Science Fiction is Technophobic
It’s 2028, and Alex Murphy, police officer-turned-robot, is set to be introduced to Detroit as its newest weapon against crime as “RoboCop.” Clad in a daunting black-plated suit, he has become a chilling amalgamation of man and machine. His family excitedly waits for him to approach, but he quickly strides past them, his mechanical movements betraying no hint of recognition or affection. Left to witness his cold detachment, his child undergoes a series of emotions, from excitement to confusion, and finally, hurt.
He steps onto the podium and stands before the people of Detroit. With the police database now embedded in his brain, he scans the crowd and quickly identifies a criminal among them. His helmet, adorned with a visor emitting an eerie red glow, immediately shuts over his face, making him appear even more menacing, emotionless, and cold-hearted. With a single calculated leap into the crowd, he raises his gun and stuns his target, quickly apprehending the criminal on the spot. The crowd backs away with a mixture of awe and fear, a question lingering in a corner of their minds: is this the advent of a new era of security and technology? Or is this our worst fears realized: being stripped of our humanity and turned into heartless machines?
Released in 2014, the RoboCop remake terrified nine-year-old me. I can vividly remember the horror I felt seeing it in the theater while I stole glances at my father sitting beside me, who seemed to be incredibly fascinated by the unsettling scene playing out before us. Determined to match his fearlessness, I did my best to appear brave, desperate to hide the fear that gripped me. Growing up with a father who loved science fiction, I was certainly no stranger to the genre, and yet I remember RoboCop as one of the first sci-fi movies that truly frightened me. Witnessing Murphy, both a father and a husband, devoid of any emotion, his mind manipulated and controlled, and essentially dehumanized, felt like a nightmare back then.
Joel Kinnaman as Detective Alex Murphy in RoboCop (2014)
In support of technological advancement and its integration into society, a TV host played by Samuel L. Jackson asks a rhetorical question early in the film: “Why is America so robophobic?” Here, robophobia refers to a fear of robots, and was perhaps my first close encounter with a much more broad term for the fear of technology: technophobia. In science fiction cinema, we have come to expect futuristic settings and highly advanced technologies, but one additional recurring theme among many of these sci-fi films, especially those set in dystopian worlds, is technophobia. This fear of technology usually serves as a driving force behind many sci-fi narratives, shaping the characters’ motivations and the societies they inhabit.
For instance, in Blade Runner, there is a societal fear and distrust of Replicants, bioengineered humans created for slave labor, due to their perceived threat to humanity and the idea that they have the potential to replace humans. In the Terminator franchise, humanity is threatened by hunter-killer machines that are sent back in time to eradicate any hope for humanity's survival, inciting a deep-seated fear of technology by highlighting the potential danger of technology turning against its own creators and posing a threat to the very existence of humanity. In The Matrix, intelligent machines have enslaved and trapped humans in a simulated reality to harvest their energy, instilling a further fear of technology by bringing up the idea that it might lead to the loss of human autonomy. Even the first science fiction novel, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, is largely technophobic as it features a creature made through man’s technological pursuits and emphasizes the potential consequences of such an endeavor as the creature proceeds to wreak havoc and disrupt society.
Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator in The Terminator (1984)
Yet, amidst this prevailing sense of fear and distrust of technology, there also exists an admiration and celebration of it: technophilia. This concept is most evident in sci-fi narratives with utopian settings like the Star Trek franchise, which offers a more optimistic view on the use of technology to explore the universe. Nonetheless, even its seemingly pro-technology world has hints of technophobia. For instance, in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, we witness Lieutenant Barclay suffering from transporter phobia, a fear of using transporters or teleportation machines, which emphasizes an apprehension about certain technological advancements. Even its episodes featuring The Borg, which are cybernetic organisms that seek to achieve perfection by assimilating civilizations into a collective hive mind, also provoke technophobia as they represent the loss of human individuality and autonomy.
The Transporter, a teleportation machine used in the Star Trek franchise
But why are we afraid? Are our fears well-founded or are they truly just the product of our overactive imaginations? Well, technophobia isn’t purely fictional. It can actually be traced back to the Luddite Rebellion in the 1800s when weavers and textile workers, known as Luddites, revolted against the use of mechanized looms and knitting frames in their industries for fear of losing their jobs to automated machines (Andrews). In fact, in his book Blood in the Machine, Brian Merchant argues that Luddism was more concerned with protecting and advocating for workers’ rights rather than simply opposing technology. Perhaps technophobia isn’t just some irrational aversion to new technologies, but rather a deeper fear of being replaced and rendered useless by technology, robbed of our worth and significance in the end.
In an age where new technologies are constantly arising, from AI-powered chatbots to personal assistants like Siri and Alexa, is our fear of technology justified? Nevertheless, change is inevitable and the world we live in is dynamic. Instead of allowing fear to consume us, perhaps we might consider adopting a more cautious approach toward technological innovation. After all, what are the odds that these sci-fi films we so dearly love and their futuristic worlds, be they utopian or dystopian, might one day become reality?
Works Cited
Andrews, Evan. “Who Were the Luddites?” History, 21 Aug. 2023, www.history.com/news/who-were-the-luddites.
Merchant, Brian. Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion against Big Tech. Little, Brown and Company, 2023.
