Technology has given us the capability to do some pretty amazing things in our lifetime. We can do things never thought possible before, like having face-to-face virtual conversations over the computer with people across the world. Do these rapid advancements in technology mean we are any more free than we were before? I would argue against it. In fact, I would go as far as to say we have created technology capable of making us even less free than any society has been before us. Think about how much you use technology in your every day life, and how reliant we are on it. The technology is all there to be able to monitor almost all of the daily activities anyone in the world goes through. This is no new topic for any of us, with all of the recent uproar regarding the NSA and their monitoring. But what if it went a step further? Drone technology is growing at an exponential rate. Imagine a near future where police drones fly around, recording everything and everyone around. That is a pretty scary thought, but one that is all too real.
Neuromancer does an excellent job of exploring these same themes, and the ironic fact that advancements in technology have not made us any more free than before. When the novel starts out, Case views technology as an escape from reality and ultimately a device for freedom. He views his body as simply a “meat sack”, hindering his minds capabilities. Once he is banished from cyberspace, however, his view changes. He is only allowed back in on the basis that he would be helping out Armitage and his associates. He has no free will inside cyberspace; he is bound by Armitage’s orders. 3Jane has a similar experience with the freedom but ultimate constraints of technology:
“‘You killed my father,’ 3Jane said, no change whatever in her tone. ‘I was watching on the monitors. My mother’s eyes, he called them.’” (Pg. 218)
She is only able to watch her father die because of technology, but it is ultimately the finite capabilities of this very technology which restrain her from being able to do anything to save him. Would it have been better for her to have never known what happened, than to have to watch the entire time knowing there is nothing you can do to stop it? Because of technology, she is not even given the option.
The restrictive capabilities of technology are not just limited to humans, however, as the sentient AI life in the novel also display frustration with it. Wintermute lives its’ days with the sole intention of wanting to merge with Neuromancer. Technology has given this AI the ability to exist, but has bound it by its’ written code with no other alternatives. As explicitly stated in the book, “[Wintermute] didn’t have any real power” (180). Likewise, technology has given Dixie Flatline the ability to cheat death. But while he may seem sentient, he lives out his days as memory downloaded on ROM (131). In reality, the technology that his granted him this ability to live forever restricts him to never be able to grow or develop. He is simply a stagnant personality. Barely something we would deem “alive.”