I agree with Paula and Marianne that Nature vs. man’s
\n–and therefore technology’s–attempt to control it
\n(which seems to always fail in the end, too) runs
\nthroughout the Science Fiction genre, and Donna Harwaway
\nmentions the omnipresence of Nature in SF
\n(see Murphie&Potts, pp.116-117):
\nFrankenstein’s beast comes to life from an electric
\nstorm & rain permeates Blade Runner (also a film noir
\nmotif–think Taxi Driver).<\/p>\n
Westernized (highly technologized) people fear
\n‘unpredictable’ Nature because they can’t really control
\nit. Nature is not unpredictable at all, though, but a
\nnatural movement toward some sort of balance, even if it
\neventually excludes the pesky human race (probably needs
\nto…).<\/p>\n
I believe those of us in the Western world have already
\nlong ago reached that critical point where we can no
\nsurvive without our technologies of electricity, water
\npurification, sewage systems, antibiotics, etc. We are
\ncyborgs in this sense. Most westerners are no longer, as
\nmembers of the human race, physically strong. Some argue
\nthis won’t matter; that we could upload ourselves as
\nbinary code in a machine, but I disagree.<\/p>\n
Ultimately the ones who’d probably best survive any
\nSF-esque catastrophe (viral or otherwise) wouldn’t be
\nthe technologically complex people who wash their hands
\nwith anti-bacterial soap, but rather those (the
\nmajority) who still live a harsh, sustainable life of
\ndaily physical struggle. Now I sound like a survivalist!
\nMaybe I am wrong, though…<\/p>\n
Just rambling, but Nature, I think, seeks balance out of
\nthe chaos, but sadly most tech-savvy humans don’t look
\nbeyond their bank account. I place my bets that Nature will
\nget things back to where they need to be, with or without us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":437,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2788],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-media-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/watercarrier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/watercarrier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/watercarrier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/watercarrier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/437"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/watercarrier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/watercarrier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/watercarrier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/watercarrier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/watercarrier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}