ABSTRACT
Figure 5.1 Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin 1936. Credit: Chap-
lin/United Artists. Courtesy of the Kobal Collection).
In Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) there is a well-known sequence in which Chaplin’s tramp is working on an assembly line, tightening nuts. All day long the speed of the conveyer belt has been increasing, until finally, unable
to keep up, Charlie has a nervous breakdown. He climbs onto the conveyer belt
and is carried along with it into the workings of a gigantic machine. Suddenly
the screen is full of enormous turning cogs, with the tramp caught up in the
midst of them (Figure 5.1). Move forward sixty years and we have Alien Resurrection
(Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1997). Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), cloned back to life after
her demise in the previous Alien film, comes across a room filled with earlier,
failed attempts to clone her. Floating in tanks are deformed, nightmare ver-
sions of herself; and strapped on a table, another monstrous Ripley clone, alive
and begging to be killed. Both these films reflect concerns about the scientific
and technological advances of the modern period and the effects that they are
capable of having on human beings. From the unprecedented development in
the human capacity to control nature, to the current advances in biotechnology
and the manipulation of life itself, science and technology have altered our exis-
tence in fundamental ways. But they also raise important questions: are all these
changes for the better? Are there dangers in these new forms of technological
control? If they have costs, do these costs outweigh their benefits? In this chapter
we will look at some of the critical perspectives on science and technology that
have emerged in recent years. First of all, however, it needs to be noted that for
a long time the dominant attitude towards science and technology has been that
they are central to human progress, unambiguous means for the betterment of
the human condition. Indeed, along with its individualism, faith in the progres-
sive character of science and technology is another characteristic feature of our
modernity. So let us begin by considering this modern faith.
