Response to 'On Media': Power vs. Responsibility

Power vs. Responsibility

When I heard the sentence “With great power, comes great responsibilities” from Stan Lee via spider man, I was inspired and felt a great sense of safety. Yes, having superpowers with responsibility, the animation world is happy and secured now. But, how about our real world?

Not as fortunate as the animation world, our real world is almost in the opposite direction. With the development of technology, human’s ability reaches to an unprecedented peak----a peak for technology, as well as a peak for manipulation. Nowadays, with a $200 PC, a normal man can cheat majority easily via Youtube; having some knowledge on nuclear, a small country can destroy the entire earth at will. The most familiar example of this fact may lie in journalism industry:

With hands on the controller of lens, one reporter now has the ability to ‘manipulate’ a ‘fact’, a preferred or desired ‘fact’. Common individuals have neither time/energy, nor enough professional knowledge to distinguish lies between truths. Telling lies from the overwhelming information is unpractical. As a result, lies are, literally, out of control.

However, I’m not saying the technology should not be developed and skills should not be made more advanced. What resonated in my brain is the perennial dilemma of development.

Initially, those great Greek philosophers noted that truth is “coverless”. That is, the less cover and medium there is, the closer we are to the truth.

Although nowadays we are far from that mysterious great Greek age, to clarify or build an easier path towards truth is still the pursue of our early technology pioneers. Compared to 19^th century, a ‘playback’ function is doubtlessly a breaking through; as well as recompose compared to ‘playback’ in the later century. The developments promise convenience and power, while nothing promises responsibility.

Some artists have replied to this phenomenon. Like the worry carried by movies like the Matrix (1999-2003), Blade runner (1982), Pacific Rim (2013), etc. that people’s failure or ignorance of maintaining the responsibility may backfire human being themselves---that the mainstream idea of science fiction. An animation EVA (Neon Genesis Evangelion 1994-?) made by Gainax goes deeper into the discussion of the religious punishment from ‘god’ because of the abuse of technology by human being, which is a favorite to me.