Dystopian Technology?

Internet Radio Stations: Ex. Pandora

Internet radio stations like Pandora chose the songs for you and build a playlist off of what you have liked or skipped in the past. It retains data on your musical tastes. Although it is great at choosing what songs you might like to hear, it injects some of its own ideas and motives into your music. It overtly advertises between songs and could even chose songs in order to project a certain idea or mood onto you. A song criticizing the government may slowly cause you to feel anger towards the government or a song negatively stereotyping a certain group may lead you to form generalizations. Technological dystopia intends to bring about worsened or horrific conditions through the means of technology and it seems (although it is highly unlikely) Pandora and other systems that chose songs for you are a controlling means to get you to listen or feel a certain way.

This idea of thought control isn't exemplified by just one technology in 1984 but rather the combination of many different things to produce a population that thinks what Big Brother wants them to think. However, internet radio most closely resembles the Telescreen which also choses programing for you. Both play on the notion that they you enjoy listening/watching what is programmed and by the end of the novel Winston even takes comfort in watching the programming on the telescreen. Songs on the internet radio invoke emotion and so does Telescreen as it goes through its hate segment.

The notion that any technology is dystopian is complicated. In one respect, so much lies in the users hand and a technology technically doesn't become bad until it is used to produce a dystopian ends. The telescreen, for example, could be used simply to make sure that people stay safe. It could possibly warn paramedics when someone gets injured or inform people about the news. Internet radio, in the same way, could be used as pure entertainment and give you songs that you truly do enjoy without any advertisements. However, as we learned earlier in the year, no technology is neutral. Every form of technology was created with an intention so it is difficult to say that it isn't dystopian if a creator unintentionally or intentionally made a technology that harmed people or placed people at a disadvantage.

Ultimately, I do not think that there a single technology that is inherently bad and that has no positive consequences. Communication technologies like surveillance cameras, which are many times negatively stigmatized, also help catch a lot of criminals. To say that a technology is inherently distopian is to say that no good can come out of it and I can't think of any technology that fits that description.