Literature concerning technology

[kbwebster]

Hi there guys, I'm doing a philosophy module named The Philosophical and Cultural Impacts of Technology and I could use all of your help!

So I'd love if you guys could recommend me any pieces of literature (including poems, plays etc) that deals with the nature of technology and its influence upon us. It would be brilliant if you could recommend earlier classics but I would be happy with any well written material! It can be based loosely or not at all upon technology as long as there is some sort of notion of an opinion/statement towards technology- even concerning capitalism since we are also looking into the nature of the chain of production. I already have several up my sleeves that are the likes of H.G Wells, Orwell, Shelley, Brecht.

I'd really appreciate all input you have to offer, it'd greatly help me out!

Thanks, Klarissa

[Wondra]

I'd recommend checking out William Gibson starting with neuromancer.

[kbwebster]

I'll be researching into that now, thanks for replying!

[The Atheist]

Definitely add in Brave New World. Stephen King's Cell might be worth a look, too. The book is rubbish, but it includes a good look at people's (King's?) fears of cellphones.

[OrphanPip]

I suppose an early work of scientific utopianism like Francis Bacon's New Atlantis might be useful to you. Also, Book III of Swift's Gulliver's Travels is often read as a critique of the Royal Society and contemporary inventors.

[Calidore]

My first thought was Neuromancer as well. I don't know how well it has aged, but it was groundbreaking and hugely influential at the time

[Paulclem]

Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais has a parody of the scientific method:

Chapter 13 How Grandgousier realised Gargantua's marvellous intelligence by his invention of an arse-wipe.

[Emil Miller]

Look no further than E.M.Forster's 1906 short story 'The Machine Stops'. It predicts the internet and the collapse of civilisation as a result of new technology.

[AuntShecky]

The hero of Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" introduces "modern" (at the time) sensibility and devices into an anachronistic setting to a great, comic effect.

[kev67]

I read Hard Times by Charles Dickens recently, which is in part about the impact of heavy industry on society, including pollution, monotonous de-skilled work and industrial accidents. It also criticised laisser-faire and utilitarian economic theories, which Dickens suspected were self-serving. The main target of the book was education. Dickens supposed that hothousing children exclusively with factual or technical information would result in emotionally stunted young adults.

[kbwebster]

Thanks everyone, fantastic input with some books I have somehow managed to forget about! Really appreciate the help!

[luhsun]

Robots series by asimov and collaborators.. how men and robots may coexist or clash seen through the various permutations of the 3 laws of robotics

[wreade1872]

Don't know if this is useful but there's a really interesting idea written kind of like a story, its a bit hard to describe but check out Roadtown by Edgar Chambless.
Its about redesigning towns so that they run in one continuous line instead of the way we live today, its really interesting and ends up with a sort of socialist commune kind of feel to it.
I'm sure it wouldn't work... but i can't figure out WHY it wouldn't :confused: .
[Text available on archive.org.]

Oh and you could also check out the book version of the classic film Metropolis. Thea von Harbou helped write the film then took her notes and expanded them into a full book. Its kind of odd, the way machines are described i could never tell whether they were symbolically in peoples heads or literally plugged in, Matrix style.
[Text available on Manybooks.net.]

[kelby_lake]

Crash by JG Ballard. I haven't read the novel but the film is certainly a nightmarish tale of technology (in this case cars) deadening us to any feeling.

[sandy14]

Both Crash & The Machine Stops are good recommendations. I'd add Huxley's Brave New World. In addition the poetical works of John Clare which features a reaction to the enclosure movement & railways. Take a look at Clare's The Moors.

In addition, Dickens - the first chapter of Hard Times - Coketown is worthy of consideration & Shelley's Frankenstein.

[kev67]

Chapter 47 of Tess of the d'Urbervilles has a good scene in which a mechanized thresher is brought to Flintcombe Ash farm. Tess had to work hard all day feeding it with wheat. It was operated by a northern man, who only described himself as an engineer and otherwise did not speak to the farm labourers. It was like an intrusion by the industrial world into the rural world.

[sandy14]

London Orbital by Iain Sinclair.

In Conversations with Lord Byron (available of google books) Byron discusses airships going to Mars in a discussion about technology.

Day of the Triffids discusses biological engineering and I suppose you could have Neville Shute's On the Beach which is thoroughly depressing reading about nuclear warfare. The nuclear nightmares of the cold war and the feeling that you might be only six minutes from annihilation certainly had an effect upon one's attitude to life. It certainly doesn't seem to feature as strongly now, although technically the threat is still present.

[ladderandbucket]

Crash by JG Ballard. I haven't read the novel but the film is certainly a nightmarish tale of technology (in this case cars) deadening us to any feeling.
Crash, definitely. A lot of Ballard's work is concerned with this theme. I would also recommend High Rise in which people use video cameras to film violent acts and his short story The Intensive Care Unit which is along similar lines to The Machine Stops. Both seem stories were written in the mid-70s and seem extremely relevant today.

Also you might want to look into the futurist art movement although I don't know if it produced much literature.

[kelby_lake]

Oh yes, High Rise is quite good, though I see it more as the effect of the building and the suffocating atmosphere that these people's lives are lived solely in this building.

[Whosis]

I'm surprised no one mentioned John Steinbeck, who wrote vividly about the farm machinery that supplanted a generation of farmers in The Grapes of Wrath.