Kurt Vonnegut

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Recommended: Ill effects of technology on society

Kurt Vonnegut has always had a great awareness of the destructive social impact of science and technology. Contraptions that Vonnegut calls “social transplants” replace real relatives and friends with synthetic ones. Recordings, radio and television are just a few of these devices. They make it possible to bring synthetic relatives and friends right into your home and replace those friends and relatives who are not perfect, nor even consistent, with a better class of people. Vonnegut’s least favorite technology is the computer, because it is a nervous system outside of our own, and it has deprived humans of the experience of becoming. “All they have to do now is wait for the next program from Microsoft” (Pickering 24). Films, books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk. Singers and musicians show us humans making sounds far lovelier than humans really make (Skaw 568). All of these technological developments have decreased the amount of contact we have with other humans.
The first of these “transplants” took place in the 4th century before Christ. Audiences accepted attractive people who memorized interesting things to say on stage as genuine relatives and friends (Vonnegut 266). We no longer have a need to make conversation with our dreadful real family and friends, not when we have all of these technological and entertaining transplanted friends and family. Vonnegut believes contemporary society is lonely because we have alienated ourselves from each other because of all of the technology in our world. Throughout his many writings Vonnegut shows his fascination with the way technology changes the social environment (Lundquist 88).
He never abandons his theme of hatred for science and technology and its social impact on society. Vonnegut also believes that we no longer have developed imaginations because of destructive technological developments. We are not born with an imagination; teachers and parents help us to develop it. Imagination was once very important because it was your major source of entertainment. The imagination circuit is built in your head. People can read a book and envision it in their mind. However, this is no longer necessary. Now there are shows, actors, and movies that show us the story instead of letting us use our imagination to envision it. We do not need imagination just like we do not need to know how to ride horses in our society. We have cars that can go much faster than horses so why learn how to ride one? This question can be applied to imagination. Why unleash your imagination to envision an unknown world in a book

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