The Melting World

I agree with Paula and Marianne that Nature vs. man’s
–and therefore technology’s–attempt to control it
(which seems to always fail in the end, too) runs
throughout the Science Fiction genre, and Donna Harwaway
mentions the omnipresence of Nature in SF
(see Murphie&Potts, pp.116-117):
Frankenstein’s beast comes to life from an electric
storm & rain permeates Blade Runner (also a film noir
motif–think Taxi Driver).

Westernized (highly technologized) people fear
‘unpredictable’ Nature because they can’t really control
it. Nature is not unpredictable at all, though, but a
natural movement toward some sort of balance, even if it
eventually excludes the pesky human race (probably needs
to…).

I believe those of us in the Western world have already
long ago reached that critical point where we can no
survive without our technologies of electricity, water
purification, sewage systems, antibiotics, etc. We are
cyborgs in this sense. Most westerners are no longer, as
members of the human race, physically strong. Some argue
this won’t matter; that we could upload ourselves as
binary code in a machine, but I disagree.

Ultimately the ones who’d probably best survive any
SF-esque catastrophe (viral or otherwise) wouldn’t be
the technologically complex people who wash their hands
with anti-bacterial soap, but rather those (the
majority) who still live a harsh, sustainable life of
daily physical struggle. Now I sound like a survivalist!
Maybe I am wrong, though…

Just rambling, but Nature, I think, seeks balance out of
the chaos, but sadly most tech-savvy humans don’t look
beyond their bank account. I place my bets that Nature will
get things back to where they need to be, with or without us.