Johnny Mnemonic and The Air-Ship

Even though the Johnny Mnemonic “cyber-punk” short story was a little hard to get through, partly because of the dolphin addicted to smack and all the technical terms, it still brought up some interesting points. The same goes for the much less convoluted story, The Air-Ship. I know we covered a lot of the themes and implications in class, but I just wanted to quickly highlight or underscore a few important points. On page 59 of Johnny Mnemonic Johnny says, “I’d spent most of my life as a blind receptacle to be filled with other people’s knowledge and then drained, spouting synthetic languages I’d never understand.” This quote paints a very eerie picture of the future in which the definition of human thought as we know it now would no longer apply. If this special courier ability (hard drive in the brain) was a reality, then a person could have information in their heads without actually “knowing” it. As the story details, this poses very serious risks to humanity. In short, the second story (way ahead of its time) is really a commentary or cautionary tale about human dependency on technology and what could happen if we become too reliant on it. Can you imagine where we would be without all the technology we depend on today (alarm clocks, cell phones, and computers to name a few)?