Vonnegut and Technology

“Do you know what a Luddite is? That’s a person who doesn’t like newfangled contraptions. Contraptions like nuclear submarines armed with Poseidon missiles that have H-bombs in their warheads, and like computers that cheat you out of becoming. Bill Gates says, “Wait till you can see what your computer can become.” But it’s you who should be doing the becoming. What you can become is the miracle you were born to work—not the damn fool computer.”

- Kurt Vonnegut

I believe the "damn fool computer" doesn't actually not harm us, but help us. However, Vonnegut has a different opinion. As you can see from this quote of his, he does not like the idea of technolgy. And, he is not shy to share his thoughts with the world. Through his writing in "Welcome to the Monkey House", he shares his ideas through fictional short stories. In “The Euphio Question”, one of his short stories, the technology has negative affects on everyone involved. The machine that is created could posiibly destroy how our world functions. From this story, we can assume he believes that technolgy will lead humans in the wrong direction. There are similar happenings in “Harrison Bergeron”. This story is set in the future, when people have developed technolgy to make everyone equal. but, the people in the story have much lower qualities of life than we do now. This is another example of how Vonnegut feels technology will destroy our way of life. Lastly,"Epicat" is another short piece that he has created. This one consists of humans and computers falling in love, and acting as husband and wife. We obviously think this could never happen, but Vonnegut makes his point. I agree with Vonnegut in a way. I do not believe we should fully rely on computers for everyday needs. But, i also think technology is extremely useful to our world. Without technology, we would have not accomplished many of the things we have today.
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