A. Neuromancer and Cyberpunk Film
Neuromancer discusses the ways in which people augment their bodies with technology, which can easily be seen in elements of The Matrix. The mixture of machine and man is found in The Matrix through the plugs and cables the humans use to connect to the virtual world, most notably the invasive, penetrative plug used to ‘jack in’ to the Matrix through the back of their heads. This is compared to Molly Millions’ razor-nails and eye augmentations found in Neuromancer – both fusion of man and machine used to grant the user abilities not available to them as organic life forms.
Neuromancer’s exploration of the ways in which people utilize artificial bodies to achieve their own means is echoed in the replicants of Blade Runner. The replicants are essentially slave labor with shortened lifespans who rebel against their creators in order to get more life, often filmed and depicted as members of an object group rejected by society’s already fading moral fabric. In Neuromancer, this is shown through the AIs of the book, namely Wintermute and Neuromancer, each of which is attempting to become a superintelligence by growing, developing, and evolving together.
Neuromancer’s demonstration of people inserting their minds into virtual reality is also echoed in The Matrix through the use of the titular VR simulation known as “the Matrix,” which is named identically in both works. While Case and crew use the Matrix as a pseudo-Internet to find information, which then becomes a sort of virtual reality, The Matrix’s simulation is shown as a false reality peddled to its users to make them believe they are in the real world.
B. Questions about Artificial Intelligence
1. Two wonderful examples of the tension about the rights of androids or artificial life in cyberpunk media lie in the 2015 film Ex Machina and the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Measure of a Man.” In Ex Machina, the programmer Caleb is sent to Nathan’s compound/home to administer a Turing test to the android AI Ava – essentially a test of her sentience. The major question in that film is the welfare of Ava if she turns out to be sentient: if she is, she is enduring a sexually abusive and controlling situation with Nathan, but if not, she is simply a machine to be experimented upon. Ava’s futurist appearance, including the translucent parts of her body, are consistently backlit to give her that uncanny, robotic appearance, thus helping the audience muddy those questions of sentience and vulnerability.
In “The Measure of a Man,” the android Data, already considered to be a sentient being by his crewmates on the Enterprise, must prove his sentience in a hearing that may see him disassembled by a scientist to make more of him. On the one hand, the prosecution states that, because he was manufactured by a man, and can be turned off simply by pressing a switch, he is not real. However, Captain Picard successfully defends Data’s sentience by pointing out that, if more Datas were to be made, that would constitute a ‘race’ that would need protections against the kinds of abuses that would be levied against them as essentially slave labor. The director of the episode consistently allows Data to speak for himself, communicating with his accusers directly, focusing on his face and filming him as if he were human.
2. Cyberpunk films that focus on android rights as a civil or human rights issue are clearly on the side of granting rights to AIs. Historically, civil rights struggles have won out in the court of public opinion, and are looked at in hindsight as noble struggles against violent, unjust oppression. By using the same kind of language about androids as people in the Jim Crow South used against blacks, for example, those siding with AIs are perceived to be on the right side of history.
3. If presented poorly or ham-fistedly, these kinds of allegories can be incredibly patronizing. Using overt imagery, like fire hoses or dogs, to simulate android oppression can be unsubtle and condescending. In the Matrix short “The Second Renaissance,” the Dred Scott decision and the novel Native Son as alluded to, as is the infamous Saigon execution photo, all of which can be insultingly on-the-nose matches to other injustices and war crimes.
4. In stories of Android revolution, the protagonist is usually either the android or a helpful human who comes around to the side of the androids. In the film I, Robot, Will Smith’s character is initially prejudiced against robots, but when he comes to befriend the sentient robot Sonny, he works with him to bring about the android revolution, thus becoming a tolerant facilitator of equal rights. In Chappie, the android is the protagonist, and he searches for a sense of agency while also picking up on our good (and bad) human values, like compassion and/or violence.
5. Everything about the Three Laws presumes that androids and AIs are meant to be subservient to humans. Each rule essentially frames humankind as a higher priority than the life of an AI, including an inability to harm humans, and even the implication that AIs must sacrifice themselves to save humans.
C. Cyberspace and Virtual Reality
Enslavement is a powerful theme found throughout a lot of cyberpunk works, particularly related to virtual reality. In both William Gibson’s Neuromancer and the kinds of cyberpunk works it inspired, the virtual reality of cyberspace is often used as a sociopolitical minefield for one larger group to enslave a less powerful group. In The Matrix, the machines use the Matrix to enslave humans so they remain docile and pliable while they are used for energy. Dark City’s virtual reality (though an unconventional one) keeps them in the dark about their real situation as the pawns of the Strangers. Tron’s Master Control Program enslaves the smaller programs in the name of purity and efficiency, and so on.
Neuromancer contains these themes of Enslavement within virtual reality as well. In many ways, the Wintermute and Neuromancer AIs are the ones truly tapped and enslaved within the virtual space, as it is only when they become “the sum total of the works, the whole show” that they are able to escape the confines of their own construction and search for other AIs like them (Gibson 156). This is a curious reversal of many of the cyberpunk works that followed it, apart from perhaps Blade Runner: here, the AIs are the ones that need liberation rather than the story reflecting humanity’s need to unshackle itself from tyrannical technology. Unlike the human hero’s journeys of Tron and The Matrix, Neuromancer’s enslavement relates to the desire of self-aware technology to remove itself from the shackles of limitation. In sympathizing with artificial intelligence in this way, Neuromancer innovates the theme of enslavement by showing the capriciousness of humanity and its desire to control the technology it creates.
Works Cited
Gibson, William. Neuromancer. Ace, 1984. Print.
