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Technophobia! Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman Technology
by Daniel Dinello
It seems that Daniel Dinello has a bone to pick with technophiles - or, at least, the extreme version of technophilia represented by posthumanism. His particular quarrel seems to be with men such as Raymond Kurzweil, Hans Moravec, and Gregory Stock, experts in the fields of artificial intelligence, robotics, and biotechnology, respectively, men who predict a future state of human evolution in which humans will interface so completely with technology that we will essentially become a new, supposedly superior species. No longer fully biological entities, perhaps cyborgs at some stage or ultimately existing virtually in an engineered cyber reality, we will (they claim) transcend the limitations of our flesh and enter into a technological utopia, freed from disease and death.
Understandably, a few of us might feel a little anxious about this strange but wonderful future, which is where science fiction comes in. Dinello s thesis is that science fiction counters these predictions of techno-utopia with visions of dystopia. He is particularly attentive throughout his book to the interface between technological development and the military-industrial complex, although he shies away from any political economy or Marxist theory. He suggests that, at their best, science fiction texts can do more than simply reflect anxieties, actually "arguing for a progressive political agenda" (275) . Dinello examines science fiction's technological dystopias, and this book is certainly to be valued as an exploration of this trope within the genre.
Indeed, this will not be the first time that an academic work has addressed the dystopic themes of science fiction, but Dinello s book is unique in its organization around the ideas of posthuman technologism. Chapter !,"Technology Is God," sketches the tenets of this theology, while chapter 2, "Haunted Utopias," gives a history of the idea. Subsequent chapters deal with progressive advances in technology that are presumably taking humans closer to their posthuman evolution: robotics ("Cybernetic Slaves"), artificial intelligence and androids ("Machines out of Control"), bionics ("Rampaging Cyborgs"), the Internet and virtual reality ("Infinite Cyberspace Cages"), biotechnology ("Engineered Flesh"), and nanotechnology ("Malevolent Molecular Machines"). As he proceeds he presents relevant texts from the corpus of science fiction; for example, in the chapter on cyborgs Dinello offers analyses of Martin...