Technology and the Brave New World :: Brave New World

Technology and the Brave New World   Although the book Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, was written long ago, its subject has become much popular since most of the technologies described in the book have, at least, partially, become a reality. Huxleys community of Utopia is a futuristic guild designed by contractable engineering, and controlled by neural conditioning with mind-altering drugs and a manipulative media system. Yet, despite the similarities, the reader also finds many contrasts between the two societies. Perhaps the most great contrast between Huxleys Utopia and our modern society, deals with the issue of procreation. The majority of babies born in our society today, are still the result of intercourse between a man and a woman. In many cases the birth of a child is a memorable and joyous event for the woman. In Utopia, however, if a woman is caught posture offspring, she will be punished by exile. Offspring not produced the societys way is a threat to the societys existence, in the eyeball of the leaders. As today, pregnancy, in Utopia, could be prevented using a variety of methods. Where our society uses male and female birth control methods, Utopia has pregnancy substitute (a procedure in which Utopian woman are given all the psychological benefits of childbirth without undergoing it) and malthusian drill (similar to todays birth control pills). However, modern society and Huxleys Utopia both explore the advantages of artificial reproduction, although Utopia has taken it to the extreme The Bokanovsky Process, is a method whereby a human eggs normal development is arrested, thence buds, producing many identical eggs. My good boy...Bokanovskys Process is one of the major instruments of social stability (Huxley, 7). Not only did this method create millions of zombi like citizens for Utopia, but the leaders have supreme control over any threat of overpopulation. Utopian predestinators decide the future function of each embry o, essentially assigning class status. In this way, the leaders of Utopia are also able to keep the social classes balanced in the way they felt benefited everyone. Although the reader sees many dissipation of social classes in modern society, in Utopia, the class distinctions were palpable. A five-tiered caste system is maintained which ranks Alphas and Betas on top followed by Gammas, Deltas, and the semi-moronic, ubiquitous Epsilons. The maxim "Community, Identity, Stability" frames the Utopian social structure.