Towards the machine: How science fiction has mapped our descent into the digital

Since Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, science fiction has been a means of exploring the question, ‘what does it mean to be human?’ in a world of exponentially advancing technology. In Frankenstein, this question appears to be primarily concerned with the limits of man. Victor fashions himself as a scientific God when he creates the monster and suffers terrible consequences for it. When Shelley was writing, science had not yet evolved past its inherent boundaries, and humans still worked within the confines of nature. However, these limits were rapidly disintegrating, and Shelley understood this as she created a literary genre that would accompany scientific advancement. It is through this genre of science fiction that the questions ‘what is a human?’, ‘what is the nature of the reality we are creating?’, and ‘what could our limits be?’ are explored.

By 1984, when William Gibson wrote Neuromancer, the question ‘what does it mean to be human’ had still not been answered. If anything, it had become more complicated. With the rapid technological advancement that had occurred in the 150 years between Shelley and Gibson, the question of religious consequences to scientific creation was less of a concern. In Neuromancer, the primary questions seem to be ‘is physical existence necessary to be human?’ and ‘what is the nature of our changing relationship with technology?’.

Case, Neuromancer’s protagonist, often refers to his body as “meat”, characterising it as an inanimate, inconsequential extension of his “true” identity, his mind. He is most comfortable inside the matrix, where his mind is effectively removed from his body, and physical existence is no longer necessary. Similarly, the character of Pauley, who is dead, but whose mind has been reconstructed as an advanced AI, Dixie, allows him to appear and react to events as if he were alive. There is a moment in the novel when Case asks him if he’s sentient, and Pauley responds, “It feels like I am”. Is Dixie still human even without a body and despite being dead?

In 1984, technology such as this existed only in the imagination of sci-fi writers, but in 2026 this is a reality

Neuromancer also explores the merging of humans and the machine in a way that has proved to be unsettlingly prophetic. Most of the characters have been altered to accommodate technology that is supposedly resulting in them appearing more machine than human. Molly, for example, has surgically inserted glasses that give her night vision and display data. In 1984, technology such as this existed only in the imagination of sci-fi writers, but in 2026, this is a reality. For example, Meta’s AI glasses provide similar advantages to the ones Molly had, the only difference: they are (currently) removable. Gibson leaves it to the reader to decide if his characters have gained an advantage with this technological input or if they have, in fact, lost something essential.

A symbiotic relationship between man and machine has been created in place of our relationship with nature. This artificial relationship is in danger of becoming parasitic, a concern echoed in Case’s narration despite his blinding proximity to technology; “He’d always imagined it as a gradual and willing accommodation of the machine”. However, what if hubris is blinding us to reality? What if we are no longer the ones who are accommodating the machine, but it is accommodating us? In writer Paul Kingsnorth’s words, “its mind is being built through the steady, 24-hour pouring forth of your mind and mine … The great mind is being built.” Although this is perhaps excessively apocalyptic, it is interesting to imagine a future in which we have become the servants of technology rather than the other way around. Before this becomes a reality, novels such as Neuromancer provide a useful stage to rehearse the implications of such an existence.

The ending of Neuromancer is, in its sombre banality, both a comment on the ultimate incompatibility of man and machine and, perhaps, a suggestion that human nature has an endurance that technology cannot defeat. Case starts and ends the book as a drug addict, suggesting the futility and meaninglessness of his adventures involving technology throughout the novel. Drugs are a necessity to keep him in his body, therefore defeating the transcendence of the matrix.

Imperfect, unpredictable emotion separates humanity from technology

Human life is necessarily immanent while technology is becoming transcendent. With the merging of the two AIs, Wintermute and Neuromancer, Case wonders, “You running the world now? You God?” Although the answer is ambiguous, the implication is that humans are, to an extent, removed from technology because of their immanence and their inherent connection to nature, in comparison with the increasing omnipresence of technology. This appears to be a triumph for technology, and Case even states, “Wintermute had won,” but it is perhaps also an affirmation of something distinctly human that cannot be merged with a machine. Imperfect, unpredictable emotion separates humanity from technology. This is, perhaps, how Gibson proposes that the complete assimilation of man and machine will be prevented. So, although Neuromancer reads as predominantly dystopian and currently not so far removed from our reality, it also highlights the human characteristics that do not exist in technology, characteristics that we ought to work hard to preserve.

Therefore, as technology accelerates, the question we should be asking is not whether we can merge with it but what, if anything, in us cannot?