Critical Annotated Webliography by Cody Wan

Guiding Question 3:
Frankenstein continues to occupy the popular imagination as a monstrous scientist. Analyse some of the ways in which Frankenstein continues to haunt discussions of recent technologies.

Introduction
In the beginning, technology is helping people to improve our daily life and raise our living standard. However, after we are increasing the technology skills such as cloning animal, creating the robots army, genetic engineering, xeno-transplantation and vitro fertilization techniques. We find that there are still many unknown area in it and those technology are challenge us what is the human purity. When the novel – Frankenstein has been written by Mary Shelley, it is a stock narrative for technology out of human control. As Catherine Waldby said that “The monstrosity of the creature’s body implies the monstrosity of our own.”, actually, the fear of technology mostly is coming from our human ourselves. Therefore, Frankenstein continues to haunt discussions of recent technologies such as biomedicine and bioscience.

Source One – Charity Battles Imaginary Killing Machines
Source from Wired.com, accessed March 28, 2008, written by Sharon Weinberger. This article is talking about the autonomous robots to become killing machines or killer robots. Because many countries are using robots to do landmines, however the robots are the cluster bombs exist in the world. Nowadays, some of the science and technology organizations are making the machine-gun wielding military robots are remotely controlled by soldiers. The US Department of Defense want the robots work without supervision, that mean they can use their artificial intelligence to make their own decisions about when to pull the trigger. In this article, the writers think that there is nothing wrong to develop the technology. It is because the technology can help us to improve our life and protest our human body. However, we should set up some restrictions and have a healthy discussion on how to control these systems. I think it is a good example to show human are afraid those robots out of human control.

Source Two – Technology Fear Factor
Source from KurzweilAI.net, accessed July 21, 2002, written by Daintry Duffy and Sari Kalin. This article has taken notice on different factors of technology fear. There are three futurists – George Gilder, Ray Kurzweil, and Jaron Lanier. They are agreeing that technologies can be used in good and bad ways. They points out that the most dangerous technology is artificial intelligence, biotechnology and nanotechnology. Although those technologies can help us discover miracle drugs, it also can help the terrorists to build super dangerous weapons. Another main point is we are more focus on the privacy and encryption. In the past society, everyone knew what everybody was doing. At now, we are expanding the domains of privacy and encryption and keep the communication private, like terrorists. Privacy is becoming more and more pervasive. Therefore, the technologies are more easily to apply in the destructive purposes. So the main method to solve the fear is using the technology in correct place. Those above writers are suggest that the human should build up our humanity more powerful and keep connection to humanity. Those scholars’s speaking can reinforce the point that technology is dangerous without human control and the solving methods are we.

Source Three – Show your high-tech ID, How does technology shape who we are?
Source from TechnologyReview.com, accessed October 25, 2001, written by Alan Leo. This article makes all the fear of technology to be close to our own identity. It points out that human are always talking an identity, but the identity as something we create. Some fellow scholars discussed how our identities shape and are shaped by new technologies in it. There are contains different new technologies to identify our identity. For example: using the gene and the genome to identify our identity, demonstrated a system to identify people by the way they talk, walk and spot the suspicious behaviors. Unfortunately, those of the new technologies cannot perfectly to identify our identity. It is because the machines can have the same human being such as the robot called Gizmo, it behaves more like a “creature” than tool. Gizmo reacts like a human with facial expression, body language and responds to positive and negative feedback. It shows that the technologies are harm the most basic human purity – identity and are shaped by the technologies.

Source Four – Science: consider it your friend or your enemy?
Source from CSUN.EDU, accessed and written by unknown. This paper talks about technology can help us to cure many human illnesses, but it has been considered harmful to society and extremely influential to civilization. The simply explanation is many of us cannot go out without a mobile phone now. As J. Michael Bishop said that science today is increasingly mistrusted and under attack. Moreover, the science has influenced our lives in ways never imagined before, science developed instruments of war and used for the destruction of humanity, as in Hiroshima with the atomic bomb. Society has become completely depended on technology. Many of us are relying on our technologies. It feels like a part of us. However, it is causing a great harm to our children. Because the children will believe that the virtual toys can know what they feel and understand their thoughts. They think that the toys and games have a brain. They are difficult to distinguish between real and fantasy. Many children believes the robots to be “Sort of alive”, they thinks that the robots have personalities just like humans do. Therefore, it shows that the creatures as a “copy of human”. Those are the simulacrum of our humanity. The technologies will bring out the social problems.

Source Five – New Robots Clone Themselves
Source from Livescience.com, accessed May 11, 2005, written by Michael Schirber. This post told us the new technique in robot, some researchers have built a simple self-replicating robot. Before, we will use the reproduction to discriminate which is technology and human. At now, the robots can make a copy of itself. The self-replicating robots can take care of themselves without any human help. That mean the robot can live alone of themselves, their life become stronger and durable. In the future, if the human cannot control the robots, the robot will have the opportunity to take control of the world. Technologies become more powerful than before.

Source Six – Forward Thinking
Source from ACMqueue.com, accessed December, 2006, written by Charlene O’Hanlon. It told that the humans are not flexible creatures, are technologies. When human feel fear, human are often held back by this scary feeling. Furthermore, too much fear will prevent us from discovering our true talents. However, the technology doesn’t know what fear is. When technology becomes smarter than human a day, man and machine have the same level intelligence. Then technology will evolve to surpass man. But it doesn’t mean human should lose our emotion, should not lose our humanity.

Conclusion
Most of us agree that the creature seems as monster and harm objects in the world. However, who is the creator, is human. If we fear of the technology, we should fear of ourselves. Therefore, human should take the responsibility to control the technologies and use it in right place. On the other hand, the most fears element is the technology product become more similar to us. The technologies such as robot have the similar social practice with us. Then the technology is creating new forms of life. So some of the people argue that the machines should follow our social rules or not. Moreover, it is causing many of social problems, the most influence group is the children. That why we start to fear and discuss of the humanity and technology.

Notes for Written Sources
Waldby, Catherine. “The Instruments of Life: Frankenstein and Cyberculture.” Prefiguring Cybercultures: An Intellectual History. Eds. Darren Tofts, Annemarie Jonson and Alessio Cavalaro. Sydney: Power Publications, 2002 28-37.

Notes for Online Sources
1) Sharon, Weinberger. (2008) “Charity Battles Imaginary Killing Machines.” Retrieved from March 28, 2008, source from http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/03/charity-will-ba.html

2) Daintry, Duffy and Sari, Kalin.(2002) “Technology Fear Factor.” Retrieved from
July 21, 2002, source from http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0510.html

3) Alan, Leo. (2001) “Show your high-tech ID, How does technology shape who we are?” Retrieved from October 25, 2001, source from http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/12633/

4) CSUN. (2008) “Science: consider it your friend or your enemy?” Retrieved from unknown, source from
http://www.csun.edu/~sa822008/paper3.html

5) Michael, Schirber. (2005) “New Robots Clone Themselves” Retrieved from
May 11, 2005, source from http://www.livescience.com/technology/050511_self_replicator.html

6) Charlene O’Hanlon. (2006) “Forward thinking” Retrieved from December, 2006, source from http://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=448