Technology, as a means toward the reduction of certain kinds of human labor and effort, can either benefit or damage human beings, depending upon such conditions as the degree to which technology itself is controlled and harnessed to positive ends and outcomes and the extent to which technology serves rather than dominates human endeavor. To explore this thesis û that technology is both a boon and a potential source of dread, and that various factors that may be beyond the control of individuals determine which effect technology will produce û this essay will draw upon a novel written and published in 1985 by Don DeLillo titled White Noise. The novel depicts, in brief, the events taking place in the life of a university scholar and his family and friends in the aftermath of a lethal black chemical cloud (an ôairborne toxic eventö) that signals the coming dominance of the ôwhite noiseö produced by electronic machines and technologies.
In White Noise, Don DeLillo (p. 325) paints a picture of technology gone mad, leading his protagonist to say that he is ôàafraid of the imaging block. Afraid of its magnetic fields, its computerized nuclear pulse. Afraid of what it knows about me.ö The world described by the author embraces technology as a benefit in terms of what it can assist man in accomplishing, but also as a ôdaily seeping falsehearted death (p. 22). The definition of technology thus presented in the novel is not a positive one; despite the fact that the protagonist and his family spend Friday evenings together before the television set (p. 16), the television is little more than a technological device characterized by DeLillo (p. 16) as having a ônarcotic undertow and eerie diseased brain-sucking power.ö From a personal perspective, technology cannot be so easily defined or dismissed; it is this writerÆs view that technology consists of systems, processes, and devices that are designed by humans to meet hum...