Techno-Realist Science Fiction

I’ve been thinking generally about two of last week’s readings, Alexander Hall’s article on technological utopianism in culture and David Golumbia’s piece on cyberlibertarianism, and how they relate to representations of technology in contemporary science fiction film. In particular I’ve had this nagging thought that perhaps rather than easily being categorised as utopian or dystopian, as being technophobic or technopilic, contemporary science fiction films are more techno-realist (a term Luke introduced me to in last week’s class).

Traditionally, or at least following the nuclear attacks on Japan as Hall pointed out, films about technology have been overwhelmingly pessimistic. Hall’s article then argues that the general cultural mood is becoming more optimistic about technology and its future. But I feel like the overall trend of late (i.e. the last five years) is to have science fiction films that are not overtly pessimistic about technology (as is the tradition), but nor are they technophilic, with cyberlibertarian viewpoint. That is to say, they are complicated!

One film in particular that I’m considering writing about for my research assignment is Duncan Jones’ Moon (2009). Moon is very similar to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, it’s really an homage of sorts. But it is where Moon departs from the earlier film that reveals how general attitudes to the future of technology, and how humans factor in, are perhaps changing. Where in the original a human fights off a homicidal computer, in Moon *spoilers* the target of the homicidal computer is actually a cyborg. What Moon questions is not whether we, the humans, will be safe around future technology (one of the main issues that viewers took away from 2001: A Space Odyssey), but rather the ethics and morals surrounding posthumanism, from a cyborg’s point of view. Maybe Moon is part of a new breed of sci fi films, and so reflective of a new cultural attitude, which don’t naively present a perfect future, but don’t predict humanity’s doom either. It’s more techno-realist.