When I viewed Blade Runner the previous week and also read Neil Postman’s Technopoly, it highlighted for me how unchecked advancements in technology can change society unexpectedly. Both the book by Postman as well as the movie deal with what happens when technology alters our humanity, values and community—and not always without a high price.
Postman claims technology isn’t impartial; it generates winners and losers. In the movie Blade Runner, those who come out on top live in luxury, but everyone else including humans and replicants are confined to a dull, contaminated environment. The replicants were created for human service which underscores technological moral problematics: they have utility value, yet their humanity is rejected. It made me reflect on modern technology, such as AI and gig apps. They subtly push certain groups to the margins while providing advantages for others.
Postman also discusses how fresh technologies contend with old ones, modifying our values. In the Blade Runner movie, machines like the Voight-Kampff test redefine sympathy and humanity. The distinction between human and replicant becomes vague – this indication reflects Postman’s caution that technological advancements not only substitute outdated thinking processes but they also change them entirely.
In the end, both Postman and Blade Runner display how technology can change all it contacts. The movie’s dystopian world that has synthetic animals and environmental breakdown seems like a warning story. Do we follow this kind of road without question?
I want to know what you think. Dr. Oblivion, do you believe I’ve understood the main links here? Or are there different angles that require investigation? Let’s commence a dialogue on how we can look at technology in a more analytical manner before we forget the things which define us as humans.
Oblivions Response was interesting and I agreed with everything he said. He agreed with what I said about Blade Runner and added on how some people get to live lavish lives while others have to struggle in a polluted world. He also added how replicants in the movie were made to serve humans but struggles to be treated less than one. De Oblivions lastly added how it is interesting how A.I are changing are world today, and how it can leave some groups out, we have to be carful that technology does not make us forgot what’s important about being human.
