{"id":17948,"date":"2024-03-28T00:03:29","date_gmt":"2024-03-28T00:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/questions\/christopher-a-sims-the-dangers-of-individualism-and-the-human-relationship-to-technology-in-philip-k-dicks-do-androids-dream-of-electric-sheep-question-what-were-the-highlights-of-the-piece-wa\/"},"modified":"2024-03-28T00:03:29","modified_gmt":"2024-03-28T00:03:29","slug":"christopher-a-sims-the-dangers-of-individualism-and-the-human-relationship-to-technology-in-philip-k-dicks-do-androids-dream-of-electric-sheep-question-what-were-the-highlights-of-the-piece-wa","status":"publish","type":"questions","link":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/questions\/christopher-a-sims-the-dangers-of-individualism-and-the-human-relationship-to-technology-in-philip-k-dicks-do-androids-dream-of-electric-sheep-question-what-were-the-highlights-of-the-piece-wa\/","title":{"rendered":"Christopher A. Sims The Dangers of Individualism and the Human Relationship to Technology in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? ,question: What were the highlights of the piece? Was something written particularly well?"},"content":{"rendered":"
the question: <\/div>\n
What were the highlights of the piece? Was something written particularly well? <\/div>\n
Reading :<\/div>\n

INDIVIDUALISM AND TECHNOLOGY IN DO ANDROIDS DREAM… ? 67  <\/p>\n

Christopher A. Sims
\nThe Dangers of Individualism and the Human Relationship to
\nTechnology in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric
\nSheep?
\nUnder U.N. Law each emigrant automatically received possession of an android subtype of
\nhis choice, and, by 2019, the variety of subtypes passed all understanding, in the manner of
\nAmerican automobiles of the 1960s.?Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric
\nSheep? (16)
\nEverywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology whether we passionately affirm or
\ndeny it.?Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology” (4)
\nPhilip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is set on
\npost-apocalyptic Earth in the Bay Area of California. World War Terminus has
\ndevastated the population of Earth and left it nearly uninhabitable, forcing
\nsurvivors to emigrate to Mars or one of the other unnamed colony planets. As
\nincentive, emigrants are given free android servants to accompany them on their
\nvoyage and serve them on Mars. The androids are extremely sophisticated and are
\nnearly indistinguishable from human beings. The novel explores the moral
\nimplications of enslaving a human-like biological machine, but more centrally
\nuses the invention of a humanoid replica to critique and define the essence of
\nhumanity; whatever qualities distinguish humans from androids become the
\nessential aspects of humanity. Rarely, an android slave will kill its master and flee
\nMars for haven on Earth. Bounty hunters are employed by the remaining police
\nagencies to protect the small but determined communities of humans who refuse
\nto emigrate and those who are prevented from emigrating because the
\ndegenerative effects of living in a radioactive environment have drastically
\nlowered their IQs. The novel examines the psychology of bounty hunter Rick
\nDeckard as he “retires” escaped androids. In this essay I am interested in
\nanalyzing the way in which technology is described in the novel and what the
\nrelationship is between humans and technology. The essay will also investigate
\nthe novel’s representation of human psychology confronted with the near
\nextinction of its species and the stratification of the human population across the
\ncolony planets. Kevin McNamara, in his essay “Blade Runner’s Post-Individual
\nWorldspace,” writes that the novel “registers its protest against the dehumanizing
\neffects of bureaucracies and technology”(422).{I intend to argue in this essay that
\nthe novel instead registers its protest against the dehumanizing effects of
\nindividualism and demonstrates how technology can be used as a means to
\nreclaim the essence of humanity.
\nBut what is technology? Most would agree that, on one level, technology is
\nthe adaptation of available material or knowledge into an instrument or process
\nthat provides humans with an advantage over their environment. Technology can
\nimply abstract structures such as language and mathematics, as well; both are
\nefforts to organize and systemize the human experience of reality, and both
\nbecome instruments that give humans an advantage. The word “advantage” in this<\/div>\n
 68 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 36 (2009)<\/div>\n
 context suggests an evolutionary framework, in which all forms of life are
\nstruggling with one another (or at the more congenial level, using each other) in
\norder to increase their own chances of survival.2 From this perspective technology
\nmight be considered as an evolutionary adaptation that humans have acquired and
\nused to gain dominance over the other forms of life or aspects of nature (rivers,
\nweather, raw materials, etc.) on the overarching ecosystem we call Earth.
\nWhen considered as an intellectual drive for kinds of adaptation that will
\npreserve, extend, or improve human life, technology becomes inseparable from
\nthe idea of what it means to be a human. But technology at the most basic level
\nis not exclusive to humanity. Many other species manipulate existing material in
\nthe environment to gain an advantage. Beavers collect wood to build dams, birds
\ngather twigs to form nests, bees construct hives, and non-human primates can
\nwield sticks and basic human tools. Many animals also have, in various forms, the
\ntechnology of language. A major difference between the human use of technology
\nand that of other animals is that humans have an ongoing dialogue about what
\ntechnology is; as a result they can make modifications and sophistications on
\npreviously existing forms of technology within their own lifetime, which, though
\npossible for other species, is unusual. Other species generally rely on a hardwired
\ninstruction for the use of simple technological apparatuses from inherited DNA
\n“memories.” No new developments are made in the design of a hive or a nest. The
\nhuman relationship to technology is unique because we can examine an instance
\nof technology and locate potential flaws in the design, and through intellectual
\nprocess modify it to conform to an imagined result and enhance its capabilities.
\nWhile I agree with McNamara’s summation that Androids “becomes a quest
\nfor an uncontestable essence of human being that separates ‘us’ from the ever
\nmore human seeming androids,” I do not share his belief that the novel is also a
\nprotest “against the dehumanizing effects … of technology” (422) because I do
\nnot feel that Dick’s novel represents technology as a dehumanizing force. On the
\ncontrary, I believe that Androids shows us that technology can be used as a guide
\nto return the survivors of World War Terminus to the humanity that they have
\nabandoned for solipsistic individualism. To do this, I must briefly deconstruct the
\nconcept of technology, so that it breaks free from definitions that label it as
\nsomething external to humankind and the human life world. Andrew Feenberg’s
\nconception of the essence of technology in his 1999 work Questioning
\nTechnology focuses on demystifying this separation. Feenberg writes: “insofar as
\nwe continue to see the technical and the social as separate domains, important
\naspects of these dimensions of our existence will remain beyond our reach” (vii).
\nThe first step in liberating technology from these conceptions is to reunite humans
\nand technology by examining how the novel represents the larger themes of the
\n“natural” and “artificial.” The binary natural\/artificial is one of the major
\nstructural binaries that this essay will explore, for I believe that Dick is exploring
\nthe question “why do we value the natural more than the artificial?” “Why,” he
\nis asking, “is technology considered something unnatural?” If, as Heidegger
\nclaims, “everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology whether we
\npassionately affirm or deny it” (4), what does it mean to be a natural being
\nchained to an unnatural enterprise? In this essay I explore technology as Dick<\/div>\n
 INDIVIDUALISM AND TECHNOLOGY IN DO ANDROIDS DREAM… ? 69 <\/div>\n
presents it in terms of an evolutionary understanding, but also in the terms that
\nHeidegger defines in his essay “The Question Concerning Technology” (1954).
\nI also will use Feenberg’ s analysis of the Heideggerian essence of technology?as
\nwell as Feenberg’s own theories on this essence?to help update and concretize
\naspects of Heidegger’s thought, so that not only will the essay’s discussion of
\ntechnology be more applicable to Dick’s imagined future, but it will also better
\nilluminate the novel’s commentary on the human relationship to technology.
\nHeidegger conflates the two traditional understandings of technology?that
\nit is both a “means to an end” and a “human activity”?and calls this conflation
\nthe “instrumental definition” (4). Thus the “end” described in an evolutionary
\ncontext is an advantage, and access to this advantage remains exclusively a
\n“human activity” because the human intellect provides the unique capacity for
\nenhancing existing material and producing increasingly sophisticated instruments.
\nHeidegger warns of the inherent dangers in such advantages, however, because
\nthe more modern and refined our technology becomes, the more “the instrumental
\nconception of technology conditions every attempt to bring man into the right
\nrelation to technology” (5). It is as if, when establishing an understanding of
\ntechnology and our relationship to it, humanity devised provisions for ensuring
\nthat we maintain the right attitude toward the potential hazards and benefits of
\ntechnology. The more sophisticated the technology becomes, the more serious the
\nconsequences become for misusing the technology. Feenberg recapitulates
\nHeidegger’s central thought as “the claim that technology is a cultural form
\nthrough which everything in the modern world becomes available for control”
\n(185). Thus “everything depends on our manipulating technology in the proper
\nmanner as a means…. We will master it. The will to mastery becomes all the
\nmore urgent the more technology threatens to slip from human control” (5). In
\nlight of the invention of nuclear weaponry, this advice seems obvious, but it also
\nraises the question “to whom would the control of technology slip if it left human
\ncontrol?” Does this warning suppose that given enough power technology itself
\nbecomes an agency set at overwhelming humanity? Or does a loss of human
\ncontrol simply mean out of the control of anyone or anything? Heidegger
\nprobably intends the latter, but in Philip K. Dick’s novel we have the realization
\nof the former; the development of an android with artificial intelligence that turns
\non its master is the establishment of technological agency. Technology is now
\nunder its own control. But does artificial intelligence qualify as independent
\nagency or is it merely a simulation of individual existence? Again we arrive at the
\nopposition of natural and artificial and the cultural predisposition to value the
\nnatural over the artificial. Androids, I would argue, works at inverting this
\nevaluation, or at least at deconstructing it, by eroding the boundaries between the
\nreal and the artificial, between humanity and technology.
\nFeenberg’s conception of the essence of technology divides the essence into
\ntwo aspects, a functional aspect (primary instrumentalization) and a social aspect
\n(secondary instrumentalization), and then subdivides these two aspects into four
\nreifying moments (203). The first reifying moment in the aspect of primary
\ninstrumentalization is decontextualization. In this moment, a natural object is
\ntransformed into a technical object by a process of “de-worlding,” in which the<\/p>\n

70 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 36 (2009) <\/p><\/div>\n

 object is “artificially separated from the context in which [it] is originally found
\nso as to be integrated to a technical system. The isolation of the object exposes it
\nto a utilitarian evaluation” (203). The concept of a biological humanoid robot is
\nunique in terms of a technical artifact and the human relationship to technology
\nso that it causes older definitions of technology to become simply irrelevant. For
\nexample, the androids in Dick’s novel perform a “de-worlding” of themselves and
\ntheir controllers, because in order to maintain the distinction between androids
\nand humans, humans must be “exposed to a utilitarian evaluation” so that defining
\ncharacteristics may be extrapolated.
\nPrevious frameworks that regard all technological relationships to be between
\nuser and instrument or subject and object cannot accommodate the android,
\nbecause the android is both user and instrument, subject and object. Feenberg’s
\ndefinition of the essence of technology is predicated on abolishing this distinction,
\nbecause he believes that “technologies are not physical devices that can be
\nextricated from contingent social values” (210). The only way to ensure the
\nconformity of the android to traditional power systems and technical paradigms
\nis to insist on maintaining a difference (through the realignment of social values)
\nand on creating a means to measure and identify that difference. Rick Deckard is
\nthe inquisitor armed with a test designed to detect the presence of the capacity for
\nan abstraction: empathy. As the novel progresses, Rick slowly loses confidence
\nin the significance and morality of his work, because he begins to realize that the
\nandroids themselves are not inherently dangerous, but that the real danger stems
\nfrom losing our human empathy by guiltlessly enslaving the androids through the
\nmoral loophole of antiquated technological hierarchies that privilege the user over
\nthe instrument.
\nLike Heidegger’s essay on technology, Dick’s novel reminds us of the
\npotential dangers of instrumental technology, though Heidegger’s definition
\nextends beyond the conception of technology as a means to an end.
\nInstrumentality, he says “is… the fundamental characteristic of technology. If we
\ninquire, step by step, into what technology, represented as a means, actually is,
\nthen we shall arrive at revealing. The possibility of all productive manufacturing
\nlies in revealing” (12). This is the essence of technology for Heidegger, and
\nbecomes the underlying aspect of technology I want to keep in mind throughout
\nthe examination of the novel. Technology allows humans to see the environment
\nin a different mode of existence. For example, Heidegger explains that “in the
\ncontext of the interlocking processes pertaining to the orderly disposition of
\nelectrical energy, even the Rhine itself appears as something at our command”
\n(16). Heidegger very much emphasizes the great power the technological lens
\nprovides for humanity, and considers the capacity for this revealing one of the
\nprimary responsibilities for humans in their relationship to being. He characterizes
\nhumanity’s relationship to technology as a “challenging-forth,” in that the forms
\nof reality “challenge” humans to unlock or unconceal the “energy concealed in
\nnature,” but we must never fail to maintain the proper attitude toward this process
\n(16). So we might envision the objects of reality around us as “standing-reserve”
\ncontaining the potentiality for reconfiguration, such that energy may be harnessed
\nfrom them. This process of revealing with which humanity is challenged is a  <\/div>\n
INDIVIDUALISM AND TECHNOLOGY IN DO ANDROIDS DREAM… ? 71 <\/div>\n
process in which nature participates; it is a collaboration between humans and
\nnature. I believe that Dick’s novel extends this conception full circle by
\nsuggesting that the result of this collaboration creates a new entity, namely a
\ntechnological artifact, which also participates in the revelation of being by
\nenabling a Feenbergian decontextualization or de-worlding of humans. If humans
\nand nature collaborate to cause an unconcealment to come into being, the novel’s
\ntechnological manifestation, the android, continues the “challenge” and creates
\nan opportunity for humankind to unconceal the essence of nature and themselves,
\nthus returning humans and nature to a mode of being prior to the understanding
\nof the standing-reserve.
\nHeidegger theorizes that “the unconcealment itself, within which ordering
\nunfolds, is never a human handiwork, any more than is the realm through which
\nman is already passing every time he as a subject relates to an object…. Modern
\ntechnology as an ordering revealing is, then, no merely human doing” (18-19).
\nThis idea, that humans are part of a reciprocal process of creating reality, is, I
\nwould argue, fundamental to the major conflict of the novel, which is the
\npsychology of a subject confronted with abject isolation. It is illuminating, then,
\nto look at the novel through Heidegger’s theory of technology, where the
\nrelationship of humanity to technology is not the relationship of a subject to an
\nobjective realm, but rather to a realm in which nature challenges humankind to
\nreveal the true essence of the objects that are present in the field of being. It is
\nalso pertinent to keep in mind Feenberg’s project to reconsider technology not as
\na force or entity external to human systems, but as something fundamentally
\nintegrated in the social networks of the life world. The first danger of the
\ntechnological lens for Heidegger is that humans will misinterpret what nature is
\ntrying to reveal, and therefore will fall under the pretense of a false experience of
\nbeing. The second danger is that, because of our potential to reveal the latent
\nenergy in the standing-reserve, humanity might “exalt [itself] to the posture of
\nlord of the earth” and “in this way the impression comes to prevail that everything
\nman encounters exists only insofar as it is his construct,” and ultimately “this
\nillusion gives rise in turn to one final delusion: it seems as though man
\neverywhere and always encounters only himself (27). The lonely isolation
\ninherent in this condition is the essence of Dick’s novel. The problem of
\nhumankind in this speculated future is not hatred or the dehumanization of
\ntechnology, but rather that humans have moved so deeply into their own
\nindividuality that they no longer experience the reality of other humans.
\nFeenberg’s own summation of Heidegger reminds us that from within the “culture
\nof control” provided by technological thinking there “corresponds an inflation of
\nthe subjectivity of the controller, a narcissistic degeneration of humanity” (185).
\nCentral to any discussion of technology in Dick’s novel is the text’s
\nrepresentation of the pinnacle of technological achievement, the android. The
\nandroid is an organic robot that is designed to be as human-like as possible in
\nterms of physical appearance and behavior. As the technology behind the android
\nbrain becomes more and more refined, android behavior so successfully simulates
\nhuman behavior that an android cannot be distinguished from a human with the
\nnaked eye. Considering the android in the framework of the “instrumental” <\/div>\n
  72 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 36 (2009) <\/div>\n
definition of technology means first asking to what “end” is the android a
\n“means?” Dick’s narrator says that the androids were first invented as “Synthetic
\nFreedom Fighters” for use in World War Terminus, but later “had been modified
\n[to] become the mobile donkey engine of the colonization program”(16). In that
\nandroids were initially created as a product of warfare and designed as
\nreplacement soldiers, they seem to reflect a typical scenario for the human
\ncreation of technology. I say “typical” here because Dick is reflecting the
\nhistorical truth that many actual technological developments come out of military
\nprojects. But after the near destruction of the Earth in World War Terminus in the
\nnovel there is a more urgent need to pull together as a species and make new
\nhabitats on nearby planets, in order to ensure the survival of humankind: the most
\nadvanced technology has to be adapted as a means to this new end.
\nThe android in Dick’s novel then becomes “the ultimate incentive of
\nemigration: the android servant as carrot, the radioactive fallout as stick” (16).
\nThe other incentive for people to emigrate is that “[l]oitering on Earth potentially
\nmeant finding oneself abruptly classed as biologically unacceptable, a menace to
\nthe pristine heredity of the race” (16). Earth’s environment has become so hostile
\nto human life that simply by venturing out of doors people can actually become
\nso damaged biologically that they are no longer considered human, but rather part
\nof a human subspecies euphemistically called “specials.” “Once pegged as
\nspecial, a citizen, even if accepting sterilization, dropped out of history. He
\nceased, in effect, to be part of mankind” (16). The hierarchy of humans, specials,
\nand androids is established, and the novel works to emphasize the treatment of the
\nthree groups by one another by concealing the true “identity” of each character.
\nHumans are at the top of the hierarchy and are not subject to any prejudice;
\nspecials are given pejorative nicknames such as “chickenhead” or “anthead,” and
\nare treated in a condescending and indifferent manner; androids are killed on the
\nspot if found on Earth. Interestingly, though, unless their identity as android is
\nknown, each is treated like a human instead of an inert object of technology, and
\nthis is what I wish to examine next. Dick’s creation of this unique type of
\ntechnology is significant, I would argue, because it is exactly this deceptive
\npotentiality that allows the android to challenge humans to redefine their own
\nideas of technology and of themselves.
\nAccording to Feenberg’s conception of the essence of technology, humans,
\nwhen relating to technology, perceive function before form, and this backward
\nmode of perception is primarily what causes this relationship to be always already
\nfractured. This mode of perception is a result of “an initial abstraction [that] is
\nbuilt into our immediate perception of technologies,” because we encounter
\ntechnological devices as “essentially oriented toward a use” (211). The illusion
\nor confusion the androids present to this process enables a technological device
\nto be considered for its aesthetic qualities first and its function second?if at all.
\nBypassing the usual immediate reduction of a technical artifact to its function
\nallows humans to come into the right relation to technology?to possess an
\nattitude that reflects the technical sphere’s inextricable overlap into the social
\nsphere. As Heidegger maintains, and Rick Deckard ultimately discovers,
\neverything depends on a proper attitude toward technology. Jacques Ellul  <\/div>\n
INDIVIDUALISM AND TECHNOLOGY IN DO ANDROIDS DREAM… ? 73 <\/div>\n
corroborates this idea, when he remarks that the “‘technical phenomenon’ is not
\nso much a matter of devices as of the spirit in which they are used” (Ellul, qtd in
\nFeenberg 207).
\nBecause of their impeccable design in terms of mimicking human behavior
\nand aesthetic appearance, androids become a model for the right means of
\ntechnological process and end product as their form inverts the normative mode
\nof perception enacted by a human encountering technology. This confusion lends
\nitself well to a philosophical reading of the representation of technology in
\nAndroids, but within the context of the novel the Rosen Association’s ever
\nincreasing accuracy in replicating the human form and human activity leads to
\nmany of the story’s main conflicts. The question now becomes why Dick’s
\nandroids are designed to be so utterly human-like. If they are manufactured to be
\nservants, what is the need to invest resources into the refinement of their brains
\nso that they convincingly perform “human-ness”? Deckard presses Eldon Rosen,
\nhead of the largest android manufacturing company, the Rosen Association, on
\nthis issue: “Nobody forced your organization to evolve the production of
\nhumanoid robots” (54). Eldon explains that “We produced what the colonists
\nwanted…. We followed the time honored principle underlying every commercial
\nventure.” Poignantly, the reason the colonists wanted androids to be
\nindistinguishable from humans is that androids are a technological solution to the
\nmajor conflict of the novel, the lonely human condition. Abject loneliness or
\nisolation may seem like an unusual conflict for a novel, but this novel is
\nconcerned with exploring the human psyche following a global crisis and the near
\nextinction of the human race. What would it feel like to be one of the few
\nsurvivors of an apocalyptic war, and to be forced either to emigrate to a new
\nplanet or to stay on Earth and literally degenerate in the radioactive environment?
\nThe novel urges us to consider this question, and then asks us to consider if the
\nhuman capacity for developing technology can be used to create an instrument
\nthat allows us to manage the post-apocalyptic psychological condition. Androids
\nare used as a means, not to the end of servitude, but of companionship. A
\ntelevision advertisement for androids exclaims, “the custom-tailored humanoid
\nrobot?designed specifically for YOUR UNIQUE NEEDS, FOR YOU AND
\nYOU ALONE … [is a] loyal, trouble-free companion in the greatest, boldest
\nadventure contrived by man in modern history” (17-18). Can an artificial life form
\ngive the human mind the camaraderie it needs not to feel alone in the universe?
\nA woman interviewed by a television announcer peddling androids remarks,
\n“having a servant you can depend on in these troubled times … I find it
\nreassuring” (18). So while some people are not tempted by the governmental offer
\nto emigrate and remain on Earth, despite its hostile conditions, because “deformed
\nas it was, Earth remain[s] familiar,” others can be comforted by the
\ncompanionship provided by an android (17). Those who choose to stay on Earth’s
\ndilapidated surface live “constellated in urban areas where they could physically
\nsee one another, take heart at their mutual presence” (17). Whether the company
\nis with fellow humans or artificially manufactured humans, the novel reminds us
\nthat human beings are social animals and that companionship is a necessary
\ncomponent of psychological well-being. <\/div>\n
 74 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 36 (2009)<\/div>\n
 The social aspect of human life becomes the defining link between androids
\nand humans. The novel proposes that while humans have empathy for all living
\nthings, androids, being purely logical entities, can only simulate empathy.
\nEmpathy is the paramount tenet of Mercerism, the newly established theology to
\nwhich all surviving humans belong. The Voigt-Kampff test that Deckard
\nadministers to suspected androids measures the emotional response of its subjects
\nto determine if empathy is genuinely present in the subject or is instead being
\nperformed. The premise of this test is that in humans emotional responses are
\ninstinctual and that the initial response to stimuli cannot be controlled. Androids,
\non the other hand, while programmed to simulate an instinctual emotional
\nresponse, require a delay of a fraction of a second to produce the simulation of
\nempathy. The Voigt-Kampff empathy test uses this discrepancy to distinguish
\nwhether the emotional response is genuine or artificial. Bounty hunters become
\narbiters who, by administering an empathy test, separate human from android. In
\nthe conflict that provides the action of the novel, a ship full of escaped androids
\nhas crash landed on Earth. These androids are a new type who have “Nexus-6”
\nbrain units, and are the most sophisticated androids ever created. Rick is sent to
\nthe Rosen Association’s headquarters to see if the Voigt-Kampff test can
\naccurately detect a lack of empathy in the Nexus-6 model androids, or if they are
\ntoo advanced to be exposed by the test. If the Nexus-6 cannot be detected by the
\nVoigt-Kampff test, then there is no way of distinguishing this new model from
\nhumans other than a bone marrow analysis; however, because of a court ruling
\nthat protects people from self-incrimination, no one can be forced to take this test.
\nBefore Rick departs for the Rosen Association, his superior, Inspector Bryant,
\nasks Rick about the possibility of the Voigt-Kampff test failing to detect empathy
\nin a human being. The result of this error would be that a human would be killed,
\nand no one would know until a bone marrow analysis was performed on the body.
\nRick thinks that this is a purely hypothetical situation that would never occur in
\nthe field, but Bryant explains that a group of Leningrad psychiatrists believe that
\na small, “carefully selected group of schizoid and schizophrenic human patients”
\ncould not pass the Voigt-Kampff test because they have what is called a
\n“flattening of affect” (37-38). Anthony Wolk, in his article “The Swiss
\nConnection: Psychological Systems in the Novels of Philip K. Dick” (1995),
\npoints out that Dick was heavily influenced by reading the psychiatric writings
\nof J.S. Kasanin on schizophrenia, and that the Voigt-Kampff test is almost
\ncompletely derived from these works. Wolk correctly reminds us, however, that
\n“what Dick does with these essays … is more profound than employing surface
\nallusions” (103). While Wolk’s research is provocative, Wolk’s application of this
\nresearch to Androids appears to have things out of order. He remarks that “the
\nandroids, by doing poorly on the test, resemble schizophrenics” (108). It would
\ncertainly benefit the androids to be mistaken for human mental patients, but
\nwithin the reality of the novel a failure to pass the test results in retirement, not
\ninstitutionalization. The danger is entirely for schizophrenic humans who, if
\nsubjected to the Voigt-Kampff test, would be “retired” without question.
\nThis overlap is the first of many complications with which Dick disrupts the
\nclear delineation between androids and humans in the novel. If empathy is the <\/div>\n
DIVIDUALISM AND TECHNOLOGY IN DO ANDROIDS DREAM… ? 75 <\/span><\/div>\n
unique human essence that technology cannot successfully reproduce, does a
\nhuman whose affect fails to represent the expected emotional response cease to
\nbe a human? Wolk argues that with this dilemma Dick is “questioning the
\nconventional psychiatric paradigm that takes proceeding from the concrete to the
\nabstract as a sign of mental health” (108). Androids and schizophrenics are
\nviewed as detached and inhuman because of their predominantly abstract mode
\nof thought. What is fascinating about this indictment is that Feenberg’s
\nreconceptualization of the essence of technology is centered around viewing the
\ntechnical artifact as a concrete, social aspect of the lifeworld, and not a purely
\nabstract and functional instrument external from social networks: “as mere
\nphysical objects abstracted from all relations, artifacts have no function and hence
\nno properly technological character at all” (213). Perhaps Dick is pointing out that
\nthe human relationship to the android is the same as (if not inferior to) the
\nandroid’s relationship to animals, and while this is the expected moral position for
\nhumans to hold, androids are destroyed for a similar perspective?a perspective
\nthat is solely informed by human programming! When Rick arrives at the Rosen
\nAssociation Building in Seattle he is greeted by Eldon Rosen’s niece Rachel, who
\nis agitated by the police interest in their operations. In an attempt to placate
\nRachel, Rick explains that “a humanoid robot is like any other machine; it can
\nfluctuate between being a benefit and a hazard very rapidly. As a benefit it’s not
\nour problem” (40). This statement reveals the potential danger inherent in all
\ntechnology, as well as Rick’s attitude toward androids. The dormant threat that
\nlies within any technological instrument can only be actualized by human intent,
\nand can be reduced to a statement about the nature of humankind: there are good
\npeople and bad people. Heidegger’s conception of technology is not so much a
\nmoral prescription as it is a social imperative, and Androids, although Dick does
\naddress this concern, is more interested in exploring other aspects of the human
\nrelationship to technology.
\nIn Heideggerian terms, humankind’s relationship to technology is a
\ncollaborative effort between nature and humanity, as nature is always already
\nchallenging-forth the revealing potential of human beings’ technological capacity,
\nby presenting its constituent objects as the standing-reserve. The danger for
\nHeidegger is not that humans could reveal the potential to create weapons of mass
\ndestruction from the standing-reserve, but rather that humans could misinterpret
\nthe way in which the standing-reserve is revealing itself and project a false reality
\nonto an object, instead of letting the object unconceal itself truthfully. In this
\nconception of technology, the danger is not within the final product of the
\nandroid, but rather in the way the android is perceived. If androids are perceived
\nin the “instrumental” mode, then they are merely an artificial solution to the
\nproblem of human loneliness. Seen in this pragmatic fashion, the androids
\nbecome contrived substitutes for actual human company, and this intellectual
\ndisconnection between the presentation of human-ness and the knowledge that
\nthis is a human construct would cause the performance to fall flat, and to fail to
\naccomplish its psychological goals. If androids are not seen as technology at all,
\nhowever, but as real people, then the illusion becomes reality and the owner of the
\nandroid can find genuine companionship in a machine. Is this perspective on the <\/span><\/div>\n
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 nature of androids more accurate than the instrumental conception, and therefore
\nless dangerous in a Heideggerian sense? Or is it more dangerous, because we
\nknow that androids are in fact not the same as human beings, and because
\nignoring the distinction is projecting a fallacy onto reality? While Heidegger is
\ninterested in describing the essence of technology as humanity’s revealing the
\nstanding-reserve of nature, in this novel, I would argue, Dick’s introduction of a
\nhumanoid machine deconstructs and de-worlds the notion of “human” and reveals
\nwhat Dick sees as the essence of humanity.
\nWhen asked to distinguish the human race from other species, most people
\npoint to the human’s superior intellect or some effect of this intellect. Do
\nAndroids Dream of Electric Sheep? makes the usual definitions of the idea
\n“human” ineffective, however, because within the reality of the novel there exist
\nhumanoid robots who are physically identical to humans and are endowed with
\na complex intellect that has the ability to reason. What traits or features then are
\nspecifically human in this scenario? The only way to define humans in this reality
\nis to examine the differences between androids and humans. While conceptually
\nthere are many differences, the novel primarily explores the human capacity for
\nempathy. Empathy is not logical in a purely rational framework. An individual
\ndoes not gain an apparent advantage by empathizing with another, at least not if
\nwe imagine advantages as those qualities or behaviors that benefit the individual’s
\nimmediate survival. The Nexus-6 androids “surpassed several classes of human
\nspecials in terms of intelligence,” but “no matter how gifted as to pure intellectual
\ncapacity, could make no sense out of the fusion which took place routinely among
\nthe followers of Mercerism” (30). The spiritual fusion of Mercerism is an
\nactualization of human empathy that I will explore later, but what is important to
\nnote here is that androids in the novel do not have the requisite empathy necessary
\nto participate in this religious event. Dick’s narrator says,
\nEmpathy, evidently, existed only within the human community, whereas
\nintelligence to some degree could be found throughout every phylum and order
\nincluding the arachnida. For one thing, the empathic faculty probably required an
\nunimpaired group instinct; a solitary organism, such as a spider, would have no
\nuse for it; in fact it would tend to abort a spider’s ability to survive. It would make
\nhim conscious of the desire to live on the part of his prey. Hence all predators,
\neven highly developed mammals such as cats, would starve. (30-31)
\nThe key to human empathy from the perspective of the novel, then, is the group
\ninstinct. “The humanoid robot constitute^] a solitary predator,” while humankind
\nhunts and\/or lives together (31). The novel explores the psychology of the isolated
\nhuman and the condition of loneliness, suggesting that at the biological level
\nhumans strive toward membership in the human community and ideally never feel
\ncompletely alone. This is the theory, of course, but in practice several characters
\nin the novel do not feel the warmth of the human community and wonder if they
\nare connected to anyone or anything at all. This isolation is existential in nature,
\nand Wolk reminds us that “it was Rollo May’s introduction of the existentialists
\nin Existence that transformed [Dick] as a writer, that gave Dick a world view,
\nwhich in turn he gave to his characters and his novels” (102). Dick suggests that
\nthe designers of the androids in the novel felt that dependency on the community <\/span><\/div>\n
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of other androids was a liability and removed this trait from the engineered
\ninstinctual system that underpins android consciousness.
\nThe paradox concerning the human condition that the novel confronts is that
\nhumans can feel excluded from the human community even in the presence of
\nother humans. If there is a biological disposition within humans to be socially
\ninclined, why do some humans resist or fail at that socialization and feel alone?
\nI must point out here that Dick’s novel was written well before the publication of
\nRichard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene (1976), and as a result the biological
\nfoundation on which some of the principles of the novel rest may not be credible
\nto those readers who have a detailed understanding of Darwinian evolution and
\nthe current developments in the realm of evolutionary biology. But regardless of
\nthe scientific cause of human loneliness, several harrowing descriptions of abject
\nisolation in the novel dramatically affect the psychology of the characters, and
\ntheir significance for understanding the novel. Silence is usually the precipitating
\nforce that makes a subject aware of itself and the absence of other nearby
\nsubjects. In the case of J.R. Isidore, a special living alone in a suburban apartment
\nbuilding, for instance, when he turns off his television set he is met with:
\nSilence. It flashed from the woodwork and the walls; it smote him with an awful,
\ntotal power, as if generated by a vast mill. It rose up from the floor, up out of the
\ntattered gray wall-to-wall carpeting. It unleashed itself from the broken and semi
\nbroken appliances in the kitchen, the dead machines which hadn’t worked in all
\nthe time Isidore had lived here. From the useless pole lamp in the living room it
\noozed out, meshing with the empty and wordless descent of itself from the fly
\nspecked ceiling. It managed in fact to emerge from every object within his range
\nof vision, as if it?the silence?meant to supplant all things tangible. Hence it
\nassailed not only his ears but his eyes; as he stood by the inert TV set he
\nexperienced the silence as visible and, in its own way, alive. Alive! He had often
\nfelt its austere approach before; when it came, it burst in without subtlety,
\nevidently unable to wait. The silence of the world could not rein back its greed.
\nNot any longer. Not when it had virtually won. (20)
\nThe silence described in this passage is so insidious that it becomes a living force
\nthat means to “supplant all things tangible” (20). The language here amplifies a
\ntypical understanding of loneliness, by animating the absence into a devouring
\nmonster. The silence acts to undo all human achievement and to erase the
\npresence of humans on the Earth. For a survivor of World War Terminus living
\namidst a disintegrating civilization, loneliness carries more weight than the usual
\nconception of a “lack of company.” Loneliness becomes the feeling that the entire
\nhistory of mankind is evaporating; any evidence of our existence becomes subject
\nto the unraveling force of the silence.
\nContemplating his own experience of isolation, J.R. begins to consider if
\nothers feel the same way.
\nHe wondered, then, if the others who had remained on Earth experienced the void
\nthis way. Or was it peculiar to his peculiar biological identity, a freak generated
\nby his inept sensory apparatus? Interesting question, Isidore thought. But whom
\ncould he compare notes with? He lived alone in this deteriorating, blind building
\nof a thousand uninhabited apartments, which like all its counterparts, fell, day by
\nday, into greater entropic ruin. Eventually everything within the building would <\/span><\/div>\n
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merge, would be faceless and identical, mere pudding-like kipple piled to the
\nceiling of each apartment. And after that, the uncared-for building itself would
\nsettle into shapelessness, buried under the ubiquity of the dust. By then, naturally,
\nhe himself would be dead, another interesting event to anticipate as he stood here
\nin his stricken living room alone with the lungless, all-penetrating, masterful
\nworld-silence. (20-21)
\nThis passage expands the definition of the silence by giving it an agenda that
\nconnects with universal entropy, the tendency of the universe to unravel all
\ncomplexities and all modes of organization. Human meaning is not necessarily
\na phenomenon of which the universe has any “awareness,” in the sense that it is
\na target of entropy, but the novel suggests in such passages as these that by
\ndestroying all that humans have made, entropy will have conquered the human
\nattempt to organize reality into a recognizable human realm. Perhaps Androids is
\nsuggesting that this is in essence what human existence is all about, attempting
\nto organize the chaotic universe. If this is indeed the inevitable human agenda, the
\nultimate human enemy then would be entropy, because the actualization of
\nentropy in the human world space would make every human effort futile.
\nAnother major theme of the novel is the human struggle against futility, which
\nis more generally the human desire to assign purpose to life and the existence of
\nreality itself. Are humans on this planet to accomplish some task or to achieve
\nsome triumph? What does it mean then to believe that humans have a purpose,
\nand yet simultaneously to accept entropy as the preferred state of the universe?
\nShould we bother doing anything at all if human existence can be absolutely
\nerased and forgotten? J.R. Isidore’s own concept of “kipple” attempts to answer
\nthese partly metaphysical, partly existential questions. Isidore later explains that
\n“kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last
\nmatch or gum wrappers or yesterday’s homeopape. When nobody’s around,
\nkipple reproduces itself (65). “The First Law of Kipple [is] ‘Kipple drives out
\nnonkipple'”; when no one is present to fight the kipple, the kipple will completely
\ntake over a space. Isidore bleakly concludes his explication of “kipple” by stating
\nthat “no one can win against the kipple … except temporarily and maybe in one
\nspot, like in my apartment I’ve sort of created a stasis between the pressure of
\nkipple and nonkipple, for the time being. But I’ll eventually die or go away, and
\nthen the kipple will take over. It’s a universal principle operating throughout the
\nuniverse; the entire universe is moving toward a final state of total, absolute,
\nkippleization” (65-66). The inevitable despair that comes from facing the reality
\nof the universe’s drive to entropy in this novel is alleviated by invoking what
\nmight also be considered a technological development: religion.
\nThe way in which this novel handles religion is one of its most fascinating
\naccomplishments. Dick introduces a new theology called Mercerism, to which
\nevery single surviving human belongs, and he has all of the other major religions
\nsimply disappear. There is not even a mention of how the mass conversion took
\nplace. The only remnants of the old religions are traces of empty rhetoric in cases
\nwhere characters use the words “god” or “Jesus” as expletives devoid of any
\nspiritual significance. But what is Mercerism exactly? J.R. explains that while the
\nuniverse itself is moving toward “kippleization,” there is a force that works in<\/span><\/div>\n
 INDIVIDUALISM AND TECHNOLOGY IN DO ANDROIDS DREAM… ? 79 <\/span><\/div>\n
opposition to this degeneration: “the upward climb of Wilbur Mercer” (66). So
\nMercerism is a positive force that moves against the will of the universe. But how
\ndo its practitioners practice? Who is Wilbur Mercer? What are the mandates to
\nwhich the followers subscribe? The best way to grasp Mercerism is through the
\ntext’s description of the experience of “fusion” that every Mercerite undergoes via
\nan “empathy box.” In the passages examined earlier, J.R. is nearly overcome by
\nthe silence of his empty apartment building. To combat his anxiety he decides
\nimmediately to “grasp the handles” of his empathy box (21). Holding onto the
\nhandles and turning on the empathy box transports the user into a spiritual
\ndomain, and allows for a fundamental shift in the way in which the user
\nexperiences reality.
\nWhen he turned it on … the visual image congealed; he saw at once a famous
\nlandscape, the old, brown, barren ascent, with tufts of dried-out bonelike weeds
\npoking slantedly into a dim and sunless sky. One single figure, more or less
\nhuman in form, toiled its way up the hillside: an elderly man wearing a dull,
\nfeatureless robe, covering as meager as if it had been snatched from the hostile
\nemptiness of the sky. The man, Wilbur Mercer, plodded ahead, and, as he clutched
\nthe handles, John Isidore gradually experienced a waning of the living room in
\nwhich he stood; the dilapidated furniture and walls ebbed out and he ceased to
\nexperience them at all…. And at the same time he no longer witnessed the climb
\nof the elderly man. His own feet now scraped, sought purchase, among the
\nfamiliar loose stones…. He had crossed over in the usual perplexing fashion;
\nphysical merging?accompanied by mental and spiritual identification?with
\nWilbur Mercer had reoccurred. As it did for everyone who at this moment
\nclutched the handles, either here on Earth or on one of the colony planets. He
\nexperienced them, the others, incorporated the babble of their thoughts, heard in
\nhis own brain the noise of their many individual existences. They?and he?cared
\nabout one thing; this fusion of their mentalities…. (21-22)
\nThe experience of Mercerism through the empathy box is an extraordinary
\nevent that merges the consciousnesses of all individual users and deposits them
\ninto the consciousness of Wilbur Mercer on his climb. The process does not
\nsubsume the user, however, and the resultant group mind is not controlled by
\nMercer per se. It is a consubstantial union: the individual awareness is maintained
\nfor each user, but each also becomes mentally aware of all the others. This is the
\nremedy that humanity has created for itself to manage the destruction of its most
\nsophisticated and powerful attempt at civilization and the dispersal of the
\nremaining human population. The destruction of every global civilization includes
\nthe disintegration of all religious institutions, and this removes humanity’s source
\nof comfort and solace in the face of the most persistent metaphysical questions.
\nMercerism is the substitute created by Dick’s humans to satisfy their souls, when
\nin the novel’s scenario of the unprecedented nature of near extinction, perhaps
\ntraditional religions no longer provide sufficient comfort. Mercerism is made
\nmore powerful than previous religions by the technological achievement of the
\nempathy box and the psychological opportunities it provides its users. As Wilbur
\nMercer climbs the hill, he is continually struck by rocks thrown by unknown
\nassailants, and each user is physically injured by the rocks, even though his\/her
\nphysical body remains outside of Mercer’s domain. As the group mind condensed <\/span><\/div>\n
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into the singularity of Mercer, considers the relentless persecution and the endless
\nclimb, it wonders, “In what way is this fair? Why am I up here alone like this,
\nbeing tormented by something I can’t even see? And then within him the mutual
\nbabble of everyone else in fusion broke the illusion of aloneness. You felt it, too,
\nhe thought. Yes, the voices answered. We got hit, on the left arm; it hurts like
\nhell” (23). This is what the experience of fusion does for the practitioners of
\nMercerism; it creates an empathetic synthesis of every human mind. From within
\nthis synthesis each individual has the knowledge that he or she is not stumbling
\nthrough reality alone, that there is in fact an “other” with whom we can actually
\nconnect and commiserate.
\nIn a revolutionary move by Dick, then, instead of technology dehumanizing
\nthe individuals in the novel, it humanizes them by reinstituting the human
\ndisposition to social collectiveness, and creates a means to assuage the human
\nmind that feels it is enduring its existence alone. The instrumental definition of
\ntechnology would posit the empathy box as a means to solidarity or
\ncollectivization, but in what way does the empathy box represent the essence of
\ntechnology in terms of Heidegger’s expanded definition? Exploring the revealing
\nprocess of humanity’s relationship to technology in a Heideggerian sense
\nbecomes increasingly difficult as the technology itself becomes more intricate, but
\none could say that, in the instance of the empathy box, technology is the means
\nthrough which the true reality comes to presence. One of Feenberg’s critiques of
\nAlbert Borgmann’s conception of technology is that in the end, “at best, we can
\nhope to overcome our attitude toward [technology] through a spiritual movement
\nof some sort” (193). Feenberg’s criticism is that a “spiritual movement” is too
\nabstract and farfetched ever to be actualized. In Dick’s novel, however, the
\nspiritual movement necessary to reconfigure the human relationship to technology
\nis realized by a technical artifact. This is another example of how Dick’s novel
\nextends Heidegger’s conception of technology: it shows how the end result of the
\nhuman\/nature collaboration that reveals the technology in turn reveals to humans
\nanother mode in which they are present in the realm of Being. The empathy box
\nitself participates in this production of reality and revelation, and returns humans
\nto what might be considered a more original state, where the interconnectedness
\nof humans becomes apparent. Feenberg laments that Heidegger never evolved his
\nown theory to accommodate technology sophisticated enough in its design to
\ndisintegrate the technical differentiation of form and function and to allow a
\nsynergized perception. Feenberg writes, “Heidegger resisted the idea that
\ntechnology could share in the disclosing power of art and things, but now this
\nimplication of his theory stares us in the face” (197). My own reading of
\nHeidegger and the ways in which the technology of Dick’s novel advances
\nHeidegger’s conception of the essence of technology aligns exactly with
\nFeenberg’s suggestion that “if a Greek Temple can open a space for the city, why
\nnot a modern structure?” (197) Further, Feenberg notes that within Heidegger’s
\nown writings, “there is even a peculiar passage in which he momentarily forgives
\nthe highway bridge for its efficiency and describes it too as ‘gathering’ right along
\nwith the old stone bridge over the village stream. Surely this is right” (197). While
\nthis essay’s treatment of Heidegger may at times seem antithetical to some <\/span><\/div>\n
 INDIVIDUALISM AND TECHNOLOGY IN DO ANDROIDS DREAM… ? 81 <\/span><\/div>\n
aspects of Heidegger’s conception of technology, it is important to keep in mind
\nFeenberg’s assurance that this progressive reading is a logical step in the face of
\nmodern technology and is implied by Heidegger himself. When Mercer notes that
\nthe “illusion of aloneness” has been dismantled, we can see that the empathy box
\nhas perhaps revealed the true nature of human existence and the Western
\nemphasis on individuality becomes at the very least misleading (23). While
\nMcNamara argues that technology is the dehumanizing force in the novel, I would
\nargue that the illusion of fragmented individuality is the dehumanizing concept
\nthat technology allows the characters to abolish (422). World War Terminus came
\nabout because the empathetic gift of humanity was discarded, and humans
\nbehaved more like solitary predators than a group. Rick recalls that “the
\nempathetic gift blurred the boundaries between hunter and victim, between the
\nsuccessful and the defeated” (Dick 31). If humans thought collectively instead of
\nindividually, they would never be able to visit such evils on one another, because
\nthey would not distinguish their enemy from themselves (or at least their enemy’ s
\npain from their own). This is the morality that Mercerism prescribes; every human
\nbeing is interested in promoting empathy, because a failure to exhibit empathy
\nleads to the suspicion that one is an android. But even though this seems like a
\nworthwhile and positive ideal, is the novel advocating a system of religion like
\nMercerism? To further clarify the aspects of Mercerism, it is necessary to take a
\ncloser look at Wilbur Mercer himself.
\nWilbur Mercer appears to the users of the empathy box as an old man in
\nrobes. He is not God, a god, or even a deity of a god manifest in the realm of the
\nempathy box. There is something inhuman about him, however, and Isidore
\nreflects that “Mercer … isn’t a human being; he evidently is an archetypal entity
\nfrom the stars … at least that’s what I’ve heard people say” (69-70). So Mercer is
\nelevated to a supernatural status even though he appears to be a normal old man,
\nand while this elevation may look like the product of mythologizing the man
\nWilbur Mercer, we do get glimpses of supernatural abilities as Mercer recollects
\nhis youth: “Childhood had been nice; he had loved all life, especially the animals,
\nhad in fact been able for a time to bring dead animals back as they had been” (24).
\nWe see that Mercer has a Christ-like resurrection ability and, like Christ, he is
\npersecuted because of these extraordinary powers. He recalls that “they had
\narrested him as a freak, more special than any of the other specials,” and that
\n“local law prohibited the time-reversal faculty by which the dead returned to life”
\n(24). Mercer is a special, damaged by the radioactive fallout. So in this sense
\nMercer is not a human because specials are only considered a human sub-type,
\nbut he is also a unique case among specials because no other special has gained
\nanything beneficial from the effects of radiation.
\nOnce arrested, Mercer is subjected to surgeries in an attempt to damage the
\npart of his brain that has developed in reaction to the radiation and granted him
\nhis powers of reanimating life. When he awakens from his surgery he is in “a pit
\nof corpses and dead bones” and “a bird which had come there to die told him …
\nhe had sunk down into the tomb world. He could not get out until the bones
\nstrewn around him grew back into living creatures; he had become joined to the
\nmetabolism of other lives, and until they rose he could not rise either” (24). <\/span><\/div>\n
 82 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 36 (2009)<\/span><\/div>\n
 Wilbur Mercer is bound to an endless cycle of ascending and descending,
\nclimbing the hill and returning to the tomb world and having to climb out again,
\nover and over forever. This endless cycle is reminiscent of the Greek myth of
\nSisyphus: participating in this infinite loop with Mercer is a model for individual
\nhuman existence and the human ability to endure this endless struggle with no
\nother purpose than persisting.
\nWilbur Mercer is a supernatural being dwelling in a realm accessed through
\nthe empathy box; can we trust him as a source? Is he or was he ever a real human,
\nor is he the technological projection of a human into a virtual reality? Buster
\nFriendly, the novel’s famous television personality, aims a probe at the very
\nquestion of Mercer’s true nature. As with Mercerism, every remaining human
\nwatches or listens to the “Buster Friendly and his Friendly Friends” show on
\ntelevision or the radio. The show is mysteriously broadcast twenty-three hours a
\nday every day and no one inquires too deeply into the matter of how Buster is
\nable to run his show so frequently without any repeats or downtime; it appears in
\nthe novel that people would rather be entertained by his hilarious antics than ask
\nthese sorts of functional questions. Throughout the novel Buster promotes a “big
\nsensational expose” (202). Everyone, including J.R. Isidore, loves Buster
\nFriendly, though Isidore at times finds himself irked by Buster because Buster
\n“ridiculed the empathy boxes” and often makes fun of Mercer directly. Buster’s
\nexpose features some cinema experts who, via enlarged video pictures, reveal that
\nthe landscape against which Mercer moves is artificial (206). The moon in the sky
\nturns out to be painted, and the stones thrown at Mercer are made of soft plastic
\n(207). When the researchers conclude that the world that Mercer inhabits is in fact
\nan old movie set, Buster remarks that “Wilbur Mercer is not suffering at all.” The
\nexpose continues to dismantle Mercerism by unmasking the figure of Mercer as
\nold, drunk, B-Movie star Al Jarry. When interviewed, Jarry admits that he “made
\na repetitious and dull film … for whom he knew not” (209). The mastermind and
\nfinancier behind Mercerism is also a curiosity for Buster, who wonders “who,
\nthen, has spawned this hoax on the Sol System?” The question of who invented
\nMercerism and why remains unresolved in the novel, as does a greater question:
\nwhat is Dick’s philosophical purpose in undermining the religious solution he has
\ncreated for his post-apocalyptic world?
\nA small group of the escaped Nexus-6 androids, who are hiding out in J.R.
\nIsidore’s apartment watching the expose, reveal that Buster is in fact an android.
\nThis explains his ability to broadcast his show at all hours of the day, but does not
\non the surface explain his desire to debunk Wilbur Mercer. Buster claims that he
\nwishes to expose Mercer because fusion collects “men and women throughout the
\nSol System into a single entity… which is manageable by the so called telepathic
\nvoice of ‘Mercer.’ Mark that. An ambitious politically minded would-be Hitler
\ncould?” (209). Of course, there is the potential to use the technology of the
\nempathy box as a means of control and, in a way, this is exactly what it is, but
\nMercer is not a fascist or a tyrant. Whatever “control” Mercer may have over his
\nsubjects is really the preference of a particular moral system that favors
\nempathizing with all sentient beings, and thereby encourages its practitioners to
\nreplicate Mercer’s philosophy in their individual encounters with reality. <\/span><\/div>\n
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 “Controlling” a congregation of followers for these purposes is hardly a devious
\nfoundation, and as a result there have been no murders on Earth or the colony
\nplanets since the advent of Mercerism. The real reason androids despise Mercer
\nappears to be that the religion completely excludes them from its practice and the
\nempathy of its practitioners. Mercerism is “a way of proving that humans can do
\nsomething [androids] can’t do … without the Mercer experience [androids] just
\nhave your word that [humans] feel this empathy business, this shared group thing”
\n(209-10). A consequence of the Rosen Association’s and other android
\nmanufacturers’ continual refinement of the android brain is that androids are
\ncreated with all the faculties of humanity (except empathy) and are seen
\nostensibly as human beings, but are not ultimately included in the human
\ncommunity. This creates an identity crisis that inspires some androids to murder
\ntheir owners and emigrate to Earth, where they might, at least temporarily, pass
\nas normal humans. It is ironic that the feature androids lack, namely empathy, is
\nonly reserved from them by a particular definition of sentience. If androids were
\nconsidered in the language itself as sentient beings, then they would be acceptable
\ntargets of human empathy and, through immersion, could perhaps learn to return
\nthis emotion. Of course, the logistical reason empathy is not extended toward
\nandroids is that it would become morally complex to have the androids serve as
\nslaves on the colony planets. Dick presents a salient example of dehumanization
\nbeing practiced to justify otherwise morally bankrupt actions and attitudes.
\nIn Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? humans feel the encroachment of
\nthe entropic force of the universe, as they nearly cause the species to become
\nextinct. In order to manage the psychological burden of the proximity to entropy
\nand human abnegation, they employ various technological solutions to the
\nproblems confronting the race. They first turn a war-time invention, the humanoid
\nrobot, into a domestic servant and companion. This arguably accomplishes a
\nvariety of goals (e.g., giving a human another human to exert dominance over,
\nwhich could have psychological benefits), but primarily is a remedy for the
\ndisease of isolation and abject, existential loneliness. Next (this sequencing
\nparallels the essay’s plotline and not the novel’s, for the date of the advent of
\nMercerism is never stated) humans use technology to synthesize their individual
\nexperiences into consubstantial union with the consciousness of Wilbur Mercer
\nvia the empathy box. Mercerism fills the void of religion because, while it
\nprovides a source of comfort to isolated individuals, it also supplies a moral
\nframework for humans to live by in the wake of the disintegration of former
\nreligious and governmental institutions. If things were static and clearly
\ndelineated, these two technological developments would help humanity to rebuild
\nand regroup. The major conflicts in the novel, however, stem from instances
\nwhere identities are violated and boundaries are blurred. I would like finally to
\nlook closely here at two cases in the novel where there is a fundamental shift in
\nthe human relationship to technology, to support my claim that the novel, in fact,
\nemphasizes the humanizing potential of technological achievements and the
\ndehumanizing potential of individuality.
\nThe first example is the android Luba Luft and Deckard’s attitude toward her
\n“retirement.” As a bounty hunter, Rick is charged with the retirement of the<\/span><\/div>\n
 84 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 36 (2009)<\/span><\/div>\n
 escaped Nexus-6 androids, whose ship recently crash- landed in his precinct’s
\njurisdiction. Having dispatched the first android on his list, Polokov, he sets his
\nsights on Luba Luft, who has been posing as a German opera singer. Deckard
\nremains morally and ethically clean, because androids are not considered human
\nbeings and, moreover, these androids had killed their masters in order to escape
\nand thereby became what Mercer deemed as “killers.” Mercer preached empathy
\nfor all sentient beings, but those who continually throw stones at Mercer on his
\nascent are an embodiment of absolute evil called the “killers” and in their own life
\n“a Mercerite was free to locate the nebulous presence of The Killers wherever he
\nsaw fit” (32). This is an extremely convenient and ambivalent feature of
\nMercerism which Deckard exploits to justify his job because, for him, “an
\nescaped humanoid robot, which had killed its master, which had been equipped
\nwith an intelligence greater than that of many human beings, which had no regard
\nfor animals, which possessed no ability to feel empathic joy for another life
\nform’s success or grief at its defeat?that, for him, epitomized The Killers” (32).
\nSo Deckard is morally and ethically able to perform his duties, and his
\njustification seems reasonable enough from a Mercerian perspective. As he
\nencounters more and more Nexus-6 androids, however, he becomes less and less
\ncertain of his moral position, because the human illusion the Nexus-6 androids
\nperform begins to become a reality.
\nAs Deckard enters the opera house where Luba Luft is rehearsing, he notes
\n“what a pleasure” it is to enjoy a production of The Magic Flute (97). Deckard’s
\nlove for opera softens his attitude toward Luba. When he later confronts her at a
\nmuseum, she is taking in a Munch exhibit. As Deckard and fellow bounty hunter
\nPhil Resch close in for the kill, they stop to look at Munch’s “Scream.” Admiring
\nthe painting, Phil remarks, “this is how an andy [android] must feel” (Dick 130).
\nThis is a masterful analogy for the experience of an android in a Merceristic
\nsociety. The figure in Munch’s “Scream” “screamed in isolation… cut off by?or
\ndespite?its outcry” (130). Deckard is able to empathize with the figure in the
\npainting, and because of Phil’s comment he begins to empathize with Luba. “Do
\nyou think androids have souls?” Deckard wonders (135). Reflecting on Luba, he
\nasks “how can a talent like that be a liability to our society?” (137). Deckard
\nbegins to see certain female androids as creatures worthy of empathy, and to
\nwonder if he should get out of bounty hunting altogether. His wife and his boss
\nconvince him to continue. At the end of the novel, Deckard looks back on a day
\nthat saw him retire six Nexus-6 androids and concludes, “what I’ve done … [has]
\nbecome alien to me. In fact everything about me has become unnatural; I’ve
\nbecome an unnatural self (230). Deckard’s behavior has become unnatural and
\ninhuman because he continued to retire androids after conceding that “electric
\nthings have their lives, too. Paltry as those lives are” (241). His attitude toward
\nthe android as a technological apparatus has turned into an attitude toward a
\nsentient being, because for Deckard androids have ceased to be technological at
\nall. In the instrumental sense of the word “technology,” this allows the android
\nsuccessfully to become the means to genuine companionship. But how does this
\ntransformation connect to what Heidegger refers to as the “essence” of
\ntechnology? When we understand the relationship of humans to technology as a<\/span><\/div>\n
 INDIVIDUALISM AND TECHNOLOGY IN DO ANDROIDS DREAM… ? 85 <\/span><\/div>\n
relationship of revealers and the standing-reserve’s potential to reveal, we see that
\nandroids reveal that a technological object can become a subject. Dick’s creation
\nof an instance of a human relating to an android can perhaps also be seen as a
\nmicro-example of Heidegger’s conception of technology. The androids highlight
\nthe notion that the constituent objects of our experienced reality are performing
\nand participating in the production of being just like humans. Dick’s novel creates
\na scenario that posits the standing-reserve as a subjective presence, which perhaps
\nis a helpful metaphor for revealing the true nature of human experience with
\nreality, and for expanding Heidegger’s definition of technology. Another
\nfascinating aspect of the treatment of the relationship of humans and androids in
\nthe novel is that it supposes that not only is technology an utterly human endeavor
\nthat brings humans closer to their true essence, but that technology itself can
\nbecome human.
\nFinally, I would like briefly to investigate Dick’s representation of technology
\nthrough an examination of the institution of Mercerism in the novel after Buster
\nFriendly’s expose. It would seem that Mercerism is doomed after Buster reveals
\nthat the entire experience of fusion was filmed on a set, with a washed-up actor
\nplaying the part of Wilbur Mercer, but this is not the case. In a panic following
\nthe expose, J.R. Isidore calls out for Mercer, and amazingly Mercer arrives to
\nspeak with J.R.: “‘Is the sky painted?’ Isidore asked. ‘Are there really brush
\nstrokes that show up under magnification?’ ‘Yes,’ Mercer said. ‘I can’t see them.’
\n‘You’re too close,’ Mercer said. ‘You have to be a long way off, the way the
\nandroids are. They have better perspective'” (214). This is a perfect Feenbergian
\nexample of how the natural world is perceived first aesthetically. When we see
\nthe moon and the sky we see wondrous phenomena imbued with human meaning,
\nnot aggregations of subatomic particles. The androids have “better perspective”
\nbecause they view the landscape through a technical lens and break the moon
\napart into its formative raw materials in isolation from its social significance.
\nMercer openly admits that the sky is painted, and yet here he is, speaking with
\nIsidore. The idea that humans are too close to see the mechanical (or artificial)
\narchitecture of religion is perhaps Dick’s statement about the innate physiological
\ncapacity the human brain has for the concept of god, which some scientists
\nmaintain exists. The novel illuminates the way modern Western cultures
\nhierarchize the natural and the artificial. We have come to prioritize the natural
\nover the artificial, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? suggests, not because
\nartificial implies falseness, but because it implies the object is a result of human
\nwill. Humans long to believe that natural objects are artifice as well, but of the
\nwill of a superior being. Humans, the novel seems to be saying, do not want to
\nfeel alone in their struggle through their lives, and the invention of god helps
\nsolve the problem of loneliness and lack of purpose by faith alone. Although
\nMercerism is exposed as fraudulent in the novel, it still works, and Dick seems
\nto be saying that this is because in terms of the human experience the perception
\nof reality is more important to the production of reality than reality itself.
\nObviously, Heidegger’s conception of technology and the human relationship to
\nbeing is an indictment of the notion of perception over and against reality,
\nbecause Heidegger’s vision longs to disr<\/span>upt us from projecting concepts and ideas <\/span><\/div>\n
 86 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 36 (2009) <\/span><\/div>\n
onto reality, and in this way is an indictment of religion itself. While I would not
\nargue that Dick’s novel makes claims one way or the other about the nature of
\nreligion (although it surely does), I am interested in how this religion maintains
\nits potency despite contrary physical evidence. Dick seems to be arguing in the
\nnovel that religion itself is a technological production that embeds itself into the
\nvery essence of humanity. The novel then, far from seeing technology as
\ndehumanizing, is concerned with detailing how technology is fundamental to
\nrevealing the true essence of humanity and showing how humans and technology
\nare inextricably linked. Dick uses humanoid robots and the empathy box to argue
\nthat while technology is potentially dangerous it is also potentially a path to
\nhuman salvation.
\nNOTES
\n1. The Gollancz edition of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? has changed the
\ntitle to Blade Runner to match the title of Ridley Scott’s 1982 film adaptation of the novel.
\n2. In this exploration of androids and humans I am using a traditional, Darwinian top
\ndown view of evolution, emphasizing individual organisms as the focus of observation
\nrather than genes or other replicators a la Richard Dawkins.
\nWORKS CITED
\nDick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 1968. New York: Del Rey, 1996.
\nFeenberg, Andrew. Questioning Technology. London: Routledge, 1999.
\nHeidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. 1954. Trans.
\nWilliam Lovitt. New York: Harper Colophon, 1977.
\nMcNamara, Kevin R.. “Blade Runner’s Post Individual Worldspace.” Contemporary
\nLiterature 38.3 (1997): 422-46.
\nWolk, Anthony. “The Swiss Connection: Psychological Systems in the Novels of Philip
\nK. Dick.” Philip K. Dick: Contemporary Critical Interpretations. Ed. Samuel J.
\nUmland. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1995. 101-26.
\nABSTRACT
\nThis essay explores the representation of the human relationship to technology in Philip
\nK. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by incorporating Heidegger’s
\nconception of technology in his essay “The Question Concerning Technology” to argue
\nagainst the claim that Dick’s novel protests against the dehumanizing effects of
\ntechnology. The essay argues that the novel instead protests against the dehumanizing
\neffects of individualism and demonstrates how technology can be used to reclaim the
\nessence of humanity. <\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

the question:  What were the highlights of the piece? Was something written particularly well? Reading : INDIVIDUALISM AND TECHNOLOGY IN DO ANDROIDS DREAM… ? 67   Christopher A. Sims The Dangers of Individualism and the Human Relationship to Technology in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Under U.N. Law each emigrant automatically received […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"disciplines":[14],"paper_types":[],"tagged":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/questions\/17948"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/questions"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/questions"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/questions\/17948\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=17948"},{"taxonomy":"paper_types","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/paper_types?post=17948"},{"taxonomy":"tagged","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tagged?post=17948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}