Atomic Bombs, “Kipple,” and the Promise of Early Computers

“A merry little surge of electricity piped by automatic alarm from the mood organ beside his bed awakened Rick Deckard. Surprised – it always surprised him to find himself awake without prior notice” (Dick 3). This is the opening scene in Philip K. Dick’s book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Deckard and his wife, Iran, consider themselves lucky to own the Penfield Mood Organ. The mood organ is a significant technological device in the novel that controls Deckard’s emotions. With the mood organ, Deckard and Iran can dial into any mood they feel like. However, once they dial in an emotion, they lose control of that emotion to the machine. They lose the freedom to make choices on their own. Thus, from the beginning of the novel, Philip K. Dick has already blurred the line between humans and machines. For Americans reading this novel in 1968 in post-World War II United States, they would have been deeply troubled by Dick’s portrayal of androids because androids are machines that humans depend on to learn what it means to be human. But, giving autonomy to machines severely limits human autonomy in a world where humans have little choice and control of their common fate, a fate poisoned by atomic radiation. Thus, in writing Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick troubled  his readers in 1968 with the paradox that as humans depended on modern technologies in post-World War II United States and relied less on each other to define their own human values and ethics, the atomic bomb permeated into everyday life and reoriented American values of peace, security, and control; DDT and Strontium-90 caused uncontrollable and unpredictable problems in the environment, which reframed the values, ethics, and responsibilities of scientists and individual consumers; and early mainframe computers extended but severely limited the values of democracy and freedom in the public sphere (thesis statement).

When Dick published his novel in 1968, many Americans were worried that modern technology, specifically the atomic bomb, would lead society to collapse into totalitarianism because the distinction between humans and machines was becoming blurred, humans’ lives were becoming fractured, and their values were developing in response to the atomic bomb. The atomic bomb did not only embody American values, but it reoriented the values of almost all societies. Thus, as the atomic bomb was dictating the values of Americans in the atomic era, Americans had optimism mixed with uncertainty as they continuously struggled to reassert humanity’s ability to control its own technology, dictate its own values, and define its own ethics. Paul Boyer in his book, by the Bomb’s Early Light, states that “above all else, the atomic bomb raised ‘the question of power. The atomic scientists had to learn new ways to control it; so now does political man” (Boyer 9). This tension about who is in control of technology or the lack of control of technology by humans is portrayed in the novel as Deckard fights back against the android machines and the Rosen association to reassert his and humans’ control over the technology, the environment, and their dominance over machines. However, as Deckard fights against the androids, he finds himself becoming less empathetic and more like the androids who have no moral or ethical purpose and who have no control over their fate. Similarly, around the time people were reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Americans, scientists, and government were becoming fearful and were losing their ability to control the unintended consequences of the atomic weapons they created. But, “Americans must not surrender to fear or allow themselves to be paralyzed by anxiety; they must rally their political and cultural energies and rise to the challenge of the atomic bomb” (Boyer 26). This is an important quote to keep in mind because whoever controls the means of reproduction controls the fate of humanity, and if no one controls the technology, no one is in control of what it means to be human and of the values of American culture.

Empathy is very significant to the novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? because by using empathy as the main distinguisher between humans and machines, Dick is challenging his readers to think about empathy, technology like the atomic bomb, and technology-dictating cultural values in ways that his readers never thought about before. Specifically, Dick is using empathy to show the possibility of a dystopian future of technological despair where humans are losing their natural abilities to empathize with living beings. As a result, Dick suggests that perhaps humans are becoming more like androids and vice versa because both do not have any control over their current situation. For example, the escaped androids in the novel can cut off the legs of a spider because they do not show empathy, but on the other hand, androids like Rachel Rosen are becoming more like humans as she expresses a desire to help Deckard retire androids throughout the novel. When Jacques Ellul wrote The Technological Society in 1967, Ellul envisioned a similar dystopian relationship between technology and culture, where there will “be a dictatorship of test tubes rather than of hobnailed boots” (Ellul 434). In other words, the scientific and technical elite claim they control the technology, can solve the problems of technologies like atomic fallout, and can exert perfect control and scientific management over every aspect of people’s lives, which is similar to how the how the Rosen association in the novel exerted control over the reproduction of androids.

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However, because the atomic bomb left Americans with a lack of control and certainty, they did not feel like they had any choice in the inevitable destruction of the Earth. Thus, the destruction of the environment resulted from the scientists’ and the elite’s lack of management, planning, and control over the land, the machine, and of each other.  Similarly, in the novel, humans were the one that created the problems of radioactive dust, the extinction of almost every species of bird, and the “kipple-ized” environment (Dick 65).  In addition, “the dust which had contaminated most of the planet’s surface had originated in no country, and no one, even the wartime enemy, had planned on it” (Dick 15). The fact that humans in the novel were unable to anticipate and plan for the radioactive dust is important to note because characters like Rick Deckard do not have the appropriate amount of empathy to have control over their own problems and to even have control over their fate. That is why it was so important for Deckard to own a real animal instead of a fake because the lack of owning a real animal showed that Deckard was losing his status as a human being, losing his empathy towards others, was losing his ability to control his own circumstances, and was becoming less human like the “chickenhead” Isidore. So, although Dick uses empathy to distinguish humans from androids, it seems like Philip Dick also uses empathy to show his readers a complex paradox in modern society after World War II where what makes a human a real human became less clear at the time because the atomic bomb made anything seem possible for humanity, yet there were limits of understanding the technology, fear of the unknown effects, and lack of control over these effects that caused people to question humanity and lose faith in the scientists who created the atomic bomb. Thus, “it is apparently our fate to be facing a ‘golden age’ in the power of sorcerers who are totally blind to the meaning of the human adventure” (Ellul 435). This is a crucial point by Ellul because the atomic bomb created new values in American culture in the post-World War II era, including new values of freedom to consume in a new consumer society created by New Deal programs. But at the same time, the scientists who created atomic weapons controlled the technologies, controlled the values of those technologies, and conformed individual consumers into modern life. So, while there was great promise for modern technologies following World War II, there was also great fear that technology was promoting values of centralization and totalitarian control, instead of democracy.

            As atomic technology was developed for the fight against communism, a great consumer society emerged after World War II that created a market for nuclear energy, but the negative effects of nuclear fallout started to show up as every day, invisible chemicals, like DDT and Strontium-90, in unexpected places. Modern technologies used during World War II created new values of liberation and autonomy for the consumer as war technologies created a market for consumer goods like DDT. But at the same time, these modern technologies created values of conformity and centralization because only a few owned the means of production and reproduction, making it extremely difficult for the average person to have the true capacity and autonomy to clean up the problems created by science.  Similarly, in the novel, the Rosen association owned the means of production of androids, leaving Deckard, Isidore, and other humans powerless in a machine-dominated environment.

One of the major questions that pondered many readers of Dick’s novel was: could Rick Deckard and the humans in the novel win over their own self-destruction? Would the “kipple” bury Rick Deckard and his freedom in the novel just like how it was burying Americans in the post-war consumer society? In the 1960s, Dick used “kipple” to signify the unintended consequences of the consumer society at the time. Average citizens wanted to know who was responsible for the problems of Strontium-90 and DDT caused by science. These questions were on the minds of Americans during the time Dick published his book. In Technics and Civilization, Lewis Mumford wrote that the machine “is both an instrument of liberation and one of repression” (Mumford 283).  . In this case, nuclear fallout from nuclear bomb testing was an instrument of both liberation and one of repression. On the one hand, tracing the effects of Strontium-90 and DDT gave individuals an “everyday ecological sense” as the average consumer had to weigh life choices with and without nuclear technology. On the other hand, the effects of Strontium-90 and DDT were out of the individual’s control; individuals could not solve the problems of science. Thus, nuclear weapons created new responsibilities for scientists in the atomic era and helped define new values and ethics for protecting the environment and avoiding a tragedy of the commons. The unintended consequences of nuclear technology helped nonscientists define new values and ethics for the scientists. Scientists ignored the effects of their creations because they were detached from what they were doing and from the values of the average citizens. In the novel, Deckard was attached and connected to the Mercer Box at the expense of detaching from societal values. By the end of the novel, he let the fake Mercer Box take control of his fate. Overall, individual nonscientists need science and technology to learn about themselves and the world they are living in so that they can have the freedom to make better choices for the future. But at the same time, individuals must be careful not to give too much autonomy and control to science and technology because as seen with DDT and Strontium-90, science and technology can lose control by putting the fate of the world in the hands of the power elite. Thus, in 1968, technology needed to develop new cultural values based less on the few individuals who controlled the technology and more on the community.

In the midst of post-World War II prosperity, there was freedom for the individual to consume and use up resources and live better. However, in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip Dick questioned why Americans valued an overabundance of resources when eventually in the long term, those resources would be depleted. Dick introduces the concept of kipple in his novel to address this concern when he says that “kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers … When nobody's around, kipple reproduces itself… It always gets more and more…No one can win against kipple, except temporarily” (Dick 65). This quote is significant because it summarizes the major historical context in which Dick is writing. Just as how individuals questioned the projects of the TVA and the consumer society it created in post-war America, Dick’s readers questioned whether Rick Deckard and John Isidore could stop the abundance of “kipple” from destroying the Earth and from diminishing the meaning of what it means to be human. Dick challenged his readers at the time to look at the world in a new way where a society was not made up of individuals, but rather, individuals were the society. Like Strontium-90 and DDT, more items or “kipple” seemed to be showing up in places where they do not belong. Thus, one of the challenges Dick presents to Americans is for them to rely on each other and not on technology to find a way to bring order out of chaos unless they wanted the freedom of the technological commons to lead to ruin, a tragedy which early mainframe computers helped predict.

When Philip K. Dick wrote this novel, many individuals had felt a loss of control over modern technology in the post-World War II era and had felt a loss of control of their environment as they could not contain the spread of atomic fallout; however, the rise of the early mainframe computers brought great promise for individuals, scientists, the military, and government who wanted to assert control over their lives, over their technological creations, and over their common fate. People like J.C.R. Licklider, Vannevar Bush, and Alan Turing envisioned the democratizing capabilities of these early computers. For them, these computers like the ENIAC, SAGE, and the ELIZA program created and extended values of democracy, rationalization, and centralization. In other words, computers gave individuals control over their environment, created a zone of democracy, administered people’s freedoms, and extended the public sphere. For example, in the ENIAC Press Release in 1946, “it was pointed out that the electronic calculator does not replace original human thinking, but rather frees scientific thought from the drudgery of lengthy calculating work” (ENIAC Press Release). However, “it is perhaps paradoxical that just, when in the deepest sense man has ceased to believe in – let alone to trust – his own autonomy, he has begun to rely on autonomous machines” (Weizenbaum 9). Weizenbaum is trying to point to the idea that humans have autonomy only because they see that autonomy through computers. Thus, in a way, a person’s choices and values are undermined by the computer’s limitations. In other words, computers can open up the doors to new communities, new ideas, and can expand the public sphere, but they are also limiting. Weizenbaum discussed in Computer Power and Human Reason how computers enabled and limited a public sphere when he wrote that “like highways and automobiles, they enable the society to articulate entirely new forms of social action, but at the same time they irreversibly disable formerly available modes of social behavior” (Weizenbaum 37-38).

Whereas many saw the great promises of computers and the democratic values they enabled, Philip K. Dick troubled his readers because he thought machines did not enable democracy, control, and rationalization, but rather, machines weakened these human values. In the novel, the purpose of an android is to mimic reality and because they can simulate reality so well, Rick Deckard and other humans can understand more about themselves the more they understand about androids. However, because the humans in the novel rely on androids to learn about humanity, humans are losing autonomy and control to the androids. For example, the Penfield mood organ gives Deckard freedom to dial any emotion, but once he is dialed in, there is no human control of emotions. The machine itself and the company that owns the machine (Penfield) are in control of Deckard. In the novel, humans are relying on androids to channel their emotions when they should be channeling human emotions themselves. For example, Iran said that “my first reaction consisted of being grateful that we could afford a Penfield mood organ. But then I realized how unhealthy it was, sensing the absence of life, not just in this building but everywhere, and not reacting” (Dick 5). This is significant to note because machines and computers may be able to simulate reality, control emotions, and democratize knowledge, but that simulated reality drains meaning from reality itself. This is why readers of Dick’s novel were troubled by what is real and what is not real. In the novel, Mercer, revealed in the novel as a fake, becomes real for Rick Deckard because of his need for interactions and his need for connecting with others through the empathy box. Thus, Deckard’s interactions with Mercer further blurred the distinction between humans and androids because Deckard and the escaped androids that he is trying to retire are solitary creatures, but they use technology of the Mercer Box and of the fake Buster Friendly to feel connected with one another, but they actually are not connected in reality at all, which is a similar idea to the present-day Facebook. Like social media, Deckar is alone but connected through the Mercer Box, a fake which enables and destabilizes democratic values in the public sphere. Similarly, as Americans used early computers in the post-World War II era to gain control of their lives and democratize knowledge, they became more reliant on the technology and less on each other.

Thus, in writing this book, Philip K. Dick wanted his readers to know that technology will show great promise for humans, but that promise is usually met with limitations and uncertainty for what it means to be human the more humans try to connect with their tools. So, as the atomic bomb, DDT, and computers in post-World War II America gave Americans prosperity and progress, they also exhausted Americans to the point where they put more hope in their technology than in their hope for humanity to solve human problems like Strontium-90, which caused Americans and American values to fracture and disperse. Today, as people become connected and emotionally attached to their devices, as they become “glued” to their cell phones, and as they form simulated communities online through Facebook, people become more like the technology they create, undercut their own values, and more important, undermine the value in others.