shows that this future will only give more power to ICT giants, who will use the situation to increase their profits. In turn, in its clear physical separation between the privileged few and the exploited rest Klein’s interpretation is close to the universe of the MaddAddam trilogy, with its division into safe Compounds and risky pleeblands, exposed to the ever-present danger of contagion. In fact, one does not have to go into the future to see this kind of spatial division. As I have already noticed in the introduction, the pandemic has affected various communities differently in the US, being not only the most devastating economically but also most lethal in crowded neighbourhoods inhabited by poor ethnic minorities. Importantly, this disaster added fuel to the flames of angry protests under the aegis of “Black Lives Matter” after the death of George Floyd at the hands of the local police force. Black Lives

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Matter as a movement started in 2013 with the main aim of fighting against police prejudice and violence towards black people, but, as Frank Leon Roberts notices, BLM has a wider agenda, as it is “fighting for a funda­ mental reordering of society wherein black lives are free from systematic dehumanization.” In fact, in its short history the movement has had a number of successes in its fight against institutional prejudice towards Afri­ can Americans—it led to the removal from power of several officials, including a county prosecutor and a state attorney whose actions (or lack of them) reflected prejudice against black Americans (Roberts). In the light of Klein’s interpretation of Schmidt’s vision of the future, however, it seems to me that BLM’s agenda is not wide enough. To put it differently: BLM could become part of a larger movement that should fight against the emerging flaws in American—and, increasingly, global—society, which the COVID-19 pandemic clearly exposed and the plans for post-pan­ demic arrangements promise (if Klein is right) to exacerbate. Explaining further the need for this widening of agenda I will turn, again, to sf: Walter Mosley’s Futureland. The point is that in the universe of Futureland blacks in the US do enjoy strict institutional equality—the reader learns, for example, that “[i]t’s a punishable offense to slander race” (349), or that “[r]acial profiling had been a broadcast offense for more than two decades” (322). Indeed, state-of-the-art technology has been employed to eliminate racial prejudice in the judicial process. The experimental AI court of law (called Prime Nine) in which Frendon Blythe, an African American accused of murder, stands trial in the story “Little Brother,” is considered to be more objective than courts consisting of humans. At one point, a court guard tells Frendon: “All Prime Nine does is look at the facts. He don’t care about race or sex or if you’re rich or poor” (215). What contradicts this apparent superiority, however, is the fact that the rich can—and they do—demand a human court of law. What is more, in the course of the story it turns out that the AI court was designed in such a way as to eliminate any possibility of emotions of compassion interfering in the judicial process. The point is that the system simply no longer needs prejudice to keep African Americans subjugated. Because of their dire situation, blacks do indeed often find themselves on the wrong side of the law (which is especially restrictive in the areas concerning the life of the poor), and the primary purpose of the AI court of law is not to be objectively just, but to eliminate offenders from society as quickly and efficiently as possible, either executing them or transferring them to privately owned prisons. Prime Nine, however, is only one of a number of technologies whose purpose is to keep the status quo. The universe of Futureland is also spa­ tially divided: the poor, unemployed masses—predominantly African Amer­ icans—vegetate underground in the so-called Common Ground; those lucky enough to have a job live in the lower regions above the street level where daylight never comes; and, finally, the rich dwell high above the ground, in apartments enjoying vast expanses of sky. Even those of the poor who do

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have work—the so-called prods—are in constant fear of losing it and thus of being relegated to the Common Ground, as the slightest transgression of numerous rules and laws significantly increases the risk of unemployment. A number of technologies are geared to look for any signs of misbehaviour on the part of the prods and to see to it that the inhabitants of the Common Ground do not roam aimlessly aboveground. These technologies include ID cards (which are needed to enter all buildings and, apart from a tracer function, contain personal bar code, work history, resume, and the DNA profile of the holder that is a sure proof of identity), eye scans (to access computers) and cashless money as a means of surveillance and constant control of people’s movements and activities (although cash still exists). As a result, technology is used to maintain the exploitation of blacks without any hint of racism or prejudice. As one character, a black radical activist, reflects: Generations of political struggle hadn’t been enough to fully liberate his people. The weight of poverty, the failure of justice, came down on the heads of dark people around the globe. Capitalism along with technol­ ogy had assured a perpetual white upper class. (73) What this means is that technology helps capitalism to widen the gap between the rich and the poor, predominantly African Americans, and then it is used to maintain the status quo. However, as I have already noticed in the first chapter, Mosley, apart from showing that technology will be used to intensify the exploitation of African Americans, also suggests that it will be deployed to extend the grip of corporate capital­ ism to non-black communities. When in “Little Brother” Blythe tries to argue with the AI court of justice, the guard, whose name is Otis and who is white, asks him: “What are you doing, Blythe?” “Fighting for your life, Otie.” “What?” “Can’t you see, man? Once they automate justice and wire it up there won’t be any more freedom at all. They’ll have monitors and listening devices everywhere. One day you’ll be put on trial while sleepin’ in your bed. You’ll wake up in a jail cell with an explanation of your guilt and your sentence pinned to your chest.” When Otis dismisses his words as crazy, Frendon reacts: “‘You have no vision, Otis,’ Frendon said. ‘No senses to warn you of doom’” (215). What Mosley clearly indicates here is the complacency of the whites. In other words, both black and white people should be united in the struggle against corporate technocapitalism.

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What is important for this struggle is not only political awareness, but also awareness of the effects of technical mediation. The novels analyzed by me in this volume show how technology mediates, or may mediate, our life, but also indicate how capitalism uses this mediation for its own purposes. Indeed, The Circle might be seen as a straightforward answer to the call for a vision warning us about the potential doom. In his novel Eggers shows how social media, whose apparent aim is the satisfaction of the basic human need for social contact, are developed not to be better and better in mean­ ingfully connecting people but to be more and more profitable, in the pro­ cess subjectifying people in such a way that they meet the demands of profitability in the most effective way. What is more, Eggers shows that the changes in human subjectivity caused by the use of social media and ICTs in general make people increasingly vulnerable to potential abuses of power, as surveillance-for-profit that people not only learn to accept but to which they willingly adapt can be easily changed into surveillance-for­ political-power. Actually, The Circle shows how technology can be used to decrease the prejudice of the police based on skin colour. It is the very technology dis­ cussed during the meeting of the “aspirants” that would allow policemen equipped with retinal displays to see criminal records of passers-by and in this way, the theory goes, only real offenders, and not all members of an ethnic group, would become the focus of police’s interest. This is supposed to be an ingenious use of technology for the improvement of the fate of the blacks—in fact, a technology that deals with the main grievance of BLM— but the reader of the novel is not convinced about its desirability. Stenton’s interest is a clear indication that this kind of technology might be easily abused, but when Belinda—the inventor of the technology—argues that, ideally, retinal displays should have access to personal chips of all passers-by (mandatory chips for all citizens is another “progressive” development advocated by the Circle) the reader has no doubts about the nightmarish potential of the technology. Profiling based on skin colour could be replaced by profiling based on income, home address, political convictions, etc., which would simply replace (but with a fair amount of overlap) racism with other types of discriminatory categorizations. Actually, the current develop­ ment of facial-recognition technologies means that there would be no need for mandatory chips for retinal displays to achieve this kind of functionality. Atwood, in turn, shows how ICTs and technologies of secure shelter allow people to forget about the grave problems of their world, like poverty and devastation of the environment caused by exploitative capitalism, as they lock themselves in the germ-free safety of the Compounds in the manner that Klein represents in her interpretation of the hi-tech, no-touch future advocated by Schmidt and his ilk. Actually, even the makeover industry may be seen as an aspect of the wider system of neoliberal control, as it reflects what Diane Negra calls “postfeminist consumerist enchantment” (118), clearly echoing Bordo’s criticism of cosmetic surgery. Explaining what she means by postfeminism,

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Negra refers to Imelda Whelehan’s analysis of the contemporary situation of women in neoliberal societies: At the beginning of the new millennium, feminists have been positioned as the cultural oppressors of “normal” women against which a younger generation of “new” feminists offers as antidote a marked individualistic kind of “radicalism.” This radicalism pretends the power of self-defini­ tion is all about “being in control” and “making choices,” regardless, it seems of who controls the “choices” available. (Whelehan qtd. in Negra 117) As Negra points out, “At a basic level, postfeminist culture manages the decline of social health by emphasizing the importance of personal (physical and emotional) health in an individualized, isolated context” (118). Under­ stood in this way, a postfeminist becomes an ideal client of the health and beauty industries, assuming “control” of her body and appearance. But assuming control of herself in the isolated context of individualism, a postfeminist loses sight of wider problems: “The consumerist spectacles asso­ ciated with postfeminism work to neutralize and camouflage looming crises of natural resources and the persistence of poverty while cooperating with the re-emergence of unapologetic class stratification in America” (118). Thinking about how to use technology to maintain their youth and enhance their beauty, women (but also, more and more frequently, men) have no sense to warn them of impending doom. Vinge’s novel, which—in contrast to works by Eggers and Atwood—is generally optimistic about the role that technology will play in human life, is no less important in the context of capitalism’s use of technology for its own purposes. Although there is no reason to question Vinge’s enthusiasm about the ways in which wearable computers with smart contacts could make human life better in certain areas—and the pandemic has clearly indicated this potential—Vinge’s vision, read with hindsight given us by the direction that technological development has taken since its publication, appears in a darker light. In fact, the novel’s descriptions of the involving side of ICTs fit the first half of Zuboff’s succinct statement about surveil­ lance capitalism: “It gives so much, but it takes even more.” Because these technologies give so much—and Vinge’s novel splendidly shows how much—people willingly embrace their subjectifying power. But, as the second part of Zuboff’s comment indicates, wearable computing will not be left alone by surveillance capitalism. In fact, Google is already blazing a trail towards a future of wearable computing. Wearable Google Glass is perhaps the best known pioneering technology in this field, but the company is also developing smart clothes containing “sensors that can ‘see’ through the fabric to detect and decipher gestures as subtle as the twitch of your finger” (Zuboff). Whatever the sensors in the fabric “see,” Google sees—and does not allow to be wasted—as well. A great amount of imagination is not

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needed to envision the way in which consumer smart contacts could be exploited by the likes of Google or—the Circle. Even AR play, which in Rainbows End appears to be mostly about crea­ tive self-expression, should be seen in a darker tone in the light of Zuboff’s argumentation. Discussing Pokémon Go, a game (developed by Niantic Labs, a company which belongs to Google’s Alphabet holding company) using AR generated by players’ smartphones, Zuboff claims that the devel­ opers of the game quickly learnt how to condition the behaviour of the players to make it as profitable as possible: The elements and dynamics of the game, combined with its novel aug­ mented-reality technology, operate to herd populations of game players through the real-world monetization checkpoints constituted by the game’s actual customers: the entities who pay to play on the real-world game board, lured by the promise of guaranteed outcomes. And all the time, information about players and businesses taking part in the game is gathered for further processing, monetization and, if the opportunity arises, conditioning of human behaviour. In general, thinking about technical mediation we have to remember that we will never escape the subjectifying influence of technology use—even a decision not to use a specific technology defines us as specific subjects—and in many cases the ethical assessment of the subjectifying power of technical mediation will always be a matter of a debate. What is crucial, however, is that we should be aware of the ways in which our use of various technolo­ gies affects us: how technical mediation influences our behaviour, our selfconception, our self-expression and creativity, and also our place in society. Only this awareness may lead us to Foucauldian ethical subjectification based on critical ontology, which is an attitude, an ethos, a philosophical life in which the critique of what we are is at one and the same time the historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them. (“Enlightenment” 118) This kind of critical attitude should be valuable for the average users of technology, but for political activists, in my opinion, it should be essential. In fact, probably the general lack of this awareness of the subjectifying power of technical mediation is the reason why Feenberg’s wish for the subversive rationalization of technology use has not been fulfilled so far. In my opinion, it is highly possible that the more the general public knows about the effects of technical mediation, the more critical it will be of its subjectifying power, especially when this mediation is utilized by neoliberal capitalism for its own purposes. Sf of the kind analyzed in this book—

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fiction which extrapolates from the present situation in order to foresee developments in the near future—is one of the best candidates for spreading this knowledge. Armed with such knowledge, we will have a better chance to build a world filled with technology truly serving people and not corpo­ rate masters.

Notes 1 Her optimism is echoed, for example, by Yochai Benkler, referred to in Chapter 2, p. 71, above. 2 It was only the subsequent rise of the internet giants that deprived pharmaceutical companies of this pride of place. 3 The “elect” in the last sentence is a clear reference to Balsamo’s idea of “electing” cosmetic surgery as a subversive fashion statement—see Chapter 4, p. 180. 4 Alarming similarities between technologies of control used in authoritarian coun­ tries like China and those used in Western democracies like the US are not limited to what is happening during the pandemic—see Newton for some of these simi­ larities. Writing about Chinese system of social control Adam Greenfield argues: “there’s nothing so distinctly Chinese about it that it couldn’t be rolled out any­ where else the right conditions obtain.” 5 Digital rights scholar and activist Michael Veale argues that the Apple–Google APIs, although “great for individual privacy,” give the tech giants great power “to analyse or shape communities or countries, or even to change individual beha­ viour, such as to privately target ads based on their most sensitive data—without any single individual’s data leaving their phone.”

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Index

abstract mode of human–technology interaction 27–9, 36, 49, 67n29, 71, 73, 85, 86–7, 91, 173, 183, 184–6; in Brave New World 49; in The Circle 61, 71, 72, 73, 85, 86–8, 91, 97, 100–1, 112; in “The Machine Stops” 45; in the MaddAddam trilogy 62, 166, 173, 183–5, 192; in Rainbows End 150; sf as 44, 47, 68n34, 113, 151; in The Space Merchants 53; see also modes of human–technology interaction Achterhuis, Hans 14 Actor-Network Theory (ANT) 8, 15, 16, 18–19 Adderall 145, 147 AI see artificial intelligence algorithmic processes 79–80, 94; in The Circle 79, 80–3, 88, 90, 94, 112–13; see also artificial intelligence Alphabet (Google’s holding company) 211 Amazon (company) 114n2, 146 Angell, Marcia 187, 199 ANT see Actor-Network Theory anti-ageing treatments 173–5, 177–8; in the MaddAddam trilogy 174–8; see also body; botox; cosmetic surgery; health and beauty industries; makeover culture Anticipations (Wells) 43 anti-utopia: The Circle as 63 Appadurai, Arjun 137 Apple (company) 114n2, 204–5, 212n5 Apple, Rima D. 183–4, 199 AR see augmented reality archive: in The Circle 75–7; digital 137, 152n25; internet as 75–7, 137; in Rainbows End 128, 137, 152n25; see also memory

artificial intelligence (AI) 80, 206; in Futureland 57, 207, 208; in Rainbows End 198 Ashplant, T. G. 63–4, 196 Atlas, James 177 attention: deep see deep attention; hyper see hyper attention; see also cognitive mode of human–technology interaction; multitasking Atwood, Margaret 10, 62–3, 68n32, 153–94, 195–7, 199–200, 204, 206, 209–10; see also The Heart Goes Last; MaddAddam (novel); MaddAddam trilogy; Oryx and Crake; The Year of the Flood augmented reality (AR) 30, 66n18, 133, 135–6, 141, 152n19, 211; in The Circle 204; in Rainbows End 62, 121, 122, 130–2, 134–5, 136–40, 142, 143, 148–9, 150, 151n14, 204, 211 Aytes, Ayhan 143, 145–7 Bacon, Roger 12 Bakardjieva, Maria 106, 196, 201–3 Ballinger, Claire 99 Balsamo, Anne 179–80, 212n3 Bartfai, Tamas 185, 194n17 Baudrillard, Jean 159, 193n7 Bauman, Zygmunt 193–4n16 behavioural conditioning: in Brave New World 48; in Nineteen Eighty-Four 51 Belliger, Andréa 96 Benkler, Yochai 71, 212n1 Bentham, Jeremy 25, 103–5 bioconservatism 14; see also posthumanism; transhumanism biopolitics 24, 25, 96, 148, 155, 170; in the MaddAddam trilogy 155, 170; see also Foucault, Michel

226

Index

biotechnology 12, 17, 33, 34, 60, 64, 183, 184; in Brave New World 48; in The Circle 198; during the COVID-19 pandemic 5, 6, 204; in Futureland 57; in the MaddAddam trilogy 62, 153, 164, 179 189, 190, 193n6, 199; in Rainbows End 63, 116, 198; see also anti-ageing treatments; breast augmentation; genetic engineering Black Lives Matter (BLM) 6, 206–7; see also Floyd, George BLM see Black Lives Matter body: and ageing 173–5, 177–8; anatomo-politics (discipline) of 25; Body Mass Index 96; in Brave New World 49; in The Circle 63, 95–8, 198; and consumer culture 180, 181, 209–10; in “The Machine Stops” 45; in the MaddAddam trilogy 159, 169–71, 173, 175–7, 178–9, 181, 199–200; and mindfull fitness 170; and multitasking 89; and neoliberal subjectivity 171; and normalization 172; in Neuromancer 54–5; as a pornographic spectacle 159; in Rainbows End 63, 116–18, 122–3, 149, 198; and self-tracking 95–6; subject’s awareness of 117; see also health and beauty industries; makeover culture; physical mode of human–technology interaction Bogost, Ian 197 Bordo, Susan 172–4, 193n16, 200–1, 203, 209; see also anti-ageing treatments; botox; breast augmentation botox 174–5, 200; see also anti-ageing treatments; health and beauty industries Bottenberg, Frances 132 Bould, Mark 54 Bourdieu, Pierre 92 Boyer, Dominic 148 Brave New World (Huxley) 48–51, 60, 68n36, 68n37; and The Circle 109; and “The Machine Stops” 49; and Nineteen Eighty-Four 52; and Rainbows End 148 breast augmentation 172–3, 200; in the Maddaddam trilogy 169, 173; see also health and beauty industries; makeover culture Browitt, Jeff 88 Brown, Wendy 66n16, 96, 171 Bruckner, Till 187, 194n19

Brunner, John 68n32 Bull, Hedley 192n2 Burke, Edmund 157 “Burning Chrome” (Gibson) 54 Burns, R. W. 51 Cadora, Karen 56, 68n42 Canavan, Gerry 191, 193n13 capitalism 29, 145, 181, 211; in The Circle 72, 209; in cyberpunk 59; in Futureland 58–9, 208; in the MaddAddam trilogy 181, 183, 209; in Rainbows End 210; surveillance capitalism 203, 210–11; see also neoliberalism Carmigniani, Julie 66n18 Cartesian mind–body dualism 54; in Neuromancer 54, 123 Castel, Robert 155 China 6–7, 10n2, 115n13, 146, 204, 206, 212n4; in Rainbows End 144 Chow-White, Peter A. 68n43 The Circle (Eggers): abstract mode of human–technology interaction in 61, 71, 72, 73, 85, 86–8, 91, 97, 100–1, 112; algorithmic processes in 79, 80– 3, 88, 90, 94, 112–13; as anti-utopia 63; archive in 75–7; biotechnology in 198; body in 63, 95–8, 198; and Brave New World 109; capitalism in 72, 209; chipping people in 110–11, 209; cognitive mode of human–technology interaction in 61, 72–3, 74, 75, 76–7, 79, 86, 87, 89, 90, 96, 97, 98, 101, 104, 109, 112; computer technology in 61, 109; critical ontology in 108, 113; cyborg in 97; deep attention in 89; retinal displays in 70, 110–11, 114n1, 204, 209; enabling–constraining structure of technical mediation in 79, 80, 83, 98, 197; environmental mode of human–technology interaction in 61, 74, 101, 103–4; ethical subjectification in 63, 108, 113; Foucauldian freedom in 113; gamification in 61, 90–2, 93, 97; healthcare in 95–100, 198–9; hyper attention in 89; information and communication technologies in 61, 70, 71–3, 74–5, 76, 77, 78–9, 80–3, 85, 86, 91, 95–8; 107, 109, 113, 197–9, 209; internet in 71, 72–3, 75–7, 81–3, 87, 108, 110, 112, 197; involving–alienating structure of

Index technical mediation in 63, 82, 83, 95, 99, 101, 104, 106, 107, 110, 113, 195, 199; and the MaddAddam trilogy 192, 195, 197, 199, 206; magnification–reduction structure of technical mediation in 80, 98, 107; monetization of technology use in 73, 86, 110, 114n8; multistability of technology in 73, 110; multitasking in 89–90, 134; neoliberalism in 72, 86, 96, 150; and Nineteen Eighty-Four 111, 114n3; personal transparency in 100–1, 103, 106, 107, 110, 112, 113, 128; physical mode of human–technology interaction in 90, 97; pressure for social media activity in 83–90; privacy in 77, 99, 105, 112, 199; quantification in social media in 90, 91–2, 93, 94–5; rankings in 81, 90–2, 94–5; rebound effect in 99–100; relationship-tracking in 98; revealing–concealing structure of technical mediation in 78, 79, 80, 98, 104; right to anonymity in 72–3, 111; self-conception in 61, 74, 75, 77, 79, 95, 99, 199; self-tracking in 95–8; social media and democracy in 105–6, 109; social media and power in 109–113; social self in 61, 76–9, 87, 88, 92, 93, 94–5, 99, 101, 103–4, 107, 108, 109; surveillance in 61, 99–104, 108, 110, 113, 115n13, 198, 209; technological transparency in 114n7; telecare in 99–100; utopian dimension in 70, 71, 72, 75, 105, 110, 112, 113 Claeys, Gregory 63 Clark, Andy 125–7, 129, 151n10 cognition, automatic system of 30–1, 33; in The Space Merchants 53; see also cognitive mode of human–technology interaction cognitive enhancement 126–7, 145, 147; in Rainbows End 122, 126, 127, 144–5, 147, 150; see also cognitive mode of human–technology interaction cognitive labour 143, 145–7; and disciplinary power 147; and mechanization of the human mind 147; in Rainbows End 143–7, 150, 198; see also cognitive mode of human–technology interaction; crowdsourcing; Mechanical Turk cognitive mode of human–technology interaction 27, 29–31, 32–4, 36,

227

67n29, 72, 75, 80, 86, 97, 158, 161; in Brave New World 48; in The Circle 61, 72–3, 74, 75, 76–7, 79, 86, 87, 89, 90, 96, 97, 98, 101, 104, 109, 112; as expression of lifestyle and self 29, 30, 31, 37; as guidance 29, 30; in “The Machine Stops” 45; in the MaddAddam trilogy 62, 63, 158, 161, 166, 191; in Neuromancer 54; in Nineteen Eighty-Four 51; as persuasion 29, 30, 32, 96; in Rainbows End 62, 119, 122, 125–6, 129, 134, 136, 150; see also aug­ mented reality; cognition, automatic system of; cognitive enhancement; cognitive labour; modes of human–technology interaction; self-conception; social self computer games 29, 39, 66n20, 141–2, 160, 161; in the MaddAddam trilogy 160–1 computer technology 30, 31, 54, 60, 80, 123, 126, 129, 130, 196, 197; in The Circle 61, 109; in Neuromancer 54, 123; in Futureland 57–8, 208; in the MaddAddam trilogy 158; wearable computers in Rainbows End 61–2, 63, 116, 122–6, 128–31, 133, 135, 140, 147, 148, 149 150, 201, 210; see also cognitive mode human–technology interaction; computer games; information and communication technologies; internet; smart contacts Comte, Auguste 12 Coppock, Patrick 141 coronavirus see COVID-19 pandemic cosmetic surgery 173–4; and commodification of the body 180; as “fashion surgery” 179–80; as revelation of the true identity 175; see also anti-ageing treatments; body; botox; breast augmentation; makeover culture COVID-19 pandemic: biotechnology use during 5, 6, 204; healthcare during 6, 204; information and communication technologies during 6–7, 203–5; pharmaceutical industry during 6; social media during 5 critical ontology 37, 46, 50, 53, 108, 113, 166, 184, 192, 211; in Brave New World 50; in The Circle 108, 113; in “The Machine Stops” 46; in the MaddAddam trilogy 164, 166, 168,

228

Index

192; in The Space Merchants 53; see also Foucault, Michel Critical Theory 13, 65n1 critical theory of technology 201–2 crowdsourcing 28, 146–7, 199; in Rainbows End 146; see also cognitive labour; Mechanical Turk Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., Istvan 40–1, 66n15 cultural history 41, 63–4, 196 Cuomo, Andrew 205 Cust, Harry 4, 42 cybernetics 54, 55, 68n38, 68n39 cyberpunk 54, 56; feminist 56; see also “Burning Chrome”; Futureland; Glass Houses; Neuromancer cyborg 55; bee cyborg in the MaddAddam trilogy 167; in The Circle 97; according to Clark 126, 151n10; according to Haraway 56; in Rainbows End 117; according to Verbeek 33–4, 55, 151n10 Danter, Stefan 95 Darwinism: in The Time Machine 3–4, 45 deep attention 31; in The Circle 89; in Rainbows End 134; see also hyper attention; multitasking De Kosnik, Abigail 142 designer babies 34–5; in the MaddAddam trilogy 69n46, 178 determinism: technical 19, 138 displays: retinal displays in contact lenses see smart contacts; retinal displays in The Circle 70, 110–11, 114n1, 204, 209; retinal displays aiding memory 126–7; stationary displays compared to mobile displays 123; stationary and mobile displays compared to smart contacts 124 Dittmar, Helga 175, 177 Dorrestijn, Steven 8, 14, 18, 39, 65n6, 65n7, 65n8, 67n27, 67n31; ethics of technology 37–8; modes of human–technology interaction 27–33, 35–6, 67n29, 68n34; technical mediation and Foucault 18, 24, 25–6, 37 Dovey, Dana 152n19 Duffy, Brooke Erin 114n8 Dumit, Joseph 185–7, 188, 194n17 Dusek, Val 11, 12 dystopia: Brave New World 50, 53; “The Machine Stops” 46, 162;

MaddAddam trilogy 63, 153; Nineteen Eighty-Four 53 dystopian dimension in theoretical evaluations of the role of technology in human life 13, 28, 66n12, 91, 104; see also utopia/dystopia syndrome in the philosophy of technology Eco, Umberto 141 Edison, Thomas 4, 46 Eggers, Dave 10, 61, 62, 63, 68n45, 70–115, 116, 128, 134, 149, 150, 192, 195, 197–9, 206, 209, 210; see also The Circle Ellin, Nan 197 embodiment relations between humans and technology 20, 65n10, 67n29; see also human–technology relations; postphenomenology; transparency, technological empirical turn in the philosophy of technology 14; see also philosophy of technology enabling–constraining structure of technical mediation 22–3, 36, 98, 120, 145; in Brave New World 49, 50; in The Circle 79, 80, 83, 98, 197; in Gernsback 47; in “The Machine Stops” 45; in the MaddAddam trilogy 162, 173, 178, 180, 183, 184; in Rainbows End 121, 125, 127, 130, 132, 140, 145; in The Time Machine 42; in When the Sleeper Wakes 43; see also two-sidedness of technical mediation engagement disloyalty (Goffman) 130; in Rainbows End 130, 133 engineer/inventor paradigm in the development of science fiction 46–7; see also evolutionary paradigm in the development of science fiction; environmental mode of human–technology interaction 27, 35–6, 67n29, 80; in Brave New World 49; in The Circle 61, 74, 101, 103–4; in “The Machine Stops” 45; in the MaddAddam trilogy 62, 63, 154, 158, 161, 166–7, 173, 190, 191; in A Modern Utopia 44, 45; in Nineteen Eighty-Four 51; in Rainbows End 62, 125, 150; in The Time Machine 42; in When the Sleeper Wakes 43; see also modes of human–technology interaction; Panopticon; surveillance

Index epistemological dimension of the two-sidedness of technical mediation see magnification–reduction structure of technical mediation ethical dimension of the two-sidedness of technical mediation see involving–alienating structure of technical mediation ethical subjectification 36–7, 53, 63, 108,

113, 121, 166, 211; in The Circle 63, 108,

113; in the MaddAddam trilogy 63,

163–4, 166; in Neuromancer 54; in

Rainbows End 121; in The Space

Merchants 53; see also Foucault, Michel

ethics of technology 36–9 ethnic inequality: during the COVID-19

pandemic 6, 206–7; and digital divide

56; in Futureland 56–7, 58–9, 207–8;

see also Black Lives Matter

evolutionary paradigm in the

development of science fiction 42, 46;

see also Darwinism; engineer/inventor

paradigm in the development of

science fiction

Ewald, François 172

existential dimension of the two-sidedness of technical mediation see revealing–concealing structure of technical mediation expression of lifestyle and self 29, 30, 37,

171, 200; in the MaddAddam trilogy

166; in Neuromancer 55; see also

cognitive mode of human–technology

interaction

Facebook 5, 37, 61, 67n26, 70, 76, 81,

84, 88–9, 92–3, 114n2, 114n4, 197,

202, 203; see also social media;

surveillance capitalism

Farah, Martha 145

FDA see Food and Drug Administration Feenberg, Andrew 201–2, 211

feminism: and cosmetic surgery 179–80, 199, 200–1; and cyberpunk 56; and sf 56, 68n42; see also postfeminism fiction: as complementary to philosophy 8; see also science fiction Fitting, Peter 68n32 fitness industry see health and beauty industries Floridi, Luciano 30–1, 66n19, 67n21, 75,

80, 114n5, 127; and Foucault 66n19

Floyd, George 6, 114n9, 206; see also Black Lives Matter

229

Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

183, 187, 194n19

Forster, E. M. 44–6, 49, 55, 68n35, 108,

162–3; see also “The Machine Stops”

Foucault, Michel: anatomo-politics of

the human body (discipline) 24–5, 32,

91, 147; biopower 24–5, 113;

biopolitics 24, 25, 96, 148, 155; care

of the self 26; critical ontology 37, 46,

50, 53, 108, 113, 166, 184, 192, 211;

ethical subjectification 36–7, 53, 63,

108, 113, 121, 166, 211; and Floridi

66n19; freedom 9, 26, 50, 58, 63, 64,

68n38, 113, 121; government 25;

human subjectivity 9, 18, 24, 26;

normalization 172–3; Panopticon 25,

26, 35, 103, 104, 105, 111; pastoral

power 167; power 9, 18, 24, 96;

resistance 201; state racism 155, 162;

subject and subjectivity 9, 25–7, 36–7,

148, 162; subjectification 9, 18, 26–7,

113; subjugated knowledges 165; and

technical mediation 9, 18, 24, 25–6,

65n6; tekhnē 25; transformative

experience 161–2, 189

Frankfurt School 13

free labour 114n8, 142; see also crowdsourcing; cognitive labour freedom (Foucault) 9, 26, 50, 58, 63, 64,

68n38, 113, 121; in Brave New World

50; in The Circle 113; in Futureland

58; in “The Machine Stops” 46,

68n35; in Rainbows End 121

Freud, Sigmund 160

Fuchs, Mathias 91

Furht, Borko 66n18 Fukuyama, Francis 14

Futureland (Mosley) 56–9, 207–8; and

Neuromancer 57

Galloway, Alexander 143

Galloway, Scott 114n2 gamification 29, 66n17, 91, 92–4, 97,

197; in The Circle 61, 90–2, 93, 97;

compared to play 138

gated communities 197; in the Mad­ dAddam trilogy 156, 197

garden: in the MaddAddam trilogy 166–8; Gehl, Robert 114n2 genetic engineering 5, 14, 34, 35, 199,

200; in Brave New World 48; in

Futureland 58; germline genetic

engineering 34–5; in the MaddAddam

trilogy 62, 69n46, 153, 154, 157, 178,

230

Index

189, 190–1, 192, 199, 200, 204; in Neuromancer 55; in Rainbows End 198; see also biotechnology Gernsback, Hugo 47 gestural routines 32; in “The Machine Stops” 45; in Rainbows End 119, 122, 150; see also physical mode of human–technology interaction Gibson, William 53–5, 57, 68n39, 123, 180; see also “Burning Chrome”; Neuromancer Glass Houses (Mixon) 56 Goffman, Erving 104, 130, 133, 152n17 Google 5, 60, 61, 70, 114n2, 114n4, 197, 203, 204–5, 210–11, 212n5; in Rainbows End 123, 128; see also surveillance capitalism Grebowicz, Margret 159, 193n7 Greenfield, Adam 115n13, 212n4 Grosser, Benjamin 67n26, 92–3 Habermas, Jürgen 65n1, 148 Haldane, J. B. S. 48 Handycam revolution 102 Hanson, Julienne 99 Haraway, Donna 56, 65n2 Hayles, N. Katherine 16–17, 65n2, 67n24, 68n40 health and beauty industries 170, 171, 172, 175, 177, 183, 193–4n16, 199; 210; in the MaddAddam trilogy 170–2, 173, 192; see also anti-ageing treatments; botox; breast augmentation; cosmetic surgery; healthcare; pharmaceutical industry; vitamin supplementation healthcare: in The Circle 95–100, 198–9; during the COVID-19 pandemic 6, 204; in the MaddAddam trilogy 155, 164–5, 182, 188; and neoliberalism 28; in Rainbows End 149; and self-tracking 28, 96, 98; and state racism 155; and telecare 99, 205; see also health and beauty industries; pharmaceutical industry The Heart Goes Last (Atwood) 193n5 Heidegger, Martin 13–14, 16, 19–20, 21, 66n12, 151n1, 194n18 hermeneutic relations between humans and technology 20, 65n10, 67n29, 89; see also human–technology relations; postphenomenology Heyes, Cressida J. 169, 172, 175 Hinsliff, Gaby 7

Holliday, George 102 Hongladarom, Soraj 127–8, 140–1 Howe, Jeff 146 Human Genome Project 198, 199; see also genetic engineering human–technology interaction 7, 8, 9, 18, 27, 36, 38, 39, 41, 42, 60, 64, 65n8, 67n27, 79, 117, 150, 195; modes of see modes of human–technology interaction; see also technical mediation human–technology relations (Ihde) 20, 65–6n10; and the modes of human–technology interaction 67n29 humanism 17–18, 65n4; see also posthumanism; transhumanism Huxley, Aldous 48–51, 52, 60, 68n36, 68n37, 109, 148; see also Brave New World hybrid, human–technology 34, 37, 38, 55, 67n27 hyper attention 31; in The Circle 89; in Rainbows End 134; see also deep attention; multitasking ICTs see information and communication technologies Ihde, Don 14, 65n3, 66n12, 68n41; human–technology relations 20, 21, 65n10, 67n29, 89; multistability 19; postphenomenology 8, 15–16, 17, 18, 65n8; technoscience 12, 68n33 Ilharco, Fernando M. 123 implants 33–4, 172, 200; in the MaddAddam trilogy 169; see also breast augmentation; physical mode of human–technology interaction information and communication technologies (ICTs): in The Circle 61, 70, 71–3, 74–5, 76, 77, 78–9, 80–3, 85, 86, 91, 95–8; 107, 109, 113, 197–9, 209; during the COVID-19 pandemic 6–7, 204–5; as detrimental to human subjectivity 197; and digital traces 78; in Futureland 56–7; and healthcare 28, 95–6, 98, 198–9; and identity experimentation 196; in the MaddAddam trilogy 62–3, 157, 158–63, 196, 209; in Neuromancer 54; in Rainbows End 61–2, 116, 125, 127, 128–33, 146–7, 148, 150, 201, 210; recent development of 5, 33, 59; and surveillance capitalism 210; as technologies of the self 30–1; in When

Index the Sleeper Wakes 43; see also

augmented reality; computer

technology; displays; internet;

social media

information society 127, 193n7, 144 infosphere 80 inscription techniques 119; see also materiality of discourse Instagram 114n8, 202 interactionist social psychology 67n21, 67n22 internet: addictive nature of 33; anonymity and fake identities on 72, 114n4, 131–2, 196; as archive 75–7, 137; in The Circle 71, 72–3, 75–7, 81–3, 87, 108, 110, 112, 197; competition to dominate 114n2; during the COVID-19 pandemic 6, 7, 203; democratic potential in 106, 201–3; distortion of information on 76–7, 151n11; as an empowering technology 71, 196; and free labour 142; in Futureland 57; and “The Machine Stops” 44; in the MaddAddam trilogy 63, 158, 162; as persuasive technology 30; and pornography 135, 159; and privacy 77; profiting from 86, 94; in Rainbows End 62, 128, 133, 150; and surveillance capitalism 203; as undermining contact with the real world 159, 197; see also information and communication technologies; social media Introna, Lucas D. 123 involving–alienating structure of technical mediation 23, 36, 87n30, 99, 120, 173, 203, 204; in Anticipations 43; in Brave New World 49, 52; in The Circle 63, 82, 83, 95, 99, 101, 104, 106, 107, 110, 113, 195, 199; in Gernsback 47; in “The Machine Stops” 46; in the MaddAddam trilogy 63, 162, 181, 195; in A Modern Utopia 46; in Nineteen Eighty-Four 52; in Rainbows End 63, 128, 132, 139, 149, 195, 210; in The Time Machine 42–3; in When the Sleeper Wakes 43; see also two-sidedness of technical mediation The Island of Doctor Moreau (Wells) 43 James, Edward 47 Jenkins, Henry 152n22

231

Kafka, Franz 77 Kant, Immanuel 12, 26, 37 Keogh, Brendan 66n20, 141 King, Angela 178 Kiran, Asle H. 8, 66n12; two-sidedness of technical mediation 20–4, 36, 54, 67n30, 99, 113 Kittler, Friedrich 119–20, 151n4 Klein, Naomi 205–6, 207, 209 Kornbluth, C. M. 52, 164; see also The Space Merchants Krieger, David J. 96 Latour, Bruno 8, 14–15, 16, 18, 20, 32, 34, 58, 65n3, 65n8, 65n9, 67n27; Actor-Network Theory 8, 15, 16, 18–19 Lavender, Isiah III 57 Le Corbusier 12, 28, 35 Leder, Drew 151n2 Lee, Gerald Stanley 42 Lees, Graham V. 185, 194n17 Le Guin, Ursula 62 Leroi-Gourhan, André 11 Lewis, Paul 67n26 Lovitt, William 14 Luckhurst, Roger 9, 11, 41–2, 46, 47, 48, 61, 68n32, 68n42 Lupton, Deborah 96, 114n6 “The Machine Stops” (Forster) 44–6, 68n35; and Brave New World 49; and The Circle 108; and the MaddAddam trilogy 162–3; and A Modern Utopia 44, 45, 46; and Neuromancer 55 Macpherson, C. B. 16–17 macroperception 67n29; see also human–technology relations MaddAddam (novel; Atwood) 153, 154, 168, 169; 170–1, 181, 182, 189, 190; see also MaddAddam trilogy MaddAddam trilogy (Atwood): abstract mode of human–technology interaction in 62, 166, 173, 183–5, 192; anti-ageing treatments in 174–8; biotechnology in 62, 153, 164, 179 189, 190, 193n6, 199; body in 159, 169–71, 173, 175–7, 178–9, 181, 199–200; breast augmentation in 173; capitalism in 181, 183, 209; and The Circle 192, 195, 197, 199, 206; cognitive mode of human–technology interaction in 62, 63, 158, 161, 166, 191; computer games in 160–1; critical ontology in 164, 166, 168, 192; designer babies in 69n46, 178; as a dystopia 63,

232

Index

153; enabling–constraining structure of technical mediation in 162, 173, 178, 180, 183, 184; environmental mode of human–technology interaction in 62, 63, 154, 158, 161, 166–7, 173, 190, 191; ethical subjectification in 63, 163–4, 166; fear of old age and death in 62, 158, 169, 177, 191, 192; gated communities in 156, 197; garden in 166–8; genetic engineering in 62, 69n46, 153, 154, 157, 178, 189, 190–1, 192, 199, 200, 204; health and beauty industries in 170–2, 173, 192; healthcare in 155, 164–5, 182, 188; human-dominated nature in 164, 166, 191; implants in 169; information and communication technologies in 62–3, 157, 158–63, 196, 209; internet in 63, 158, 162; involving–alienating structure of technical mediation in 63, 162, 181, 195; magnification–reduction structure of technical mediation in 162; makeover culture in 169, 175–6, 179, 180–1, 192; multistability of technology in 189, 191; neoliberalism in 62, 63, 154, 155, 162, 169, 183, 188, 192n2; the Other in 156, 159, 161, 162–3, 191; pharmaceutical industry in 170, 182–3, 186–7, 188, 199; physical mode of human–technology interaction in 62, 166, 167, 173; pornography in 159, 193n9; reality TV in 158, 159, 161; revealing–concealing structure of technical mediation in 162, 164, 190; self-conception in 156, 166, 175–6, 178; social self in 175–6; and The Space Merchants 164; state racism in 155; surveillance in 157, 164; vitamin supplementation in 169, 170, 174, 183; vitamin supplementation as a vector of an engineered illness in 182, 185, 186–7 Madrigal, Alexis C. 67n26 magnification–reduction structure of technical mediation 20, 21–2, 36, 66n11, 80, 98, 107; in The Circle 80, 98, 107; in Gernsback 47; in “The Machine Stops” 45–6; in the MaddAddam trilogy 162; in Rainbows End 125 makeover culture 169, 173, 175, 180, 183, 186, 209; in the MaddAddam trilogy 169, 175–6, 179, 180–1, 192 Mankind in the Making (Wells) 43, 44 Marcuse, Herbert 13, 14, 28

Markula, Pirkko 170 materiality of discourse 119–20; in Rainbows End 119–20 Matsakis, Louise 115n13 McGonigal, Jane 29, 91 McLuhan, Marshall 35, 59 McNicol, Andrew 114n4 Mechanical Turk 146; see also cognitive labour; crowdsourcing Mechanism: as technology 11, 41 Medawar, Charles 187 memory: collective 137; cybernetic 66–7n20, 141; external database as 126–7; and poetry 152n25; in Rainbows End 128–9, 137–8; and self-conception 30, 127–8; see also archive Mendieta, Eduardo 37 Michelfelder, Diane P. 38, 39 microperception 67n29; see also human–technology relations Microsoft Teams 203 Milner, Andrew 88 mindful fitness 170; see also health and beauty industries; makeover culture Mixon, Laura 56; see also Glass Houses A Modern Utopia (Wells) 43–4, 45, 46; and “The Machine Stops” 44, 45, 46; and The Time Machine 44 modes of human–technology interaction 27–34; abstract see abstract mode of human–technology interaction; cognitive see cognitive mode of human–technology interaction; environmental see environmental mode of human–technology interaction; and human–technology relations (Ihde) 67n29; physical see physical mode of human–technology interaction; and the two-sidedness of technical mediation 36 Morgan, Kathryn Pauly 175 Mortenson, W. Ben 99, 104 Mosley, Walter 56–9, 207–8; see also Futureland Moylan, Tom 59 multistability of technology 19, 32, 66n13, 73, 195; in The Circle 73, 110; in Futureland 57; in Gibson 54; in the MaddAddam trilogy 189, 191; in The Space Merchants 53; see also postphenomenology multitasking 31, 89, 134; in The Circle 89–90, 134; in Rainbows End 132–4 Murphy, Graham J. 46, 59

Index Nakamura, Lisa 68n43 Narkunas, J. Paul 155, 193n13 nature: and feminist science fiction 56; and radical posthumanism 65n4 nature, human-dominated 13, 65n1; in the MaddAddam trilogy 164, 166, 191; in techno-Robinsonade 40; in The Time Machine 42 nature, human: as endangered by technology see bioconservatism; in Rainbows End 118; technological modification of 33 Naughton, John 204–5 Negra, Diane 209–10 Negrin, Llewellyn 175, 180, 181 neoliberalism 28, 29, 86, 145, 155, 171, 183, 185, 205, 209, 211; in The Circle 72, 86, 96, 150; in the MaddAddam trilogy 62, 63, 154, 155, 162, 169, 183, 188, 192n2; responsibilization of subjects in 28, 66n16, 96, 184, 210; see also capitalism Netflix 5 Newton, Casey 212n4 Neuromancer (Gibson) 53–5, 56, 59, 68n39; and Futureland 57; and Rainbows End 123 Niantic Labs 211 Nietzsche, Friedrich 119–20 Nineteen Eighty-Four (Orwell) 50–2; and Brave New World 50–1, 52; and The Circle 111, 114n3 Nizzi, Marie-Christine 38–9 Ogden, Thomas H. 161, 162 O’Leary, Timothy 161–2 Ong, Aihwa 155 ontological dimension of the two-sidedness of technical mediation see revealing–concealing structure of technical mediation Orwell, George 50–2, 111, 114n3; see also Nineteen Eighty-Four Oryx and Crake (Atwood) 62, 153, 156–7, 158, 159–61, 162–3, 171, 173, 174–5, 177–8, 187, 189, 190–1, 197, 199; see also MaddAddam trilogy the Other 132, 156, 159; in “The Machine Stops” 162–3; in the MaddAddam trilogy 156, 159, 161, 162–3, 191 Owens, Timothy J. 67n21, 93

233

Panopticon 25–6, 35–6, 51, 58, 103, 104, 105, 111, 125, 157; see also Foucault, Michel Papert, Seymour 160 Pariser, Eli 145 Parrinder, Patrick 12 Payne, Sheila 99 Percival, John 99 personal identity 30, 31, 75, 127; see also self-conception; social self pharmaceutical industry: during the COVID-19 pandemic 6; distortion of clinical trials by 187; in the MaddAddam trilogy 170, 182–3, 186–7, 188, 199; and neoliberalism 28, 183, 185; production of patients by 186; generating profits versus curing patients 185, 187–8, 194n17, 199 philosophy of technical mediation 8–10, 18–24, 27, 39, 117; as part of philosophy of technology 8; and postphenomenology 65n8; and science fiction 9, 41, 64; see also Actor-Network Theory; philosophy of technology; postphenomenology philosophy of technology 8, 9, 11, 12–14, 16, 18, 26, 41, 66n12, 100; empirical turn in 14; and science fiction 41; see also Actor-Network Theory; philosophy of technical mediation; postphenomenology physical mode of human–technology interaction 27, 31–4, 36, 67n29, 68n41, 80, 86; in Brave New World 48; in The Circle 90, 97; in “The Machine Stops” 45; in the MaddAddam trilogy 62, 166, 167, 173; in Neuromancer 54, 55; in Nineteen Eighty-Four 51; in Rainbows End 62, 119, 122–5, 150; in The Space Merchants 53; in The Time Machine 42; see also modes of human–technology interaction play 138, 141, 143; and gamification 138; and playfulness 138; in Rainbows End 138, 140–1 playfulness 138, 139; and play 138; in Rainbows End 139 Pohl, Frederik 52–3; see also The Space Merchants Pokémon Go 211 pornography: on the internet 159; in the MaddAddam trilogy 159, 193n9; and smart contacts 152n19 Poster, Mark 41

234

Index

postfeminism 209–10 posthumanism 9, 16–8, 34, 65n4, 65n5; see also bioconservatism; humanism; transhumanism postphenomenology 8, 15–16, 18, 19, 38; see also philosophy of technical mediation power 9, 18, 24, 96; pastoral 167; see also Foucault, Michel practical dimension of technical mediation see enabling–constraining structure of technical mediation; see also two-sidedness of technical mediation Pratchett, Terry: in Rainbows End 136–7, 142 prescription (Latour) 18–19, 34; see also Actor-Network Theory Price, Catherine 184 Pringle, Richard 170 privacy 37, 77, 99, 197, 212n5; in The Circle 77, 99, 105, 112, 199; in Rainbows End 128, 152n16; see also surveillance Pustovrh, Tony 145, 147 quantification in social media 91, 92–3, 95; in The Circle 90, 91–2, 93, 94–5 quantified self 22, 28, 96, 98, 198–9; in The Circle 96, 98, 198–9 racial inequality see ethnic inequality Raczkowski, Felix 66n17 Rainbows End (Vinge): abstract mode of human–technology interaction in 150; archive in 128, 137, 152n25; artificial intelligence in 198; augmented reality in 62, 121, 122, 130–2, 134–5, 136–40, 142, 143, 148–9, 150, 151n14, 204, 211; biotechnology in 63, 116, 198; body in 63, 116–18, 122–3, 149, 198; and Brave New World 148; capitalism in 210; China in 144; and The Circle 116, 128, 149, 150, 195, 210; cognitive enhancement in 122, 126, 127, 144–5, 147, 150; cognitive labour in 143–7, 150, 198; cognitive mode of human–technology interaction in 62, 119, 122, 125–6, 129, 134, 136, 150; crowdsourcing in 146; cyborg in 117; deep attention in 134; enabling– constraining structure of technical mediation in 121, 125, 127, 130, 132,

140, 145; engagement disloyalty in 130, 133; environmental mode of human–technology interaction in 62, 125, 150; ethical subjectification in 121; Foucauldian freedom in 121; genetic engineering in 198; Google in 123, 128; healthcare in 149; human nature in 118; hyper attention in 134; information and communication technologies in 61–2, 116, 125, 127, 128–33, 146–7, 148, 150, 201, 210; internet in 62, 128, 133, 150; invol­ ving–alienating structure of technical mediation in 63, 128, 132, 139, 149, 195, 210; magnification–reduction structure of technical mediation in 125; materiality of discourse in 119–20; memory in 128–9, 137–8; multitasking in 132–4; and Neuromancer 123; physical mode of human–technology interaction in 62, 119, 122–5, 150; play in 138, 140–1; playfulness in 139; privacy in 128, 152n16; self-conception in 128, 137, 141; self-expression in 122, 142, 211; sensory enhacement in 122, 125, 150; smart contacts in see smart contacts in Rainbows End; social self in 135, 140; surveillance in 151n9; technocracy in 152n24; technological transparency in 125; wearable computers in 61–2, 63, 116, 122–6, 128–31, 133, 135, 140, 147, 148, 149 150, 201, 210 Ralph 124C 41+ (Gernsback) 47 reality TV 158, 160, 161; and pornography 159; in the MaddAddam trilogy 158, 159, 161 rebound effect 19, 32, 99; in The Circle 99–100 Reinecke, Leonard 197 relationship-tracking 98; in The Circle 98; see also self-tracking Relman, Arnold S. 199 responsibilization of subjects in neoliberalism 28, 66n16, 96, 184, 210 retinal displays see displays revealing-concealing structure of technical mediation 21, 22, 23, 36, 66n12, 78, 98, 104, 173, 180; in Brave New World 49; in The Circle 78, 79, 80, 98, 104; in Futureland 58; in “The Machine Stops” 45, 55; in the

Index MaddAddam trilogy 162, 164, 190; in Neuromancer 55; see also two-sidedness of technical mediation Richardson, Ingrid 123, 124 Roberts, Adam 3–4, 62 Roberts, Frank Leon 207 Robins, Kevin 156, 158, 159, 160, 161, 197 Rose, Nikolas 28, 66n14, 66n16, 67n22, 96, 171 Rosenberger, Robert 16 Roth, Andrew 7, 204 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 11 Russell, Jon 115 Saint-Simon, Henri de 12 Samblanet, Sarah 67n21, 93 Sargent, Lyman Tower 63 Sartre, Jean-Paul 132 Scharff, Robert C. 12 Schmeink, Lars 68n44, 193–4n16 Schmidt, Eric 205–6, 207, 209 Scholz, Trebor 143 science fiction: city in science fiction 43; difficulty in defining 39–40, 68n32; dystopia as 46; engineer/inventor paradigm in the development of 46–7; evolutionary paradigm in the development of 42; feminist 56; as a literature of technologically saturated societies 9, 41; origin of the term 47; and philosophy of technical mediation 9, 41, 64; the present as 59, 200; and scientific romance 1; Time Machine as 4; see also Atwood, Margaret; Eggers, Dave; Forster, E. M.; Gernsback, Hugo; Gibson, William; Huxley, Aldous; Kornbluth, C. M.; Mixon, Laura; Mosley, Walter; Orwell, George; Pohl, Frederik; Vinge, Vernor; Wells, H. G. Scott, Brett 10n4, 114n10 script (Latour) 18, 19, 38, 58; see also Actor-Network Theory Seed, David 43, 48, 49, 50, 60, 109 self: narrative account of 30–1; 67n22; and subject 31, 67n23; see also personal identity; self-conception; social self self-conception 30–1; in The Circle 61, 74, 75, 77, 79, 95, 99, 199; and biotechnological modification 34, 35, 173; and the internet 31, 72, 196; in the MaddAddam trilogy 156, 166, 175–6, 178; and memory 30, 66–7n20,

235

75, 127, 137, 141; in Neuromancer 55; in Rainbows End 128, 137, 141; and social self 30, 93, 99, 136, 140, 175 self-expression: cosmetic surgery as a tool for 180; in Neuromancer 55; in Rainbows End 122, 142, 211; as a variation of the cognitive mode of human–technology interaction 30, 31 self-tracking: and the body 95–6; in The Circle 95–8; and healthcare 28, 96, 98 Sennett, Richard 156, 161, 167–8 sensory enhacement: in Rainbows End 122, 125, 150 Sharon, Tamar 12, 14, 17–8, 34, 65n2, 65n3, 65n4, 65n5 Sherborne, Michael 4–5, 8 Sicart, Miguel 138, 139, 141 Sloterdijk, Peter 17 smart contacts: compared to stationary and mobile displays 124; and surveillance capitalism 210–11; see also displays smart contacts in Rainbows End 62, 63, 123; and augmented reality 130–2; and biopolitics 147–8; and cognitive enhancement 122, 125, 126, 150; and cognitive labour 147; and creativity 122, 150; distractive potential of 132–4; 150; and external memory 127, 128–9; mastery of 122–3; and the modes of human–technology interaction 150; and offensive augmented reality 134–5; and pornography 135; and sensory enhancement 122, 124–5, 150; and silent messaging 129–30 Smith, Greg 104 Smyth, Gerry 63–4, 196 Snyder, Carey 49 social media: addictive mechanisms built into 33; and the automatic system of human cognition 31; in The Circle 61, 63, 70–1, 73, 75, 81, 83–4, 85–6, 87–8, 89, 90, 91–2, 94–5, 107, 108, 138, 209; as conducive to human welfare 71; during the COVID-19 pandemic 5; democratic potential of 202; and gamification 91, 197; and multitasking 89; pressure for social media activity 85, 86, 88–9, 114n6, 197; and quantification 91, 92–3, 95; and personal identity 31, 75; rankings in 91; profitability of social media use 95, 114n8, 203; and social comparisons 93–4; and social self 94;

236

Index

as a tool for self-expression 30, 31; and the two-sidedness of technical mediation 22, 95, 107, 203; see also internet social self 30–1; and augmented reality 135; in Brave New World 50; in The Circle 61, 76–9, 87, 88, 92, 93, 94–5, 99, 101, 103–4, 107, 108, 109; and digital traces 77–8; as convertible into money 94, 95; and false information on the internet 77; and the internet as archive 76; in the MaddAddam trilogy 175–6; in makeover culture 175; and normalization 172; and Panopticon 36, 104; position in a ranking as 93, 94; in Rainbows End 135, 140; and self-conception 30, 93, 99, 136, 140, 175; and social media 88–9; and telecare 99 Solon, Olivia 114n12 Solove, Daniel J. 77 Sorkin, Michael 156 Soteropoulos Incollingo, Jacqueline 143 The Space Merchants (Pohl and Kornbluth) 52–3; and the MaddAddam trilogy 164 space opera 40 Spicer, Robert N. 79, 114n7 Spiegel, Michael 192n2 Staltz, André 114n2 state racism 155; in the MaddAddam trilogy 155, 197 Stefanick, Lorna 102 Stiegler, Bernard 11, 14 subject and subjectivity: in Actor-Network Theory 15, 18–19; in Althusser 88; in The Circle 73, 87, 209; as the focus of science fiction 4, 40–1, 195; in Foucault 9, 25–7, 36–7, 148, 162; in Habermas 148; liberal humanist perspective on 16–17; in the MaddAddam trilogy 62, 163, 164, 191; and the modes of human–technology interaction 27, 28, 29, 30–1, 34–6; neoliberal 28–9, 66n16; in the philosophy of technical mediation 18–19, 20, 21, 22–3, 24; posthuman perspective on 9, 16–18; in postphenomenology 15, 16, 19; in Rainbows End 118, 125, 129, 134, 141, 198; in Stalinist Russia 51; subject and self 31, 67n23; in Turkle 196, 197; and the two-sidedness of technical mediation 21–4; see also

subjectification; subjectification

through human–technology

interaction

subjectification: ethical see ethical subjectification; in Foucault 9, 18, 26–7, 113; in the narrative accounts of the self 67n22; and other translations of the French original term 66n14; science fiction as a means of 66n15; see also subject and subjectivity; subjectification through human–technology interaction subjectification through human–technology interaction 9, 27, 30–1, 34–36, 67n28, 197, 210, 211; in Brave New World 49–50; in The Circle 61, 70–115 passim, 209; in “The Machine Stops” 45; in the MaddAddam trilogy 63, 153–194 passim, 196, 197, 199; in Neuromancer 54, 55; in Nineteen Eighty-Four 51; in Rainbows End 61, 116–152 passim, 198; in science fiction 64; in The Space Merchants 53; in The Time Machine 42–3; in When the Sleeper Wakes 43; see also modes of human–technology interaction; subject and subjectivity; subjectification; two-sidedness of technical mediation Sunstein, Cass 29–30, 33 surveillance 7, 25, 36, 64, 99, 102, 115n13, 158, 197, 203; in The Circle 61, 99–104, 108, 110, 113, 115n13, 198, 209; in Futureland 208; in the MaddAddam trilogy 157, 164; in Nineteen Eighty-Four 51, 52; in Rainbows End 151n9; see also Panopticon surveillance capitalism 203, 210 Suvin, Darko 68n32 Swan, Melanie 28, 198 Taylor, Daniel 5 Taylor, D. J. 51 technical mediation 16; and determinism 19; and Foucault 9, 18, 24, 25–6, 65n6; enabling–constraining structure of see enabling–constraining structure of technical mediation; involving–alienating structure of see involving–alienating structure of technical mediation; magnification–reduction structure of

Index see magnification–reduction structure of technical mediation; philosophy of see philosophy of technical mediation; revealing–concealing structure of see revealing–concealing structure of technical mediation; twosidedness of see two-sidedness of technical mediation; see also Actor-Network Theory; modes of human–technology interaction; postphenomenology technocracy 12, 13, 28, 35; in Brave New World 48, 49, 52, 68n37; in A Modern Utopia 43–4; in “The Machine Stops” 44; in Rainbows End 152n24; in Ralph 124C 41+ 47; technocratic planning and utopia 28, 35 technological mediation see technical mediation technology: bio- see biotechnology; conception of 11–12; as inextricably combined with science 12, 40; information and communication technology see information and communication technologies; philosophy of see philosophy of technology; see also human–technology interaction; technical mediation; technoscience techno-Robinsonade 40 technoscience 12; and science fiction 40, 42, 47, 66n15 tekhnē: in Foucault 25; in Stiegler 11 telecare 99, 104; in The Circle 99–100 Terranova, Tiziana 142–3 Thaler, Richard 29–30, 33 The Time Machine (Wells) 1–4, 5, 7, 8, 42–3; and A Modern Utopia 44 transhumanism 12–13, 14; see also bioconservatism; posthumanism transparency, personal: in The Circle 100–1, 103, 106, 107, 110, 112, 113, 128 transparency, technological 19–20, 32, 79, 119, 126; in The Circle 114n7; in Rainbows End 125; see also postphenomenology; technical mediation Trepte, Sabine 197 The Trial (Kafka) 77 Turkle, Sherry: addictive quality of the internet 33; deep attention/hyper attention 31, 67n24, 89, 134; internet anonymity 72, 132, 196; mindless

237

communication on the internet 85, 92, 197; multitasking 89, 133–4; overwhelming nature of internet use 85, 88–9; social self and the internet 76, 81 Turner, Phil 124 Twitter 61, 70, 197, 202; see also social media two-sidedness of technical mediation 21–4; epistemological dimension of see magnification–reduction structure of technical mediation; ethical dimension of see involving–alienating structure of technical mediation; existential dimension of see revealing–concealing structure of technical mediation; and the modes of human–technology interaction 36; ontological dimension of see revealing–concealing structure of technical mediation; practical dimension of see enabling–constraining structure of technical mediation; see also technical mediation; philosophy of technical mediation utopia: Men Like Gods 48; A Modern Utopia 44, 46 utopian dimension: in The Circle 70, 71, 72, 75, 105, 110, 112, 113; in Ralph 124C 41+ 47; in The Space Merchants 53; in theoretical evaluations of the role of technology in human life 12, 13, 91, 104, 105 utopia/dystopia syndrome in the philosophy of technology 14, 27–8 Van Den Eede, Yoni 98 Veale, Michael 212n5 Verbeek, Peter-Paul 8, 11, 16, 18, 29, 30, 39, 65n6, 65n7, 65n8, 66n12, 67n28, 67n31; cyborg relations between humans and technology 33–4, 55, 151n10; interpretive step 32; moral imagination 38; posthumanism 17, 18, 65n5; rebound effect 19; technical mediation and Foucault 18, 24, 25, 26, 27; technological transparency 19–20; two-sidedness of technical mediation 20, 21, 22, 66n11 Vinge, Vernor 10, 61–2, 63, 116–52, 192, 195, 196, 198, 199, 201, 204, 210; see also Rainbows End Vint, Sherryl 16–7, 59, 65n4, 68n40

238

Index

vitamin supplementation 183–5; in the

MaddAddam trilogy 169, 170, 174,

183; as a vector of an engineered

illness in the Maddam trilogy 182,

185, 186–7

Waddell, Nathan 52, 68n37

The War in the Air (Wells) 7

The War of the Worlds (Wells) 43

Wassom, Brian 152n19

Wells, H. G. 1–5, 7, 8, 42–4, 45, 46, 47,

48, 49, 51; see also Anticipations; The

Island of Doctor Moreau; Mankind

in the Making; A Modern Utopia;

The Time Machine; The War in the

Air; The War of the Worlds; When

the Sleeper Wakes

Whelehan, Imelda 210

When the Sleeper Wakes (Wells) 7, 43

Wiener Norbert 54, 68n38, 68n39

Wilken, Rowan 123, 124

Wiltse, Heather 78

Wolf, Maryanne 89, 134

Woodhams, Samuel 204

The Year of the Flood (Atwood) 153,

157, 163–7, 168–70, 172, 175–7, 179,

180–1, 182, 183, 188–9; see also

MaddAddam trilogy

yoga see mindful fitness

YouTube 114n8, 202

Zeiler, Kristin 117

Zoom 5

Zuboff, Shoshana 86, 94, 203,

210–11